The Sun.
London, England, 1838-08-25 00:00:00

ut their hands to documents in confiding ignorance of their

contents."—Times.
In the second and final Report of the Railway Com-
missioners of Ireland, which is just published, will be
found not only most interesting and important information
respecting the construction, eligibility, and probable re-
turns of various lines of railway in Ireland, and their effect
on the country generally, but also a large amount of most
valuable statistical intelligence. As railways exercise
such a potent influence on the several interests of society,
the field of inquiry opened to the Commissioners was one
of the most extensive character ; and the result of their
labours affords abundant evidence of the ability, assiduity,
and zeal 4ith which they discharged the duties imposed
upon them; A more comprehensive report has seldom or
never beet laid before Parliament. It furnishes a most
clear and iipstructive account of the geology, nature of the
soil, prostiacts, manufactures, population, food, wages,
and trafitc in different parts of Ireland. Did our
space a it, we should willingly transfer to our
columns any of the statements respecting these inte-
resting to ics ; but they extend over such a variety of
details, t it would be impossible to give them place in a
Newspa Incidental to the construction of railways in
Ireland, question of a steam communication between
that court* and America, and its relative advantages corn-
pared.tvi - similar communication from England, afford
scot:4 fo . ' h interesting investigation. The different
lines ef-co unication between Dublin and London, and
their respective advantages, are also subjected to a close
and searching scrutiny. From this it appears that by
making a railroad from Porth-Dyullaen, in North Wales,
to London, and establishing a steam communication with
Kingstown,, the distance from Dublin to London may be
regularly traversed in sixteen hours, while it would take
seventeen hours by Holyhead, eighteen by Ormeshead, and
nineteen by Liverpool. The first line is that recommended by
the Commissioners. This is a most interesting part of the
inquiry. There can be no doubt that the expediting by a
day or a night the post between London and Dublin, an
immense advantage would be conferred on the mercan-
tile community of both cities ; and this advantage
is attainable only by adopting the line which can be
traversed in the shortest time, as the difference of even an
hour might cause the saving or losing of a post. But then
arises the quescion of expense and the eligibility of the line
in other respects. Should it be adopted, however, and the
mails leave London in future, as there is every probability
they will, at seven, instead of eight o'clock, letters may be
delivered in Dublin by noon the next day, and the return
mail starting from Dublin by three o'clock the same after-
noon, would reach London by eight o'clock the following
day, in time for distribution by the delivery of the General
Post letters from other places. To bankers, merchants,
and all engaged in operations requiring the rapid transmis-
sion of intelligence, it is unnecessary to expatiate on the
advantages of thus bringing the chief cities of the two
countries nearer to each other by one day's post. Consi-
dering the present condition of Ireland in all its relations,
the judicious establishment of railways might fairly be ex-
pected to operate changes of the most beneficial character.
We shall, therefore, not lose sight of the Report, of which
we shall take an early opportunity of giving a further
digest.—Morning Advertiser.
The Whig Poor-law, at the point of the bayonet—the
Bastile gruel, seasoned with cold steel, is sharp medicine
for the suffering poor ! Lancers, riflemen, and new police,
all employed at Dewsbury to thrust down the people's
throat the great Whig " boon to the labouring population,"
afford a curious practical illustration of the beneficent cha-
racter of that most liberal measure, which it requires the
sword of the dragoon to force upon a reluctant people. It
is a new thing to see the cause of charity encircling itself
with lance and bayonet, and relying for the acceptance of
its " favours" on the terrible array of military power. New
as the practice is, however, it is not the first time that the
introduction of the Whig Poor-law has beenenforced by the
arm of military power. At Bradford, not very long ago,
blood was shed, and the " boon" was received like something
that a conqueror bestows upon a vanquished people. The
only reward which the " masses" have yet obtained from the
faction whom they assisted into power is this fatale donum
of Whig liberality, which condemns deserving poverty
to the penal privations and ignominy of crime, and turns
the heart's affections into a source of misery and tor-
ture. When Sir Francis Burdett, at the close of the
Session, called the attention of Parliament to the Malthu-
sian Act, and the manner in which it was worked, he ex-
cused himself for not performing that public duty earlier
in the Session, by stating that he had been requested from
time to time to wait for the result of the labours of the
Poor-law Committee—an excuse which appeared to us not
quite satisfactory. Sir Francis Burdett ought to have
known that the one-sided Committee would never do full
justice to the question. He ought to have known that it
was a Committee appointed by the most tricky of all Go-
vernments, not to expose the evils of the Whig law, but
to endeavour to screen them. Knowing the dishonest object
of the Ministers and the grossly partial composition of the
Committee, we declared, in the first instance, that we would
not value its proceedings a straw, and, accordingly, we
never thought it necessary to wait the result of its labours,
in order to guide us in advocating the cause of the op-
pressed and afflicted poor. Sir Francis Burdett ought
to have submitted to Parliament his own views on the
Poor-law system, wholly independent of any reference
to the proceedings of the Government Committee and its
Somerset House oracles. If he, or any other Member who
really cares for the condition of the labouring poor, had,
early in the S2ssion, in a manly and determined manner
laid bare the iniquities of the law in the House of Commons,
and adequately supported in that House the benevolent and
intrepid exertions of Earl Stanhope in the other, it is very
probable that the scenes of popular commotion and military
array with which this country is now afflicted, or threatened,
would not have occurred. A confidence that Parliament
would redress their wrongs would have done more than
anything else towards insuring the peaceful conduct of
the people. As to any patchwork amendment of this
cruel and unchristian law, it will never do. The
sincere opponents of the measure will not be satis-
fied with anything short of the abolition of that un-
constitutional power by which the three Commissioners
are enabled to exercise the legislative authority which
of right belongs only to the Monarch and the two
Houses of Parliament. Scarcely any of those tyran-
nical regulations which are ignorantly supposed to
be part and parcel of the Bill constitute any portion of
it, but are the emanation of arbitrary power which that
Bill confers upon the Central Baard, to frame laws for all
the parishes of England and Wales. It was thought
by the framers of the measure that such clauses appeir-
ing on the face of the Bill would call forth an opposition
which it might not be easy to overcome, and so it was
craftily contrived that nothing should be said in the Bill
of the separation of man and wife, parent and child, and
other abominations, which were left to be worked out by
the triumvirate at Somerset House, in pursuance of the
absolute power conferred upon them for that purpose ; al-
though, even after the Bill had sometime passed, Lord
Brougham utterly denied there was any intention of sepa-
rating man and wife in the union Bastiles. It is natural
enough that a measure instituted by " Liberals," and di-
rected towards tyranny, should be concocted in fraud, nor
can we be surprised that it should be incapable of any ex-
tensive execution without the aid of force.—Morning
Herald.
The journals in the interest of the Whig Government
have of late condescended to be very didactic in their
notices of the character and conduct of the Upper House
of Parliament. Those sapi:mt " public instructors" ex-
hibit the most amicable solicitude for the powers of the
Peers, and ootwithstanding that the majority of that House
have treated tLe Ministers, whom Whig journalists delight
to honour, with anything but confidence or respect, their
case is yet taken in hand with the liveliest consideration
for their welfare, and they are shown how they may, upon
philosophical principles, preserve themselves from ruin.
The only drawback upon the value of all this Whig
benevolence is, that the case to which it applies does
not appear to exist. The Lords are instructed how
they should enlist the well-informed classes in their fa-
vour, and avoid provoking the passions of the multitude.
Now there are some persons in this country at present
—persons not unaccustomed to the Court and the Council
board—to whom this instruction would seem not only
generally useful, but at this particular juncture espe-
cially necessary ; and we think it a pity that the sapient
advice we are now noticing should not be given to them,
instead of to persons who do not appear to stand in any
present need of it. It strikes us that if there be any set
of public men in this country who at present enjoy the fa-
vourable opinion of the well-informed classes, and who do
91 )1 run any risk from the hostile passions of the multitude,
that body of public men will be found on the Conserva-
tive side of the House of Lords. They have lately been
exhibiting, in a very determined manner, a respect for the
law, which the Government has failed to show. They have
insisted upon the law not buing broken, when the Govern-
ment would have passed over the breach of it without no-
tice, for fear of offending a man whom they desired to sup-
port in the exercise of arbitrary power. Now, be it a
principle or be it a prejudice, there can of the fact be no
doubt, that the opinion of the well-informed classes is in
favour of a strict observance of the law, and even the mul-
titude are by no means displeased to see that men in high
places are compellable, and are compelled, to respect the le-
gal limits of right and wrong, which the poor man is called
upon to observe, or else to
bear the punisment incident to
their infraction. The existing Government, would which .
•be
aristocratic without the
tocracy,andwhich woos the friends
of " liberality" to its aide, y
practices the reverse of liberal,
is also much too clever
for the well-informed classes, and
attends to the wants of the multitude in such a way as to
provoke no small amount of
rsPtea:
passionate wrath.
swsmall.neeTdhoer Government, therefore, seems to

the advice which the Whig journalists have to spare ; but,
as for the Conservative majority of the Lords, their posi-

tion with the public has never been, within our memory, in
a more satisfactory and healthy condition. We wonder
what it is that has led our profound and very observant
Whig Journalists to think otherwise, and to imagine that
the Lords required some good advice to insure their safety.
What do these Journalists take as the measure or guage
of the opinion of the well-informed classes as to any
existing political body? If we were to press upon
them our tests, such as ,the prevailing opinion of
the Universities—of the landed proprietors—of the
wealthy merchants—of the Clergy—the Bar—the men
of rank in the Navy and Army—all these would pro-
baby be refused. It would be said that in none of these
should we find an exposition of the opinion of the intelligent
middle classes. Well, then, let us take a test manufac-
tured by the Whigs themselves, in which no one has ever
pretended that the advantage of securing a fair representa-
tion of their own views was neglected. Let us take the
Reform Act, and the franchise established by it. Will it
be pretended that in the kingdom of England the exercise
of that franchise does not afford a fair criterion of the poli-
tical feeling of the middle classes ? Will it be said that
putting the lower classes out of the question, and lode
pendently of the insufficient representation, or non-repre-
sentation, of which their leaders complain, the middle
classes also are left by this grand Whig charter without an
opportunity of fairly expressing their opinion through the
election of their representatives ? Whig Journalists cannot
surely pretend this—they cannot so befoul their own nest,
as to tell us that the exercise of the franchise, established by
the Reform Act, affords no flit- criterion of the politics of the
middle classes. But if they do not tell us this, vvhat becomes of
their pretence that the well-informed middle classes are
opposed in political opinion to the majority of the House of
Lords ?—for the majority of the representatives of England
under the Reform Act, and the majority of the House of
Lords, are of one mind, and act together in all great poli-
tical questions. And besides this, it will be found that
the Conservative majority of the representatives of England
are emphatically the representatives of the middle classes ;
for though it be true that from a goad many towns in Eng-
land, where the influence of those classes does fairly ope-
rate, Whig Members are returned, yet in the greater
number of instances the Ministerial Members come
either from towns where all minor influence is overborne
by two or three swollen manufacturers (an ignorant,
purse-proud, tyrannical set, as ever existed), or from
larger places, where the force of the rational and
deliberate is swept away by the multitude of two-penny
traders in beer, cabbage, small coal, and sedition. This
latter state of affairs is evident in Lambeth, Finsbury, and
other " metropolitan" districts. But it may be urged that,
notwithstanding what we say about the majority of the
English representatives, there is a majority of the House
of Commons opposed to the majority of the House of
Lords. True ; but how does that happen ? Why, it
happens solely and entirely through the Ministerialism of
the Members from the Roman Catholic part of Ireland, a
portion of the empire where it is notorious that there is
not any such thing as an intelligent middle class. In the north
of Ireland—that is, in the Protestant and prosperous part of
that kingdom—there is a middle class, and we not
only believe, but we know, that so intelligent a middle
class can scarcely be found in any other part of her
Majesty's dominions. But the representatives of these
people almost all vote with the majority of the House of
Lords. In the far larger portion of Ireland, that is the
Roman Catholic and wretched part, there is no middle
class. There ought to be proprietors, and there are priests
and peasantry. The representatives from this part of the
country almost all vote against the House of Lords ; but
these Members of Parliament represent the hatred of the
Roman Catholic Priesthood to the institutions of Great
Britain. The people, who nominally elect them, are neither
intelligent nor free upon political questions. The difference
of opinion, therefore, between the majority of the House
of Lords and the majority of the House of Commons, is
not evidence of a disagreement between the former and
the intelligent middle classes ; but the harmony of opinion
subsisting between the majority of the representatives of
England, and the majority of the House of Lords is evi-
dence—which the Whigs cannot invalidate without stultify-
ing themselves—that the intelligent middle classes and the
majority of the House of Lords are at present of one mind
upon great political questions, and are equally opposed to
the shabby, shuffling, policy of the Whig-Radical A.dini-
nistration.—ilforning Post.

FROM LAST NIGHT'S GAZETTE.

WHITEHALL, AUG. 22, ISM

The Queen has been pleased to constitute and appoint Major-
General Sir Edward Gibbs, K.C.B. to be Lieutenant-Governor
of the Island of Jersey, in the room of Major-General Archibald
Campbell, deceased.

Commission by the Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire.
Royal North Gloucester Regiment of Hopkins
Gent., to be Lieutenant, •ice White, resigned, Aug. 3.

ENGLAND.