The Sun.
London, England, 1837-11-11 00:00:00

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The following letter hasbeen addressed by Henry Grattan,
Esq., M.P., to Lord Cloncurry :
" Hotel du Congres, Rue Rivoli, Paris, Oct. 27.
"My Dear Lord—l have just seen your letter to Mr.
O'Connell, in which you state your intention to meet the
Irish Members in Dublin, and confer with them preparatory
to the meeting of Parliament. As the House of Lords
have decided that there should be one law for Ireland and
another for England—thereby condemning the union pro-
ject of Mr. Pitt and giving additional proof of its failure--
I highly approve of the suggestion, and should raters(' if
illness in my family had not brought me to a milder climate.
I, therefore, take this method of informing my constituents,
who justly expect every attention to their interest', and to
which they are entitled in a pre-eminent degree, for the
county of Meeth ranks among the first in its successful
opposition to a Toi:e aristocracy, who had neither power to
command nor ability to onneiliatc, and over whom they have
obtained for my colleague (;lea. O'Connell) and myself, a
majority of 700 electors. Such conduct . demands my
thanks, and merits, on my part, every a,:!_entlon to the in-
terests of our country.
" These interests are developing themselves ces:v day.
The rapid communication and facility of intercourse w;:.l'
the Continent will open the eyes of all men to the state of
Ire] and, and mankind will lift up their hands in amazement
at her condition. Eight millions of people will become
more and more impatient under their wrongs ; they will
become more sensible of the miseries of their state, and of
the folly of their intestine divisions. The Irish nation will
unite ; a silent but certain revolution will be effected ; and
then every man, whether Whig or Tory, will condemn the
System by which Ireland has been governed.
" What is the condition we behold ? Society cut up by
tile roots ; poverty ; absenteeism ; cull discord ; religious
Strife ; a partisan magistracy, and peculating bigoted cor-
poretions ; the churches of the Protestants half empty ;
the chapels of the Catholics, in number and accommoda-
tion, sheneefully deficient ; the religion of 600,000 upheld
by funds enarlY equal in annual value to a million of
money ; the eelLsion of six millions left to the chances of
voluntary contributions, and the tithes of the established
church collected at the point of the bayonet ; large tracts
of territory held by a nobility and gentry who seldom re-
side, and who spend their rents in another country ; the
most fertile soil in Europe but half cultivated, though the
people are laborious, and labour got for sixpence a day,
and human life sustained for three halfpence a day ; yet,
notwithstanding these advantages, upwards of two millions
of the inhabitants (as in the Report of the House of Com-
mons) are left in a state of absolute starvation for nearly
six months every year !!! I exclaim that those evils must
be remedied at every hazard, and I assert that mankind
should execrate the Tory Governments who have reduced
so fine a country to so wretched a state, and all mankind
must wonder that the Jrish are so tame and so enduring.
" It is our duty to prepare the minds of the people for
that moral revolution which is fast approaching, and the
subjects that you and the Irish Members have to consider
should not be confined to the Tithe and Corporation ques-
tions solely, but should embrace all those that Ireland re-
quires. Our legislators are deficient in information, slow
to acquire, tedious to amend, and incompetent to succeed.
Three sets of Tithe Bills, of Election Bills, of Corporation
Bills, successively proposed, greatly altered, partly adopted
or finally rejected by the Lords, betray an incapacity to act
or an unwillingness to legislate, show an indifference to the
wants and wishes of the people, and mock mock Ireland
with Vac forms of a free Constitution.
" Let us turn to the Continent, and compare Ireland
with these countries. The Tories will exclaim, The people
there hove not a free Constitution, nor a Habeas Corpus
Act, nor ties trial by jury as with us, nor the liberty of the
press !' We can reply, They have more than the Tories
gays to Ireland:. The Tories, forsooth, who packed our
juries, tutored our shere's, prosecuted the press, persecuted
an I sought to imprison the friend of the people, proscribed
their supporters, promoted their enemies, and, notwith-
st Inclines the reported speech of' their leader, Sir Robert
Peel, allowed religious and party feelings for a length of
years to interfere in the advancement of almGst.every man
in almost every office, civil, military, and judicial. They
made it a curse to be born an Irishman, and a crime to Pf.
baptized a Catholic—their system of plunder and pecula-
tion, tyranny and treachery—(Lord Fitzwilliam at one mo-
ment, then the torture at another)—civil war at one pe-
riod, secret hostility at another—murder and blood, havoc,
and spoil, and ruin.' The result of the system which that
party put in force in Ireland is a melancholy history, and
affords a salutary lesson to British Kings and Continental
Sovereigns to avoid a similar system of government, unless
they wish to live in the hatred of their fellow-subjects, and
in perpetual dread for their own existence.
" The Tories cannot, then, preach to the Irish what
they never gave or permitted in Ireland—the blessings of a
British Constitution. Turn, I repeat, to these countries
—Belgium, Nassau, Hesse, Baden, France—no wars of
religion, no tithe conflicts, no Bible battles, no akzentces,
no necessity for poor laws—almost every one is educated,
most of the people have land—all are well fed, eel! clothed,
well housed—municipal bodies, selected by and from
the
people, regulate their local affeirs, and control the public
expenditure—information is spreading rapidly—religious
bigotry has vanished, and in the very town where Luther's
defence of Protestantism remains, and signed by his own
hand, these prejudiced Tories may see, in the same bui!d-
ing, Protestant and Catholic kneeling to their• God, and
worshipping him as the common father of mankind, with-
out envy, hatred, or malice' towards their neighbours ! !
How different this from Ireland, where the Tories ruled
for the last fifty years, and the cry of their hell-
hounds never-ceasing barked !' But there is, in ad-
dition, one distinguished feature in the French sys-
tem; which I press upon your attention—that is,
the National Guard—a cheap defence of nations pre-
siding over and protecting the fate and fortune of their
country. A people in arms are a tower of strength ; the
armed citizen; conscious of his power, controls its exercise,
casts a shade of moderation over all his actions,- and adds
an embellishment to civic virtue. It is this that will secure
to France her freedom ; it is this that has immortalised the
name of La Fayette—a similar institution procured for Ire-
land her liberty—such an institution may be necessary
again. The solunteers of 1782, led on by Lord Cherie-
tient, and my faller, struck off at a blow the chains that
for centuries had bound the nation, and effected for Ireland
in an hour what Parliaments took half a century after-
wards to do for the Catholic, so much more efficient is the
straightforward proceeding of the people, than the double-
faced friendship and policy of the Ministers. Civilisation
and liberty went hand in hand, and order and tranquil-
lity reigned around. The eyes of a nation may t e
closed, and her senses stupified, even for ages—but it re-
quires only a moment to awaken them. The clang of the
national armour scuds its echo through the land and arouses
all men from one extremity to the other. From the
dissolution of that illustrious body in Ireland may be
dated the return of violence and tyranny, the advent of
Tories to power, and the long dreary night of commotion
and calamity, religious persecution and domestic discord.
" But why have the Tories rendered the establishment
of such a force in Ireland hazardous though perhaps neces-
sary ? Because they put Ireland out of the pale of nations
—they declare that she is not a to he united with Eng-
land on teens of equality—that one law is to exist for
Euglen 1 and another for Ireland—and that a vicious and
corrupt one. They rendered necessary 7,000 police and
22,000 troops of the line, with their expensive establish-
ments ; but the English will find at last that the hearts of
the Irish, and their arms, are the best security for Great
Britain, as the Tories now teach us that these are the only
guarantees for Irish freedom ; and I maintain that if that
party, upheld by the House of Lords, continue out of Par-
liement the system of abuse, insult, and calumny towards
the people, the friends of the people, and the religion of
the people ; and if they pursue in Parliament time system
of again rejecting all popular measures, and nullifying the
action of the House of Commons ; they recruit for the
Val mtcers of Ireland—they decide that Ireland must be in
arms if she seeks to be five, and THEIR RETURN TO
POWER WILL BE THE SIGNAL.
" I write in a foreign land. At heart an Irishman, con-
nected inseparably with my native country, and allied with
time Catholic, I feel that just indignation which the in-
jured does when oppressed by power. Alive to the
happiness which these countries enjoy, and anxious that
such should be extended to my own, I also write in the
hope that every honest Frenchman may be on his guard
against the Tory party, and may protect his Government
fio:n their contagion ; that a mark (as it were) may be put
upon his abode, in order that it may be passed over and
:;voided. In former days Ireland appealedtethe arms of
France. Fraitenov, the Irish brigade,i ;
tiiln and later events
speak the policy pursued towards It;loutnow she can
appeal to the wisdom and reason of this nation. All their
easopetaies are on our side ; there are none in common
jar
tire English Tory ; and more affection is found here
Jar people who are strangers than can be met with at tile
Conservative. meetings of the British, who are allied to
Ireland by ties of every kind. Their incessant and in-
creasing ribaldry, their abuses of the Irish, their haughty
insolence, their vulgar vituperation, and impotent threats,
will make the Irish view them with abhorrence. All who
.ten will come from the svest and pass England by ; they
will hasten to a more genial clinic and to warmer bosoms,
wheire they will meet with a response and sympathy in their
sirrows, though they may not find redress; they will leave
Old Englan'd to her Tories, and as Cicero said, 'they will
overshoot Mitydene:
" To guard ageinst this feeling of alienaCon and the dan-
gers that impend we should all contend. The French as
well as the Irish should be on their guard ; for, if the
Tories hate the liberty of the Irish, can they love that of ,