The Sun.
London, England, 1842-02-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF TUESDAY.
GLOBE.—Mr. Gladstone made last night as plau-
sible a speech as could be made for the Peel Corn-
bill. Mark how a plain tale shall put him down ! Mr.
Gladstone says, that Corn-laws have subsisted for 500
year ; and that the principle of a maximum duty has
been in force during all that time, until it was first
violated by the prohibitory law of 1815. There are
Corn-laws and Corn-laws : there are merely nominal
' and there are really prohibitive maximum duties.
It may not be inconsistent with the character
of an Oxford High Churchman to practice a
little Protestant (we beg pardon, Anglo-Catholic)
Jesuitism in his statements as well as in his arguments.
But frauds, even pious, must be exposed. What can
the correct Mr. Gladstone mean by talking of the
old English Corn-laws, as if they had anything prac-
tically in common with the more modern ones ? Was
not the main object of the former to prevent
exportation, " forestalling," " regrating," and all
the other chimerical supposed causes of dear-
ness Was there ever a law enacted, More
Charles the First, which bore on its front the
sole object of preventing corn from being too cheap ?
Again, what can Mr. Gladstone mean by adducing
the maximum duties of the Act of 1773, as affording
any sort of precedent either for those of the present
law, or the Peel abortion for its amendment ? The
Act of 1773 opened the home market to foreign
supplies of wheat at a duty of sixpence per quarter
when the price exceeded forty-eight shillings, and
prohibited exportation when the price rose to 445.
Here was still the spirit of our old laws. To secure
cheapnesss and plenty in the home market
(though by superfluous precautions) was still always
the prominent ostensible object of corn legis-
tion. Mr. Gladstone must know perfectly well
' that the maximum duty of 205." was practically a
dead letter under the Act of 1773. Neither that,
nor the higher duties imposed between that epoch
and 1814, ever were chargeable but at a few short
intervals. The trade was practically free ; the
tide had turned ; from an exporting we had become
an importing country at prices at which the
maximum duty was not chargeable ; and Mr.
Gladstone has himself confirmed the statement
that " from 1765 to 1795, agriculture, manufac-
tures, and commerce, advanced with rapidity hand
in hand." Why were they not let alone ? Will
Mr. Gladstone give us back the maximum duty of
1773 ? We 'will answer for it there is not a " total
repealer" who will not gladly accept this return to
the wisdom of our ancestors, and a regular corn trade.
As Mr. Gladstone has the coolness to assert an iden-
tity of principle in the Corn-law commended by Adam
Smith and the recent series of slippery-scale-devices,
his decent and orthodox official assurance may well be
deemed equal to anything; and it is not at all surpris-
ing that he asserts the identity in principle of Sir
Rohert Peel's project with Lord John Russell's. The
assertion is just as glaringly false of the one, as it is
of the other.

STANDARD.—Lord John Russell asserted in the
debate last night that a settled Corn-law, never to be
modified, is indispensable. how settled? Can his
Lordship, on one side settle immovably the advances
of agriculture, or on the other, the value of
money ? From the nature of things, a Corn-law, to
be just, must be subject to frequent revision, as pe-
remptory, if not quite as frequent, as the Mutiny
or Appropriation Acts. And from whom does this
argument for a settled Corn-law come ? From a man
who has, within twenty years, changed his views of
the law almost as many times, and who is himself the
party unsettling the law in the present instance. To
all his Lordship's taunts about* disturbing the existing
law and making concessions there is this one answer :
" it is all your own work ; you began it." But then the
sliding scale, says his Lordship, causes irregular impor-
tation. To be sure it does; it is intended to do so, and it
ought to do so. The purpose is to meet a constant and re-
gular demand by such foreign supplies as may be ren-
dered necessary by deticiences in the domestic supply.
This it does e&ctually, an we see ; but if the domestic
upply is irregular—and who can control the seasons ?
—the complement of that supply must be irregular
also. If the foreign supply were not irregular, it
must ruin domestic agriculture, on one side, or leave
the people without a sufficient supply in seasons of
scarcity. Lord John's inconsequences are, however,
leading us too far ; we must leave him in the hands
of Mr. Gladstone, whose speech, while it convinces by
its reasoning, will gratify every reader of good taste
by its brilliant eloquence.
COURIER.—Lord John Russell's attack last
night on the plan propounded by Sir Robert Peel for
the adjustment of the Corn-law question, though
ranking high as an effort of Parliamentary skill, and
though evidently the result of great care and severe
preparation, will, in our humble judgment, contribute
more towards the final success of the measure against
which -it was aimed, than will the speeches
of its ablest defenders. Clear, close, and argumen-
tative as was, the reply which Lord John Bus-
' ,;ell drew from the Bight Honourable the Vice-
President of the Board of Trade—forceful mid conclu-
sive as was his refutation of the Noble Lord's strongest
points—and stinging as was his retort of the impu-
tation of the do-nothing
:policy—still we firmly
and sincerely believe his lucid and felicitous vindi-
cation of the measure now before the Commons
and the country will fail to recommend it half
so powerfully as the mode and arguments with
winch Lord john Russell assailed it. Upon a care-
ful perusal of the speech delivered last night by the
leader of the Opposition, it is utterly impossible not to
arrive at the conclusion that between him and Sir R.
-Peel hardly a shade of difference, as regards the really
fundamental principle at issue, is perceptible. Lord
J. Russell admits the right, on equitable grounds, of
British agriculturists to protection against foreign
producers. That is all the Government contends for;
and yet, with this admission, thus voluntarily and
freely given, the Noble Lord took upon himself to
rebuke the framers of the proposed measure, because
in conceding they had not succeeded in conciliating.

FROM TIM EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

GLOBE.--The mistake into which the Tories, as
a party, have constantly fallen, they appear to be
about to repeat. They have always resisted con-
cession to popular claims until concession has
ceased to possess the power to conciliate. They
have yielded to force what they might, at an
earlier stage, have conferred by favour. Thus
they acted in the case of the Catholic disabilities.
They opposed the relaxation of the civil bonds in
which the Irish Catholics were held, until the
degradation and oppressions to which those disabilities
gave rise roused the public feeling to demonstrations
of resistance, which the Government found itself un-
able to suppress ; and then, and not till then, Sir R.
Peel and the Duke of Wellington—who had obsti-
nately refused all concession—consented to abolish
every civil disability under which the Roman Catho-
lics then laboured, and introduced the famous Bill of
1829, which is, in fact, what it professes to be in form,
the Magna Charta of Civil and Religious Liberty
to Ireland, the greater part of whose people had, until
then, been by law and in fact excluded from the pale
of the Constitution. The Tories manifested the same
blind obstinacy in the matter of Parliamentary Re-
form which they displayed on the question of Catholic
Emancipation. The resistance of Sir Robert Peel,
and the Cabinet of which he was the leader in the
House of Commons, to the proposed transfer of the
franchise from close boroughs convicted of bribery and
corruption, to the populous towns which were unre-
presented in Parliament, naturally excited the people
to more firmly compacted and determined exertions
to purify the House of Commons from the pollutions
which had gradually found their way into the
system of elections, and had rendered the idea
of representation a mockery and an insult. The re-
fusal of Sir Robert Peel to transfer the franchise
from East Retford to Birmingham, Manchester, or
Leeds, provoked popular demonstrations, which the
events of every succeeding year tended to strengthen,
until the Duke of Wellington's declaration against
Parliamentary Reform at the opening of the session of
1830, sealed the fate of close boroughs, and terminated
the career of the Ministry, by which their existence
had been maintained as the perfection of human wis-.
Bona, as exhibited in the formation of a system of Par-
liamentary representation.
STANDIRD.—The speeches of Sir Edward
Knatchbull and Sir James Graham were both dis-
tinguished by a masculine frankness of tone as well as
by great ability. Whatever may be thought by op-
ponents of the weight of their arguments, no one
can impute to either of the Right Hon. Baronets pet-
t:fogging or chicanery. The same masculine frank-
nesS certainly does not characterise the speech of
Mr. L„2,ouchere, though the best opposition speech
of the two night's debate. It would be easy,
if we had roc;:n, to prove that Mr. Labouchere 's ad-
dress is a tissue of false principles and misapplied
facts from the begin:iing to the end. A few samples
must suffice .hi our narrow limits. The Right
Honourable Gentleman- protested against the doc-
trine that the relative position of the landed in-
terest, and, of course, Df all dependent upon that
interest, ought to be preserved. Seeing that this
preservation of the relative position of five-sixths
of • the population is but in fact a refusal to
allow the supposed aggrandisement of the re-
maining sixth, or rather of the five-hundredth
part of that sixth, the protest assumes any-
thing but an impartial shape. But what is the prin-
ciple of this protest ? Is it not that classes may be
properly proscribed for the benefit of other classes ?
vet as the Queen owes equal protection to all
her subjects, but owes the means of protec-
tion more immediately to those who are
threatened, so the Legislature may, without devia-
tion from the most imperfect partiality, provide
specially for a class in danger ; and, in truth, if
classes are not to be protected as classes, what is the
present pother about the necessity
,of protecting
manuf4cturers as a class ? Next, Mr. Labouchere
argues the question of a fixed duty, as if such a trade
as a preremptory foreign corn trade could be carried