The Sun. — 1840-03-31 (London, England)

ASHBURTON. There-has been, we admit, alternations of distress; the agriculturists have suffered at one period, and the manufacturers at another. A fertile season in England has allowed the population at one time to go a-head, and at another, an unfruitful year, has starved them down to the quantity of food our own land could provide for their subsistence. In the language of ALEXANDER BARING, on February 22, 1815, the regulations of the selfish landlords have "cut down our population to suit our corn, instead of regulating the supply of corn by our population." " They have not lengthened the bed to the man, but they have shortened the man to the bed." Then the Merchant knew that there was no limit to the perseverance of human industry, to which he then ascribed that prosperity he now ascribes to a law which cuts down our population to our corn. Then the Merchant described it as an " absurd principle," " to force what gentlemen called an independent supply," though now the Lord is for maintaining this absurdity,and for cutting "down the population," to suit the landlords' pocket. Men and women of England, we use Lord ASHBURTON'S language when we tell you that the Corn-law " cuts down population," that is, in homely English, murders infants, and the aged, and the weakly, not by that process of painless extinction, recommending which raised such a welldeserved censure against " MA Rcus" last year, but by the slow, lingering, and painful process of starvation. If the propositions of MARCUS made the blood boil, and the heart throb—what ought the practices of the land-owning law-makers to cause, who carry his beastly propositions into actual effect, as asserted by Lord ASHBURTON, in a most revolting and cruel manner ? When we said yesterday that Lord MELBOURNE did not understand this question, it was from a conviction that he has never considered it under the new aspect in which Mr. BARING exhibited it as " cutting down the .population." From the. moment that the indignant* denunciations in The Sun of the Corn-laws, tonna an answering echo in Manchester,Edinburgh, and Leeds, the Corn-laW ceased to be a question of economical science, and be. came one of stern morality. It admits of no compromise, it will tolerate no middle course. It is a question of right or wrong, and though the deductions of political economy—though statistical researches—though observations on the currency, confirm the moral view, and supply an admirable illustration that justice and expediency always go hand in hand, from the moment that the question was taken up on moral and religious grounds, the observations of experience and the deductions of science might confirm, but could never thwart or impair, the fervent and widespread conviction that those laws ought to be totally and immediately repealed. Who, when a question of murder is under consideration, suffers his  judgment to be swayed by the intruded consideration .of whether the murderer got a jacket more or less by his crime ? The Cornlaw repeal has become a great moral question for our people, and the poor considerations urged by Lord MELBOURNE prove that he has never sounded its depth. Let him consult the proceedings of the Delegates yesterday—let him ponder over the language of Mr. BROOKES, and he will become sensible that the Corn-law agitation can only terminate in the extinction of the law, though the Ministry, and the Aristocracy, and the Church perish with it.