The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-05 00:00:00

rtt ,s ult.

LONDON:
IVEDNESDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 5, 1842.

Now that M. DE LA MARTINE has asserted
that the world is becoming mechanical or manu-
-fitcturing, and insisted, in his poetical way, that
statesmen must accept this as a part of society,
seek to give it a soul, there can be little
doubt but that the opinion will find general
favour with our Tory journalists, as it has already
found favour with more than one. For our
Faris, feady as we have been to give currency to
M. LA MARTINE'S oration, we had nothing to
lea-At from him on this head, and have several
tiraeF., and years ago, insisted, in this journal, that
the L;rowtlt of manufactures was a natural and
nee, ssary step in the progress of mankind. We
haya pointed out the circumstance, namely--the
en, m tof proportionably fewer hands to feed
socir ty as the art of agriculture is improved—which
cor ,peis men to be manufacturers, if they have
nc th.: means to live without employment, and
we Li; .ve briefly, as occasion served, alluded to
som' of the moral effects—which we regard as
alt~.gether beneficent—of the growth of mann-
factuves, and the increasing use of machinery.
On this important question, therefore, we had
notning to learn, and have learned nothing, from
M. OE LA MARTINE, though we are glad of him
as au auxiliary to impress on our readers the
truth, that society is becoming, and must be-
come, mechanical or manufacturing.
Buz this important truth is denied by the
Tories, and not merely is the truth denied, but
their tictions are dictated by a contrary opinion.
Wit), an Arcadian simplicity, a remnant of the
belief in a golden age, they insist that agricul-
ture, because it was earlier practised than manu-
factures, is a far more suitable employment for
society; and, far from allowing individuals to
distribute themselves as is most for their advan-
tage, in manufacturing or agricultural occupa-
tion;, they have insisted, and do insist, on forcing
an undue number to engage in cultivating the
soil, and in Preventing an increasing number
from gaining a living by making and selling ma-
nufactures. If M. DE LA MARTINE and we are
right, the statesmen who adopt the Tory princi-
ple, and try to extend agriculture and check the I
growth of manufactures by laws, are engaged in I
resisting the natural and necessary progress of
society, and are responsible, by their erring
conduct, fbr much of the misery which exists.
In Si: ROBERT PEEL'S imagination it may not
be very poetical or picturesque to have the
whole community crowded into large towns conj.
fleeted by railways, and he may think it worthy
of a statesman to make laws on such a snarling
view of what society may possibly become; but
society has hitherto obtained, and will most pro-
bably in future obtain, the mere means of sub

sistence by a decreasing quantity of labour,. and
the statesman who thwarts or resists that benevo.
volent and beneficial progress from some fancied
superiority in agriculture, is the enemy of his
specks.

We hear much said now of the general peace
of Europe, and we rejoice, day after day, that
our columns contain none of the excitement of
war ;' but it is somewhat Singular to find general
distress and general discontent existing in con- '
junction with general peace. Is it, however, the
fact that,there is peace in society, though there
be peace betwixt nations? If our previous ob-
servations be correct, those_who frame our insti-
tution:, and govern society, may be said to be at
war with its progress. The passages we quoted
yesterday from the Times, " the movement of
numb ors against wealth and rank," imply nothing

less than a war of the multitude against the in.
stitutions of society. How many persons may be
lying in gaol awaiting the deliverance of the
SpEc:al Commission we know not, but they are
not fewer than half a thousand. In former
times the journals attacked political parties and
political leaders—they now assail classes, and
assail them with fury. On the one hand the
landlords, on the other the manufacturers, are
described as oppressing the multitude. If we
have no longer war betwixt nations, we have
war betwixt classes; if we have not war abroad,
we have fierce conflicts at home. We aim not at
each other's lives, but at each other's prosperity;
and, though death be not inflicted, destitution is.
Men perish not amidst the inspiring sounds of
the trumpet, but amidst the cheerless gloom
of cold and creeping poverty. It is this kind of
war betwixt institutions and the people, betwixt
class and class, growing out of a traditionary and
unjust partiality to ancient employments, and an
antipathy to new occupations,which, in the midst of
peace betwixt nations, is one of the main sources
of general distress and general discontent. We
know of no nostrum, for our parts, to cure this
general disorder, but we rely principally on the
spread of information, and the progress of
accurate knowledge amongst our rulers, as well
as amongst the people.

One of the objections made by sentimental
writers and sentimental statesmen to the pro-
gress of manufactures is, that they are un-
poetical. They destroy all the charms which
these writers and statesmen ascribe to rural life.
The undeviating rail, running betwixt high
earthern walls, or passing through a hole in the
earth called a tunnel, or running along on the
top of high embankments, is merely dark, ter-
rific, and mechanical. As the clattering carriage
whirls furiously along, frightening the graceful
animals who are grazing peacefully in the velvet
meadows which it intersects, it is the very anti-
podes of all that to youthful poets and poetesses
is charming in the country ; and an opinion
is formed which is not without its influence in
the Legislature, that mechanical improvements
are odious, soul-less things, which only deform
the fair face of nature. We shall borrow, there-
fore, from a leading Tory publication, the florid,
but certainly not the successful or the reasonable,
defender of Sir R. PEEL'S policy, a few observa-
tions on railroads, to show that they are not
without a poetry of their own. The Quarterly
Reviewer says—
Yet our age is not asleep. Great movements, va-
rious activities, are heard and seen on all sides. In
the lowest department, that of mere mechanics, con-
sider what fifteen years have done. It was only in
the autumn of 1830, following close on the French
three memorable days of July, that the Duke of Wel-
lington opened the Manchester and Liverpool Rail-
road. The population of the busiest region on this
earth were assembled round him, whom all acknow-
ledged as the greatest man in England, at the inau-
guration of a new physical power, then felt to double
the strength and swiftness of human beings. While,
among the myriads of gravely joyous faces, the new
machines travelled at a speed matching that of eagles,
the life of a great statesman shot off on a darker and
more distant journey, and the thrill of fear and pain
at his destruction gave the last human tragic touch
to an event which would at any rate have retained for
ever an historic importance. The death of Mr. llus-
kisson startled the fixed bosom of the veteran sol-
dier, and those who were near perceived a quiver of
the lip, a movement of the eye, such as had hardly
been caused by the most unlooked-for and dreadful
chances of his mighty wars. To a calm observer the
emotion of the whole multitude, great and small,
might strangely have recalled far-distant ages, and
the feelings with which ancient peoples held every
great event as incomplete, wanting the blood of a vic-
tim—too often human—solemnly shed. In the most
prosperous and peaceful of national triumphs the dark
powers again claimed a share, and would not be for-
gotten.

- Since then, about twelve years have passed, and
behold what they have brought forth. Some seventy
millions of money have been expended—more, at the
lowest estimate, than four times as much as the
Papacy was able to raise in a century and a half for
the construction of its greatest monument, the
costliest the world has ever seen. These seventy
millions of pounds have been subscribed by private
persons at their own choice in one small country, and
have created nearly fifteen hundred miles of railroads
—structures that surpass all pyramids and Cyclopean
walls, and machines that would puzzle Archimedes,
by which myriads of men are perpetually travelling
like the heroes of fairy tales. It is probable that the
roads of the Roman eawire, the work of many
centuries, did not cost so much of human labour, and
they certainly did not exhibit so much greatness of
thought, as those that we have built in less than
twenty years. In the state of society that has pro-
duced such results there may be, we know there is,
enough torpor, even rottenness. But it cannot be,
on the whole, an insignificant stage of human ex-
istence, one barren for imaginative eyes.
From the Reviewer's remarks, of which the
above is but a specimen, it is plain that he
regards our present world, our workshops, and
our exchanges, our tall chimneys and our straight
rails, our busy marts and our crowded streets
—teeming, as they do, with life, with tragic and
with comic interest—instinct, as they are, with
all the passions of man, to be full of poetry ; but
the feeble and helpless complainers of an un-
poetical and unpicturesque world, are so dull
that they cannot perceive it, and so little learned
in the love of the passions that they cannot inter-
pret them. We quarrel not with their imbecility,
but we protest against society being made to
suffer because some of the most feeble-minded
of our writers and statesmen are smitten with a
vain desire of distinction, which they cannot
gratify. They are unable to find out the poetry
of the existing world, because it is not the poetry
of their books; and, seeing nothing picturesque
in the occupations of more than half the commu-

nity, would fain suppress them. As long as such
foolishness was confined to the novels of the
Minerva Press, no person thought it worthy of
notice ; but when Tory writers, day after day,
decry manufactures, on sentimental grounds, and
when the Prime Minister appeals to the preju-
dices of sentimentalists against a town population,
thatfoolishness becomes excessively mischievous,
and it is time to direct leading articles against it
The S

especial
Comtnission appointed for the
trial of the northern rioters was opened at
Sta4rd on Monday, on which occasion Sir Mello-
LAS TINDAL, the Chief Justice, delivered a charge
to the Grand Jury; which deserves praise for the
general moderation of its tone, and the clear and
distinct manner in which the law of the land is
expounded, as it bears upon such riotous combi-
nations as took place last July in the manufac-
turing districts. His Lordship, after giving a
brief, general outline of these illegal transac-
tions, whose origin he attributed to certain dis-
putes between the masters and men on the
question of wages, proceeded to state the
difference between legal and illegal combinations,
observing, " that if the workmen of the several
collieries and manufactories, who complained
that the wages they received were inadequate to
the value of their services, had assembled them-
selves peaceably together for the purpose of
determining upon the rate of wages or prices
which the persons present at the meeting should
require for their work, and had entered into an
agreement amongst themselves for the fixing of
such rate, they would have done no more
than the law allows them. Unfortunately,
however," his Lordship added, " those who
were discontented did not stop here," but assumed
the power of interfering with the right which
others possessed, of exercising their own discre-
tion on the subject of their alleged grievances.
" It is unnecessary to say," the Chief Justice
went on to observe, " that a course of policy so
utterly unreasonable in itself—so injurious to so-
ciety—so detrimental to the interests of trade—
and so oppressive of the rights of the poor man
—must be a gross and flagrant violation of
the law, and is to be put down, when guilt
is established, by a proper measure of punish-
ment." Upon this point there cannot be two
opinions. Justice and common-sense alike re-
pudiate such oppressive combinations, as being
assocteianlding
injurious to—indeed,directly to impair
—the system; andthe calm,
equable, but emphatic manner in which they
are denounced by his Lordship, will, we confi-
dently hope and believe, have a. far more whole-
some effect on the minds of those misguided men
who took part in the late strikes, than if such
warm and over-zealous language had been re-