Star.
London, England, 1829-09-21 00:00:00

PART of Mr. SADLER'S SPEECH at WHITBY.

A Public Dinner has been given to Mr. SADLER at
Whitby, by the Merchants and Shipowners of that place,
on which occasion he delivered a speech to the following

effect :

GENTLIMEN - The ancient and genuine policy of this great
country, like its Constitution, was not, if I may so ettpreu

myself, struck nut at a heat.

Dictated by necessity, and 'con-

firmed by experience, It was the work of successive. generations
—generations of incomparably greater intellect, and, it is to be
feared, of far more real patriotism than the present. It was
not dictated, perhaps, by hireling critics, or patronised by poli-
tical pamphleteers, but it bad in the deliberate sanction and
suffrages of such names as Bacon, as Locke, as Addison, the
signature of immortality—men who brought to the considera-
tion of the subject not only the broadest lights of reason, but
the utmost warmth of benevolence, and who left nothing to be
discovered in the fundamental principles of human policy to the
witlings of the day, but the secret of their own conceited igno-
rance. That policy, founded upon the certainty of the rich
abundance of all things necessary to human existence within
out own shores, and of the consequent duty and advantage of de-
veloping them, sought from foreign countries those commodities,
(happily for us, few and comparatively unimportant.) which na-
ture has denied to this, at the same time strictly protecting those
branches of British industry which could not otherwise have
been introduced among us, or preserved, when established.
Now it were most easy to show that whatever reasons there
might have been for the introduction of such a system (and they
were such as will continue to operate in all countries where Com-
mon sense prevail), such reasons were rendered infinitely more
imperative by that course of events which has caused this coun-
try to be more heavily taxed than any other, and (thanks to
the support of internal industry) long enabled it to dispense
the most liberal reward to human labour of any nation upon
earth. To allow British labour to be competed with by foreigners
in our own market then is, in reference to the first fact, our taxation,
the moat dishonest ; and, in regard to the second, our comforts, the

most cruel policy that ever was ventured upon by any Government
in the world, to say nothing of its folly. In behalf of the former

system I have mentioned names ; I Will now make a still more im-
portant appeal, namely, to facts. Reasonings, by whomsoever urged,
may fail • experience never! Under that system of policy, and
in spite Of obstacles the most formidable, the nation increased
its wealth, promoted its prosperity, consolidated its pt.wcr, and
extended its dominion. Depressions there certainly did occur in the
country, but these, which towards the last were plainly traceable
to the introduction of parts of the absurd policy now adopted. were,
comparatively speaking, slight and temporary, and above all, par-
tial : if one interest suffered, the rest were in a condition to sustain
it. The vibrations of the national balance soon subsided into the
equipoise of settled and general prosperity. The history of the
world exhibits not the nation whose advancement was so rapid, and
whose prosperity seemed to promise such perpetuity. That such
was its condition, I appeal to your individual experience. I cite
still higher authority. Prosperity was pronounced in glowing lan.
guage trom the Throne—prosperity was echoed in niece exag-
gerated terms, and attended with boundless promises of its per-
petuity and increase, by the Minister of the Crown. These de-
clarations were believed and acted upon by the people, and their
faith has been since imputed to them as their folly and their crime,
by some of those, even, who put them forth. But they were true,
and would have remained so, but for the perverse alteration, at
that moment, of the principles of our national policy. All inno-
vation, Lord Bacon says, is attended with injury ; and he must be
blind, indeed, that does not see the injury this has occasioned;
but, by a strange fatality, which not unfrequeutly occurs in the
history of human affairs, the suffering has fallen upon the guiltless,
while many of those who were accessory to the change have largely
benefited by It.
Let us, therefore, now turn to the present condition of things
amongst us. What now is the situation of the country? A re-
trogression In three or four short years, since he new theory has
been in operation, of the most alarming nature, in whatever point
of view it is considered. What is the great interest—which the
place—in this heretofore hippy empire, which is prospering?—
Where is it that general distress is not now experienced, and im-
pending ruin dreaded? What is the pursuit which is profitable to
the employer, or sustains in comfort the employed? Who shall
say whether that mass of bodily suffering which the almost starving
operatives now endure, or the mental and concealed anguish which
many of their former employers experience, is the mo.t heavy and
heart-rending ?
And first, if we turn our eyes to the agriculturists, who, if
calculated as Adam Smith intimates, in reference to the employ-
ments solely dependent upon them, which in our census are
placed in the other class, will amount, as I have proved else-
where, to two-thirds of the industrious part of the community—
I say, turning to the agricultural operatives, what is their con-
dition ? The farmers of the kingdom are on the verge of ruin ;
many of them are already inextricably engulphed ; poverty and
distress pursue and have already reached them. The labourers,
in entire counties altogether, are in the deepest distress, and are
almost universally pauperised, and their condition has had its
full share In reducing the manufacturing operatives to a like, or
even a worse situation. With tens of millions of acres of land
wholly uncultivated, millions of which are amongst the richest
soils in the world ; with millions more, especially in Ireland.
not half laboured ; and with an incredible and increasing number
of hands out of employment, and whom we must sustain, though we
wholly lose their labour, things have been at length so happily
managed, that we habitually employ the labourers of distant
countries, while ours are idle ; call their fields into cultivation, while
we neglect our own; furnish with capitals foreign rivals in other
branches of industry, which they will assuredly employ against
us, while we voluntarily diminish the national resources ;—and
still our population is inadequately, and relatively speaking,
dearly fed. But the economists recommend perseverance in
this policy, and deliberately advise the desertion or abandon-
ment of agriculture to the extent of putting three-sixths of our
soils out of cultivation. Whither then must the dispossessed mil-
lions of wretched fugitives resort? To the manufacturing districts
certainly. They must become the rivals of the present operatives
there, instead of remaining their steadiest customers; and that at a
time when the goods already fabricated are so immense in quan-
tity as to inundate the world, and so low in price as to starve the
manufacturers. Political economist+, I am well aware, have an

answer for all this ; it consists of a future promise : hut the peo-
ple of England have been long amused by promises from the same
quarter and have been cruelly deceived. And, moreover, they
have been reduced to such a condition by their miserable misma-
nagement, that they cau no longer wait their fulfilment, were they
as undeviatingly true as they are manifestly false. They cannot
subsist upon remote and uncertain contingencies. lty a better
policy than that now pursued, this country might furnish an abun-
dant supply of food at a relatively cheaper price, and stiU have
'• enough and to spare," to the evident comturt at d advantage of
the entire community, and especially of the manufacturing part
of it.
Turning, then, to the manufacturing interests,—respecting these
the most disheartening and prejudicial system has been adopted.
We have legalized the constant introduction, under certain duties,
of articles of foreign industry, which have, in many branches of
business, necessarily interfered with h labour, and greatly di-
minished its recompense. Our silk manufacturers, our shoemakers,
OUT glovers, and very many others engaged in sti,l more operose
and profitable branches of employment. comprehending in the
whole a great multitude of our industrious countrymen, have been
subjected to the distressing rivalry of foreigners. That this bas
lessened the demand for home labour there can be little doubt; none
whatever that it has greatly diminished its wages. Indeed I myself
have heard those who were mainly instrumental in introducing the
change, exult in the vastly greater cheapness of the goods when fab-
ricated, which the change has occasioned. I heard the exultation at
the time with sorrow, 1 hard it with shame, when I recollected
that those who utterd it made no lessening demands upon the
public purse, which has still to be replenished in their behalf, by
the harder efforts of a suffering people. But the exultation, after
all, was natural; their interests are adverse, as are those of a body,
unhappily too numerous, who are the avowed and persevering
enemies of a protected internal industry. As for the shipping
interests, to which I shall allude hereafter, it were superfluous to
tell you that they have been similarly and even worse treated ;
but to this subject Isbell again recur, though I think it is almost
unnecessary to do so in the present company. I think with
that, at least, Gentlemen, your are as well acquainted as are
the theorists.
One thing has often struck me as to the policy of our projectors,
namely, the address with which they attempt to sever the various
interests of the country, managing the successive depression of each
by appealing to the selfish feelings of the rest. Thus I think I well
remember a certain individual (to whom, however, I have never
once before alluded personally, notwithstanding the attempted wit
that has been so misapplied on that supposition)—l say, I think I
remember him holding forth to the Liverpool ship-owners, that they
might probably be compensated for the loss of their protection by a
similar withdrawal of that of the agriculturists; the granary of the
Empire might, partially at least, be placed, it is hoped, abroad,
and then the ship-owners would, of course, share in transporting
hither the constant supplies—(little chance of this, however, I
ween, under the reciprocity system!) But both ship-owners and
agriculturists were to get other commodities cheaper by the free
trade system; silks, for instance—and the silk manufacturer, in his
turn, was to be propitiated by the sacrifice of the throwster,
The object of these changes was all the while low prices, other-
wise we pay little compliment to. the sagacity of their promoters;
and, after ill, a more insane attempt than to (actuate that,

could never have entered into the head of man, when it is con-
sidered that we have a fixed incumbrance, or debt, to a vast
amount, on .which the cheapening of the value of property,
and of tabour in the country which has to sustain it, operates
as an enormous augmentation. The fundholders, the jobbers,
the brokers of the community, may and do feel the advantage
of these changes; some of these dictate the carrying of them
still further into effect, but will be well for them, even with
a view to their own permanent interest, to pause, or they will
find the mischief they medidate " for others will hill upon their
own pate." Eight hundred millions of debt, and cheap prices,
are not convertible terms ; no more than are foreign compe-
tition and British comfort. See in the light of true political
philosophy, all the different branches of industry in a commit:-
nity are united in the bonds of mutual interest as well as
amity; and if one be weaker than the rest, the others are
willing to extend to it a helping hand ; but the new system sees
things in a different light ; " buy where you can buy cheapest "
is the motto—though it is one which would divest of all our
local duties and attachments, and even of patriotism itself.—
Hence those engaged is various pursuits which can never be
wholly diuevered, are taught to eye each other with feelings of
jealousy and hostility ; they must still cling together, indeed, but
with the deperatiun of drowning men. who drag each other
down to destruction. These, Gentlemen, are my general views
on the subject : general l may caU them, :or they Embrace the
interests and pursuits of every class amongst us; and I rejoice to
say, they are becoming univerral among the operatives. The
noble English maxim, " Live and let live," is revivin,;. Whe-
ther it regards the labourer at the plough, or the manufacturer
at his loom, I have always felt, what I have somewhere expressed,
" Let those that till, and those that weave,
Still by honest labour live."
And 1 shall never exchange this feeling for some dry and unfeeling
dogma of political econ 1111 l y. But is the country in the distressed
state in which it is now represented to he? I rear it is. sod were
I to become a p tlitical tenrist in order to ascertain the fact,
would seek it amongst the nsassy. I should not fix my views on
the mere surface, s.l* rasher summits of swirly ; these may still
glow with the gleam of setting prosperity, which. like the luminary
from whence I take my illusttation, casts a richer ray, the lower
it is on its decline ; while its warns and cheering be ems withdrawn
from beneath, have lett the narrow humble vale of poverty in dark-
ness and destitutim. I would riot collect my information—
Where luxury
In palace s lies straining her low thought
To form unreal wants t"
nor from flatterers at feasts ; Irons the discussions of s conomists,
at the hoards of our merchant Princes, groaning with delicious
viands and sparkling wines of every vintage ; but rather from the
father of the cottage, who sits idle and distressed, brooding, over
the fate of those from which his eyes tire averted, his suffering
Wilily, but over whom big heart is yearning---nd breaking! 1
would not seek it in the dazzling drawing-room, full of curious and
costly foreign decorations, where the lady's splendid robe which
sweeps over the Turkey carp. t is the glowing labour of the
Lyonese loom ; .:rid the peison, ev. 0 to the hand and the
toot, is adorned with the products of sither than English in-
dustry. No! I would rather read it in the condition id that
poor homeless being, of the same sex, shivering in the portico be-
low; whom the introduction «f those very luxuries has perhaps
derived of her honest employment, and driven her to await, in the
wages of prostitution, the preservation of a life worse than death
itself! In a word, I would take my ideas of the principle and
progress of the system from the inmates of the cottage, rather than
the mansion. As to myself, 1 had to present a Petition from one
of the populous Hundreds of the County of Lancaster, and I
learned. en the authority ef the highly respectable Gentleman
through whom it was handed to me, that thousands of the people
are subsisting on fifteen pence a head per week, and even that pit-
tance is earned by extreme and lung protracted labour.
'fill very lately, however, the prevalence of general distress was
insultingly and mendaciously denied by many of our public oracles.
Thar impudent falsehood will how, however, avail no longer. Pa-
tent as the people of England usually are under their sufferings
end privations, they are now, I des:oly regret to observe, beginning
to be turbulent. When the weavers of Spitalfields were refractory,
these oracles coolly recommended, not their redress, but their de-
sertion! The business was to be removed at their dictation to dis-
tant parts. Well! is Congleton at this moment any better off? Has
Macclesfield been less Insurrectionary? Look at Rochdale, at Man-
chester, at Barnsley; what is the state and condition of those
places? Would to God my voice could reach them and might be
listened to, I would earnestly exhort them to peace and obedience to
the laws ; but 1 would not advise them to desist from remonstrat-
ing concerning their grievances. lithe Ministers could be bullied
out of their principles, as some of them professed to have been, I
think they might be importuned out of their policy; though I am
fully aware that, to the scandal of human nature, whims are much
more tenaciously maintained than principles; and such, perhaps,
still think, that agitators for emancipation ought to be listened to ;
agitators for bread put down !—But now that the general distress
can lie no longer denied, still this darling theory is to be defend-
ed, by attributing our sufferings to other causes; and it must
be confessed they give us abundance of choice. Sometimes it
has been laid to the charge of stagnation, more frequently to
over-production; now the bankers are in fault—now the traders ;
our agriculturists have produced too much—they have produced
too little. We have a surplus of capital—we have had a want of
it ; but now it seems that an indifferent harvest or two is the most
convenient apology for our distresses, which distresses, however,
commenced before the h were deficient ; but had it been
otherwise, variations in our seasons always have existed, and
ever will recur, as certainly, though perhaps not so regularly,
as the cycles of the planetary system. And for these, as
they must always be expected, a wise and paternal Govern-
ment will never be unprepared. In a word, the people of
England, it has long appeared pretty plain, cannot trade to the
satisfaction of their rulers ; nor does Providence appear to
please them any better. These facts, however, are certain ;
first, that the distress is great; and, secondly, that its date is
coincident with that of the operation of the new theory ; wit-
ness the statistics of misfortune, of poverty, of crime, in the
instant and vast increase of bankruptcies, the multiplication of cri-
minal committals, the rise in the poor rates, all taking their date
from the identical period in question. Can events of so striking
and tremendous a character exist without a cause, and one ade-
quate to their production? It were absurd to suppose it—one of
the most important duties of the Government is therefore to search
it out, and, instead of withstanding those public
.enquiries for
which the people have so long and so loudly called, to solicit rather
than reject their evidence and information.
It appears to me, we can best approach this inquiry by a series
of negatives. And first, it is nut Providence who is chargeable
with the miseries of the people—on the contrary, never
was there a country so endowed with whatever could admi-
nister to its comforts, yromote its prosperity, or .enure its
greatness. All the real elements of wealth are centered within
our shores; all the accidents whirls could favour their development
are also ours. We have a country unrivalled its fertility and ample
in extent, only partially cultivated, and capable of sustaining, as to-
ture generations will prove, • v.or a,CessiOD of inhabitants in far
greater plenty than our present population enjoys. Beneath us are
minerals of the moat valuabie kind. Without, our teriitoties en-
circle the earth, and accumulate on our shores the products of all
regions, and open a door of access to all countries. We have a climate
unrivalled in healthiness, and a portion among nations the must for-
tunate ; surrounded by the ocean, which is not only the very element
eel 13ritodi safety and glory, but an inexhaustible mine of wealth.
Such is the condition in which Paovinawcs has placed us;
such tl.e bounties the Deity has poured upon us. The sacred and
figurative language of the :'cast might be applied to England, as
emphatically as to an equally distinguished arid unthankful country
of old—' He has placed our vineyard on a very fruitful bill, be
has fenced it and gathered out the stones thereof, built a tower in
its midst, and planted it with the choicest vines." And it may
still be asked, as it was of old. " What could be done more for his
vineyard than he has done in it ?" I defy any 11120 to answer this
solemn question as it respects England, so as to lay in any measure
the misery of this people at the door of eternal l'aovinaccs.
Nor, second, is it the character or conduct of the inhabitants
to which the present distress tit the country are attributable? On
the contrary, there is not a populations upon earth more prone to
labour, more active, enterprising, or intelligent in their exertions ;
more persevering in their pursuits; none who have so great an
abundance of capital, that idol of the present system, by which,
according to its doctrine, our national advantages can alone be
developed or distributed. Whoever, therefore, or whatever has
occasioned the existing distress, the people are guiltless.
Nor is it the number of our countrymen which has prodiked
it. Fashionable as is the diabolical doctrine—for diabolical it
is--inasmuch as it begins by affronting Gon, and issues in in-
juriug man : it is, like many other fashionable notions, utterly
false. It is the prerogative of G 01), saving the presence of our
political economists, to decide the question ; and he has decided
it, in the superabundance of the means of human subsistence
which, as a nation, he has lavished upon us, placed within our
reach, and solicited us to accept. Whether in reference to the
resources of the country or its means of profitable employment,
if properly developed, there is not a sinew or an arm too many
in the empire, no nor elsewhere, no more than there is a
superfluous spirit called Into the realms of immortality by the
Emma Goo! Short Indeed, and infernal would be the remedy,
were this revolting notion true. Deportation of every kind, mur-
der in all its forms, indirect or otherwise, would be obvious and
general benefits. Still, however, the promulgators of this notion,
with the habitual selfishness of the system, pronouncing upon the
redundancy of human being, invariably except themselves. The
Christian advocates of this doctrine are not its person! converts ;

whether as it respects life or it: rooming: cad .; task..
no personal sacrifices. They are no (tirtiusea—teneks). Nut I
see your indignation at the very mention of thew' swum, ; an': 14-
cher than nn the dogmas of the politic .1 aCaronalliti, air atilt
rest as to this mat trr upon the assurances c-f I ;IA: who giv-th f..
to flesh ; fur his mercy endureth for ever'
In whatever point of view. therefore, we regard this Resat na-
tion, we may assert that its natural state is one of prosperity cud
happiness Such Is the condition which i: ought to enjoy. And
the Minister to sebum in effect the country commits the charge of
seeing that the puh!ic •• receive no inury, ought to render a rea-
son for its condi ion, if it to otherwise.