The Sun.
London, England, 1829-04-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE LONDON JOURNALS.

The details of the silk question require to be well
sifted, before it can be ascertained what degree of
approbation is due to those of Mr. Vesey Fitzge-
rald's measure. There never was a more glaring
absurdity than the calling either Mr. Huskisson's
law, or this proposed one of Mr. Fitzgerald, a law
for the promotion of "free trade" in silk. We
shall come a little nearer to the truth, if we describe
it as a scheme for enforcing, in spite both of the
smuggler and of the consumer, a reluctant use of
English silks, to which the former system of direct
prohibition was found an ineffectual protection. If
this were a bond fide system of "free" trade, the
consumer would, ex vi termini, be permitted to
wear with impunity what manufactured silks might
best please his fancy. It would say to the public,
" We don't meddle with you: buy your shawls and
petticoats where you France, or England,
or India." But this " free trade" law speaks quite
another language: it tells us distinctly, that we
shall give a preference to the English silk manufac-
ture, unless we are williag to pay 25 per cent., be-
sides the value of the foreign article, for permission
to wear it. The tax has been professedly calcu-
lated on such a scale as may at once defeat the
smuggler, and crush the rivalship of the French manu-
facturer, and may thus substitute a practical for a
nominal prohibition. Yet this is sneered at as an
attempt to introduce a "free trade" in silks. There
exists in the new project this one advantage—
and it is the only one—viz. that it compels the home
silk-dealer to look about him a little, and so far im-
prove the rubbish which he used to pass off upon
his easy-tempered countrymen for silk goods, that
those which he henceforth brings to market must be
only about 30 per cent. worse than French silks, or
he may find it rather difficult to sell them. Our ob-
jection to the provisions of this new Bill is, that
they do not accord with the principles assumed by
Ministers. The ostensible object is one of liberality
and competition : the real scheme is to give the
home manufacture advantages which may set all
foreign competition at defiance. As for the smug-
' gler, the Bill is grossly inconsistent. We are told
that the duty ought to be lowered, for the purpose
of ruining the tirrtiggler ; the reduction, therefore,
ought to be carried to the full extent by which such
a benefit might be secured. But what is the me-
chanism of the Bill ? It lays on ditties of 30 per
cent.; but we are assured, on respectable authority,
that the contraband may be imported at an average
cost, including insurance, of about 16 per cent.;
so that the smuggler enjoys, by act of Parliament,
a premium of l 4 per cent. on every violation of
the law. We do not know how far the Pre-
sident of the the Board of Trade may be
obstructed in the effort to exhibit throughout
his Bill an illustration of the reasonings by which
he recommends it; but to be consistent with those
reasonings, he ought to reduce the protecting duty
to half its meditated standard,—that is, to 15 per
cent. Why, again, should the thrown silk of Italy
be subjected by the new law to an impost so enor
mous as 3s. 6d. per lb. on the first class of that
which comes from Piedmont ? Thrown silk par-
takes more of the nature of a raw material than of
a manufactured article ; that of Piedmont is indis-
pensable to the British loom, from which webs of
any price are delivered. It has been proved that
the English throwster gains, instead of losing, by
the more extended import of the thrown silk of
Italy, which is only another name for the extension
of the British manufacture itself. On what ground,
then, of common sense or policy, it is that the Pied-
montese organzine should be taxed 3s. 6d. per lb.;
tram, 2s. ; and singles, Is.? It cannot be, if well con-
sidered, for protection, since, as was deMonstrated
many days ago, the best protection to the thrown silk
of this country is in large importations of the finer
article from Piedmont. We do strenuously urge
the real friends of free trade, therefore, in mid out
of Parliament, to press upon the Minister the ma-
nifest expediency, of either abolishing altogether
the tax on foreign thrown, or, if some duty be de-
sirable for revenue ptirposes, of reducing it to one-
third of the amount which appears to be intended.
How.can the same Board of Trade, which professes
a solicitude to'place the English manufacturer on a
footing of fair rivalry with the French, justify the
iMposition of this high duty on thrown silk from
Italy, which is equally wanting on French goods and
to English; but which, owing exclusively to the
British tax, is obtained at Lyons on so much easier
terms than here ? How it is that the silk of Italy
becomes so indispensable to British manufacture,
when the British Crown (under its lord and master
of Leadenhall-street) holds possession of the whole
peninsula of India, a country where the mulberry
and the worm are indigenous, and where silk, even
superior to that of Italy, might be raised, is a ques-
tion which must be reserved for a future, though
not a distant, opportunity. In the mean time, we
conjure the King's Minister to establish a far lower
scale of silk duties than has been announced in the
speech of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald.—Times.

Mr. Hume could not do a more acceptable ser-
vice to the .public than by procuring a Committee
to be appointed to take into consideration the whole
subject of imprisonment for debt. This, like many
other important topics, is frittered away by being
taken up hi detail, a fault which Mr. Hume himself
appears. on this occasion to be falling" into. On
one day, for instance, he moves for a return of the
persons detained- in the debtor prisons of the me-
tropolis for non-payment of their fees; and on
another he objects (as he may, indeed, well do) to
the useless and enormous charge of the Insolvent
Court. But, if instead of taking up these features
of the system one by one, the whole were exposed
to view at once, it would
.present, tie will venture
to say, such a mass of hideousness and deformity as
would astonish and disgust every disinterested be-
holder. We should like, if it were possible, to see
at one clear view—

1. The number of persons arrested and confined for debt
fora given number of years.

2. The amount of dick debts.
3. The dividends they have paid to their creditors.
4. The law-costs attending their arrest incarceration,
and release.

5. The actual charge which their detention in prison
has been to themselvcq, their frienfh,, and the public.
A table, exhibiting at one view some such infor-
mation as this would do inure to show the absurdity
of the system than any one of its heads alone can
effect. It is monstrous, to be sure, to learn that the
Insolvent Court is a charge of 12,000/. a-year to the
public, and this without its obtaining more than a
farthing in the pound upon all the debts which have
hitherto come under its cognisance; but when, in
addition to this, we learn that it costs every insol-
vent, upon an average, 20/. to obtain his release,
how much is the charge and the evil aggratated.
Take, for instance, the annual number dischaitged at
two thousand, which is, probably, much below the
mark, and here is a sum of 40,0001. per annum not
only wrung from the most necessitous of mankind,
but the law actually getting five times more from
these persons than their bona fide creditors ever
receive. The Insolvent Court, we admit, is founded,
in the abstract, upon a wise, a just, and a benevo-
lent principle—viz. that upon the delivery up
of all his property to his creditors a debtor shall be
set free. But then idl the wisdom and the justice of
this principle is immediately frittered away in the
mode of its execution ; which, with an injustice and
absurdity precisely the reverse of the merit we give
it credit for, says that, before a man may do even
this, lie shall have spent a given time in prison—as
if that would afford him more property to surrender,
make him a better man, or less likely to fall into
difficulties for the future. If there be any justice
in this principle, as we admit there is, as long as
arrest for debt exists at all, surely the obvious com-
mon-sense mode of its application should be instan-
taneous. 'We should say, that if wan is willing
to give up all that he has to his creditors'', that
alone should be an answer to the arrest, and pre-
vent such a man from ever being placed within the
walls of a prison; whereas, by placing him there,
in nine cases out of
.ten, not only is his own ulti-
mate ruin sealed, but bath the ability and the die-