The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-24 00:00:00

PRINCESS'S THEATRE, OXFORD-STREET.

This New and Elegant Theatre, fitted up in a style of splendour
hitherto unequalled in this country,
Will OPEN on MONDAY, DECEMBER 26,

With an ADDRESS, to be delivered by Mr. J. H. Wallack.
After which, LA SONNAMBULA. Count Rodolph, Mr.
W. H. Weiss ; Alessio, Mr. Walton ; Liza, Mrs. T. H. Se-
vern ; Amine, Madame Eugenia Garcia (her first appearance
on the English stage); Elvino, Mr. Templeton.
To conclude with a New Fairy burlesque burletta, entitled
THE YELLOW DWARF. Principal characters by Mr.
Oxberry, Mrs. Anderson, Miss Noel, Madle. Melanie Duval,
and M. Deneze, who will make their first appearance in this
•enntry in the incidental ballet.
Places and Private Bosse to be had at the Theatre, and at all
the principal Libraries.

HIGH W ATER AT LONDON BRIDGE THIS DAY.
Morning.... VI minutes after 5 f Evening 55 minutes after 5.

LONDON :
SATURDAY MORNING. DECEMBER g 4, 1842.

Some of our Contemporaries are extremely
unreasonable in requiring day after day that Sir
ROBERT PEEL should give some formal intima-
tion of his intentions with regard to the
Corn-law. He can have no other intention than
to maintain the law of last session if he can. His
character as a statesman, his honour as a gentle-
man, legislative decorum, respect for the Parlia-
ment, all the fudges and fictions which serve at
all times as pretexts for not promoting the public
welfare, imperatively command him to preserve
intact the law of last session. The real question
is, not will he preserve it, but can he ? Is he
master of his own actions on that point ? Is he
as free to take his own course, to consult his own
character, to study his own honour, to hearken
to what decorum recommends, as he is to walk
or ride in Tamworth Park as he chooses ? He
is not. What he may be obliged to do depends
on the progress of opinion, which is very rapid,
and the success of the League, which is unex-
ampled. It is quite impossible for him to comply
with the wishes of his admirers, or the demands
. of his opponents, by any declaration at present
of what he means to do.
Suppose he were to inform the public by an
official triple leaded communication in the Post,
that he is resolved firmly to adhere to the law
of last session, can any man believe that agita-
tio,n would immediately cease? Such a declaration
would only inform the League that it must
• matew redoubled exertions to overcome the ob-
stinacy of Sir ROBERT PEEL, in opposition to his
own better judgment of what is for the national
good. Would such a declaration make one fanner
satisfied with present prices, or make one landlord
more determined, in spite of the ruin which the
law is bringing on himself, by ruining the towns,
to maintain it ? What, then, would be its utility ?
None whatever; and we can save Sir ROBERT
*** PEEL the trouble of making any such declara-
.t , ' on, by assuring the public that he will stand
by his foolish law of last session if he can.
i • Suppose he were to state that he means to
Propose a moderate fixed duty, would that ap- '
• pease the League, and preserve his own charac-
ter? It woulnot. The League would continue
their exertions for the total repeal. A great
number of farmers and landlords would rather
have perfectly free trade at .once than a fixed
duty. To make such a declaration, therefore,
would only exhibit vacillation and weakness;
it would betray himself, and separate him from
• a 'great number of his present supporters, with-
out gaining the confidence of the Whig advocates
of a fixed duty. The public may be assured
that Sir ROBERT PEEL has no information to
• give on this subject;and will give none till the
Parliament assembles. Till within a few days of
that period, he will not have made up his own i

mind to any other point than to keep on trial
PEEL'S Corn-law for a session or two longer.

Revolutionists will not be displeased should
' Sir ROBERT PEEL be successful. The public
distress, the want of trade, and the want of em-
ployment—the consequences of the existing
Corn-law--are placing all the errors of our
system in bold relief. They have made the ne-
cessity for a Poor-law for Scotland apparent.
They have, at the same time, demonstrated
that the Poor-law of England is inadequate,
and cannot be fully carried out. They have
done the same for the New Poor-law in Ireland.
They have made the tenure of land there the
subject of public discussion, and have brought
the most powerful of the journals to be the ad-
vocates of the people and opponents of the
landlords. They have doubled the atrocities of
our system of summary convictions, and of our
Game-laws, and have made them odious to the
public. The longer the famine-laws are con-
tinued, the more salient become all the enor-
mities of our political system; and all revolution-
ists, we believe, pray that Sir R. PEEL may, for
his own character and honour, obstinately adhere
to his own law.

The hopes of the Conservatives are at present
based, it appears, on the fact that our country-
men are a religious people. For our parts, we
are not aware that an irreligious people ever
existed. Men may mistake the objects of' wor-
ship, but worship has, and ever will have, a fast
footing in the human mind. Such a general fact
as that men are religious, is an equally solid foun-
dation for the hopes and systems of every other
politician as those of the Conservatives.
But the Conservatives assert that people in-
heriting old traditionary ideas of devotional reve-
rence, can never sink into servile abasement, or
be dissolved in helpless anarchy. In what
countries are such ideas more cherished than
Italy and Spain ? Yet one of those countries is
completely and servilely abased, and the other
has only escaped from such abasement to plunge
into revolution, and has not yet extricated itself
from anarchy. That country of Europe in which
old traditionary ideas of devotional reverence
seem to have least hold of men's minds, and
where, at the same time, the Church is one of
the poorest of Christendom, is Germany, which
flourishes in peace, and her people have, in a
great measure, maintained their independence.
It is eminently Conservative, without being en-
thralled by old traditionary ideas of devotional
reverence. From such facts we see nothing in
the respect entertained amongst us for traditionary
ideas, similar to that entertained in Spain and Italy
to justify any hopes that we shall escape either
abasement or anarchy if our seculae legislation
do not assume a new character.

As well as a religious people, the English are
unquestionably a money and rank-loving people,
and it happens somewhat curiously that their tradi-
tionary ideas of devotional reverence are con-
tinually and strongly fortified by the great wealth
and princely rank of the hierarchy. How much of
the vast respect which the people profess for the
Church is due to its endowments, and how much
to its Christian character, would puzzle the best
algebraist of the age to calculate. No metaphy-
sician could analyse the compound motives. We
at least would not undertake to say, unless we
knew all possible ramifications of family in-
terest and family hopes, how much of certain re-
cent exhibitions of exuberant zeal might spring
from a reverence for religion, and how much from
the homage which the bulk of men pay to such an
immense reservoir of emoluments. Of one thing
we are quite certain, that our people have neither
respect nor reverence for poverty; and were
the Church to be poor, like the Apostles, and the
Apostles' divine Master, they must change their
character entirely, or all reverence for the Church
would disappear. Fortunately for its dignity, and
for the preservation amongst us of old tradition-
ary ideas of devotional reverence, not only has it
managed to keep together large revenues, but,
with laudable diligence, it has continually in-
creased them. Duly sensible of the source of
their power, the clergy cultivate the growth of
their wealth with commendable zeal, being sure
that as long as they hold some six or eight mil-
lions of the annual produce of industry, they may
command the homage of a people who possess,
with many virtues, an unbounded admiration for
wealth and rank.

We drew attention about a month ago to the
nature of the offences for which country gentle-
men, arbitrarily and summarily, send the un-
happy and degraded peasantry—once, possibly,
but not in ourrecollection, their country's pride—
for two or three months to Houses of Correc-
tion. The Wiltshire Independent, of Thursday,
supplies us with another list of the persons com-
mitted to the Devizes House of Correction. In
it we find these, with other cases :
Edward Hillier and Isaac Long, the younger, for
two months each, for maliciously breaking twenty-
two panes of. glass in the windows of the Melksham
Union Workhouse; Isaac Long, the elder, for two
months, for having assaulted and beat Samuel Rutty,
of Steeple Ashton ; Jacob Thursh and Alfred Davis,
both of Brinkworth, and Edward Walker, of Somerford
Parva, for two months each, for destroying game in
the respective parishes • Jonah Merchant, for three
weeks, for a breach of the game laws at West Ashton;
John owell and Solomon Parfit, for two months
each, for destroying game at Maiden Bradley ;
George Cousins, for two months, for destroying game
at Highway.
To us, writing with all due respect to field
sports, it seems a shocking perversion to rate the
liberty of a human being at no higher value
than the liberty of a partridge. For snaring a
hare an immortal being is shut up in gaol.
Gentlemen kill partridges and hares by the
score, and the same thing which they practise
as a savage amusement, is punished as a great
crime in the poor, when done by them to sus-
tain life. There is rivalry, apparently, betwixt
them. The poor desire to live, the gentry to
sport; and as the latter make the laws they
punish the former for sustaining life at the
chance of diminishing their amusement. Yet
England is described as the land of liberty, in
which justice is equally meted out to all. The
Jaws, too, are said to be the same for the rich
and the poor, though one man is honoured for
killing scores of wild birds, and another man is
n,
sent to the treatnliialnldfocrankniollt, however,
a pair. The
gentlemen of E
, escape
the penalties of such conduct, and they find
them in being surrounded by men, of which this
is one of the newest descriptions:--
I can assure the members and friends of both the
Church and the aristocracy, in all earnestness and
sorrow, that among the labouring population there is
a deep hatred, daily growing stronger, a bitter anti-
pathy, expressed as often as they dare express it,
against the gentry. Let no one treat this assurance
lightly. A personal investigation of the cottages,
the furniture, and the food of the rural labourers
throughout several counties, and conversations with
the families at their firesides, or in many cases at the
place of the cottage where a fireside should have been,
but was not, has given me sure and sorrowful proof
of this hostility. *
A Member of the present House of Commons hear-
ing that I was pursuing my inquiries into the state of
agriculture, and the condition of the labourers in the
south, sent an invitation to me to call on him at his
country seat. I called ; went over part of the estate,
and conversed with him on various matters relating
to the objects I had in view. " Here," said he, " those
men you see at work, are all of them as ignorant and
debased as can be. They seem to have lost their
self-respect, if ever they had any. In fact, we have
four times more people in this and the next
parish than the landowners can find em-
ployment for and they are starving—literally
starving—many of them don't do more than two
or three days' work a week, at an average through
the year, and all of them are poachers and thieves.
Look at this man who works with the hatchet—do
you observe him, the next to the ash tree ? That
n lan was, about this time last year, in a very low con-
dition; he had no work, and he is no hand at working
—none of them are ; they have never been used to
steady woPlc ; they were the nursings of the old
poor-law, ansl being a surplus population, they
never will be any better. That man I met
again when I c.i.rne down from London this
season, and he was looking much better
than I had ever seen him ; there was a marked
change for the better in all his appearance, and I
said, 4R— how have you been getting on ? You
seem improved since I saw you last.' And how do
you think he accounted for it ? 'Why,' says he,
smiling in my face, as if he was the happiest man in
the county, your Honour, I've had three months—
I've just come out of gaol."

" Now," continued the gentleman, "that is just
a specimen of the whole of those villagers ; some may
be more discreet in their conduct ; some may live
better than others ; but I am sorry to say I can see no
difference. What are we to think of their condition,
when the dietary of the gaol improves them ? What
of their moral character, when they speak of the gaol
with an air of satisfaction ?"

That paragraph we borrow from " Notes from
the Farming Districts," published by the Morn-
ing Chronicle. After reading it, we must beg
pardon of the country gentlemen for our stric-
tures. Such it appears is the condition of their
" bold peasantry—the country's pride "—that to
send them to prison is to improve both their
moral and physical condition. The Magistates,
therefore, commit so many of her Majesty's sub-
jects summarily to prison every year out of
mercy and kindness. At the same time it must
for them be a sad thing to be surrounded by men
in so deplorable a condition that -solitary impri-
sonment and the tread-mill, with a fair share o
food, is a beneficial change.

DUTCH AND HAMBURGH MAIL.
HANOVER, DEC. 11.—After the marriage of the
Crown Prince, his Majesty intends to visit England,
as was talked of some tine ago. The only purpose of
this journey is said to be to consult the celebrated
physician Sir Henry Halford on his Majesty's health.
He having been formerly the King's physician, and
enjoying the entire confidence of his Majesty, whereas,
since the death of Stieglitz, the King has no confi-
dence in the German physicians, and it is difficult to
induce him to follow their prescriptions. The King,
as is well known, would not even see Schinlein, whom
the King of Prussia sent to him when he was at Dus-
seldorf.
CASSEL, DEC. 15.—His Royal Highness the Crown
Prince, or Regent, opened the Assembly of the Estates
in a very gracious speech, in which he congratulated
them on the state of the country.
HAMBURGH, D Ec.lB.—Our city sustained yesterday
a severe loss by the death of Dr. Aberstruth, after
many years' illness. He was made Senator in 1808,
land Burgomaster in 1831. His name is too closely
connected with our city, and the happy effects of his
public conduct are too deeply impressed in the hearts
of his fellow-citizens, to forget what they owe to him.
ST. PETERSBURGH, DEC. 11.—Count Alexander
Watewsky, formerly a land proprietor in the king-
dom of Poland, is prohibited from ever again setting
his foot in the kingdom, or in the Russian empire. In
the year 1834, he obtained the Emperor's pardon and
permission to return to his country. He did not,
however, take advantage of the pardon granted to him,
but settled in France, entered into the French service,
and now thinks of returning to Russia as a French
subject.
Exchanges on London, Dec. 9, 371.--Journal de St.
Petersbourg, Dec.:lo.
HANOVER, DEC. 18.—IIis Majesty returned yes-
terday afternoon from the Gochorde.—Humburgh
Papers, Dec. 20.
C.IIE HAGUE, DEC. 17.—His Majesty King Frede-
rick William, Count of Nassau, arrived here yester-
day from Berlin.
AMSTERDAM, DEC. 17.—1 t appears from the state-
ments that have been presented respecting the East
India finances, that the surplus of the revenue for
1842, is estimated at about 3,900,000 florins. That
the value of the produce sold in the Netherlands, ac-
cording to the latest prices, was nearly 30,80C,000
florins, that among them were sold nearly one million
picols of coffee, 800,000 picols of sugar, to the amount
of 500,000 florins of Java tea, and 140,000 florins
tobacco ; the indigo is reckoned at nearly two millions
of pounds.
DUTCH FUNDS.—AMSTERDAM, DEC. 20
Money. Bills.
Actual Dcht, 234 per Cent ..«.».«.»U«« 5234 524
Ditto, ditto 5 per cent.
Amen t Syndic, 4% per cent 9l 94%
P.tto, ditto. 254 per cent
Commercial Company, 4'4 per cent... 124)6 130
Loun 1t37, 5 per cent. .. 99% 99%
Exchangeon London, One m0nth......... 12 20
Two months ........ 12 15
Hamburgh, One month 35 8754
Two months ..... 35 68)6
Dutch Papers, Dec. 21.
BELGIAN FUN_a—BßussELs, Dec. 21.
Actual Debt, 2)4 per Cent ,
Rothschild's Loan, Five per ..... 102
Loan of Thirty Millions, Four per Cent ....... 93
Three per Cent..........
Thirty seven Millions, tt()
(1541) 10.2
Loan of City, 1832, Four per Cent. 97
Society of Commerce, Four and a Half per Cent.
Bank of Belgium, Five per Cent 77
National Society
Exchange on London (short)
—Brussels Papers, Lee 21.
AUSTRIAN FUNDS.—VIENNA, Dec. 13.
Five per Cents. Metalhquee 119%
Four per Cent 5............. ........ ......... 100%
Three per Cents
Bank Shares .. . ..... •••••••••.•••••••••••••••• •••••• 1613
Augemeine-Zitung,bec. 17.
HAMBURGH BORSEN HALLE, Dec. 20.
Bills. Money.
Austrian 5 per Cents. ............ ........ 110
Bank Shares 1620
Anglo-Russian Loan lOB% 108%
Russian 5 per Cent., Ist series, Certifieate lO2X]
Inscription, Ist series
Russian 5 per Cent. Hope and Co., 3d and 9th
Series
Ditto in Certificates os --
New 4 per Cent. (1840) 5714 57
Dutch Actual Debt, 2% per Cent. ......... 51% 51
Ditto 5 per Cent.
Polish Bonds
New Tickets
Anglo-Danish Loan, 3 per Cent. 3234 82
Spanish, New 5 per Cents.
PRUSSIAN FUNDS.—BinDT, Dec. 19.
Bills. Money
St. Schuld Sch., 4 per cent.
Prussian English Bonds, 1830, 4 per cent. 102)6 112
Exchange on London . 8 24%
Prussian State Gazette. Dec. 20

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