The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-13 00:00:00

~~ its

LONDON:
TUESDAY MORNING. SEPTEMBER 13, 1842.

We find ourselves, with a feeling of shame
and indignation, engaged in a defence of the
manufacturing industry of the country of WATT,
ARV:WRIGHT, and DAVY. But no person, we he-
lieve, can read the Tory journals without a con-
viction that this defence is neeessary. Day after
day, and week after week, the manufactures of
England are vilified as if they were the causes
of poverty and pestilence. They are derided,
too, in the names of humanity and benevolence;
and because they have not made all those opu-
lent, or at least prosperous, at all times, whom
they have snatched from destitution and death
in the agricultural districts, the law is suppli-
cated to visit those who carry them on with re-
straints and penalties. _ _

Experience has taught those who have at-
tended to her lessons, that the interference with
a manufacture, as in the cases of glass, malt,
brewing, &c., for the manufacture.of which the
Excise prescribes the rules, invariably impedes
its success. All business is engaged in for profit;
where competition is excessive, freedom is neces-
sary to ensure profit; manufactures, therefore,
require perfect freedom; but, despite these les-
sons of experience, the Tory writers continually
demand restrictions on manufactures. The blind
leading the blind is a feeble illustration of their
presumption. They are the blind, Msisting that
those who can see shall Ibllow their groping
steps, arid encounter all the mischances to which
their want of vision will subject' them.
The latest subject to which they have directed
their attention, under the auspices of that en-
lightened legislator Mr. FEItRAND, is the truck
system, or the payment of wages in goods, and
the Tories are vehemently- indignant with those
manufacturers who insist on the workpeople they
employ buying at their shop. Some of them
pay their work-people in goods instead of
money, and certainly fleece •the labourers to a
very considerable extent. For their avarice
and extortion, which is unfeeling and dishonest,
no man can make an excuse. They are un-
doubtedly very much to blame, though they
only imitate the landlords and the clergy. Ex-
tortion is unhappily the practical rule of life in
our society. It neither begins nor ends wth the
manufacturers. It is as plainly Perceptible in
the Civil List, which is really paid to support
the aristocracy, and in the revenues of the
Church being wholly engrossed by the priest-
hood, to the grievous injury of education and of
the poor, as in some numufacturers of Bradford
compelling their people to take cloth instead of
money for their wages, and so paying their
workmen twenty or thirty per cent. less than
they ought to pay. The manufacturers who
fleece their useful labourers in that manner are
not to be excused by the similar conduct of other.
-classes, and we are not sorry to see the Tory
journals reprobating a vice in the former which
they applaud in the latter.
For us it is not enough to join the Tories in
condemning such extortion ; we should like to
know how it is that the extortioners amongst
the master manufacturers are enabled so to treat
their workmen, notwithstanding the .workmen
are sensible of it, and notwithstanding the law
has been sharply directed against such practices.
We gave the solution of this problem yesterday,
whe'r we said that " the prior condition of the
people threw into the hands of.the factory owners
a mass of helpless labourers entirely dependent
on their will." Let any one look at the evidence
which Mr. FEnRAND'S Committee has collected,
and he will find almost every page is studded
with paragraphs like these :
" It appears very plainly that the manufacturers have
the men under their own power, and can do what they
think proper with them, whether good or bad." " The
workmen dare notinform' anitinst the masters; they know
' that the master would turneihem off." " The men submit
1i Theyincganpnaoitageintotuh.aegers, situations." "If the men insisted'
on
they would' hive been dis-
charged."
We could quote scores of such statements, all
tending to prove that the labourers are com-
pletely and helplessly at the mercy of the mas-
ters. The masters are tempted, by the posses.
' slog of power, into the conunission of dishonesty;
and with a complete dominion over their men,
and a great temptation, they probably deserve
praise for their forbearance more than censure
for their excess.
•
Our Contemporaries, however, take advan-
tage of the truck system prevailing in some ma-

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