The Sun.
London, England, 1837-02-14 00:00:00

rying out the proposed system, they would entail a great burden
on themselves. He was satisfied that they, would not get the
persons of the same class in Ireland to attend, day after day, and
week after week, as was the case in England. He repeated, if
the difficulty to procure the services of proper persons on the
Board of Guardians here was found to be great, it would be
still more so in Ireland. He was also satisfied that the
more they extended the size of each workhouse district
the greater the difficulties that would be felt. He was
of opinion that the proposed workhouse district was too large.
for the practical working of the system. It should alto be re-
collected that there was a great want of a proper parochial
machinery in Ireland, and therefore he thought that they
would have to give greater power to the Commissioners in
Ireland than was given to .them in England. There was
another part of the plan with respect to which he wished to say
a few words, and which was suggested to hint by what had
fallen from the Noble Lord. It was proposed that titter and
entire destitution should be the only ground of relief: Did
not this suppose as a corollary that entire destitution gave an
absolute right to relief? How could they tell a man that be
should not go a begging, and at the same say that the case
was not one of destitution, and relief, therefore, should not be
given ? Upon whom would they throw the responsibility to
say who had and who had not a right to relief ?—( Hear, hear.)
llis Noble Friend, he believed, went further, and said that
destitution was the sole condition of relief. He said that he
would give no absolute right, and the reason was, that
he could not do so without having a law of settlement.
He would not pledge himself upon the subject, but would wait
to hear whether the Government could show the possibility or
practicability of introducing any measure—whether it gave
to the pauper an absolute right, or not an absolute right, to
relief—which should not carry with it the necessity of some law
of settlement. Let them not shrink from the difficulty of the
case. He knew it was a difficulty. His Noble Friend had
said, " Look at the Law of Settlement in England, and see
what trouble, what litigation, what expense it occasions ; there-
fore (said his Noble Friend) simply let us have no Law of Set-
tiement at all." Suppose his Noble Friend were to be met
with this sort of argument—" Set what abuses have pre-
vailed under the old Poor-law system in this country; see what
ruin in every direction it has occasioned.; therefore let us
have no Poor-law at all ;" would r not be precisely the
doctrine which his Noble Friend now advanced against the
Law of Settlement ? If the House recognised the prin-
ciple that destitution should be the test of relief, and
that that relief should be limited to the workhouse, and if
they meant as a general measure that it zisould prevent va-
grancy—vagrancy being the greatest evil in Ireland—then
they must give to destitution an absolute right and claim upon
some fund; and if they gave to destitution an absolute right
and claim upon some fund, then they must by some law of
settlement say upon' what fund that claim should be, From
this chain of.reasoning he could not see how they could escape
—how was it that his Noble Friend proposed to begita this

system in Ireland ? Why, by establishing at first fifteen
workhouses in that country. Now it was admitted that
there would be a great rush of paupers upon those fifteen
workhouses, and that it would be impossible to resist their
claims.—( Hear, hear.) But that was an argument in favour
of a law of settlement, when thay were were about to give to
paupers a claim throughout Ireland the same as in England,
upon every one of those workhouses. But if in Ireland the
authorities should not choose to admit the paupers claiming,
then, according to the proposition of his Noble Friend, those
paupers should have a right of begging. See how, adopting,
as it was proposed to do, the same law and the same ad-
ministration in Ireland as in England, such a r plan would
operate. At present there was no Poor Law in Ireland ; con-
sequently, from the coasts of Cumberland, Westmoreland,
or the Western coasts of England, they could ship off
any number of Irish paupers, they thought proper, and turn
them loose on Irish ground, and tell them to beg their way
home. Was it intended by the Noble Lord that there should
he thrown upon Belfast, Dublin, or Waterford, an absolute
and compulsory, though not a legal, burden of this de-
scription ; or to say to them, " Though there is a Poor Law
throughout Ireland, and an universal system of relief,
yet these persons must be maintained by you in Dublin,
Waterford, or Belfast, or else they must be allowed to beg
their way through the country ? Was that the way they did
in England? lf, then, they wished to introduce the same
system of relief into Ireland as prevailed in England, they
must carry the same system throughout. They must make
the county of Dublin bear the same relation to the county of
Lancaster, as the county of Cornwall or the county of York
bore to it at the present moment. But this they could not do
without establi;hing a law of settlement. Without a law of
settlement, therefore, and without giving paupers an absolute
title to relief, he could not see how it was practicable that

the present measure could prevail. lie would not at the
present moment enter into a consideration of the several very
important questions of detail involved in this Measure. He
entirely agreed with his Noble Friend in the propriety
and expediency of the provision for excluding clergymen
of all denominations from the administration of these
funds.—(Hear.) Their interference might lead to heart-burn-
ings, and to suspicions of partiality, if not to partiality itself ;
while it would to a great extent be mixing them up with a vast
number of circumstances from which they had much better be
excluded. They would then be better able to perform their

proper functions, as a sort of mediator between tfie guardians
and the paupers. It was perfectly consistent with their sacred

. .
office to advocate the claims of charity, but not to administer
parochial or district relief. The question of rating was one of
great importance, and to which he was aware that Government
had given very serious attention. He could not, however, say
that he altogether agreed with them in the conclusion at which
they had arrived. He should have been most desirous of see-
ing a system by introduced by which the poor-rates levy might
have acted as an absolute and positive check upon that which
he held to be one of the greatest evils of Ireland as between
landlord and tenant, namely, the exorbitant rents fixed upon,
which one pary never expected to receive, and which the
other party knew he could never pay. He should have been
glad to see the amount of rate taken and estimated upon the
covenanted rent as between landlord and tenant. That would

have acted, in his opinion, as a very important check to the
evil that so greatly prevailed in Ireland. For now the land-
lord imposed a rent of 50s. an acre, knowing at the same
time that he should never get 405., but, trusting to what he
could screw out of the tenant, willing to take everything if
he could get it ; while the poor tenant, from the great com-
petition for land, undertook to give 505., knowing also at the
same time that he could not pay any such sum. Now,
if they could introduce a system by which the amount fixed
as the rent were made the basis of the amount of taxation—

to which there could be no objection, that being the valua-
tion imposed by the parties themselves—there would be at
once a check upon the exorbitant avarice of the land-
lord, and also upon the improvident want of foresight on
the part of the tenant in promising an amount of rent which
he was not able to pay. He hoped it.: would not be impos-
sible to introduce some such provision in the Bill. It was
also a question to he considered, when they came to the de-
tails of the Bill, as to the amount to be charged upon the
landlord, and the manner in which it was to be distributed
among the landlord ;and tenants; and also as to the means
by which they were to pay it—whether they should deduct
it from the whole of the landlord's rent, or whether the amount
charged upon the landlord should be first paid by the tenant
and allowed as a part consideration of the rent—which he
should think the most desirable course. But these were

questions to be considered by them in committee, and dis-
cussed by them as members of the House of Commons, who,
whatever their opinions might be upon theoretical questions,
he hoped, when they came to deal with a great question of
this kind, concerning which there was but one sole and only
interest on both sides of the House, would equally endeavour
to carry it through perfectly by friendly argument, and by
discussing it, warmly if necessary, but at the same time can-
didly ; and by bowing to the opinion of the majority, and to
expediency, when their mutual object was ascertained to be
the same. He wonld say that was the course the House of
Commons ought to pursue on a question of this kind. That
is (said the Noble Lord) the course which I mean to pursue,

nay, in the name of every Member on either side of the House,
without distinction of party, may I not say that that is the
course which we shall pursue ?"—( Loud cheers.) With re-
gard to extending the right of relief not only to the impotent
but to the able-bodied pauper, he confessed he himself saw no
means by which they could draw a line of distinction between the
two ; limiting, as it was.proposed to do, that relief altogether ;
at all events in the first instance, to that which should be

given in workhouses, and workhouses alone. With no ex-

aggerated expectations that this measure would produce un-
limited prosperity in Ireland—with no exaggerated expecta-
tions that it would entirely relieve even partial, local, much
less general distress—while, on the other hand, with no ex-
aggerated apprehensions that it would endanger the rights of
the landlord, he, as an Irish landowner, thanked his Ma-
jesty's Government for having introduced the measure, and,
as an Irish landlord, he would give his aid to bring the mea-
sure to as perfect a conclusion as possible. He had omitted
to mention one question, which was with respect to the num-
ber of vagrants. He hoped, in considering the question of
destitution, his Noble Friend would make it understood that
no person renting and occupying land should -be considered in
such a state of destitution as to give him a right to relief. It
had been said that there would be a great influx of paupers at
particular times of the year in the workhouses. Undoubtedly
this would be the case if they admitted this class of persons ;
because the small landholders at certain periods of the year
suffer great distress, generally in the months of May, June,
and July, between the consumption of one crop and the gather-
ing of the other. Now if men, though holding four or five
acres of land, were at those periods to be considered in such
a state of destitution as was no doubt often actually the fact, as
to entitle them to come into the workhouse, the workhouses
would be inundated and overwhelmed, and the effect would be
that every farthing so paid and expended would be paid into
the pockets of the landlord. He did not wish to raise the rent
of the Irish landlord, though be believed it was capable of be-
ing raised. First, it might be raised by superior cultivation,
by a greater extension of the farms, by increased application of
capital to those farms, and by a greater conversion of that class
of the population who now depended partly upon letting four
or five acres as landlords, and partly upon holding three or four
acres themselves, into active labourers. He believed that
if those changes could be introduced, the rents of Ireland,
under a good system of Poor-laws, were capable of being
materially and honestly raised to the benefit of the_ land-
lord, but no less also to the benefit of the tenant. What he
wanted to prevent was the dishonest and fraudulent raising
of rents ; that system of nominally raising rents to an amount
which was never intended by the landlords to be levied, but
which was intended to screw down the tenantry, and to force
from them the last penny their impoverished condition could
spare. He thought to a certain extent the measure intro-
duced by his Noble Friend to-night might have the effect of
mitigating this great prevailing evil ; and whatever should
have that effect would be an unmixed good. Feeling confi-
dent that the House would seek sedulously to guard the mea-
sure by such salutary provisions as should not allow it to impose