The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-01 00:00:00

irixertutb-Dittoit

SUN OFFICE Three o'Cluch.

It will be seen from accounts published this
day, that the arrests of the Chartists are daily on
theincrease. Ten were arrested yesterday at
Manchester, one at Sheffield, two at Leeds, and
several at other places. The Government have
laid their plans with much skill, and have evi-
dently waited till they could pounce upon all
the parties at once; but we believe they are in-
debted for success not so much to their own vigi-
lance, as to a certain class of persons never
held in high estimation. We learn from a
Correspondent that a considerable number
of determined Tories, under the guise of Chart-
ists, were admitted into the secret, and when
their plans were sufficiently matured, they
turned informers, and on their evidence warrants
were immediately issued against the leaders.
We presume, however, that the charges are not
very serious, as several of the persons implicated
have been admitted to bail.

The political article in the Number, just pub-
lished, of Blackwood' s
.Magazine, is fuller than
usual of studied misstatements and perversions '
of fact ; indeed, its very title, " The League's
Revenge," sufficiently indicates the general ten-
dency of its arguments, whose object is to prove
that the late turn-out in the manufacturing and
coal districts originated with the members of the
Anti-Corn-law League, who themselves sug-
gested it, and carefully watched and assisted
its progress up to the very moment
of the grand explosion, in order to suit
their own selfish and factious purposes.
"We do not hesitate," says the writer of
this precious ultra-Tory diatribe, " to attribute
the late revolt of the urban masses to the League,
and those who espouse the cause of the League ;
we lay the odium at the doors of those who first
gave the discontent a vent—upon those parti-
san manufacturers who forced their dependents
into the streets, by threatening them with star-
vation." If the members of the League—among
whom are to be found many of the wealthiest,
most-intelligent, and most influential manufac-
turers in Manchester, and the surrounding districts
—if these men, who have such a deep interest in the
maintenance of subordination and tranquillity
among their workmen, and to whom anything in
the shape of a convulsion is little short ofabsolute
ruin ;—if these men really prompted the late re-
volt, all we can say is, that they must have been
the greatest set of idiots that ever walked on two
legs, and called themselves men ! What.! encou-
rage the stoppage of their own mills; diminish,
instead of increase, the means whereby they live;
shatter the fabric of their own prosperity, and
bring themselves within the jaws of destruction ;
in other words, cut their own throats in or-
der to revenge themselves on their ene-
mies;—is it to be imagined that a body
of men so shrewd and enlightened as
those who compose the Anti-Corn-law League,
could, even under the bitterest sense of injury
and oppression, act in this frantic, suicidal man-
lier ? Impossible ; and yet we must concede to
him this monstrous hypothesis, otherwise the
writer in Blackwood cannot make out even the
shadow of a case! So much for the sophistry of
this reckless ultra-Tory scribe; but what are we

to say for his assertion that the " partisan inanu-
facturers forced their dependents into the streets,
by threatening them with starvation'!" Never
was there a more unblushing falsehood ut-
tered than this! It is as opposite to the
plain, known fact, as day to night—shadow to
substance. Instead of forcing their workmen
into the streets by holding out a menace of star-
vation, the manufacturers did their utmost to
keep them from the streets, and induce them
peaceably and diligently to continue their work, •
%veil knowing, with their usual sagacity, even if
they were not influenced by nobler motives, that
their own self-interests would be injured by the
insubordination of their dependents, and that
not a single mill or factory could be
stopped, and its works paralysed, without
the masters suffering to a still greater ex-
tent than the men. How are we to account
for such ridiculous reasoning—such Fal-
staff-like mendacity as this, on the part of a writer
who shows in other parts of his article—as in his
brief, cursory remarks on the inconsistencies of
the Whigs—that he is by no means devoid of a
certain modicum of political acuteness ? His ab-
surd sophistry is only to be accounted for
by the fact that be had a rotten cause to
defend ; that he was perfectly conscious of this;
and that therefore, in the headlong desperation
of the moment, he availed himself of whatever

arguments came readiest to hand, cherishing a
sort of forlorn hope that they might at least pass
muster with his ultra-Tory readers, to whose
prejudices he took care they should appeal.

Some of the Paris journals are quite in a fever
of joy, because, as they say, the American Go-
vernment has declared in a note to the French
Government, that it could not, and would not, at
any time, or for any cause, permit a foreign na-
tion to share the right of sovereignty on board
of an American vessel. We hardly know what
is meant by " sharing" the right of sovereignty,
unless it refer to the proposition made in The Sun,
that American ships should be visited by their own
officers, in conjunction with ours, embarked on
hoard English men-of-war. The ignorance, how-
ever, or the forgetfulness, ofour brotherjournalists
on the other side of the Channel, to make much
out of this declaration, real or pretended, of the
American Government, is quite amusing. They
regard it as something new, as a victory gained by
the Americans over the English ; and they say
that " it will be quite impossible for M. GUIZOT
to submit,for France,to obligations which England
has admitted that America has a right to decline
in regard to ;ler own person." Why, England
has always admitted the same thing, and has
therefore sought, but sought in vain, to make the
Americans consent to a mutual right of search.
The Americans have never held any different
language, nor acted in any other manner. They
have resolutely refused from the first to allow
English men-of-war to visit their merchant ships,
and as resolutely have they refused to enter into
any treaties granting a reciprocal right of search.
Both by words and deeds the Americans have
declared, ever since the question of visiting ships
to prevent the slave trade was mooted, that they
would not share the sovereignty of American
vessels with any Power whatever. For the
French journals to speak of this declaration as
something new, which ought to have a powerful
influence on the conduct of the French Govern-
ment, is sheer forgetfulness, if it be not an ab-
surdity.
France has long held different language, and
acted in a different manner. Being well ac-
quainted with the conduct and language of the
States, she has entered into treaties with Eng-
land, granting a mutual right of search, within
certain latitudes, for the prevention of the slave
trade, and can have no motives now for break-
. ing those treaties which did not exist before the
supposed declaration was made. She may, it'
she think fit, separate herself from Eng-
land in the benevolent crusade which the
latter has undertaken against the horrible crime,
the piracy, of stealing the Africans; but let her not
in doing s 3 assign motives for her conduct which
do not exist. Let France and Frenchmen avow
that their jealousy of England is so insurmount-
able that it prevents them from ever cordially
uniting with England in the most humanei and
perhaps the noblest, undertaking that ever
confederated Governments engaged in. They
have too often been allied to rob and plunder the
weak and the helpless; in this case—however
visionary some persons may call their attempts—.
• they are allied to suppress one of the darkest
curses that disfigures the humanity of our com-
mon nature.

We learn from Vienna that Prince MICHAEL
and his family had, on the lath, been declared to