The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-31 00:00:00

cues the opinions of Mr M hiteside, Mr Napier, Sir Hugh
Cairns, and other gentlemen with reference to the Church
establishment. He was frequently interrupted by cries of
" Time, time I" When he was about to conclude a person
in the gallery rose, and in a loud voice claimed permission

to make a remark. Some confusion arose, and the individual

who had caused the interruption was induced to leavequietly.
Mr K. DIGIIT seconded the resolution, which was unani-
mously adopted.
Dr LEAHY, Roman Cat holic Archbishop of Cashel, moved
the next resolution as follows :—" That as•a general rule

all agricultural improvements in Ireland have been and are
effected by the occupiers of land ; and that the law, in deny-
ing the right to compensation for such improvements, pre-

vents the application of capital to the soil, and paralyses in-
dustry by taking away its motive and its reward." He said
—" The laws touching the relations between landlord and
tenant in this country are in some respects opposed to jus.

tice. lam not here to advocate the cause of the bad tenan
nor am I one of those extreme persons who hold that, gene
rally speaking, landlords are oppressors and tenants perse
cuted. There are good and bad upon both sides. There are
good landlords who feel that they have duties towards their
tenants as well as rights over them, and who discharge those
duties in such a manner as to win the approval of all good
men, and in some measure to redeem the errors of many of
their own class. On the other hand, there are bad tenants,
having their land for the value without paying the rent, be-
cause they want industry or consume their substance in
drink, and euch tenants cannot justly complain if the land-
lord puts his legal rights in force against them. But that
an improving tenant should be turned out of his holding,
and that the landlord should appropriate to himself, or trans-
fer to another, improvements as well as land, without one
single farthing of compensation to that poor tenant whose
little capital with the sweat of his brow went into the land
to fertilize it, that is an outrage against humanity and
justice—that is, if anything is, the sin of oppression of the
poor. It may be said—perhaps it will—that in taking part
this movement in favour of the tenants, we catholic bishops,
who from our office are ministers of peace, became ministers
of discord,turning landlord against tenant and tenant against
landlord. No such thing. If we aro ministers of peace, so
aro we ministers of the God of Justice, and we but ask justice.
(Cries of "Hear, hear," and cheers.) We but ask what was
insisted upon the other day by a grave judge of the land,
than whom no person is batter informed on the relations
between landlord and tenant in Ireland, Judge Longfield,
who, not casually, not by the way, not in the hurry of
the moment, but after deep study in his closet of the sub•
ject upon which he brought to bear all the acumen of his
high intellect, all the advantages of his mature experience,
came to the conclusion, and in the face of the empire pub-
lished it as his opinion, all the same as wo contended for—
that a claim for compensation ought to be legally secured
to the tenant for valuable improvements in his land. We
but say what Judge Longfield has said. If we now enter
into the arena of politics, it is but to ask for justice for a
lone-suffering peop'e. We come firward rcsoe2tfully, but
firmly, to call upon the Govern gent and Logis eiture of the
country to ameliorate, as far as good government and leg's-
lation can ameliorate, the condition of a people whose wel-
fare h s been sadly neglected. Therefore are we here to-day.
And let no one say we have not a right to be here. We have
a perfect right. We are bishops, but so are we Irishmen.
A.s subjects and citizens of the realm, bearing our portion of
the public burdens, rendering to Ca) tar what belongs to
Ceeear, we claim the full and free exercise of all the rights
and privileges pertaining to every description of persons in
the community, not excepting the very humblest. We
claim the right to speak and to act within the laws. We
claim that which is said to be the birtlght of every sub-
ject of the realm—the right to meet and petition for the re-
dress of what we feel to be grievances. And if at other times
we might, from whatever motives, be silent, now, if ever,
we feel called upon to speak out. Look at the present
lamentable condition of Ireland. In the middle of the
boasted nineteenth century, after more than 69 years of
union with rich England, Ireland, comparing country with
country, and people with people, is at present brought down
to the lowest place in the scale among the nations of Europe,
whereas, had it been a union of mutual advantage, she
ought to have made giant strides towards national pros-
perity. But it is very far from being so. Millions of acres,
upon which the millions of people now gone for ever could
have been advantageously located, are now lying waste, im-
mense receptacles of water which add to the humidity of our
climate. Our harbours, in which the navies of the world
might ride in safety, are empty of shipping. Our rivers,
which might bear away on their bosom the products of this
countree'and bring back in return rich cargoes of merchan-
dise from every part of the world, roll their waters idly to
the sea, some of them without so much as turning a singe
mill• wheel in their course. Then look at the condition of the
people. Our great landed proprietors arc absentees; our
manufactures once of a time, in Iced, did II eurish, and it
is hoped may flourish again, but do not now ; our few re-
maining artisans are pining in the garrets of our lanes; our
people generally are the worst clothed, the worst housed,
the worst fed of any in Earope; our strong farmers are
many of them crippled, our small farmers brought down to
the condition of labourers, our labourers driven from the
fields into the workhouses, our fields, once alive with
people, now turned into desolate sheepewalks and bullock
pastures, echoing to the sounds of beasts instead of the chil-
dren's merry voices, and the ploughman's cheerful whistle.
(Hear, hear.) The people of Ireland are flying from their
native land in hundreds of thousands : what do I say ?—in
millions. Our young women, pure as the breezes which
fanned their native hills, they who should be the mothers
of a new generation in Ireland—and our young men, light
of limb and strong of hand, destined by nature and nature's
God to till the soil of their own teeming valleys, and to
cover our hill sides with the golden corn—and our old men
and old women, bonding under the weight of 60 or 70 years,
with but one earthly hope left them, that their bones might
rest with the bones of the ten generations before them—all,
all, young and old, men and women, aro flying from the
shores of Ireland as from a land stricken with plague, to
seek elsewhere the means of subsistence denied them in the
land of their birth. And what is the cause of this extra-
ordinary emigration ? Is it that the national resources of
Ireland aro unequal to the support of the millions of people
she has heaved out of her prolific womb ? The soil of Ire-
land, if duly cultivated, would:support not seven or eight,
but ten, twelve, fourteen millions of people. Or is it that the
Irish are an idle, half-foolish, half-romancing people, who
set their faces towards the west in the hope of finding some
garden of the Hesperides where they shall have nothing to
do but put up their hands and pluck the golden apples ?
No, the Irish are a shrewd and hard-working people, at
home and abroad amongst the most hard-working
people in the world. (Cheers.) Or is it, again, that the
Irish do not love their native land ? Perhaps no people
in the world, not even the Swiss, are more attached to their
native land. The exiles of Erin on the banks of the Hud-
son or the Ohio look back to that green island far away in
the ocean with much the sem° longing of heart as the Is-
raelites by the rivers of Babylon when they hung up their
harps on the willows, and wept as they remembered the
songs of Sion. (Applause.) But perhaps we may account
for the exodus by the famine consequent on the potato
blight, and by subsequent bad seasons. Well, allowing to
these causes their full share in the thinning of our popula-
tion, they cannot by any means be set down as the sole or
principal cause of the dispersion of our people. Why, the
country had partially recovered from the effects of the famine,
and it was after this partial recovery that the great tide of
emigration began to flow westward. Then, as to bad seasons,
other countries as well as Ireland--vine-growing, corn-
growing countries, experience unpropitious seasons ; but
where do we find any people but the Irish departing in mil-
lions because of such visitations of nature? And what
known government, with one single exception, but manages
somehow to bring its people safe through a season of dis-
tress ? Ah I other agencies are to blame and other deficien-
cies besides those of nature. Moderate men, practical men.,
men the most conversant with the condition of Ireland cast
a large share of the blame upon the landlords and the Go.