The Sun.
London, England, 1839-04-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON', TUF,SnAY, APRIL 16. JPPG

which, during your Majesty's reign, they are confident will al-
ways be exerted for the good of your people."
Presently afterwards, there was the resolution of the
[louse of Lords, reflecting greatly on one of the Secreta-
ries of State—Lord Nottingham, and the [louse of Corn.
moos immediately came to a resolution in favour of Lord
Nottingham. which they carried to the foot of the throne.
It was as follows :
" Not contented with preferring their own examination to
yours—not contented with excluding your Majesty and the
Commons, to whom Parliamentary inquiries most properly be-
long—appropriate to their House only, even in their application
to their Sovereign, the name of Parliament."
It so happened that several years afterwards Lord
Nottingham moved in the House of Lords a resolution as
to the conduct of the war, praying that no peace might be
made while Spain and the Indies remained in the hands of
the House of Bourbon. This was immediately resented by
the Government, who took their own means to support
their measures in the House of Lords.
I Sir R. PE E L—By a creation of Peers.
[Lord J. RUSS E L L—Yes, as the R;ght Hon. Baronet
says, by a creation of Peers ; for it had so happened at that
time that the prerogative bad been exerted with so much
sobriety, that the creation of 12 Peers was sufficient to
give the Ministry a majority.—( Ministerial cheers.)
That certainly has not been the sobriety of later times.—
(Ministerial cheers, re-echoed by cheers from the Opposi-
tion.) Sir, I have no objection, if it were proper at this
time, to enter into that question ; but, certainly, I think
that one of the greatest evils of the Ministry which came
into power in 1784 was, that it altogether altered the cha-
racter of the House of Peers--( Ministerial cheers.) I stated
this opinion so long ago as 1822, on bringing forward
the question of Parliamentary Reform, and I have
not seen any reason to change it. Sir, I was proceeding to
state that for a considerable time, owing, a; I think, to a
defect in the representative system, the House of Lords
and the House of Commons were without any great differ-
,!nce. When Lord Grey, however, was entrusted by his
late Majesty with the direction of affairs, we soon found
out a difference of opinion between the two Houses as
to the Executive ; and on the policy of the Govern-
ment regarding Portugal, the House of Herds sent an ad-
dress to th.T. Throne, disapproving of the conduct of
,he Government. What was the result? An HAL and

Gallant Friend of mine, immediately put the questio
to this House whether they would agree with the
House of Lords upon the question, or whether they
would support the policy of the Government. That must,
Sir, be the case.—( Hear, hear.) If the Houses of Par-
iiament differ as to the policy of the Executive—
the opinion of the House of Commons ought to be
expressed upon it ; and I say that, according to the
Constitution of the country, according to the power
vested in the House of Commons, the opinion of the
House of Commons on that subject ought to prevail.—
( Loud Ministerial cheers.) Sir, I have hitherto stated
the reasons why I think the House of Commons ought to
express an opinion upon this subject. I have not stated
anything inconsistent with their entertaining an opinion
ilar to that which has been entertained by the Honse of
Lords. I have not stated any thing inconsistent with
them, either, if they should think fit, executing the inquiry
themselves, or passing a more direct vote, censuring
the conduct of the administration in Ireland. All that I
have argued, and which I think I am entitled to ask, is
that this House should pronounce an opinion one way or
the other.--( Cheers.) Let them pronounce an opinion
either way, I think they will maintain the character and dig.
nity of the House of Commons. But I must say, that if they
were to pass the resolution of the Right Hon. Baronet—if
they were to say that they would wait till the end of this year
or perhaps to the end of next year, till the House of
Lords have examined into the exercise of the prerogative of
mercy—Meer, hear:—till the House of Lords have gone
through the case of every criminal tried at Kilkenny or
Armagh, if this House should wait thus silently and pas-
sively, allowing the Government to be carried on crippled
and enfeebled by the vote of the House of Lords, without
oronouncino any opinion, I say that the degradation of
the House of Commons is marked from that day.__( Loud
cheers from the Ministerialists.) Now, Sir, I come
to that which, no doubt, is a most important
question for this House to decide upon—upon
which I fear that I must trouble them at considerable
length ; but which I am resolved to bring before them, in
order that this House may know at least what has been our
view with respect to the state of Ireland—that they may
not be led astray by partial statements with re-
spect to the outrages which have taken place in
Ireland=and that they may not conclude, from
the words of this resolution of the House of Lords, that
outrage and crime have solely prevailed in Ireland because the
administration of the Government has been in the hands
of men of liberal inclinations and politics—(hear, hear)—
but that they may see to what it is owing that crime and
outrage have existed in Ireland, and that such crimes and
outrages have not been repressed—that they may see, that
these are evils the seeds of which were sown long ago, and
which it will require not four years, but forty years of good
Administration, luny to eradicate.—( Loud cheers.) Sir,
so far back as the commencement of the reign of George
I I 1., we fine that persons in Ireland went about armed, com-
pelling others to give up their arms, going disguised at night,
witnesses being threatened, and combined force being used
to carry into effect certain objects which conspirators had
in view. Sir, in this state of things, lawless and lament-
able as it is, there is nothing which very much differs
from the state in which other counties had been; there is
nothing that much differs from the state of things in which
this country is represented to have been, during the early
part of the reign of Elizabeth, or the state of things in
which Scotland is described to have been at the revolution
in 1688 ; there is nothing in it to which the wisdom of the
Ministers of Elizabeth, or the policy of William of
Orange, were not capable of applying a remedy. Is there
anything in the nature of the Irish people, which
forbids such outrages being successfully remedied ?
think no man will deny that in the upper classes no men
have shown greater talent, greater aptitude in the arts,
and arms, than the natives of Ireland—( Cheers)—and I
think, with respect to the lower classes, there arc no
men who, as soldiers, as subjects, as workmen, have shown
more valour, more industry, more of the qualities by which
a country was generally raised to eminence.—( Loud
cheers.) It is not, therefore, that there is anything in the
state of Ireland, or in the nature of the people themselves,
which forbid such evils being met and remedied. Sir, it is
worth the attention of the House, that Lord Normanby's
Under Secretary has been much condemned, for writing
in simple terms of property having duties as well as tights,
and of the neglect of those duties in past times having led
to much of the misery of the present. And I will read
what was said by Mr. Fitzgibbon, in 1787, afterwards
Lord Clare, a person certainly not of very popular
principles.—
" At last they proceeded to "regulate the price of land, to
raise the price of labour, and to oppose the collection of the
hearth-money and other taxes."
" 1 am very well acquainted with the province of Munster,
and I know that it is impossible for human wret Redness to
exceed that of the miserable peasantry of that province. I
know that the unhappy tenantry are ground to powder by
relentless landlords. I know that far from being able to
give the clergy their just dues, they have not food' and rai-
ment for themselves ; the landlord grasps the whole, and
sorry am Ito add, that not satisfied with the present extor-
tion, some landlords have been so base as to instigate the in-
surgents to rob the clergy of their tithes, not in order to alle-
viate the distresses if the tenantry, but that they might add
the clergy's share to the cruel rack-rent already paid."
—That was the character given of the Irish landlords by Mr.
Fitzgibbon, the Attorney-General, and I should like to
know what he would have said if he had been told it was not
competent for him to express the opinion that property had
its duties as well as its rights.—( Cheers.) The Duke of
Wellington also said, in 1829-..
" The whole affair was managed, and the
money paid by the
landlord, or the candidate, or was in some other wayhiade the
object of a job for promoting the political influence
took the trouble of managing it. It also ea dfrom the
authority t h se o whote
authority he hail before quoted, that the people were driven to
the hustings in large numbers ; that they were looked upon as
part of the live stock of the estate ; and that they
t scarcely s
treated like human beings. Property has it
its rights ; and that it is to the neglect of these valueese
that many and most of the present miseries are to be attributed."esa
_That was in past times, and would to God that Mr. Drum.
mond's statement was true, that it was confined to past
times. —( Hear.) I have spoken now of the state ofthe coun-
try, and the causes why I think the evil was not remedied
in those days. Arthur Young, in his works in 1772 said—
" The age has improved so much in humanity that even the
poor Irish have experienced its influence, and are every day
reated better and better; but still the remnant of the old man-
ners, the abominable distinction of religion, united with the
oppressive conduct of the little country gentlemen, or rather
vermin of the kingdom, who never were out of it, altogether still
bear very hard on the poor people, and subject them to situations
more mortifying than we ever behold in England. The landlord
of an Irish estate inhabited 4- Roman Catholics is a sort of despot,
who yields obedience, in whatever concerns the poor, to no
law but that of his will. To discover what the liberty of a people
is we must live among them, and not look for it in the
statutes of the realm : the language of the written law may be
that of liberty, but the situation of the poor may speak no lan-
guage but that of slavery. There is too much of this contra-
diction in Ireland ; along series of oppressions, aided by many
very ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of
exerting a very lofty superiority,', and their vassals into that of
an almost unlimited submission.
" A landlord in Ireland can scarcely invent an order which
a servant, labourer, or cotter, dares to refuse to execute.
Nothing satisfies him but unlimited submission. Disrespect
or anything tending towards sauciness he may punish with his
cane or his horsewhip with the most perfect security. A poor
man would have his bones broken if he offered to lift his hand
in his own defence."
—That was the description in plain and cogent terms
of the condition of the Irish landlord and the Irish
peasantry. I will take another description, written with
more philosophy and with more eloquence. It is an extract
from Mr. Burke. The Noble Lord read as follows from the
Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe.
" You who have looked deeply into the spirit of the Popery
laws, must be perfectly sensible that a great part of the present
mischief, which we abhor in common (if it at all exists), has
arisen from them.
" Their declared object wias to reduce the Catholics of Ire-
land to a miserable populace, without property, without estima-
tion, without education. The professed objectmight was toe
or obtaintodeprive
the few men who, in spite of those laws,
any property amongst them, of all sorts of influence or authority
over the rest. They divided the nation into two distinct bo-
dies, without common interest, sympathy, or connection. One
of these bodies was to possess all the franchises, all the property,
all the education. The other was to be composed of drawers of
water, and cutters of turf for them.
" Arc we to be astonished, when by the effort of so much
violence in conquest, and so much policy in regulation, con-
tinued without interruption for near a hundred years, we had
reduced them to a mob ; that whenever they came to act at all,
many of them would not exactly like a mob without a temper,
measure, or foresight."
—The Noble Lord also quoted the following from Lord
Charlemont ;
" Exorbitant rents, low wages, want of employment, in a
Country destitute of manufactures, where desolation and fa-
mine were the effects of fertility—where the rich gifts of a
bountiful soil were destructive to her children, and served
only to tantalize them ; where oxen supplied the place of men,
and by leaving little room for cultivation, while they enriched
their pampered owners, starved the miserable remnant of
thinly scattered inhabitants ; farms of enormous extent, let
by their rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing
landjobbers, by whom small portions of them were again let
and relet to intermediate oppressors, and by them subdivided
for five times their value, among the wretched starvers upon

potatoes and water; taxes yearly increasing, and tithes
the Catholic., without ary possible benefit, unwillingly
pays in addition to his priest-money, misery, oppression, and
famine ! These were undoubtedly the first and original causes,
obvious to the slightest inspection, though resolutely denied,
and every public investigation i,lto them impudently frustrated
by those whose sordid interest opposed their removal."—
Hardy's Life of Charlemont.
Those extracts show, I think, and most truly, the
condit'on of Ireland at that time, and if I am at all
right in my belief—if at that time measures had been
passed putting the Roman Catholics upon an equality with
the Protestants, making the laws of the realm convey
the spirit of justice, and at the same time providing as we
have endeavoured to provide in the spirit of the laws of
Elizabeth, for the sustenance of the poor, in my opinion,
we should not now have had to regret the state of Ireland.
--(Cheers.) That was the time, in my opinion, when
great influences might have been exerted, and when fu-
ture evils might have been prevented. —( Hear.) What
was done ?—the first law which was passed, was with
respect to Whiteboys in 1775, when the law of punish.
ments and penalties were imposed. The preamble recites—
" It has frequently happened of late years, in different parts
of this kingdom, that several persons calling themselves White-
boys, and others, as well by night as in the day time, have in a
riotous, tumultuous, and disorderly manner assembled together,
and have abused and injured the persons, habitations, and pro-
perties of many of his Majesty's loyal and faithful subjects, and
have taken away and carried away their horses and arms, and
have compelled them to surrender up, quit, and leave their
habitations, farms, and places of abode ; and have with threats
and violence imposed sundry oaths and solemn deelarations con-
trary to law, and solicited several of his Majesty's subjects, by
threats and premises, to join them in such their mischievous and
iniquitous proceedings ; and have also sent threatening and in-
cendiary letters to several persons, to the great terror of his
Majesty's peaceable subjects.
In the same year another law was passed, and after re-
counting the disorders that prevailed, it proceeded to enact
the most severe penalties. There are many clauses in that
Act inflicting the penalties of death ; but even when the
clauses do not go so far as to enforce capital punishment,
what is the spirit of that law? If any person is found
out of his doors in a garb that is not his usual
garb, or a dress that it is not usual for him to wear, he is
taken into custody and imprisoned. Such was the spirit
of that law ; such was the spirit of the Insurrection
Act ; such was the spirit of the Habeas Corpus Act—all tend-
ing to punishment, all using severity against the people—all
taking care, and very properly taking care, to pursue crime
with the utmost penalties,' but none of them providing for
the permanent welfare of the people—none of them ad-
, mitting the Roman Catholics to be treated as the free sub-

jects of a free country.—(Much cheering.) I will show
yo❑ the consequences of those proceedings. I will not go
through the catalogue of the dreadful offences of crime, of
murder, and of insurrection that prevailed in 1788. 1798,
1806, and at various times, nor will I go through

the catalo4ne of the penalties of the laws of those times,
but I wish you to come to consider the period of 1824
and 1825. Those intermediate fifty years are, perhaps,
the most remarkable fifty years in the history of the
country. In France there was a monarchy overthrown
and a military despotism created. During that period
almost every country in Europe saw its thrones abandoned
or their possessors dead—its institutions altered, and symp-
toms of the most violent rev&utions. The persons living
in those times were almost like the Pilgrim in the ruin of
Rome—

" Oft arose the voice
Of time, 'mid,t parting towers
Tumbling precipitately,
Down the abyss."
In our own country we had great changes and suspensions
of the Constitution—a foreign war—an immense national
debt—prodigious victories in arms—and very great and al•
most miraculous prosperity. Such were the changes
which during fifty years took place on the Continent of
Europe, and in this country ; and now I will show you what
was the account given at the end of the fifty years by a
person well competent to speak to facts with respect to the
state of Ireland. You had not then changed your laws—
you had not then admitted the Roman Catholics to a free
participation with the Protestants; and the party to whom
I allude describes the country as he found it, and
after the time of the passing of the White Boy Act,
Mr. Barrington said—

" I find the Whiteboy-system has for the last sixty years
continual under different names : as Peep-o'-day Boys,
Thrashers, Whiteboys, lighters, Carders, Shanavats, Cara-
Rockites, Black-hens, Riskavahas, Ribbon-men, the
Lady Cleres, the Terry Alts ; these latter were the names
they assumed last year in Clare. Now we have Whitefeet
and Blackfeet.. The outrages have been the same for the last
sixty years."
They (the illegal associations) have always had objects
connected more or less with land. The preamble of the Irish
Act of 15 and 16 George 111., almost describes the present
state of the country. Associations have been formed for
regulating the prices of land, attacking houses, administering
oaths, delivering threatening notices, taking arms, taking horses
at night and returning them again in the morning, taking
away girls, murders of proctors and gaugers, prevei.ting ex•
portation of provisions, digging up land, destroying fences,
houghing cattle, resisting the payment of tithes, and other
outrages similar to those which have occurred in Clare last
year, and which are now the subject of investigation in the
Queen's County."
Thus, Sir, it appears that those fifty years—that that half
century—which effected such great changes, and exhibited
such an extensive revolution in almost every country of
Europe, had left Ireland, according to Mr. Barrington, in
the same state that was almost literally describel by
the \Vhiteboy Act in 1775. —( Hear, hear.) The Noble
Lord also read the following extracts in confirmation of
his statement;—
Lords' Comrnitt^e, 1824—i Ir. Francis Blackburne.
‘' My opinion was and is, that in Limerick, and the adjacent
parts of the counties of Cork and Kerry, the spirit of insurrec-
tion which has broken out proceeded from local causes, and the
condition of the lower orders of the people. The population
of the parts of the country where insurreetions are most preva-
lent is extremely dens-% The property is greatly subdivided,
and the condition of the lower orders of the people is more mi-
serable than I can describe it. The great increase of people,
with other causes which I shall advert to more particularly, had
raised the rents of lands in that part to a degree that was per.
fectly exorbitant. Land in that country, which is totally desti-
tute of manufactures, appears to me to have become (if I may
use the expression) a necessary of life."
Lords' Committee, 1824—Mr. Maxwell Blacker.

" The great tendency to increase of population, arising
mainly from the high prices during the war, which changed
Ireland from a pasture country very much into an agricultural
coui.try; and from the relaxation of the Penal Code in that
particular, :Is to establishing 40s. freeholders among Catho-
lics, which has led excessively to population—and also from the
interest of the Priests to increase population, whose greatest
income is derived from the fees upon marriages, were the causes
of the distress."

Mr. Matthew Barrington, Crown Solicitor, Munster.—Eri
dence, Howe of Commons, 1832.

" Do you attribute the inflammable state of the population to
the state of misery in which they are ?—I do to a great
extent. I seldom knew an instance where there was suffi-
cient employment for the people that they were i nclined to be
disturbed; if they have plenty of work and employment they
are generally peaceable."
Major Richard Wilcocks, Inspector of Police.—Evidence,