The Sun. — 1842-09-23 (London, England)

DOCTRINE OF « DISAFFECTION." We have observed in several instances that the Magistrates, before whom the rioters have been lately brought, have seized the oppottunity for censuring severely those who stir up the people to disaffection against the laws. The Anti-Corn-law League having been directly pointed at by some of those magisterial censors, we hare a word to say upon the subject, by way of clearing the mystification intended by the use of the terms " disaffection to the laws." We would ask Mr. Foster, the respectable chairmain of the Salford Court of Sessions, and his brother Magistrates—do they mean to impugn the conduct of those who promote disaffection towards bad laws ? We remember to have seen a female put to death at Newgate. She was a mother, and her infant child was torn from her breast as she mounted the scaffold. Was Sir Samuel Romilly deserving of censure, for exciting disaffection in the public mind against the demoniacal law under which that poor woman, and a mother too, was judicially murdered, for stealing property above the value of five shillings from a inendraper's counter ? It is not ten years since our fellowChristians were legally bought and sold by British citizens. Were Clarkson and Wilberforce censurable because they agitated the public mind to create disaffection towards the law which sanctioned the system of slavery in our colonies? On the contrary, are not the above names held in the highest reverence for having succeeded in creating such an abhorrence of those bad laws as led to their abolition ? Following in the path of Romilly and Clarkson, the members of the Anti Corn-law League are exerting themselves by ' every legal means to spread the disaffection they feel towards a law which, they believe, limits the supply of a nation's food, dooms multitudes to a premature grave, and demoralises great bodies of the industrious population. Entertaining this belief, not only are they justified, not only are they not censurable, for the course they pursue, but they would be guilty of a dereliction of their duty as men, as citizens of a free country, and as Christians, if they did not use every legitimate effort to create disaffection in the public peaceful mode of effecting its repeal. We may be told by as the only practicable and mind towards the Corn-law, Mr. Foster and his colleagues, that they do not concur with us in our view of this law. Be it so. In that case they are not expected to join us in exciting public opinion against it. All that is due from them as component parts of the electoral body is, to investigate the nature and operation of the law for the support of which they are responsible to their country and their Maker. Ignorance they cannot plead ; our agitation of the question has deprived of that plea every rational possessor of the electoral franchise. In times like the present it is especially important that Magistrates should strictly confine themselves to their proper functions of administering the laws, and not exceed their legitimate duties by interfering with the rights of citizenship. Despite the opinion of Mr. Foster and his brother Magistrates, we regard it as not only the right, but the sacred duty, of all who entertain similar opinions, to use every constitutional means for disseminating disaffection towards the Cornlaw, as the surest means of procuring its total repeal. —Anti-Bread Tax Circular.