The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-11 00:00:00

TUE SUN, LONDOII, SAIITROAY EVENINCii OCIIOI3ER_ 1862.

This the hon. member now proposes to do. At the
meeting of the East Berks Agricultural Society he
said that he hoped the suggestion he was about to
make would meet with the assent of the chairman ;
as the society offered prizes to encourage good con-
duct in labourers, lie proposed to offer a prize for
the landlord who built the best cottages."

A very good beginning of Mr. WALTER'S ;
a better subject for a first prize could hardly be
selected. It may violate the laws of political
economy in one aspect, but it is quite accor-
dant with ;them in another. The demand of
the labourers ought to regulate the supply, and the
quality of the cottages, we may be told. But on
the other hand, regarding labourers as the agricul-
turists' chief implement of production—his steam-
engine—and admitting that he ought to have his
machinery in the best order, good cottages are as
essential a part of the best labour as a good and
soundly built engine-house of a well-working steam-
engine. A healthy, moral, sober, decent set of
labourers are a clear gain to an estate ; and it has
now become apparent enough that without cottages
which conform to the demands of sanitary prin-
ciples and moral decency, such a class of labourers
can never be expected. The labour is the life of
an estate. If it be in the hands of sober, steady,
intelligent, and trustworthy men, the fact alone id
equivalent to a rent or a profit, to say nothing of
higher considerations. But there are these higher
considerations. We are not yet quite come to " the
only nexus between man and man—cash pay-
ment." We have some sense of duty left towards
those who in one sense depend on us, but on whom,
in another, we are even more dependent. And, as
it is out of the question that the agricultural la-
bourer should improve his cottage, and yet clear that
both on moral, and in the long run, on pecuniary
grounds, it needs to be improved, the only
person we can look to is the man who
who has the most permanent interest in the land—
the landlord.

Mr. WALTER has had his attention specially
called to the subject of labourers' cottages. A gen-
tleman in the county has offered a prize of £5O for
the best essay on the most efficient means of im-
proving labourers' cottages. In connection with
this, some frightful details of the consequence of
cottages having but three rooms, and we suppose,
too many have not even that number, were brought
before him, since Mr. WALTER had been requested
to act as the adjudicator of the prize. The task
seems to be not an easy one to decide what a good
labourer's cottage ought to be. The expense must
be limited ; direct profit there can be none—at least
five per cent. is out of the question. Mr. WALTER
has been trying his hand on his own estate, and
finds the work to be one requiring time. He pur-
poses, therefore, to make his prize a triennial one,
and to offer " a gold medal triennially to the laid-
lord who built a specific number of cottages, of a
specific number of rooms, not under three cottages
in three years." We hope other prizes will soon fol-
low. Such as—one for the landlord who kept least
game, or who dismissed his gamekeepers altogether,
another for the landlord who drained most land—
another
for the longest and least restrictive leases—
another for the landlord who refused to canvass his
tenants or know which way they voted, and who
therefore gave his hearty support to the ballot.
Perhaps more subjects for prize landlords may
occur to agricultural minds—but quite confident
are we that the prizes are quite as much needed for
good conduct on the part of the Squire as for the
same on the part of the labourer. Indeed, we aro
inclined to think, they should go first. So much
of the improvement of the agricultural populations
must come from above, that we should begin with
prize landlords rather than with prize labourers.
In that case we have little doubt we should, in a
short time, see Mr.WALTER himself addressing the
House of Commons with his prize distinction on
the breast of his coat.

A National Monument, in honour of DANIEL
O'CONNELL is now being set on foot ia Ireland, to
attest the grateful recollection, among his fellow-
countrymen, of his many and splendid services for
the good of their fathers, of themselves, and of their
remotest posterity. It is monstrous, indeed, to
think that such an attestation of gratitude from Ire-
land to O'CoNNELL should have been left until now
to be afforded as by a sort of grudging after-
thought. It is inconceivable how the idea should
never have been seriously thought of until so many
years after his death—it being now actually
more than fifteen long years since he
breathed his last at Genoa : sending his
heart on to Rome (whither he was, at the time'
making, broken heartedly, a kind of Pilgrimage),
and his inanimate body bask to Dublin for solemn
public interment. Dying in 1847, as O'CONNELL
did—lreland, only in 1862, entertains the idea of
raising a National Monument in proof of her lasting
gratitude to his memory ! Now that this tardy
act of justice, as well as proof of gratitude,
has been commenced—let the efforts now making
in Ireland remain unrelaxed until a sum shall have
been collected sufficient to liquidate the expense of
raising a monument worthy of the great name
to be inscribed upon it ! Worthy of commemo-
rating at once the patriotic genius of DANIEL
O'CONNELL, and the grateful admiration of his fel-
low countrymen. He was one of the noblest and
truest Orators in an age of oratory. He was for
many years a veritable Tribune of the People. As the
author of Catholic Emancipation he has earned an
eternal right to that magnificent title he will hence-
forth hold in history as—The Liberator ! If he was
for more than a quarter of a century a thorn in the
side of a succession of
,English Ministries, it
must bel acknowledged in his favour that under
every conceivable provocation he never once ex-
cited his fellow countrymen to armed Rebellion !
He whose word was so long and so potently their
law ! He who could influence the passions of the
Irish multitude with the beck of his finger, with the
glance of his eye ! So loyal in obedience to the
law was he, throughout the whole of his stormy
career, in spite of the known impetuosity and
impulsiveness of his eminently Celtic character, that
he even provoked the imputation to himself of poli-
tical cowardice by promulgating as a guiding axiom
for his followers, that avowal still deemed by many
to be the avowal cf a poltroon), that there is no
political advantage worthy of shedding one drop of
human blood to gain ! Forgetting as we can
surely, one and all of us very readily do, now, the
folly of that nonsensical make-believe during the
latter year; of his life, all about the Repeal of the
Union—forgetting this, and remembering only his
great services to the cause of Liberty as the Cham-
pion and Victor in the ever-memorable and long-
protracted contest for the triumph of the
cause of Catholic Emancipation, we wish well to
this tardy project at last of a National Monument
in Ireland to the name and fame of :DANIEL O'CON-
NELL, great as "The Tribune" of the Irish people,
but greater still as "The Liberator" of the
8,000,000 of his co-religionists in the United
Kingdom.

The Victoria and Albert, royal yacht, has sailed
from Portsmouth to Antwerp, to be in readiness to embark
her Majesty and the Royal family, who will arrive at
Osborne next week.
His Excellency Count Lavradio returned to town
Yesterday, from visiting Viscount and Viscountess Palmer-
ston at Broadlands,