The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-03 00:00:00

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LONDON
THURSDAY MORNING, MARCH 3, 1842.

The Report on Sir ROBERT PEEL'S corn resolu-
tions was received last night, and the Bill will be
brought in as soon as possible. He and the great
majority of the Parliament are quite identified, and
as the most ardent Corn-law Repealers are not pre-
pared, as far as we can learn, to set aside the autho-
rity of Parliament, though it be the mere organ or in-
strument of the landlords, it follows, as a matter of
course, that they must acquiesce in the landlords' de-
cision. The community, enslaved by its own defer-
ence for the aristocracy, must put up with whatever
laws the landlords choose to make. Under these cir-
cumstances, nothing short of a miracle can prevent
Sir ROBERT PEEL'S plan for continuing a great sys-
tem of legislative plunder from becoming the law of
the land. True, it is a terrible disgrace to the Legis-
lature now to re-enact a law which experience has de-
monstrated to be as mischievous as it is fundamentally,
unjust; but the Repealers having striven and pro-
tested against it, and not being efficiently supported
out of doors, must wash their hands of the iniquity,
and lay it entirely at the door of the landlords. Their
duty, in relation to that plan, in Parliament must now,
we believe, draw to an end.
Sir ROBERT PEEL has in plain terms informed the
House of Commons, that the landlords would not
allow him to make a further relaxation of the Corn-
laws ; at the same time he has announced other meh-
mires to restore the dilapidated finances, and to amend
the tariff. Though disappointed with what he has
already done, the public are extremely desirous to
learn what more he means to do. It will not be pru-
dent in the Liberal Members to baulk this desire;
and we would suggest to them, therefore, to throw
no obstacle in Sir R. PEEL'S way, by proposing any fri-
volous or useless motions, to be withdrawn after an un-
satisfactory debate. Let them rather facilitate the per-
formance of essential business, and so enable Sir R.
PEEL to state as speedily as possible what he proposes
as to taxes and what as to trade. No other subject is
of public interest or public importance, and the Li-

'betal Members will not gain on public esteem by in-
; terposing with petty measures and petty projects of
their own. If they can defeat the Corn-law project,
let them do so ; if they have no hope of that, let them
contribute to gratify the expecting people by hasten-
ing the publication of Sir R. PEEL'S whole plan.

Their cause will lose nothing by this course.
Public opinion is already setting in strongly against
PEEL, and an additional impetus will probably be
given to the current by the other petty measures by
which he will disappoint the people. New taxes, we
presume he must have ; and he can scarcely impose
them without raising prices, and altering the relations
d his new Corn-law. It is very probable that his
ether measures, without benefiting the consumer, will
tend, like his Corn-law alterations, to make him un-
popular with the farmers. What he has already pro-
posed has seriously damaged his character and
exposed the aristocracy, whose servant he is ;
and the Liberal party will lose nothing by
allowing the thorough conviction of his weakness and
their injustice to take deep root in the public mind.
We do not say the Liberal Members are not at every
stage of his Corn Bill to say No to it, and point out
its injustice ; but let them not interpose with any mo-
tions or proceedings of their own to prevent the
public from hearing his whole plan of commercial re-
lief and financial burdens. -

[The following article was written immediately after
Sir PEEL delivered his last great speech, but the pres-
sure of Parliamentary matter excluded it till now :—]
We feel almost inclined to pity Sir ROBERT
PEEL. Never was a political schemer more com-
pletely caught in his own toils. Unwarned by the
present use of earnest and solemn language, the
index to strong and irrepressible feeling, arising from
general and great suffering, he has persisted in playing
fast and loose with truth, and has for years notori-
ously spoken against his own convictions, in order
that he might, by help of the land-owners, be the
Prime Minister of England. Mistaking the source
and nature of political power, he has continued to
worship the Church and the aristocracy, because ig-
norance once made them Gods, after those idols—as
his successive defeats on the Catholic question, and
on Reform proved—were thrown down, and
trampled in the dust. In obedience to their com-
mands he has striven against truth, justice, and en-
lightened public opinion, and by them he has been
!successively laid prostrate and helpless. Now he has
attained-the very height of his ambition, and by his
own act, amending the Corn-laws, does he again
stand self-condemned.

His all-important recognition, which we noticed on
this clay week, of the superior influence of the success of
manufactures to any system of Corn-laws in promot-
ing agricultural prosperity, is an acknowledgment of
the impotency of his legislation, and of the over-
whelming power of the substantial interests of society.
It implies a conviction on his part that these substan-
tial interests are a law of society, and it imposes on
him the obligation to study them, and conform himself
thereto. He has again admitted, as in 1829, the in-
adequacy of a much cherished law, which he has strenu-
ously maintained, to answer its intended purpose,
and has been thus compelled again to lay violent hands
on his own political greatness, and the ascendency of
his party.
We have on two or three occasions distinctly charged
him with appealing to the passions and prejudices of the
landowners, and with exciting their alarms, as in his re-
ferences to the corn which might possibly be grown in
Denmark, and as to the effect of 2,000,000 of acres of
land being thrown out of cultivation by free trade.
We have accused him of dealing i&House of Corn-
- ;
mons-clap-traps, and of having for his party purposes
exaggerated all the possible evils of putting an end to
• the brei4l-tax. Now on Wednesday night he
avowed that his present measure was as large a one
as he could carry. He said-
-1 believe the Hon. Gentleman (Mr. C. 'Buller) wishes
4.. Tor an ultimate repeal, yet he wishes them to act with caution,

:--

2,t1

and not excite apprehensions in the minds of the agriculturists.
I knew that my proposition would not have that effect; and if
the Hon. Gentleman had seen the communicational have re-
ceived, I think he would think that I have advanced as far as I
possibly could without raisins those apprehensions. It was
therefore on this account that I anticipate his vote to-n;ght in
opposition to the Hon. Gentleman. lam sure that if I had
gone much further those apprehensions which the Hon. Gen-
tleman fears would have been fulfilled.
He implied, therefore, that a larger measure than
his resolutions would be beneficial and just, and he
admitted, as the servant of the landlords, that he is
only allowed to give the little he offers. But he has,
for his own purposes, now and on former occasions,
strengthened the prejudices and excited the alarm of
the landlords, to whom he succumbs ; thus is he
made powerless to do good, thus is he rendered im-
potent to benefit the nation, and soon must he give
up a helm which he has obtained by most unworthy
means.
Thus is his political character and power de-
stroyed by those very prejudices and passions in the
landed aristocracy, which he, for the sake of getting
office, has nourished into strength. Who shall doubt
the moral government of the world, when schemers,
even when they appear at the height of prosperity,
are thus caught in their own toils, and doomed to
pass a sentence of condemnation on themselves ?
On Wednesday Sir ROBERT, with his usual cun-
ning, made great use of the concessions of his oppo-
nents, though he was well aware of their worthless-
ness. Mr. M. PHILIPS admitted over-trading and
too great facities of banking prior to 1838. But
what have such temporary and fleeting causes, which
might involve a few persons in difficulty, to do with
the wide-spread distress which now pervades the
entire empire ? The banking system of Scotland has
undergone no alteration, and Sir ROBERT PEEL will
hardly affirm that the over-speculation in Lancashire
in 1836 and 1387 caused the ruin of Paisley, and the
want of trade at Aberdeen and Arbroath in 1841.
So Sir ROBERT PEEL seized hold of the acknow-
ledged prosperity of 1832 to 1837 to prove that pros-
perity might exist under the Corn-laws ; but he ought
not to have forgotten that the country was rejoicing
at that period under great remissions of taxation, as
well as abundant harvests. As a statesman he was
bound to look at the terrible vicissitudes to which
every branch of industry has been continually sub-
jected during the last twenty-seven years, though the
country has been at peace, and the people uniformly
industrious and orderly. From that general failure
he ought to have concluded that there must be some
general .disturbing cause in operation—something
wrong in our legislation, when the exertions of the
nation have been as mistaken as a lover's fancies, and
have continually run into fitful speculations or sunk into
paralysed helplessness. It is his business to find out this
cause, and remove it ; for that he has pay and power ;
he contented himself with showing up Mr. GREG.
He abdicated the functions of a statesman to assume
those of a pettifogging disputant.
He quoted Mr. RICARDO, too, as the advocate of
protection ; he forgot to say that Mr. RICARDO
founded his argument on the land being subject to
tithes, the burden of which increases with the gross
produce, while, since Mr. RICARDO wrote, the tithes
have been commuted, and are not henceforth to increase
in quantity. He omitted to notice that prices have since
settled down, with many ruinous fluctuations, at least 25
per cent. He forgot also to state that poor-rates have
been forcibly reduced in the proportion of from
8,000,0001. to 5,000,0001., and that every tax, even to
that of shepherds' dogs, which weighed exclusively on
the agriculturists, has been repealed. To quote Mr.
RICARDO, at present, as an authority for a law to tax
the people's food on account of the burdens borne by
the land, without taking any notice of these changes,
must be attributed, not to the ignorance, but to the
disingenuousness of Sir ROBERT PEEL.

Sir ROBERT PEEL based another great argument,
which pervaded all his speech—from his first notice
of the new mills mentioned by Mr. HORNER,
to nearly the end of it—on the increasing employ-
ment in the manufacturing districts. He admitted the
distress, but when he found 94 new mills had been
built in Lancashire only, when he found that the con-
sumption of cotton had increased in 1840 to

175,000,0001b5., he concluded that the distress was
evanescent, trifling, much exaggerated, and one of
those petty disturbances of the social system, which
are compatible with general prosperity, and would soon
pass away. But if the distress be now great, in spite
pf all this additional employment, what would it have
been had these mills not been built ? To erect them,
and to fill them with machinery, gave employment to
a great number of persons ; to work them after they
were erected, employed 'an additional number. To
manufacture all the cotton in 1840 mentioned by Sir
R. PEEL must have given work to upwards of a mil-
lion persons. Notwithstanding that, there was great
distress, what, we ask Sir R. PEEL and his cheering
landlords, would have been the overwhelming distress,
had this cotton not been worked up ?
The manufacturers did not call the pauper popu-
lation of Ireland and agricultural England into ex-
istence ; they only provided work for them as long
as they could. They continue to provide work for
them as much as they can, and because they are not
able to go forward as rapidly as they did from
1832 to 1837—because their prosperity is nipped
and destroyed by the Corn-law, the Prime Minister
reproaches them with having caused the national dis-
tress by over-speculation' and over-production. We
have before convicted him of disingenuousness—we
have now convicted him, we think, of gross injustice.
We might easily add to our catalogue of his offences
against good taste and morals, but we give him over to
the contempt of the hungry populace, whom his new
modification of the Corn-law outrages, and to the cen-
sure of the manufacturers, to whom his reasoning and
his language are an insult.

Lord CAMPBELL'S Bills for abolishing the Court of
Privy Council, improving the appellate jurisdiction of
the House of Lords, and placing a permanent Judge at
the head of the Court of Chancery, will not pass this
session. This is evident from the way in which the Law
Lords received them in the House of Peers.last night. The
Noble and Learned Lord, in commencing his career in
the Upper House, as the rival of Lord BROUGHAM, gave
offence to many of his colleagues by the unscrupulous
way in which he had appropriated their several
projects, and amalgamated them so as to form
a system of his own. In one of Lord CAMPBELL'S three
Bills, Lord CorrErum discovered one of his own strangled
progeny; Lord BROUGHAM hinted that he had supplied
the conception of a second ; and the LORD CHANCELLOR
contended that the *empire would suffer no less by
the postponement of the passing of the three till
the Greek Kalends. We may, therefore, safely
predict that Lord CAMPBELL'S Bills will not pass this
session, whatever may be their respective merits. The
Bills themselves are not yet printed, but from the outline
given of them in the speech of the Noble and Learned
Lord, we entirely approve of the leading principle
upon which they are based. We think that
there ought to be one, and but one Tribunal of
Ultimate Appeal. We further contend that the
Chief Judge of the' Court of Chancery ought
to be a permanent Judge. and totally without political
functions. The President of the House of Lords is not
and cannot be, a fit and proper person to preside over a
Court of Equity, and yet be removable with every
change of Ministry.

A pamphlet, entitled " The Unlawfulness of all Wars
and Fightings," has been transmitted to us from one of
the " Religious Society of Friends," with a request
to impress the importance of the subject on
our readers. We would willingly comply with
the request, if we saw how the object of the writer
could be obtained, without leading to slavery or to
crimes greater than even those committed in war.
Before cessation from all fightings can be accomplished,
we must have not a quintuple, but at least a
centuple treaty, which *all bind all the nations
of the earth to turn their swords into ploughshares and
their spears into pruning-hooks, and even then what
security would there be against some petty state
landing a few soldiers at Gravesend or London-
bride, marching along Cheapside and the Strand,
loading themselves with plunder and carrying off
ktri,ilererreesstebhsee inangtaitnilntees: maoleifotraolpßeorrlaipsztit?lrtyolrVinhasltvitensectiauo,rfit
perhaps not a few of the most beautiful Qua-
Yfoll labourers
g
the example, and carrying off next
r year their
husbands as slaves ? As the • world exists at
I present the injunction on which this respect-
able
found I class their practice could not be obeyed
without throwing the whole state of society into inde-
scribable confusion. Till the Millenium arrives, or till
all mankind shall assume the habits and doctrines of " the
Friends," we shall have wars and rumours of wars. They
deserve all praise for their humane end peaceable conduct,
but even they would be driven to fight if others did not
protect them. Self-preservation is the first instinct of
human nature. Would even they not have recourse to
violence if they were thrown among ravenous wolves ?

The following extraordinary article, respecting the
personal conduct of the Emperor of RUSSIA, and the
mode of life at the Imperial Court of St. Petersburgh, is

from the leading columns of our now Tory Contempo-
rary, the Times. For the statements contained in it we
do not hold ourselves responsible. That the Emperor
NICHOLAS, in his regal capacity, is an iron despot, in
whom there is no bowels of compassion, all conversant
with the sad fate of unhappy Poland know too well.
But as a husband and the father of a family,
we have hitherto heard nothing but what was greatly
to the credit of the CZAR. The health of the EMPRESS
has been for several years exceedingly delicate, during
which the EMPEROR is reported to have treated her with
great tenderness, carefully concealing from her any
folly of the Court calculated to occasion her any un-
easiness. His eldest daughter he permitted to choose
a husband for herself—no indication certainly of
undue parental severity. He extended the like
indulgence to his eldest son and heir, provided the
lady of his choice was of a certain rank, and he al-
lowed him to roam over Europe in search of her. We
notice these particulars, because we like justice so well,
that we would willingly accord to Satan himself any
merit due to him. We now quote the article of the
Times:—

Our private correspondence from Vienna of the 20th ult. states,
that the wife of the son and heir to the Emperor Nicholas had
(although enceinte), determined to quit her husband, and re-
turn to her father at Darmstadt, in consequence of a series
of brutal treatment to which she was exposed. The Duke of
Leuchtenburg is said to have deeply regretted having quitted his
happy residence at Munich, to marry a Russian Princess, and fix
his residence at St. Petersburgh where he has received many inci-
vilities from his father-in-law, the Emperor. The unfavourable
accounts received at Munich, of the manners of the Court of St.
Petersburgh, are said to have prevented the marriage of the Prince
of Bavaria, with the Grand Duchess Olga, whose hand is now
offered to the Duke de Bordeaux.

The Five per Cents. were done at Madrid on the
21st instant at 30k for cash, and 30i 4 at dif-
ferent dates.

M. MA GUIN brought the question of the ratification of
the Bight of Search Treaty, before the Chamber of
Deputies on Monday, with a view to exact from the
Government a pledge not to ratify it at all. M. G UIZOT
said that after the first debate in the Chamber about
it, the Government had confined itself to two things—
the supporting the rights of the Crown, and the admission
of the gravity of the opposition feeling exhibited by
the Chamber. The Crown had made known to
its Ambassador in London, that it could neither accept
the Treaty nor enter into any engagement for the future.
The Four Powers, in answer, stated that they compre-
hended the delicate position of the Cabinet, and should
leave the Treaty open for the ratification of France,
whenever she felt so disposed. So much for the nonsense
of the Opposition Press about France being insulted.
Queen Christina continues frequently to visit the Palace of the
Tuileries.

M. Salvandy, our ex-Ambassador in Spain, bas had a pretty long
conference with the King.—Le Commerce. _ .

A letter from Cairo, in the Leiptig Gazette, states that the last
despatch of the Sultan addressed to the Pacha, desired him to get
ready a contingent of 12,000 men for service among the forces
organising at Constantinople. Mekemet Ali, it adds, knew before-
hand what the contents of the despatch, which had been long ex-
pected, would be, and hastened to dissolve the National Guard of
Alexandria, and disbanded some of his regular troops, so that he
now alleges that he has only his guards, and cannot spare them.
BOURSE—PARis, MONDAY, FEB. 28.

First Highest Lowest Last
Price Price. Price. Price.
French 5 per Cent 5.......... • 119 25 ... 119 30 ... 1 920 ... 119 30
9 per Cents BO 80 05 ... 60 .. 60 05
8 ink of France 3350 7...3350 ...3345 ....3345
Liffitte Bank 1,0001. Stares 1022 50 ...1025 ...1022 50 ...1025
5,000 f. Shares 2059 ...5050 —5050 ...5050
lelgian Bank
1821 ......
Belgian 5 per Cents. ..... « 104% ... 104% ... 104% .. jog%
6 per Cent..., 1850 105% ... 105% ... 105% ... 105%
5 tanish Active 25% ... 25 ... t's «. 25
Portuguese 5 per Cents.
tivapolitan
80rten......

RAILWAY SHARES.
St. Germain ••••••••••••••••••••• 825 ••• 825 ..• 825 ••• 825
versgulles. R. B 347 1:0 ... 347 50 ... 347 50 ... 347 50
L.B 2lO 210 210 .• 210
%min
AUSTRIAN FUNDS...-VIENNA, FEE. 19.
/limper Coats. Metalliques
Four per Cents. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ..... ......... 100
Three pH' Cents. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 7814
• Bank Shares ...............»..« 1037
....411gemeine Z;itung..Feb. 23.