The Sun.
London, England, 1842-07-05 00:00:00

country, and if the Conference cannot overrule the
Premier and his friends we shall begin to despair of
England. Upwards of ten months has Sir R. Plum
been in office, having assumed it under the loftiest
pretensions and most excited hopes. Every day since
trade has been growing worse and worse ; poverty and
pauperism have increased ; so that his admi-
nistration, which began so proudly, seems likely
to be called the Disastrous Administration. In
Parliament he has been uniformly triumphant, and
every measure on which he could boast of success
seems to have cheated the hopes, or added to the dis-
tress of the people. Not only has distress continually
increased, discontent that was lulled by hope is again
gathering in black and stormy masses, roused up by
disappointment. Our accounts from the manufactur-
ing districts are of the most gloomy description. One
class after another is sinking into pauperism, and Sir
It. PEEL, it is said, must apply his Income-tax to re-
lieve the paupers. Under these painful and trying
circumstances the Anti-Corn-law League again
assembles in conference. We look on the
proceedings as of serious and solemn import. We
earnestly pray that they may be equal to the crisis
which brings them together. Half measures will no
longer do. Flattery and false language can deceive
none but themselves. If, while they denounce the
Corn-law as unrighteous and iniquitous, they preach
obedience to such a law, they will need no enemy to
overcome them. If, while they meet in an extraordi-
nary convention, to set aside, as they hope, the
deliberate decision of the Parliament, they shall
profeSs a love and reverence for the bbdy whose
decrees they deride and properly wish to upset,
they will betray themselves. They come to Lon-
don to impugn the wisdom of Parliament, they
meet to show that it has done, and is doing, a
grievous wrong to the people, and unless they express
that fearlessly and honestly, they will do nothing. What
resolutions they may adopt is not for us to suggest ; but
if they are not now prepared to set the unrighteous
bread-taxers at defiance, to stand firmly and exclu-
sively upon the justice of their cause, they will not
be equal to the occasion.

As there are now great complaints about the in-
crease of the linen duties in France and the expected
woollen duties in Germany, it seems appropriate to re-
mind the public that an individual trader and a nation
are not enriched by what they send away, but by
what they receive. If the French will give us their
wine without taking anything in exchange for it, so
much the better. If our linen-yarn spinners and
woollen-cloth weavers were to send abroad ten times
as much as at present, and were not to bring
back an equal quantity of goods, they would be
losers by the increase of trade. They would la-
bour more and get less. We venture on this ground
to throw out a doubt whether the increase of import
duties in other countries, about which there is a
disposition to make such an outcry, be of any mate-
rial injury either to individual manufacturers or to
the nation. We would venture even to suggest that
export duties, such as our duty on coals, which pre-
vents other nations obtaining them, are much more
injurious to foreign nations than any import duties
levied on foreign commodities.
Too much importance is attached, we think,
to the import duties levied in other countries.
We know it is expected that the French linen
yarn manufacturer, paying no such duty, will
sell his yarn at a lower price than the yarn imported,
which will thus be banished from the French market.
Does experience justify that view ? Did our heavy,
our prohibitory duties, keep out French silks and
gloves ? Did the enormous duties in France keep out
thread for lace ? We affirm that they did not ; the
smuggler was too much for the Custom-house officer,
and the result of the duty was only to raise the price
of the article to the consumer. Experience, more-
over, informs us that the sure effect of high protecting
duties, is to make those in whose favour they are
enacted negligent, indolent, and unenterprising, while
they stimulate those whose production they are in-
tended to check to renewed exertions. Against these
two opposite motives duties to any extent are almost
unavailing, and therefore we beg leave to doubt whe-
ther, in a very short time, the effect would not be that
English linen yarn would be sold in France, in spite
of the duty, cheaper than French linen yarn.
On this view we are very much inclined to con-
clude that heavy import duties on foreign commodities,
whatever may be the intention of levying them—and
we are not now to learn that the intentions of statesmen
are seldom realised by their laws—do not much injure
the imports they were intended to annihilate. Our
heavy duties on French silks did not annihilate the
silk manufactures of France. The heavy duties on
our manufactures in the United States have not de-
stroyed them. Provided the country from which the
import of the commodities is to be checked does not
play the game of its opponent, by inflicting corres-
ponding and retaliatory duties—for example, in our
ease, on French wines and brandies, or on American
wheat and flour—and does not, therefore, prevent the
taxing country from sending its goods hither, it will
be very difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the im-
portation of our goods. The French and the
Americans will want to be paid for their brandies and
their flour, and the certain way, therefore, in spite of

fiscal regulations, to force a market for our linen yarn
in France is, to lower the duties on French commo-
dities, and allow France freely to send her gocds
hither.
We know that such opinions do not suit the
frightened, short-sighted, and perhaps greedy, manu-
facturers. But we are not now to learn—with the
ruins of the mercantile system hanging about us—
that manufacturers are not to be trusted to dictate
laws which affect the general welfare. We there-
fore do not pay quite so much attention to their fears
and their complaints on this point as they think they
deserve. According to our view, treaties of commerce
and reciprocal duties, about which we hear so much,
are of very little importance. It is not possible for
other nations to injure us by their regulations, if we
do not injure ourselves. It is the imports, we repeat,
not the exports, which enrich nations and individuals ,
and if our rulers do not by stupid regulations keep
out imports, as in the case of corn, exports will soon
go to pay for them. There is not a Frenchman nor
a Yankee who will give us a hogshead of wine or a
barrel of flour without getting from us an equivalent.

The Ministers did not choose to make a House of
Commons last night, and there are many surmises as
to the cause. For our parts we scarcely believe that
they are frightened at Mr. WALLACE'S motion, what-
ever effect the state of the country may have on their
nerves ; neither do we credit the stories of a rupture
in the Ministry; nevertheless, there must have been
some strong reason why, at this period of the Session,
Sir ROBERT PEEL would not have a House made on
a Monday evening. He wants money—he says he
cannot get on without the supplies—and yet he threw
away a night. Is there a screw loose ?