The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-01 00:00:00

with the Macadamized portions of Oxford-street, Picca-
dilly, and other places of equal traffic, the economy of
wood paving is as prominently evident. These cost at
present from 2s. 6d. to 3s. per yard, per annum, to
keep in repair, to say nothing of •their first construction ;
and the wood paving, for
,terms of twenty-one years, can
be laid down, and kept in perfect repair, at an annual
charge or rental of 2s. 3d. per yard—being a saving of
from 10 to 30 per cent. per annum."

THE g( FIREBRAND QUAKER" OF

BRIDGE WATER.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SIR-My duty as a good partisan, being not to
see the enemy careless in his posts and parties
without turning it to account, I take advantage
of the looseness of some of his movements, to
try to advance the object of calling on the Libe-
rals, in various quarters, and by their various in-
terests, to lift up their heads and unite on the
question of Free Trade for a general move.
The subject which now presents itself, is an
article or letter signed " No Magistrate," in the
Times of 31 December. To whatever extent a
leading Ministerial paper by choosing an article
for insertion adopts it and makes it part and
portion of the policy it maintains, to that extent
the contents are appealed to as if they were pro-
mulgated by the Government.
A " firebrand Quaker" as he is called, a
borough magistrate, at Bridgewater as would ap-
pear, is charged with exhibiting a placard in his
window at the last election with the following :
" Are the poor to pay 9d. per loaf, and the rich land-
owners to pocket the tax of 3d., which they invariably
do ? Or are the poor to pay 6d. per loaf; and the Con-
servative landowners to lose the 3d. ?"

In immediate juxtaposition to which, is the
following commentary : •
" Could this proposal for confiscating the whole rental
of the kingdom—for making the landlords lose' all, and
falsely representing that all to be four times as great as it
actually is- —could such a detestable proposal possibly pro-
ceed from a person ' admitted mull hands to be fully quali-
fied for the commission of the peace ?' Surely it may
be safely left to any honest man in the kingdom, what-
ever his politics may be, to determine on the quali-
fication of this firebrand Quaker for the magistracy,
who at a period of general excitement could exhibit to
the public so monstrous a lie—a lie, too, so likely to de-
lude and infuriate the people. Can any respectable man
doubt for an instant that the exhibitor of this infamous
statement was utterly disqualified for any office which
required a respect for truth and a reverence for the lives
and property of his neighhiurs ?"
It is one thing to enjoy the elegant amusement
of calling a Quaker a liar, and another to answer
to a man's own party for having given the op-
portunity to an adversary to invite public
opinion to determine, whether the honest
Quaker was not proceeding in a course
as consistent with religious iprinciple, and with
the duties imposed on him both as a citizen
and as a magistrate, as if he had chosen to de-
monstrate his zeal against any other of the forms
of evil-doing which are rampant in society.
May this crocodile to Quakers have been im-
posing on the Times, and after all be some wag
of the League's, aspiring to boastino, that he at-
tacked the landowners through the columns
of the Times? The position he has fixed
upon them is this,—that all the rental of the
kingdom is taken through the operation of the
Corn-laws ;—that the Corn-laws are an invention
for creating a class of men to be called rent-
owners, who otherwise and by the unaided
course of nature would never have existed;—that
they are a contrivance for causing a public loss,
of dimensions with difficulty assignable or calcu-
lable, for the single object of giving a limited and
easily calculable amount out of it to a happy
portion of society the law creates for the express
purpose of being the recipients.
The League never said so much, but the Times
has. And for any nice questions of authority, the
Times must settle them with its correspondent.
Meantime the assertion of the honest Quaker's•
window stands out avowed, defended, adopted,
transferred to the hearts and heads of all in the
country who to honesty join a certain quantum
of intelligence.
Combining this with the other portion of the
letter, whip!' is. on the coup d'etat tor creating
Tory magistrates, may we not hope that the
united effoet will be to raise up a spirit of indi-
vidual determination in the places which have
been the scene of operation, the end of which
will be to promote the feeling of a general -ne-
cessity for union on the question of Free Trade,
as the means of driving out the common enemy.
When the Neapolitaug" Misbehaved, somebody
said they must have more of the Austrian stick.
The Tories are giving us the stick.
Yours, sincerely,
T. PERRONET TH OMPSON.
Blackheath, Jan. 1, 1842. , t

MONEY and COMMERCIAL NEWS.
CI7 Y, TWELVE O'CLOCK.
LIVERPOOL SHARE MARKET, DEC. 31.—The trans-
actions comprise—Grand Junction Half Shares 97i ;
Great Western Fifths, 101- ; Midland Counties, 85 ;
North Midland New 361.
The St. John's New Brunswick papers, received by
the Acadia, state that three attempts had been made
during the week to set fire to houses in the city.