The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-06 00:00:00

IRELAND.
TO THE EDITOR OF TILE SUY.

have fie quently read with pleasure, and
efe • concurred in, your able views on the wants of
T.
.ad; and therefore it is that I now venture to tres-
yoifg valuable space with a few facts illustrative
2 present condition of this country. My object is,
agh your widely circulating columns, to draw
Serious attention of cur English fellow- suljects,
and of the Legislature, to the disastrous consequences
of the absence of adequate employment for our
labouring population.
Some few years ago, this city enjoyed a certain
degree of prosperity ; supplying articles of import to
a large section of the south of Ireland, and receiving,
in exchange, an immense quantity of agricultural
produce. At that time, I admit, there was more or
less of misery in the rural districts, and our social
state was far from the healthiest. But it is only now,
by the sad contrast of the present with the past, that
we learn to appreciate the bustle and activity of our
cern,
rn, butter, and provision seasons in past years—when
many hundreds of thousands of pounds used to change
hands, when our poor-rates were light, and all classes
of the community were comparatively prosperous. 7
At present, how different is our position ! _trade
(with the single exception of that in foreign-grown
breadstuffs, imported to feed an agricultural people) is
quite paralyzed ; our merchants sit idle in their offices;
our shopkeers are literally doing nothing ; bankrupt-
cies are of daily occurrence. A stranger walking
through the city now would be forcibly struck by
the number of untenanted houses in the principal
streets, in which, a few years ago, it was
almost impossible to find a house to let.
Thus, in the return of poor, waste, and untenanted
premises, laid before the grand jury, by the cess col-
lectors, in the present assizes, March, 1849, we have
201 houses returned poor, and no less than 653 waste!
Of these waste houses there are 35 in our four prin-
cipal streets, besides an arcade, with 15 shops,
.all
closed !* The numbers in our workhouse, daily
increasing, are, this week, 6,292, being 1,099 more
than the highest number in the year of the famine.
Besides this there are thousands of our able-bodied
labourers and tradesmen, with their families, starving
in their own homes. I have lately collected some
statistical details on this head, and I find in every
lane and alley family after family in a state of the
most abject misery. In vain they look for employ-
ment, and few of them can procure one meal in the
twenty-four hours ! Their numbers are swelled by
crowds of wretched famine-stricken poor creatures,
from the western district, where the land is waste,
and there is no employment for the population. Our
prisons are thronged with vagrants. So full is our
county gaol, that at this moment there are in it 150
cases of famine-fever! Crowds of emigrants are
every day leaving our quays, all taking money with
them, not one of whom would leave if they had encou-
ragement to remain ; but they cannot get land here
on fair terms and secure tenure, and, therefore, they
are compelled to take their labour and their capital to
the culture of a foreign soil. Yes, Sir, the tranfer of
of land in Ireland is so difficult and so
expensive, its tenure so ill-adjusted, and the landlords
generally so involved in embarrassments, rendering it
impossible for them, were they ever so well disposed,
to discharge the duties of property, that there exists
at present an almost insurmountable bar to that
which is, beyond all question, the only remedy for
Irish misery and pauperism, the employment of the
people's labour in developing the resources of the
country ; for our resources are mainly agricultural.
The land of Ireland must be relieved of its cumbrous
settlements and charges, emancipated from unneces-
sary legal technicalities, so obstructive to its improve-
ment, and so ruinously expensive, and then, under an
equitable system, be thrown open to the tiller of the
soil. Until this is done the country will never be
prosperous ; and it never can be done without the in-
tervention of the Legislature. It is admitted, on all
hands, that the greater part of the land said to be
under cultivation in Ireland is not one-tenth part
cultivated. Here at once we have a boundless field
for the employment of spade husbandry. A well-
known agriculturist, Mr. Hamilton, of St. Ernan's, in
th:-, county of Donegal, who employs from 500 to
1,000 labourers, pronounces spade husbandry more
etlective and more profitable than culture by the
plough. That there are no better workmen than the
Irish labourers, no people more industrious under or-
dinarily favourable circumstances, none more averse
to look for poor-law relief, none more anxious to sup-
port themselves by the labour of their hands, is at•
tested, year after year, by the harvest- fields of
England. It is no less attested by the large
sums of money annually remitted home by
Irish emigrants in America—men whom nothing but
want of employment and starvation could ever force
to aleandon their native land. Even within the last
few days I have seen a remittance of 251. trans-
mitted from New York to his family here, to enable
them to join him, by a tradesman who, having sought
in vain for employment in this city, emigrated in
January, 1848 ; thus, in a country where labour is
free, not only supporting himself, but accumulating
25/. in little more than twelve months. Unable to
obtain employment at home, the able-bodied labour
and capital, the bone and sinew of our country, are
fast leaving it. Throw open the land to the people,
and you check at once this fatal emigration ; you
give an impulse to trade and develope the national
resources ; thus relieving the country from that mass
of pauperism that threatens ere long to involve all
classes in one common ruin. How the system works
elsewhere we may learn from the following extracts
from Thornton's " Plea fur Peasant Proprietors" :
" In order to show the powerful effect of peasant
proprietary in stimulating industry, it is only neces-
sary to turn to any country in which the peasantry
cultivate their own lands. Such is the case in Zurich,
as well as in several other Swiss cantons ; and, ac-
cordingly, says Inglis, Anywhere in the neighbour-
hood of Zurich, in looking to the right or to the left,
one is struck with the extraordinary industry of the
inhabitants. In the industry they show in the cultiva-
tion of the land I may safely say they are unrivalled.
When I used to open my casement, between four and
five in the morning, to look out upon the lake and
the distant Alps, I saw the labourer in the fields ;
and when I returned from an evening ramble, long
after sunset, as late perhaps as half-past eight, there
was the labourer mowing his grass or tying up his vines.
But there are other and better evidences of the in-
dustry of the Zurichers, than merely seeing them late
and early at work. It is impossible to look at a field,
a garden, a hedge—scarcely even a tree, a flower, a
vegetable—without perceiving proofs of the extreme
care and industry that are bestowed upon the culti-
vation of the soil.'

"In another place, he says, when speaking of the
Engadine' (the whole of the land of which belongs
to the peasantry), did not sufficiently enlarge upon
the industry of the inhabitants, but it deserves a
panegyric. There is not a foot of waste land in the
Engadine—the lowest part of which is not much
lower than the top of Snowdon. Wherever grass
will grow, there it is ; wherever a rock will bear a
blade, verdure is seen upon it ; wherever rye will
succeed, there it is cultivated.'t Mr. Laing confirms
there statements, and applies the description to Swit-
zerland generally.
"In Germany, Mr. Howitt, after mentioning that
the land is for the most part in the hands of the
people,' and parcelled out amongst the multitude,'
describes the peasantry as labouring early and late,
because they feel that they are labouring for them-
selves. There is not an hour in the year,' he adds,
in which they do not find unceasing occupation.' "
I shall not prolong my quotations, but merely re-
peat that Ireland can never be prosperous until her
land be thrown open to the labour of the population;
and by the strong arm of the Legislature only can
this be accomplished. Under ordinary circumstances,
a great deal will ever depend on local exertions ; and
there is no one more ready to subscribe to, and practi-
cally carry out, the principle than I am ; but the pre-
sent position of Ireland is exceptional. After three
successive failures of the potato crop, with a bankrupt
proprietary, a thinned and famine-stricken peasantry,
neglected agriculture, and trade fearfully diminished
and depressed, we are utterly powerless. Witness the
Westmeath and Skibbereen landlord meetings. With
every disposition on the part of the proprietors of the
soil to aid themselves, they have been unable to do
anything ! Immediate ruin impends. The Legisla-
ture alone can save us, by untying our hands, by
placing us in a position to aid ourselves, by enacting
slch measures as would compel all proprietors to dis-
charge the duties of property, and further, by meet-
ing the present emergency by a liberal grant, for the
purpose of affording extraordinary employment to the
people. Immediate measures are required. The
six months between this and harvest are
a fearfal interval. No time
lost in employing our labourers should be
in arterial drainage, as proposed, but not only
completing
Gwroaunitds fobroltnhineserpoual.pos es
our trunk lines of railway.
from the Imperial Treasury
much money put out at interest; for they itwouldso
arrest the rapid progress of Irish ruin.
ofAntrlnlglwanodulids
remind our rulers that the prosperity
bound up with that of Ireland. She is, by her own
free choice, united with her "for bitter, for worse."
Already Irish pauperism is felt by the English ma-
nufacturer in the sadly diminished demand of the
Irish market, by the English trader in his long list
of bad debts on this side of the Channel, by the
British Minister in a decreased Irish revenue. What
Ireland now seeks, every candid Englishman will ad-
mit, is not a matter of favour but of right, as an in-
tegral part of the British empire.
I encle3e m v address, and remain, Sir,
Your obedient, humble servant,
A GRAND JUROR OF THE
CITY OF CORK_
Cork, March 28, 1849.