The Sun.
London, England, 1830-02-18 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sie.,—You are a'very decided advocate for the return to
cash payments. Has it never struck you that, by the sub-
ititntion of 30,000,0001. of specie for the like amount of
paper, 50,000,0004 of the capital of the country have
been sunk, and the interest of that sum lost for ever ?
Yon are art advocate for the principle of non-interfer-
essee, for not over-governing, as far as free-trade is con-
cerned ; are yen consistent in not extending it also to the
currency question ?

You talk of the depreciation of our money abroad ; and
yet you know that trade cannot be carried on long between
two rountries, except by barter, and not by the payment of
ninth specie on either side. The country-bankers are a
slandered and Injured body of men. Of those who failed
during the panic of 1825,—through no fault of their own,
the greater part have paid a considerable dividend, and will
mast probably pay, in the course of a little time, the whole
of their debts.

Your insertion of the above will much oblige, Sir, your
bedient servant, A SUBSCRIBER.

Pamphlets on the Poor Laws are pouring in on
no. We have now before us two, advocating the
most opposite views—one of them entitled " Poor
Laws in Ireland considered in their probable effects
Ilion the capital, the prosperity, and the progressive
improvement of that country, by Sir John Walsh,
Bart.;" the other a second edition enlarged, of " A
Discourse on the Poo: Laws of England and Scot-
land, on the State of the Poor Laws of Ireland, and
or, Emigration, by George Strickland, Esq., Magis-
trate for the North and East Ridings of the County
of York, Barrister at Law, &c." Mr. Strickland
begins with observing, that the Poor Laws admit of
such latitude of construction that no two Magistrates
interpret them in the same mariner, rind that there
has grown up in several parts of England a custo-
mary law of a very injurious tendency. The condi-
tion of the labourers depends on the proportion be-
tween their numbers and the means for employing
them; but within the last thirty years more especi-
ally, it has been forgotten in some parts of England
that these means cannot be increased in the ratio in
which the population can increase. By holding out
encouragements to marriage, and destroying the con-
nection bet Ween labour arid its reward, a redundant,
and, consequently, a wretched and demoralized popu-
lation has been created in many parts of the South
of Ireland. To grapple with this evil ought to be
tire first care of the Legislature. But they who
should infer that because the Poor Laws have been
ill•interpreted in some parts, we should be better
without them, reason without sufficient knowledge
of all the bearings of the case. Mr. Strickland has
some good remarks on the subject. "It would be
quite foreign to my imention (he says) to enter into
any disquisition upon that which is a favourite spe-
culation with some authors—the possible existence
of a state of things respecting the poor, totally dissi-
milar to that of which we have experience, or of
which history has given any account, in which man-
kind may be supposed, by the lights of education,
or the benevolence of their nature, unsophisticated
Ly institutions of law arid government, to be pro-
pelled to relieve all the wants of their fellow-citizens,
arid the people thernsalves being made so sensible
of the miseries attendant upon a population exceed-
ing the demands for labour, by self efforts and re-
straints, be induced to check themselves from pro-
ducing such an excess of numbers, and be taught to
believe and repeat with the shepherd Milo—
. For what has he that works for food

To do with love? lie is an idle god.'
All that I contend for is, that the evidence of his-
tory preoents to our view scenes of a totally different
description : That in countries where laws have not
interfered with, or provided any adequate provision
for the wretched, great excesses of population seem
invariably to hare taken place; and that the numbers
of the people have been at periods Feduced to the
means of subsistence by the occurrence of famines,
which have swept away thousands from the facie of
the earth in their tremendous progress." If we
are not then warranted by our past experience in rely-

ing on the poor themselves on this point, and if it be
found that without a legal provision their numbers
will always be excessive, a most material tonsidera
tion forces itself upon us, namaiy, whether without
Poor Laws, we can haze such a police in a country
as may ren-Jek it possible for all those who
are :fat poor to lire in it with any de-
';',,ace of comfort. " If (says Mr filttickland)
there were no Poor Law!, th'as'e bhable to work
would ask for charity S but if they Were riot allowed
to beg, antl 'no't work, the 'necessary t:onse-
quanta would be, that death Would be inflicted upon
such wretched persona by hunger. If laws supply
no relief to such objects, we must allow beggary
saithot,rt restraint—that is a necessary conteAtience ;
the affluent must learn to sith'n':it with patience to
being importuned am beset in the streets, on the
roads, and tt their houses ; as is now the case in
Ireland with such miserable objects as in England
are better and more humanely supported in poor-
houses or in their cottages.. This ih A pride whieL
we pay for a luxury,' to he '2,lle.tiVt itom such dis-
tressing settler:" We Cannot get rid of poor ; and
the question, Whether they ought to be legally pro-
bidad for, or allowed to roam about the country,
must be soon settled. Who would live in a coun-
try in which beggars were allowed to :barn about, if
he could leave it for another, tree from such a pesti-
lence ? By pair ieling rot the poor-, the 'rich obtain
tit 4; to interfere with them; and they ate forced,
i'roan a regard for their oar. ilitere.sts, to take
measures to piarv‘eat an undue increase of
the poi) Which, without their interference,
Would be inevitable. We have never skid to the
rich, humanity calls on yott,t infercst yourselves in
behalf of thepoor..s hat we have said, if you wish to
preserve anu enjoy your property, attend to their
'coalition. And here we come to the necessity for
the possessors of property in the South of England
adopting measures to prevent the rindrie InCrease of
the pauper population. M. Strickland contends
that the Marriage 'Of paupers ought to be checked
by kgitiAiviA, etiaatment. In the greatest part of
fiernialiy, marriage is placed under great restric-
tions, for the sake of the poor themselves. The
law, for instance, in Bavaria, distinctly states who
shall be allowed to marry; and the Clergyman who
should dare to marry a Tetson not possessing a legal
title, is net oily subject to a heavy penalty; but
liable to the parish for the support of the fruit of
each marriage. " They (says 111 a.. Strickland) who
contend that such an attempt would be promoting
immorality are ba!and to prove how it advances the
cause e! Virtue or the well-being of society, that
taao persons, already paupers, supported by the
landed proprietors, without the industry or the
means of maintaining themselves, should be allowed
to marry and rear children to the same state of sloth
and irregularity in which they themselves have lived.

. . . . There is no room for doubt
that some wholesome guardianship being placed over
the poor, in this respect, must conduce to the
benefit of the poor themselves, to the protection
of property, and in the end to the diminution of
vice, improvidence, and misery amongst the people."
Mr. Strickland proposes, " that an Act be passed
rendering it unlawful for a clergyman to marry any
man, after the churchwardens and overseers shall
have produced a certificate that he is a parish pau-
per, or that he has received parish relief within
twelve months." But a number of other changes
are demanded for the purpose of giving the laws a
more decided tendency to improve the condition of
the population. Mr. Strickland adverts to the in-
flux of Irish labourers into England and Scotland,
and contends that that country ought not to be
allowed to remain " a great nursery for peopling
the wilds of Canada and breeding paupers for the
parishes of England." The measure for which he
contends is, a provision in Ireland for the aged and
infirm poor. " Before Ireland can show," he says,
" a fair ground of exemption for such a measure, it
must be proved that her labourers are happy; that
their number do not exceed the demand for them;
that they have reason to be contented with their
lot ; that the aged and worn-out do not die of fa-
mine ; that the heart-rending picture which has
been drawn of their wretchedness is an unfounded
representation, the work only of imagination and
falsehood." There is not a country in Europe
with any pretensions to being well-ordered, in
which there are not Poor Laws very much
like our own. Wherever there are no Poor
Laws, the condition of the lower orders is dreadful.
And this brings us to Sir John Walsh, who stoutly
combats the introduction of Poor Laws into Ire-
land. Sir John, with the fact of the increase and
wretchedness of the Irish population staring him in
the face, lays it down that the " claim of succour
has an invariable tendency to augment the Poor ;"
that the. Poor Laws " incline to augment disprc-
portionably the number of the lowest ranks."—Sir
John is a plausible writer, and a great master in the
art of drawing legitimate conclusions from false
premises. There is one fact which we will oppose
to him, and all who combat Poor Laws, and it is
this : that restraint alone can prevent the tendency
of a population to increase in a ratio greater than
that in which food cart be increased in an old country
—and as moral restraint in a case of a people like the
Irish is beside the question, the only available re-
straint we can have must be sought in the interest
of the rich. Sir John states quite enough to satisfy
us that nothing short of Poor Laws will compel the
landlords to keep down the numbers of the people
on their estates.
" In Ireland," says Sir Jahn, " all the usual routine
of agricultural employments is independent of hired la-
bour, and it is only in request at particular seasons. The
children of the farmer are his labourers. An English
farmer, should he have a numerous family, rarely keeps
above two or three at home with him ; he strives to place
the others in different trades and services; and, after as-
sisting. them to the extent of his abilities, he sends them
forth to make their way in the world

The children of the Irish farmer have no such views for
the future ; indeed the future occupies but a small portion
of the thoughts of his people. They remain to assist
him in his farm, and indulge no more extended hopes or
desires than to he able to maintain a family upon some
scrap or division of their father's farm. . . . . . .
While there is much in the state of this part of the com-
munity to excite our hopes for the future—hopes which
their actual progress has in some measure realized—it re-
quires a constant effort on the part of the landlords to
sustain this movement, and prevent their retrograding.
The tenants have one universal object. It is to provide
.for their children upon their farms, and enable them
to marry and settle, by partitioning off a part of the
ground, upon which they may erect separate cabins.—
Early marriages are general in Ireland ; the stigma of
rashness and imprudence, the disapprobation of older and
graver heads, does not the least attach to them. They
peens a part of the natural and inevitable cause of human
events. They are often promoted by the influence of the
Catholic Priesthood, whether, as their enemies assert, in
consequence of the fees on marriage forming a large part
of their emoluments, or from the more praiseworthy and
disinterested motive of guarding the morality of their flocks,
and giving a legitimate direction to the impetuous passions
of youth. It is not wonderful that, when the authority
of religion and her Ministers enjoins as a duty the gratifi-
cation of the strong:feelings of nature, their precepts should
inset with a prompt and general obedience. A farmer
possessed of a comfortable farm, and having saved some
little money, has attained the highest pinnacle of his de-
sires. His personal wants are more than satisfied, and his
hopes extend no farther. The simple structure of society
around bins does not afford materials fur loftier wishes or a
path to higher elevation : lie sacrifices no future expecta-
tions, and it appears natural to him to enable his children,
by whose means he cultivates his farm, to settle upon it, a
small part of it amply sufficing for their necessities. Yet
it is evident that a subdivision of these small lots -rust
throw the occupants back into the class of cotters.

. . . The lowest and most numerous class in Ireland
are the cotters, whose situation, numbers, and habits, are
important considerations in the subject under discussion.
It is this portion of the community whom Poor Laws
would be intended to relieve; it is from this class that the
numbers who dock into England in search of work are
supplied. It is the vast proportion which they bear to the
rest of the nation which covers the Irish soil with the
marks of so much wretchedness and penury. They are
the part of time population who seem so much below the
standard of European improvement."
Hers we find the Cottier population in the lowest
state of wretchedness, and the class immediately

above the Cottiers, the rarmars, 44 requiring a
constant effort on the part of the Landlord to pre-
vent their retrograding," and altogether exempt
from the desires and wishes of civilized society.
On Sir John's own shewitlg; a sel'eitty like this, if
left to *quid be a constant.niisance in our
neighbourhood. It is quite cleAr; that in the exist-
ing state of the law; a resent have a strong
nerve
of
111:'aself to counteract the inclina-
tions such a people. One man might do so, but
for one that did, twenty .would give way, But
when it comes to a,scramble AetWe't...n . interest
and good-natures Vie !.:how which will win the day.
Give tile pcor a settlement, and ere long the pro-
prietors will b 3 compelled to thin their estates.
Those who cannot themselves attend to their estates
will be forced to part with them to those who can.
The evil which threatens 1-I,:tgl,tti iS th`s rapid
multiplication of 'th'r, Trish; Hitherto the landlord,
have encouraged this multiplication for the
sake of political jobbing and competition for land,
or they have not opposed it. Avarice has hitherto
been enlisted on the side of increase. Let its try
what it cam do when enlisted on thv side of dimi-
nution. The land of a country belongs tti the country ;
and they whO are stdfered to occupy it ought never
to be alloWed to shal:e themselves free of the respon-
sibility attached to their station. If the lower order
of Irish were slaves, the landholders, as their owners,
would still be answerable fur their human stock.—
Morning Chronicle..

The Subletting Act formed on Tuesday night the
subject of an animated discussion in the House of
Commons. " A great part of the tenantry of Ireland
(said Mr. Doherty), it was well known, were worse
off than the beast that browsed upon the lands it
was high time to thalte ah eltort to ameliorate their
condition; and this Act had been brought forward
with the view of raising the peasantry in the scale
of civilization, and rendering them beings with whom
there might he that degree of communication and
interchange of kindness, without which there could
be no permanent bond of union between landlord
and tenant,(Hear, hear.) It was not, as the
Hon. Member for Clare had represented it—the act
of a haughty Aristocracy to exterminate the people.
. . The Hon. Member had said he did not
see the principle of the Act—it was this, that people
should perform their contracts.—(Hear, hear.)"
Mr. O'Connell, on the other hand, contended, that
the Act would have the effect of creating " a more
minute subdivision than ever had before existed,"
and of " increasing the pauper population, in dimi-
nishing the quantity of land which each man could
hold." We confess that, circumstanced as Ireland
is, our fears are, not that the Act can have any very
extensive effects in increasing the size of pos-
sessions. The competition for land to supply the
wants of an excessive population, will always sup-
ply but too powerful a motive for the subdivision of
possessions. To give to landlords a strong in-
ducement to prevent the subdivision of possessions,
they ought to be made to maintain the poor they
create ; and then we will answer for it they will
take care that too ninny persons shall not reside
on their estates. But in burdening the land-
lords with the poor, we would leave his hands
free, so that a surplus population should not be
fastened on him in defiance of contracts. As
part of a series, then, we can see no objection
to the measure. The misery of the lower orders is
caused by the too rapid multiplication of their num-
bers. In Erndand the Poor Laws had unquestion
ably a powerful effect in keeping down the numbers
of the people; and this effect was universally as-
cribed to them by all our public writers, who, when
it was the fashion to bewail the evils of depo-
pulation, were continually inveighing against the
practice of throwing down cottages. The good
would hare been much greater but for the
Bastardy Laws, which lead parish overseers to
force the poor to marry, by giving the father
of a bastard child the option between a prison and
marriage. We trust that if Poor Laws are extended
to Ireland, care will be taken, in establishing a rule
for settlements, to avoid several abuses which have
crept into ours, and especially the bastardy part of
them. It is generally understood in Ireland that
Government intend to propose a Poor Law; and
Mr. Doherty may be thought to have said as much
on Tuesday night, when he observed, that" he knew
that it had been and was the intention of the Govern-
ment fairly to meet the wishes and the wants of the
Irish people."—Morning Chronicle.
Mr. Hume, by his motion on Monday night, ap-
pears to have put the sincerity of Ministers, on the
score of economy and retrenchment, to a test which,
though they contrived to escape from, they resisted
with a very bad grace. For how stands the matter,
as between them and the country ? Sir James
Graham, on a former evening, proposes that the
House shall immediately set about the work of cut-
ting down the public expenditure by every possible
means ; and to prevent such a resolution being
passed as coming from the opposite quarter, Mr.
Dawson, the Secretary of the Treasury, meets it by
other resolutions, in the slitipe of an amendment,
scarcely differing from the first in terms. Well,
here stands the House pledged to retrenchment as a
general proposition—and what does Mr. Hume ?
He descends at once from generals to particulars,
and proposes the very items on which he thinks
that the reductions can take place; yet these the
Ministers reject—first, on the score that they are
too extensive and impracticable ; and secondly, that
the House is bound to wait for their plan, and not
listen to that of an unofficial person. Whether the
establishments of the country are prepared, at "one
fell swoop," to undergo such a diminution as that
proposed by the Hon. Member for Aberdeen, is
more than some of the warmest friends to economy
may, at first sight at least, be prepared to admit ;
but it should be remembered that Mr. Hume's pre-
mises were not all embodied in his resolutions, and
that it was, therefore, very easy to have severed
what might have been deemed the practicable from
the impossible part :
Est quo lam prodire tenus si non datur ultra.
But the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his col-
leagues find it much more convenient to stick to the
generals rather than the particulars—to their own
theory rather than to Mr. Hume's practice, and,
therefore, with an implied salvo of what is to be
expected from the Budget, Mr. Hume's resolution
is negatived. And where is the earnest, we would
ask, that Ministers mean to remit to the country vo-
luntarily one shilling of its enormous expenditure ?
Let us look, for instance, as a test of their sincerity,
to the Office of Treasurer of the Navy. Here is
an office which the Finance Committee has pro-
nounced to be useless, which the honestest and best-
informed among its recent possessors has pro-
nounced to be a sinecure, and which they them-
selves have hitherto only given as a make-
weight to
one of their own members. No sooner does this
office become vacant, than, instead of abolishing it,
or even keeping it in abeyance till their own plans
of retrenchment are discussed, they confer it
upon a gentleman who has hitherto been the
avowed champion of retrenchments in all depart-
ments—thus at once sacrificing economy, and
the character of one of its hitherto most
unimpeached and uncompromising advocates ;
and do Ministers suppose, or do the most
slavish of their adherents imagine, that this is a
course of conduct which will satisfy the country, or
that it will even much longer be endured ? Ought
a country with one-half of its labouring population
scarcely existing, and that but from hand to mouth,
and with its agriculture and manufactures fast sink-
ing into ruin—ought a country, we say, so situated
to be thus treated ? A little sympathy, we all
know, mitigates a load of pain. And who is there,
we will ask, so strongly called upon to sympathise
with the national distress as those who, if they have
not caused it by their own errors, have at least pro-
longed it by their obstinacy up to the last stage of
human endurance ? The truth is, that Ministers
seem to be still ignorant of the real state of the
country ; and this is the more extraordinary, consi-
dering that they possess, if they choose to use it,
he belt sources of information. But we have

heard of men in private life who never could see
the decline of their affairs until they were ruined
beyond redemption ; and the same blindness at the
present Moment seems to beset our rulers, who, we
only trust, will not continue to deceive themselves
till it is toli late ttl repair dr atone for the calamities
which they shall have brought upon the country.
Morning Herald.

It has been the practice, we believe.; at,the com-
mencement of every Session, fOr the Bailiff or High
Constable of N4,7estrainker to receive a precept com-
manding him to attend, with a proper number of
constables, daily, to preserve the peace in the lob-
bies and avenues of the house of Commons. The
new police having superseded the common constables
in most of their other Welt 'ettl:ebted to lade
prom this—but report says that the
Speaker has declined their services, and has required
that the duties (within the lobbies, at least) shall
be performed by the High Constable and his subor-
dinates, as usual. If this be the case, it must have
arisen from a feeling on the part of the Speaker,
which every friend to our cad institutions mast ap-
plaud--vi., a jealousy at the very idea of Parlia-
ment being attended, or even in the most remote
appearance overawed, by a force appointed and paid
by the Crown. But it may be a,ked, if this be a
force Which Parliament has sanctioned, and; indeed)
created, why shduld Parliarnent itself evince any
jealousy of it ? But that May with equal truth be
said of the standing army; and as a file of grenadiers
would not be allowed to occupy the lobby (unless a
new Cromwell should arise to bring them there,)
neither is it fit that a corps of gene-d'armerie should
do so either. But then this awkward question
arises, if the new description of constable has been
deemed fit for their constituents, how is he less fit
for the representatives We will net pursue the
matter any further at present, especially as the re-
flection of our readers will fill up the void, if there
be any, in this slight allusion to the subject.—lbid.
We present our readers, in another part of our
paper, with an abstract—most imperfect it assuredly
is—of the numbers awl expense of the army for the
current year. The estimated charge for the present
year, it will be seen, is upwards of six millions—
last year it was upwards of seven millions; so that
according to the figures, there is to be a reduction
for the current year of upwards of a million, or, in
exact numbers, of 1,586,260!. This preliminary
step on tile part of the Government bodes well for
its economical arrangements; but it must be re-
membered, at the same time, that the expenditure
invariably exceeds the estimate, and that, if the
hands of Government are not tied up by a reduc-
tion of taxes, there will be no safety guard against
the increase of the expenditure in this, or in any
other department. It is also a proper subject of
inquiry why, in a time of profound peace, six thous-
and cavalry should be kept on full pay—why eighty-
nine thousand men should be kept up when there is
no apprehension of war, or danger of invasion from
abroad—and why, above all, now that Catholic
Emancipation has been granted, and Ireland, ac-
cording to all accounts, in a state of the most pro-
found peace, it should cost the United Kingdom no
less a sum than 977,732!. for keeping it quiet !
Morning Advertiser.

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

COURT OF KING'S BENCH, FZB. 17.

OBBARD AND ANOTHER V. BETHAM.

This was an action by the assignees of Thomas
Guest Blowficld, a bankrupt, to recover a sum of
2551. In 1825, Blowfield, the bankrupt, who was
a perfumer and cutler, in Middle-row, Holborn, fur-
nished the defendant, Captain Betham, with an as-
sortment of perfumery and cutlery articles, to take
out to India. In payment, the defendant gave his
acceptances, two of which were not taken up when
they became due. The bankrupt, Blowfield, who
was the drawer, paid one of the bills (a bill for
2001.) before his bankruptcy, and the other, which
was in the hands of a third person, was proved un-
der his (Blowfield's) commission. The assignees
now sought to recover 2371., the amount of prin-
cipal and interest on the 2001. bill, and 181., the
amount of the dividend paid upon the bill proved
under the commission.

Under his Lordship's directions a verdict was en-
tered for the plaintiffs for the sum claimed.

OURDEN V. ANDERSON.

This was an action to recover 142/. as money paid
to the defendant, a builder, under a contract to build
a house for the plaintiff.
The Jury found fOr the plaintiff—damages 1421.
These sittings, at the rising of the Court, were
adjourned to Wednesday, April 14.