The Sun.
London, England, 1854-03-28 00:00:00

SETTLEMENT AND REMOVAL BILL,

The new Irish difficulty cost ministers a defeat last
night, the second reading of the Settlement and Re-
moval Bill being adjourned to the 28th of April, by a
division of 209 to 183. Such mishaps are the invariable
penalty of almost the greatest sin a statesman can com-
mit—not being entirely prepared. The best army and
the best general in the world may be beaten by a very
inferior foe if one important division of the force is but a
little too late, if a position is not occupied in time, or
some ordinary provision neglected. Unquestionably
Lord Palmerston should have known what he was
about before he allowed Mr. Baines to bring in his bill,
and should have taken care that the coast was quite
clear. So far from its being clear, no sooner was the bill
in the house than the Irish members, very naturally,
we think, insisted on the extension of the measure to Ire-
land. We have already expressed our belief that in prac-
tice, and on the actual appeal to the feelings of the people,
it would be found impossible to sustain a distinction be-
tween English and Irish applicants for relief. We con-
ceive, therefore, that Lord Palmerston, under the pres-
sure described, had no alternative but to promise his
best exertions towards removing this invidious feature
of the measure. But here, again, it would seem, a mis-
take was committed. The Irish members were left
under the impression that the bill itself would be
amended so as to meet their wishes. This was found
impossible, and another bill for the purpose was an-
nounced on Friday. For our part, we see no adequate
reason why all sides of the house should not have pro-
ceeded quietly to discuss the English bill on its own
merits, leaving the yet unprepared Irish measure to take
care f itself, when it should come on. However, the
Irish would not proceed with the present bill while in
ignorance of the measure intended for their own country ;
and a considerable number of the English members have
been equally distrustful ; the one party fearing that too
little would be done for Ireland, the other equally fear-
ful of a too large concession ; and the result is, that
the whole subject has been put off till after the Easter
holydays.
Lord Palmerston shows at last so thorough an appre-
ciation of the difficulties which surround the question on
all sides, that the only wonder is he should not have re-
cognised them in time to escape last night's casualty.
On the one hand, he appeals to the immense and indis-
pensable services of the Irish labourers at all the great
seats of English industry. It is the Irishman who ex-
cavates our foundations, who throws in the concrete,
who constructs the scaffolding, who carries the weighty
materials up the tall ladder, who, in fact, does all the
rough work of our cities. When this man sickens, and,
after a hard struggle, applies for relief, is he to be re-
moved to Ireland, when his fellow-labourer, in precisely
the same case, is saved from that inhospitable treatment
specially on the ground of humanity ? As a mass, and
as a regular element in our population, we cannot re-
gard the Irish as intruders. Liverpool and Manchester
would not be Liverpool and Manchester but for the
vicinity of an immense and hitherto inexhaustible sup-
ply of cheap, strong, and willing labour. The Irish
are the rough foundation of this grand social fabric,
and to treat them as if they had no business here is a
folly only equal to that of the man who sets about deco-
rating and improving his house by removing foundations
and beams the necessity of which he is too stupid to
understand. That is the one side of the question before
the house, and we see it so strongly that we can only
wonder any Minister should propose to place the useful,
hard-working Irishman, under so great a disability, as
compared with his English fellow-labourer. On the
other side, there is the great dark cloud of Irish
pauperism ever ready to break and pour in—more, we
are disposed to believe, in the imagination of English
ratepayers than in the reality. But Rome itself; in the
days of its luxurious decay, could not be in more constant
fear of the savage multitudinous North than English cities
are of Irish vagrancy, which they picture as an army of
locusts that any wind may waft to our Shores, and which
will eat up every green leaf and all the food of man. Lord
Palmerston thinks that something must be done. We can-
not undertake to maintain every vagrant wherever he may
choose to pitch his tent and ask for a public allowance,
so his Lordship suggests a year's industrial residence—
that is, we presume, residence in one neighbourhood,
with as much employment as is implied in no applica-
tion for relief. From this suggestion it is too clear that
the Home Secretary has still to make his terms with the
Irish members, and, as the simple fact of his entering
into negociation with them has excited the terror of
English ratepayers and their representatives, his Lord-
ship has managed to put himself and his colleagues be-
tween two fires, without much prospect of leaving them
to settle it between themselves. It must be admitted,
however, that the difficulty already exists, and is not
one of his own making. We have come to it by a re-
gular and inevitable succession of changes. The only
solution, as we think, is the final and entire assimilation
of the English and Irish Poor Laws ; for, however hu•
manity may recoil from the cruel process of spurning the
Irish back to their country when they ask for re-
lief, justice and common sense equally resent the unfair-
ness of such a system of poor laws in Ireland as shall
drive its pauperism upon the English ratepayer.
Meanwhile, it is consolatory to observe the decided
improvement in the tone with which the claims of poverty
are discussed in these days compared with the discussions
20 years ago. Then the labourer was the most voracious
vermin, the heaviest encumbrance, and the most imper-
tinent intruder on the soil of his birth. He had no right
to marry and have children, unless at some very mature
age, that should secure a perpetual decrease of popula-
tion. The great fear of our philosophers was, that we
should have too much bone and sinew—too much of the
stuff that has won our battles by sea and land, and that
has since augmented the population of two continents by
several millions. We have a Home Secretary who can
see a labourer carry almost his own weight of bricks to
the top of a house without regarding him as a unit
in a surplus population, and one too many for England.
The county members, almost in spite of themselves,
talk respectfully of those by whose labour and hard-
ships we are what we are. Indeed, a new and strange
fear is stealing upon us all. What if this same British
labourer, this troublesome, devouring, ne'er-do-well
being, whose perpetual demands for work grated so ill
on the ears of our economists, and who was said to be
undermining the social system, like those huge grubs
that devour the inner bark of trees past their prime,
should, after all, leave us ? What if we should actually
live to want him ? So great is the change of feeling that
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om
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ea
mean change
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andwe expect soon
providentsoon tom
find
rra
fellow of 21 with a girl two or three years younger,
marriage
without a roof over their heads, and half a dozen gen-
tlemen and farmers competing for the honour of building
them a cottage. It may be long indeed before we come
to that, but it is certainly much pleasanter to hear
the staple of the British population spoken of as huraan
beings and fellow-creatures than as noxious vermin, to
be kept down by fair means or by foul. This very great
change in the condition of labour and the increasing
value of the human unit may, perhaps, disabuse our
country gentlemen of the fear which still possesses them
as to the overwhelming influx of Irish pauperism. The
poor of that country are not deficient in natural affec-
tion, and they will not suffer their disabled relatives to
be cast on our charities now that Ireland really can give
employment to all. Some degree of precaution may,
indeed, be necessary, and the Irish members ought in
reason to submit to it, but the danger on our side has
_ _

been immensely exaggerated ; and we should not have
thought the English ratepayers utterly ruined even if
the present bill had conceded the right of relief to the
Irish as well as the English sojourner.—Timcs.