The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-21 00:00:00

Ilt4L AND.

DUBLIN, Nov. 20.

THE EXODUS.
The following letter has been addressed by the
Archbishop of Tuam to the Right Hon. W. Glad-
stone, Chancellor of the Exchequer :--
" St. Jarlath's, Tuam, Nov. 16.
Sir,—Having usually addressed the Prime
3Unister, as the most responsible organ of the Go-
vernment, I deem it now right to address the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, who, next to the other,
exercises the greatest influence for good or evil over
the destinies of Ireland. Leaving Messrs. Dillon
and Fisher to enlighten the lovers of equity and
Justice on the unequal fiscal burdens which the
-Union has imposed on the two countries—burdens
which are becoming daily more intolerable to the
weaker one, by reason of their increasing pressure
—I will confine myself on the present occasion to
that fearful exodus which is sweeping away our
population, and, with a force more tremendous than
that which once flung the warriors of Europe on
the shores of Asia, threatens to cast the entire of
the young chivalry of Ireland on the welcome coasts
of America. The hereditary enemies of the Irish
Teople are at length alarmed at their own misdeeds.
"By the sure operation of the unerring laws of
justice vengeance is recoiling upon those by
whom
it has been so long and so cruelly exercised; and
tb e systematic work of agrarian evictions, artificial
famines, and forced emigration, has s now reached
such a crisis as to terrify the Britishilas their Irish
officials by
whom it has been projected, as w:
zealously carried
agents, by whom it has been so
weaken and
on. By the persevering efforts 8
sub-
due the formidable enemy which, from the con-
sciousness of continual ill treatment, the English
Government never ceased
state
oconjure up, Ireland is
at length brought to a of debility ; but the
and manifested, is not how to
anxiety now felt
prostrate her more, but how to apply restoratives
sufficiently seasonable and vigorous to arrest her
utter dissolution. Such is the fatal result of that
false prosperity cry that has been artfully sent
round through the country those some years past,
end swelled into a chorus by a corrupt andincgssornosi
inconsi-
derate -
erate press, while those who set agoing the
delusion have been successfully despoiling their
hated victim.
"Such is now the position of our country, as at-
tested by the joint confession of her heart-boken
children and those who have reduced her to that
state, the one flying from her as no longer being
able to afford them support or safety, and the other
adjuring them not to go, and obtesting, however,
that the grinding machinery of tenantry at will
and perpetual notices to quit, and the annual rais-
rag of rents, and the ejectments of the tenants, and
the demolition of their houses, were only intended
as a civilising process fora lazy and unruly people,
bale never meant for the annihilation of their en-
tere race, or for turning their country into a wil-
'le/Tess. Those flattering counsels not to quit the
cavalry, coming now so late, are found to be in-
ef.ectual, and chiefly because they are not accom-
panied with any hope or assurance that the causes
which hsve given such a frightful impulse to the
exodus would suffer any abatement. The alarm that
has seized the Government and the landlords
sprin gs not, it is manifest, from a concern for the
tens nt class, but from a consciousness of the social
ealf.mities which the flight of its stalwart inhabi-
taeits is bringing on the country in which their own
interests are so seriously involved. And yet we
hear not, on the part of the landlord class, any re•
pentant el.erlaration that they will strive, by grant-
ing les'Acf.3 on equitable terms, to remedy the evils
which riow appals them, nor any indication on the
part cif the Government that they will connect the
interests of the landlord and tenant by waking
the franchise depend on the condition of
a certain profitable and secure tenure of
eouse or farm ; nor is there, finally, any
hope held forth that those detested prisons, the
workhouses, shall be abolished, which are the most
effectual instruments in driving the people from
Ireland, any foreign land, with freedom and the
reward of industry, being preferable to such penal
incarcerations. Nor is the axe yet laid to the root
of that hideous evil, the Protestant Church Esta-
blishment, so long acknowledged, deplored, and
stigmatised as the standing scandal of our land and
the shame of its Government.
"No, nor amid the inglorious scramble for place,
the.t now occupies the few who are tempted by the
cheating hope, are there found in the present crisis
of the fate of Ireland any who seem to bestow a
serious thought on the protection of that too faith-
ful people by whose heavy and repeated sacrifices
those ungrateful men were placed in a position to
dare to hope for those trifling honours and emolu•
ments, to which the safety of the great mass or the
-Irish nation is continued to be so unscrupulously

sacrificed.
"And yet the tragic farce that Ireland's destina
tion is to be a feeder of cattle is not yet ended. In
vain has the sad conviction been tardily forced on
the coun.try that with the contraction of the area
for
ariculture its flocks and herds have been dimi-
died in the same proportion. It never occurred
Beerns to those philsophical graziers that tame and,
'domestic animals so dependent on domestic care and
4italutimust be diminished, or disappear, with the
nor disappearance of the hands that tend
t,ilus that the next step in this system of besti-
a. racy
the
restoration
the expulsion of the weaker animals
of the for,:ration of the fierce and stronger lords
seem that To this primitive state it would now
'the desolatin_sen_d is now fast drifting, untaught by
pursued d,4a,,,,e,cts of the policy that has been
"Instead of'uaLonose latter years,
assemblies that tn: magnificent and deliberative
weal, either to
a's!'''r the benefit of the common
the restoration of their
native Legislature o'retl:ot .
party to awe the n • inaugurate a Parliamentary
aaleter
constitut:onal opposition, the an independent and
meetings
the country has been
doomed to witness
ranter. Those meetings, iZat'ar far different cha-
composed of men breathing the cit,r being exclusively
orq /. according to
ing the language of freemen, are7ghts and speak.
the
narrow©r
elements
the fashion of the times, made
aiarrower differ-
-men and beasts--at which
ence of the national species is lost
larged and liberal syrup ithy with the
natii_mn.re en.
and the shrieks of the unfortunate people ho
kind,
driven from their lands are drowned in thew
niie.
nardt.e
ous lowings of the quadrupeds that
replace
them
Such are the aggregate meetings with whiei, the,
country is now familiar—cattle-shows in the mom.
ing, while their congenial owners crown the even.
ing with banquets, giving expression to a novel sort
of eloquence, which could find no favour beyond the
precincts of the bucolical school—boasting of the
peace which they call the solitude they have created
and boasting, too, of a still more extraordinary
triumph—that they have reversed the sacred ordi-
nances promulgated at the morning of creation, and
that man is now obliged to yield dominion to the
beasts of the field.
"It is no wonder if men of spirit, and possessing
the means, should fly from a conflict so degrading
and a doom so disastrous. They are flying, and, in
despite of all dissuasions from whatever quarter,
they will continue to fly in such numbers and with
such rapidity as remind one of the melancholy
ligures of our bards, comparing
birds, atter the capitulation
of Limerick. They know
the v
e tterrorsll of war, as wail as of the deep which they
any
y terrorsi. compared to the insecure, pre-
laws fugitive and savage mode of life to
which t he
the treachery of broken promises
them, aggravated by
en promises and violated cove-
theynants, on the part °
unfaithful men, in which
are resolved noolf to confide. It is in vain
then that laudlord.,°n"
changing
beseech their tenant; tnoow their tone,
taosvy—
ernraent which so lon
treated them with crueltyg
it is in vain that the
Govern--
obsequious scribes of a
implore of them not to
toer b
claims arc
appears
deterrnincd,
"• Their reassollovne,ghaoswtelavez
just
earls are so merci-
lessly unheeded. And hence the .
difference with which they leave ao land and stern in
for them be endearing characterof that has
a p
and with it all the sacred attractions and se arent,
curit
of home.—Your faithful servant, y
t Jolts, Archbishop of Tuam.,,
At Galway the Claddagh men have ceased to
oppose the trawlers, and the Government have pre_
rnised an ingniry into f heir disputes, with a viewa
a satiaractery arraugernent.