The Express.
London, England, 1853-05-03 00:00:00

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1110 k WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE
Tnr Dao-31conle..10b. ...... Afternoon. 110. 32m.
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LONDON, TUESDAY, MAY 3.

Moron another long night's debate on the In-
t come Tax has thrown very little new light on the
subject, it has not failed to show that the Tories
relied very much upon being able to use Irish
members us cat's-paws for opposition purposes. In
the House of Commons, the great point is, of
course, to influence votes, and as • considerable
number of those needful things are known to waver
in the possession of certain honourable members
from the Sister Isle, a great Tory effort has been
made to get Ireland into a state of revolt against the
imposition of Income Tax in that country, although
these very Tories last year proposed to extend to Ire-
land this very tax they now object to. Much that is
unjust, and much more that is foolish, was said last
night to this end ; so much, indeed, that it becomes
a positive duty to examine the real present condi-
tion of Ireland, that we may see how tar there is
ground for excusing her from a tax now levied
on the other portions of the United Kingdom. Last
night the Tory swindle on this subject was most
thoroughly upset when, in a Ilouse unusually full,
their opposition was defeated by a majority of 71.
But the first stage not being the whole journey of a
new law, let us join issue with the Obstructives on
their own ground, and see " Whether Ireland is is
a condition to pay Income Tux."
In 1737, Bishop BERKELEY called on the State
"with a high hand to introduce agriculture,"
and inquired " whether there be upon earth any
Christian or civilised people so beggarly wretched
and destitute as the common Irish?" In 1841,
Lord Dt.voe's digest of the evidence brought
before his Commission laments over " the usual
agricultural practice throughout Ireland as de-
fective in the highest degree ;" and all the reports
intervening between these two bore the same testi-
mony ; whereas now, only nine years after Lord
DEVON'S lament, we have the remonstrance of athe
Rev. ALEXANDER PEYTON, parish priest of Blarney,
against the desertion of Irish land, which is to be
had so much cheaper now than land in Canada and
the United States, which he has visited for purposes
of inspection and inquiry. We have the records of
the locumbered Estates Court, which show us that,
while the old ruinous prices of Irish farms are
gone for ever, the land is not, on the other
hand, ruinously cheap. It is rising at this moment;
rising in a way which testifies to the security of pro-
perty, the intention of purchasers to improve, and
the ingress of a new class of landholders, whose busi-
ness it is, expressly, to improve and cultivate the
land. How economists have sighed out their despair
over the conacre systein! It is broken up, uud is fast
melting away. How they have painfully calculated
the enormous disproportion of the people to the
land ! The people are gone or going,—so as to have
relieved all apprehension about their numbers.
What dread we hear of now is about depopulation—
a dread we do not share; and shall not, till wages
have risen a good deal higher than they are yet.
There lie the broad lands of that fertile island,
mellowing in the air and sunshine, in preparation
for future harvests, instead of yielding, in
its exhaustion, half-putrid roots to a wan
and haggard peasantry. And that peasantry, thus
leaving those fields to lie fallow, are no longer
wan and haggard, but sending over money to carry
out thousands more to a land where nobody hungers.
How we used to discuss, in a hopeless sort of way,
the constitutional illegality of the Irish, and listen,
with ever lessening surprise, and ever growing de-
spair, to the frequent news of assassinations, and the
atrocities of Ribbon societies ! Now, what a won-
derful dissolution of that enormous mischief is taking
place! If there are men enough, there are not dis-
contented men enough to carry on chronic rebellion,
They are busy going away, or helping their friends
away: or, from so many of their neighbours having
gone away, they are earning their ls. 3d. or Is. 6d.
per day, and are disposed to sleep at night, as
working men should, instead of being out in the
starlight, as rebels and poachers only are. When
we used to say privately to each other that
Government never had got at the mystery of those
Ribbon Societies, and never would get at it, we did
not dream of their dissolving under a higher and
more beneficent Government than that of Queen,
Viceroy and Parliament—under those great natural
laws which have now intervened to supersede and to
rebuke oar beet wisdom, so lately puzzling over an
insoluble problem. How we used to mourn over the
influence of the demagogue and the priest—the de-
magogue at all inconvenient times, and the priest at
all seasons, and through all time. Where now is the
demagogue—the prince of his order? Not only is
he dead, but his ghost is laid. He has been found
out, and he is forgotten. Nothing came of his great
promises; but a new and splendid promise, which
realises itself from day to day, has presented
itself from quite another quarter; and, looking
that way, the people turn their backs on the
agitator's grave. And as for the priests, they are
perhaps the only class in Ireland excluded from the
new promise. They warn the people from the
shores, but still the people go. They tell of terrible
things to be feared in far countries, but the people
go to see what they are like. The priests count over
to them " the blessings of home—the blessings of
education—the blessings of religion :" but the people
go for the very purpose of finding a better home ; and
they know that an education of comfort and decency
must be better than anything they have found for
their children yet ; and that if religion be good for
anything, it can live in all latitudes. And so is the
power a the priests expiring, and small are the
gatherings about their altars, and humble is their
position among their diminished flocks, in com-
parison with what it was before the famine came
to put their quality to the proof. If the peasantry
and farmers are thinking of emigrating, it is not now
Protestantism in America or Romwism in Ireland
how we used
to at
condition
them
mhaek. Again,
of Irish landlord,
and, through him, of that of his tenants. How deci-
sively we pronounced that the tenure of land was the
that will hoofldththe
beginning and end of Irish misery; and that the
mischief was of so inextricable a kind that nothing
but a total revolution, a clean sweep of property, or
of its obligations, could bring about any amendment.
Yet now, how we see the renovation begun, legally,
equitably, for everybody's gain, and nobody's practical
loss. The landlord is freed ; his creditor is paid ; his
estates are thrown open to use; and openings are
made for the acme of men who can improve the
land and establish new branches of industry.
A new field is opened for the return and applica-
tion of absentee Irish capital, and for the immigration
of skilled English and Scotch labour. Now, if any
one had told us, when Lord DevoN's Report was
Mailed, that in ten years Irish land would be in
course of retrieval, Irish population diminishing
through prosperity instead of adversity, wages ris-
ing, disaffection dying out; priestly influence de-
clining; the land released and divided, and obtaining
the fair value,—in short, every peculiar and unma-
nageable evil dissolving, and renovation beginning in
every direction; and all this without convulsion,ht
without alarm or injury ;—we might
s almost say with-
out human intervention; but under the steady working
of impartial natural laws, what should we have said ?
We know what ought to be said, and what is said,
by observers in other countries: that, amidst the
manifold wonders of the remarkable times in which
we live, none is more solemn, none more animating,
none so precious and so sweet as the spectacle of the
regeneration of the most wretched of the civilised
countries of the world. It is not that " Order
reigns," as the Emperor NICDOLAS says of Warsaw.
It is not that " Pacification is achieved," as the Em-
peror NAPOLEON says of dumb France. It is not
that " the compromise of the constitution are linen',
an the lYder estabulinstiehetddemaesntthofe threeir.erclielal\.ll‘77.- .
andfy
in e
eui
cnoqnuse asi onu at y
obeyed Fugitive Slave Law. It is a real renovatienk.' • i"
being wrought out, not by despotic decrees, -eifr
even by Parliamentary Laws; but by law' tits

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