The Sun.
London, England, 1839-02-07 00:00:00

DON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1839

Member for the University of Dublin had mentioned the
circumstance of there being no allusion in the Speech
from the Throne to the social condition of Ireland. It
was not usual to enter into a general disquisition relative
to the social state of any part of the United Kingdom,
unless it was the intention of the Government to call the
attention of Parliament to the subject with a view of in-
troducing some specific measure. If this were not the
case it would be their duty in every speech to allude to
the social condition of Ireland—a question connected
with some historical transactions as to the state
of the social condition of that country, which
could only lead to very long debates without any advan-
tage. If the Hon. and Learned Gentleman means to ask
whether it is our intention to introduce any specific mea-
sure to improve the social condition of Ireland, I must
say we have no such measure to propose. I should ima-
gine that the general principles which conduce to the
prosperity of other countries would also conduce to the
, hear.) I believe
cessationr of pery cution,
pgreonseprearli t yo
freedom fI r el
andan d . —eq(uHaleitayr: hea
education, the relief of destitution, of the employ-
ment of the people, the usual and ordinary means adopted
by other countries for the improvement of their social condi-
tion would be also useful to Ireland. If the lion. and Learned
Gentleman should bring forward any measure I shall be
ready to enter into the discussion of the social condition of
Ireland with him, to show how that condition has been
brough' about, and why it exhibits so many painful fea-
tures. If he has no measure by which these results could
be brought about, he could do nothing better than to en-
deavour to restrain the passions and bridle the temper by
which discussions in Ireland were characterized, and which
was participated in by one side as much as the other. I
really think that this would be a means of making those
legislative measures, which may be proposed to this House,
most extensively useful. The Hon. Gentleman Soho last sat
down has not only followed the Right Hon. Gentleman, but
has said most unjustly that the law was not enforced against
the authors of combinations and excitements for murder.
I know of no such combinations and excitements. I ut-
terly
deny the imputation ; and if the Government saw any
such excitements, instead of looking on tranquilly and in.
differently, they would think it their bounden duty to re-
press them.
Captain BOLDERO said that, in her Majesty's Ad-
dress to the House of Commons, there was the following
paragraph :—" I fully rely on your loyalty and patriotism
to maintain the efficiency of these establishments which arc
essential to the strength and security of the country."
He presumed that alludrd to the Army and Navy. The
security of the country was assailed on many sides. There
was war in Canada, lie believed there was war in India, and
there was a display of warlike intentions on the coast of
Spain, besides the supposed intentions of Russia. He

hoped that when the estimates of the army and navy were
laid on the table, they would be placed on such a footing
that England would be prepared fur danger, from what-
ever quarter it might conic. He maintained that our
!=trength at this moment was not adequate to the danger
that threatened us.
Lord M.)RPETEI wished to make one observation
with reference to what had fallen from the Hon. and Gal-
lant Member opposite (Colonel Perccval) of his not having
contradicted the statement made by the Hon. and
Learned Member for Dublin. lie certainly owed it to
the lion. and Gallant Member to state that ho was in
possession of no evidence which threw any doubt on the
fact of the attack having been made.
Mr. HUME, in addition to the observations which he
made last night respecting Canada, wished to allude to the
melancholy circumstances occurring in that province,
which were calculated to produce a very ill effect on the
public mind, both here and in America. In the Gazette,
which he had received this day of the 4th of January, he
found• that four more executions had taken place, and be
would submit to the Noble Lord whether those executions
in cold blood were not calculated to increase the excite-
ment which had so unhappily prevailed, and to ask whe-
ther any orders had been sent out on the subject ?
Lord JOHN RUSSELL said the papers that would
be presented to the House would give the necessary in-
formation. If the lion. Gentleman alluded to the exe-
cutions in Lower Canada—

Mr. HUME—Upper Canada.
Lord JOEIN RUSSELL—WeII, the paper will ex-
plain that. Ido not believe the Governors of Upper or
Lower Canada will carry the executions farther than is
absolutely necessary. _ _

The SPEAKER then said the House would meet at
half-past one to-morrow, for the purpose of carrying up the
Address to her Majesty.
The House then adjourned at HALF-PAST

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

The opening of the Session has already shown the
people what they are to expect, the obstacles to be
surmounted, and the energies which must be put forth,
in order to avert the impending destruction of our
foreign trade, and with it the ruin of manufacturing
capitalists, and the starvation by tens of thousands
of those whom they employ. Hitherto there has been
little or no conflict. The chief drawback upon tho ex-
pression of the public will and interest has been the
disturbance of some meetings by a section of the Chart-
ists—the little-loaf and tin-canister-party which Tors ism
has pushed forward to do its dirty work. But now the
question is, whether the public voice shall have a fair
and full hearing in the Legislature ? To obtain this is
the first move in the game, and calls for determined ef-
forts on the part both of representatives and constitu-
ents. Considerable inconvenience has doubtless been
sometimes occasioned by the lengthened remarks and
desultory conversations that used often to accomplish
the presentation of petitions. But simply to take care
of its own convenience is not the paramount duty, nor
the paramount right, of a House of Representatives.
Members must submit to be inconvenienced, when not
merely the convenience of the public but its deepest
interests are at stake. The old custom was, on many
points, a very serviceable one. It did much towards
preparing people's minds for Catholic Emancipation and
Parliamentary Reform. Its revival is peculiarly re-
quired on such a question as that of the Corn-laws.
Unless the occasion be superseded by the immediate
concession that evidence shall be heard at the Bar of
the House, it is incumbent on those Members who have
petitions to present, that they demand and exercise their
right, in defiance of all convention. Only so can it be truly
said that the people are heard at all. The facts and argu-
ments that accumulate, till they approach to morel de;
monstration, are necessarily condensed into a few sen-
tences in a petition. The statements and illustrat:ons
of the representative are essential for making known
the complaints of his constituents. It is the mode in
which he can best be said to represent them. Besides,
the petitions against the Corn-laws come from various
classes and localities. The grievance is diversified ac.
cording to the circumstances of each. The subject is
not like that of the slave trade, nor the observance of
the Sabbath, where all petitioning parties have only the
same story to tell. The mischiefs of the corn monopoly
resemble the fiends, whose name was " Legion." The
cotton manufactures have one branch of the great in-
jury to exemplify—the cutlers another. The Glasgow
petition will suggest a different set of evils from that of
Manchester. It is for their Parliamentary advocates to
" put a tongue in every wound of their country,"
and to allow no conventional fiction to stifle its utterance.
A specimen is afforded of the disingenuous treatment
which this subject will encounter in the use made
by Sir Robert Peel on Tuesday night of the
returns read by Mr. G. W. Wood. Those re-
turns indicate a fact of a very alarming description.
They show the changing character of our exports from
articles into which labour enters largely as an element.
to those on which little or no labour is employed. The
exportation of the former is decreasing ; that of the
latter increasing. We send abroad more wool and less
woollen—more metal and less cutlery ; that is to say,
we are becoming venders of the material instead of the
manufacture. A. more disastrous transition can scarcely
be imagined. Yet in these returns, Sir Robert Peel
professes to exult as a vindication of the existing sys-
tem. The boast is that of a beleaguered city in the
quantity of guns and gunpowder that it vends to the
besieging army. Exports of raw produce, or of the
first forms of manufacture, come back to us in
the finished article, battering away like the balls
and bullets of the enemy, at tho very citadel of
our prosperity ; while at every volley Sir Robert
Peel rejoices in the increased demand for the mate-
rials of our own destruction. 'Whether the Right
Honourable Baronet be the dupe of his own sophis-
try, or only intends others to be so, the fact that such
an argument could be employed, with an appearance
of success, is itself a dedonstration of the desirable-
ness of hearing evidence at the bar of the House of
Commons. The utterer and the cheerers of this
miserable perversion of facts either need enlighten-
ment, or deserve exposure. The people must bestir
themselves in the few days that will elapse before Mr.
Villiers' motion conies on. The delegates are setting
about their work in a business-like manner ; but their
hands should be strengthened. Now is the time
for 4etitions to tell. They have tenfold the worth
within the next twelve days that they can have
afterwards. Evidence at the bar of the House should
be the prayer of all ; it is the only investigation worth
having ; the only
concession which will not be an
insult to the petitioners ; the only mode of assault
which the monopoly cannot permanently repel. We
dare the landowners to let the world see the ex-
tent of the injury they inflict upon others, without
really benefiting themselves. Let the whole truth
come out. Let the assertions of the petitioners be put
severely to the proof. Why is so reasonable a demand
likely to be resisted ? What more important topic can
possibly occupy the 'attention of a Legislature ? On
what else to the exclusion of this can they busy them-
selves, that their constituents will not regard with bitter
scorn ? Only let not any atom of public inertness leave
them an excuse. No town, city, or borough, should
furnish its representative with the plea
that he had no
testimony of their desire for cheap bread. No man
should dare to insult his maker, injure his fellow-crea-
tures, or wrong his own conscience, by praying in
Church on Sunday for daily bread, if he have not peti-
tioned the Legislature for cheap bread. Even every
one .who hesitates ought to petition fora public hearing
of the evidence, that he may hesitate no longer on a ques-
tion affecting the means of subsistence to the great mass of
the community. This question puts two very different
classes upon their vial—the House of Commons and
the unenfranchisa I masses. The conduct of the former
will show to what extent it is a re,. •epiesentation ; that

of the latter tO;rhateatent it is prepared for a useful

-
exercise of the silting°. Short-sighted must be the
selfishness that can withhold the one from granting, or
the other from asking, a full public investigation of the

influence of the Corn-laws. There can be no reasonable
pretext of injury to either in inquiry. For it to be
quashed by the one party would be intolerable insolence
—for it to be impeded by the other would be insane
vindictiveness. The misguided working men may already
see what they have to expect of their Tory abettors.
On Sunday the Charter newspaper, by the agency
of an unrebuked Correspondent, proposes to try Sir
RObert Peel again as Minister. On Monday the
Tory Standard tells the working classes that the interest
of their employers can never be their interest, and that
they are much more enlightened persons than those of
the class above them ; and on Tuesday Sir Robert
Peel holds them up to the Legislature and the country
as the lawless enemies of property. Used for a pur-
pose, praised in irony, kicked in earnest, if all this do
not make them join the middle classes, heart and hand,
for the repeal of the Corn-laws, their heads must be as
empty of brains now as their bellies will soon be of
bread. The infatuation is marvellous. Anterior to
the fact, who could have supposes! it possible that any
portion of a community should have opposed itself to
the inquiry, whether it could not obtain, in greater
abundance, or at a lower rate, the daily means of sub-
sistence ?—ilforning Chronicle.
Wh.m it so falls out in the chapter of accidents that
Lord Brougham expresses a right opinion, he does ex-
cellent service by the matchless force with which he
expresses it. For good or for evil, no man alive has
such a command of powerful words. No man alive can
make the lorreus loquendi subservient to his will as he
can, nor give vent to the boiling energy of mind in
words which leap almost beyond the mark to which the
meat resistless energy could aspire. We thank him for
his lashing of Irish crime, and of that great public crimi-
nal Mr. Daniel' 'O'Connell. Not even Lord Brougham
can express more detestation of a cowardly, crafty, un-
principled bully than Mr. Daniel O'Connell deserves ;
but he has painted him well, and the picture will not
soon be forgotten. The following is an extract from
Lord Braugham's speech of Tuesday evening, when al-
luding to the speeches of the Crown law officers at the
late Special Commission in Ireland
What the opinions of the Law Officers of the Crown
In Ireland were, as regarded what was an extra c,n-
spiracy, he did not know; but he had been shoe n by re-
cent legal investigations there, that murder was tp,,ken
and treated of, concocted, plauucd, urged, and a.6r.J d on,
done, compassed, and perpetrated, in a way, a match fir
' which, he defied any to find even in the centre of Africa
amongst the savages. It was in evidence that while tl
very examples of criminal justice were being made, a noble,
an amiable, and a respected individual, an admirable mem-
ber of society, beloved by those about him, and endeared
to the bulk of his tenantry as a landlord, was murdered,
shot at as a beast from behind a hedge ; and 'Ai more
idea seemed to be entertained of discovering who com-
mitted the crime than if it were physically impossible to
trace the footsteps of the assassin. lie was compelled to
ask himself whether all could be well in the law or police
of a country where such revolting and shocking scenes
occurred, and where an attempt had been made in the
face of day by an impudent audacity, an enormous effron-
tery, an accursed malignity, to turn away from the real
assassin the universal indignation of mankind, and to fix
the commission of an act, atrocious whoever did it, upon
one in whom to have committed it would have been a crime
incomparably blacker—to think of which almost curdled
the blood in one's heart. The last effort of despera.'e
factious audacity had been made—this last evidence of a
malignant nature crowned the whole, and made him hope
that justice would be done, if not on the murderer, at least
on those who only yielded in infamy td the as.sassin of the
father—the assassins of the reputation of the s, n. They
little knew what Englishmen are made of—they little
knew what English blood boils in English veins, who fan-
cied that their influence with the Government would pro-
tect them, if they showed their faces in this country, from
the universal horror and execration that attended the
commission of such crimes."

This is the proper way in which to speak of Mr.
O'Connell. He is a man who deserves to be scouted
from all political society where one spark of high and
honourable policy still re:nains. He is a disgrace to
the Parliament of which he is a member, and the time
in which be lives. The recollection that to such a man
the existing Administration has long owed its existence
is one of the most humiliating and disgusting that can
occur to the mind of any one who f6els as a British or
an Irish gentleman ought to feel.—Morning Post.