The Sun. — 1848-06-28 (London, England)

THE SECRETARY OF THE BRADFORD REFORM ASSOCIATION. Sir,—On Monday, the 26th, the interminable quarrel was resumed, on the subject of the despatches charged to have been withheld from the Sugar and Coffee Committee. There appears no doubt of the abstract fact, that the despatches were not there. The good therefore which it may be hoped the public will derive from the storm, is that the Government will take care the like does not happen again. On the same evening, the debate on the Sugar Duties was resumed, and again adjourned. The mist does nut at all clear up; and like a prudent man in a mist, I mean to keep to the safe side, which will be by voting for going into Committee, and seeing what will come of it attervvards. One argument I have heard, I am prompted to rebel against. I hear it said, " Use slave-grown sugar, because you use slave-grown tobacco and cotton." And there is a great joke about Dr. Lushington and his snuff. Now it strikes me, that this is very much like saying " Thou shalt do murder," because you have fallen into one or two of the other sins in the same neighbourhood prohibited. I cannot see what reason a man's having broken the seventh or eighth commandment is for his being counselled to break the sixth also; or why a man who has encouraged slavery to the extent of using slave-grown snuff and a slave grown pocket-handkerchief from the United States, should be invited to mend the matter by encouraging slave-grown sugar also in Cuba and Brazil. Men do Hot do so in common things. On Tuesday there was no House. I understand I lie under some degree of blame for not having gone with a deputation from Bradford to the Government. Now against this I must urge, that a deputation is welcome to as much of my own time as it likes, but not to the titre of the House. If the deputation had gone at three in the morning, it should have found me ready to go with it. But if I had gone then, I must have missed two or three divisions, on a subject where I bad been partially engaged in keeping friends up to the mark. I went to two several members of the Government, and said to each of them more than ten times what I should have had any chance to say on the deputation. And I further assured the members of the deputation, that though there were parts of their objects which it would require both skill and courage to assist them in, I would do everything it was practicable to do consistently with principle, and which had the slightest probability of producing them any favourable results; in which you will be aware that I allude to the very sore point of French Merinos. Their complaint is, that the French Government gives a bounty on the exportation of Merinos; the consequence of which is that the dyers at Bradford dye French Merinos instead of Bradford ones. Now, without in the slightest degree sinking the truth, that the English community in the aggregate gains all the difference of price of the French Merinos which it uses, yet as the object is evidently in the end to create loss and not gain, to wit, by putting down the Bradford manufacture and then raising the price, it may lawfully be opposed. And it is of the more importance, because the system has been recommended for general adoption in the French Chamber, by one of the blind guides who have helped to fill France with mourning. The obvious way to prevent it is to intimate to foreigners, that wherever they give a bounty on exportation, an equal duty shall be laid here on importation. Which is saying more than everybody will do, So that on the whole, in conscience I hold myself acquitted. Miserable work in Paris. All for want of political economy. People will find it out some day. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T.