The Sun.
London, England, 1836-10-13 00:00:00

THE' SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1836

results of the • Poor Law Amendment Act, which is a
partial abrogation of the old poor law, it should advo-
cate the extension to Ireland of a system from winch
England is endeavouring to escape. In reference to
the relative effects of the old and new poor law on
wages, the Chronicle observes—" In not a few cases,
we fear, the farmers even gained, for a time at least, by

the scandalous system of deriving part of the wages of their
labourers from rates towards which those who paid a
fair market price for their own labourers contributed as
well as themselves. But it would be a poor argument
against an improvement, that it cannot be effected
without benefiting only one party. The money ex-
pended on idle paupers is now expended on industrious
labourers ; and, as labour creates additional property,
all are thereby benefited." Seeing thus clearly the
effects of curtailing the operation of poor laws in Eng-
land, the Chronicle, nevertheless, advocates their ap-
plication to Ireland. Verily, on this subject, as our
Contemporary observed of Mr. O'Connell, "we know
not what lie would be at." Differing as we do from our
Contemporary's argument, we willingly avail ourselves
of his testimony of facts, when he states that—" The '
character of the agricultural population has been so
much improved, by restoring them to the independence
of which they had gradually been deprived under the
abuses of the old system, that already they appear
quite a new race. The connection between independ-
ence and virtue which had been remarked so early as
the days of Homer is equally evident in our time.
The sullen refractory paupers of our agricultural dis-
tricts have become cheerful and prudent labourers."
If, as is here asserted, the experience of ages illustrate
the connection of independence and virtue, and if the
poor laws have militated against both these qualities,
on what grounds can their introduction into Ireland
be defended ? Surely our Contemporary would not
deprive the Irish people of their independence and vir-
tue at the same time, by the application of a principle
of which he proves such would be the effect ? The
new poor law is neither more nor less than an extenua-
tion of the old, and as this extenuation is attended with
such desirable results in one part of the kingdom, is it
not manifestly better to seek the redress of Irish misery
in other applications than originate in that division of
the empire a system, the consequences of which expe-
rience has proved to be so lamentable in this ? We
quote from the Chronicle the following summary of the
effects of the new poor law in different Unions :
" The first Union of which the particulars are detailed
by Mr. Hughes is that of Sheppey. The saving here
is a fraction over 254 per cent. Mr. Chambers, the
chairman, in answer to an application from Mr. Hughes,
states that for several years I have not known the
labourers so generally employed as at this time ; I am
not aware of one able-bodied man of good character
being out of employ. The inmates of the house arc
generally satisfied with their situation.' The poor have
been reduced in a year from 619 to 437. In Faver-
sham Union the saving is nearly 52 per cent. Mr.
Nearne, the chairman, states, the labourers are gene-
rally in employment ; I may say, more so than has
been the case for many years past ; the new law has
evidently wrought a great moral improvement in their
condition.' In the Milton Union the saving is rather
more than 521 per cent. ; the number of poor reduced
from 1,600 to 990. Mr. Hinde, the Vice-Chairman,
states that the Poor Law Amendment Act has decidedly
improved the habits of the poor. In the Blean Union
the number of poor has been reduced from 972 to 775.
The saving is 48/ per cent. Mr. Hyder states that
the Bill has done wonders by its promotion of in-
dustry.' In the Thanet Union the saving is 55 per
cent. The number of paupers has been reduced from
564 to 294. Mr. Crampe says, that the effects
of the new system are daily developing them-
selves, and will soon appear in an improved charac-
ter.' In the East Ashford Union there has been
a saving of 421. 12s. sd. per cent., the diminution
of pauperism 381 per cent. In the West Ashford
Union the saving has been 423 per cent. Mr.
Hughes says, Proofs are not wanting here or else-
where sufficient to convince the impartial mind that
the industrious classes are more exertive, more vigilant
in seeking employ ; less frequently in beer-houses, or
dissolutely wasting their time and their money.' In
the Eastry Union the saving is 513 per cent. Mr.
Hannam states that in this extensive union (of 23,868
inhabitan ts) ' the prejudice and ill feeling which was
so strongly manifested against the enactments of the
new Poor-law has astonishingly subsided ; the working
classes themselves, knowing it to be the law of the
land do not now protest against it, and that it has
worked a great change for the better is universally ac-
knowledged.' In the River Union the saving is 11
per cent. In the Elham Union the number of paupers
has been reduced from 897 to 395 ; the saving 51 per
cent. Mr. Jones states, the labourers are all em-
ployed ; and the new law is restoring economy and im-
proving morality.' In the Bridge Union the poor are
reduced from 1,900 to 812 ; the saving 222 per cent."
To prove that this diminution of pauperism, and its
contingent diminution of expense, is not attended with
any decrease of the comforts of the poor, we quote
from the Chronicle the evidence of Mr. Hughes, who
observes—

" Having rather publicly expressed myself strongly op-
posed to much of the machinery of the measure, as well as
imagined the dietary fixed on for the several union-houses
of East Kent would be inadequate to the necessities of na-
ture, I resolved to make, at least for one month, a trial in
my own person of the validity of such an opinion.
" This trial terminated yesterday ; and, as I feel ingenu-
ousness to be a necessary ingredient in the human charac-
ter, and one which I hope to exhibit through life, I have
considered but fair to state, for your information, and that
of the public of East Kent, that my apprehensions, which
were by no means peculiar to myself, were; as to the quan-
tity of food, quite groundless, the supply for me (possess-
ing a good appetite) being more than sufficient—indeed, I
did not require, and consequently consume, more than five-
sevenths of the quantity ! and I fully believe, for the month,
I ate less than that proportion ! I should have stated ear-
lier, not for your information, Sir Francis, but for those
who are at least equally interested with you and me, that
for four days in the week twenty-two ounces of food is the
intended allowance to male paupers, and for the three re-
maining days one pound of meat, or puddings, and vege-
tables, with fourteen ounces of bread and cheese each day.
" I may here state that I have rigidly refrained from the
use of wine, and other fermented liquors, saving the luxury
of small beer, and this, I believe, the only inroad made on
the letter of the whole regulations. An intimate friend, also
a guardian, has made common cause with me, and joined in
the trial. His declaration is, that the quantity is sufficient
for him, indeed considerably more than he requires. We
are gratified to find this result. Perhaps we are the only
two individuals in our grade of society who have really
made a practical experiment on this head, in the eastern
division of our county ; and I may truly add that our health
has been adequate to that of any former period."
Let the Chronicle, if it can, reconcile its evidence
with its arguments—we confess it is beyond our abi-
lity to do so. The former demonstrates to conviction
the impolicy of poor laws, and their pernicious effects
upon society—the latter would uphold and extend
their application ; but as facts are better than logic,
however ingenious, we avail ourselves of our Contempo-
rary's testimony as to actual results, and leave his ar-
guments to those who delight in supporting abstract
speculations against the evidence of the senses.—
Morning Advertiser.
The Peers of Portugal have presented a protest to
the Queen against the Constitution recently proclaimed
in that country and accepted by her Majesty. In this
document the refractory nobles assert that the Consti-
tutional Charter of Don Pedro, supported by the Por-
tuguese army with feats of the greatest constancy
and bravery against superior numbers, could not be
revoked or annihilated by a fraction of the said
army in what they are pleased to term " a moment
of hallucination." The Peers claim their prerogative
to watch over the keeping of that Charter, in which
they deny that any alteration can be made without
their approbation, and therefore protest against the de-
cree proclaiming the revived Constitution as illegal,
and express a hope that her Majesty will make known
to the Portuguese and foreign nations, " that the
Peers of the kingdom neither promote nor approve re-
volutions"-,,-a fact which we had believed to be already
sufficiently well known in Portugal and elsewhere
without the publicity of a special proclamation. The
protest is signed by twenty-seven Peers, and is altoge-
ther as silly and ridiculous a composition as ever came
before ui, not even excepting the stupid paper in
which Prince Ferdinarii
lately announced his resig-
nation of the command of the army. In the same pa-
ragraph wherein the Veers protest against the present

Constitution as the result of a military movement, they
refer to the zealous support given by the army to the
chartei' of Dou Pedro as its strongest claim to be pre-
served and acknowledged as the law of the realm.
Thus making the military demonstration in one case
the grounds of accusation, in the other of defence.
When the army co-operated with oligarchs, its conduct
was eulogized as heroic and glorious, but now its co-
operation with the people is ascribed to momentary
hallucination. The Peers boast of having maintained
the charter of 1826 against superior numbers, and at

he same time denounce the Constitution of 1820 as

being revived only by a fraction. The reasoning of the
Portuguese Peers is in fact as inconsistent, and gar-
nished with as many false assumptions, as any protest
which ever graced the books of our own House of
Lords. To the Peers themselves their logic may be
satisfactory, but to common understanding their protest
is as unmeaning as, in a public point of view, it must prove
ineffective. It is not probable that the Portuguese will
again yield up their newly-established rights to the
usurped guardianship of 41 querulous nobles, who auda-
ciously call upon their Sovereign to renounce the act
which identifies her with the nation, and places her
throne on its only sure foundation—the confidence and
affection of the people. It is not probable that Donna
Maria will separate herself from the people to take
part with an aristocracy who presume to dictate to all
the other powers of the State. She knows, we hope,
her own interests better than to commit herself by an
act which would repudiate her for ever from the esteem
of the Portuguese people. Such an act would be
equivalent to an abdication of her crown. The object
of the protesting Peers is obviously to enlist the sym-
pathies of the despotic powers, by whose assistance
they might, in case of their being able to provoke in
Portugal any demonstration against the new system,
endeavour to re-establish usurpation. The hope is a
natural but a vain one. Opinion advances too raipdly
to be stayed in its progress by the whining absurdities
of Peers, or the open or concealed hostility of despots.
—Morning Advertiser.
The Ministerial journals very naturally devote their
utmost efforts, not to extinguish, for in present circum-
stances that is plainly impossible, but to keep down
the expression and conceal the existence of the great
and essential differences of opinion and object which
divide the supporters of the Administration into dis-
tinct and irreconcileable classes. These differences,
numerous and important as they are, may all be com •
prehended under one general description. The Minis-
terial Whigs, enjoying or expecting their several shares
in the good things of office, hold it right that reforms
of all sorts and sizes, that the most desperate advances
even, in the career of revolution, should have just so
much of their patronage as may be sufficient to keep
their Radical allies in good humour, and themselves in
power. With them the talk about reform is a means,
the end being the retention of place. The Radical
and Papist allies of the Administration, however, re-
verse this order. It cannot be doubted that they
mean at least all, many of them probably much more,
than they say. They tolerate the official existence
of the Whigs, not from satisfaction with the prin-
ciples of the Whig Ministers, or from respect
for their sincerity, but because they do not at pre=
sent see any probability of obtaining a Ministry better
calculated than the present to promote their purposes.
With them the maintenance of the Whigs in power is
only a means, their end being revolution, disguised
under the name of reform, and the destruction of the
Protestant Church in Ireland. It is a very stale and
shallow artifice to class together, under the name of
Reformers, men whose character, position, and objects
differ so widely. The British Radicals and the
O'Connell tail have hitherto voted generally with Mi-
nisters, and have thus far accomplished the end for
which their alliance is courted by the Whigs, but,
notwithstanding this visible co-operation, the two
parties are essentially antagonist, each striving to
make a tool of the other for purposes peculiarly its
own. It‘is idle, in such circumstances, on the part of
Ministerial writers to accuse a third party in the
State, namely, the Conservatives, with attempts to
sow dissension between the Administration and its
Radical allies. Dissension and distrust are inhe-
rent in the very origin and nature of their artificial
; alliance. The men of the movement, if, as we
see no reason to doubt, they are sincere in their pro-
fessions, cannot consent for ever to be merely the means
to an end entirely different from their own. They will
, claim and insist upon their reward. It is unreasonable
to expect that they should secure to the Whigs per-
petuity of office for nothing. The system of postpone-
ment and evasion may answer the purpose of the
Mi-
nisters for some time longer. But the Radical auxiliaries
who are ranged for the present under the Ministerial
standard, without so much as pretending to the least
respect for the banner, or affection for the leaders of
the confederated host, will demand, we may be as-
sured, their full arrear of pay, and break out, should it
be much longer withheld, into that open mutiny of
which the clamorous threatenings have been already
, heard. Nor is there much reason, indeed, to doubt
that the Ministerial Leaders would satisfy, with
all imaginable alacrity, at the expense of the
most valuable and sacred institutions of the
State, the demands of their revolutionary contingent,
• but for two reasons—first, that the institutions of the
State are fortunately not so entirely at their mercy
that they can dispose of them as they like ; and,
secondly, that
,they cannot manifest too decided a
disposition to gratify their revolutionary allies with-
out exciting the disgust and alarm, without causing
' the alienation and desertion, of another, more respec-
table though less numerous division of their forces.
There are persons even yet supporting the present Mi-
nisters in the House of Commons who would abandon
them to certain and immediate defeat if they manifested
an intention to yield implicitly to Radical dictation.
Ministers occupy, indeed, a position as precarious as
it is dishonourable. To lose the support even of the
least numerous class of their actual adherents must
be fatal to them, and their adherents are so opposed to
each other in character, circumstances, and purposes,
that to retain the support of all for any considerable
period is next to impossible. Whether they advance
with the revolutionary, or stand still with the more re-
spectable and reflecting portion of their adherents, they
incur an equal danger. In the former case they fall
from the desertion of the more moderate men of their
party ; in the latter they are sure to be sacrificed to
the ungovernable impatience of their Radical allies.
It has been said by some of the advocates of the Mel-
bourne Government that as much diversity of senti-
ment exists among different classes of Conservatives as
among the supporters of the present Ministry. But,
overlooking for the moment every other, there is this,
difference, at least, between the two, that the Conser-
vatives are led by Statesmen who have not, like the
present Ministers, been selected as leaders for the sole
merit of being without opinions of their own to which
they may be expected steadily to adhere. What class
of Conservatives is there who would wish (or who, if
they wished it, could hope to accomplish their pur-
pose) •to reduce the Duke of Wellington and Sir R.
Peel to the abject position which Lord Melbourne and
his colleagues are seen to occupy in relation to the
Irish Roman Catholic Members of the House of Com-
mons, or the British party of Humes, Roebucks, and
Wakleys ? The Conservatives, if, in some respect,
they differ in opinion, are capable of amalgamating
their forces for definite and common purposes ; and
are, we believe, not capable of conspiring, in divisions
still distinct and hostile, to set up an Administration
of puppets (had they even such puppets to set up), in
order that they may hover around them, and struggle
and manoeuvre, each against every other, to snatch, by
turns, as they can, and for separate and adverse pur-
poses, a temporary and precarious possession of the
wires.—Mor 'ring Post.
Instead of censuring the Lords for applying the
weeding-hook and pruning-knife too unsparingly to
the Whig jobbing Bills of last Session, we are rather
disposed to find fault with them for not having exer-
cised their constitutional powers of excision and amend.
ment with still more severity. It will be recollected
that, in regard to the Irish Constabulary Bill, by which
the " retrenchment" Ministers attempted to create
forty-two new Government appointments, with salaries
of 5001. a-year each, the Lords took the liberty of
" retrenching " pretty amply, having, by one stroke
of the pruning-knife, reduced the number of new
Whig appointments—(which were, by a curious coin-

cidence, about the number of the joints of the " tail")
from forty-two to four—which, in our opinions,
were four too many—so far, however, the Lords
brought within a reasonable compass the Wliig job
for " doing justice to Ireland," by quartering on the
public resources a whole phalanx of hungry sycophants
and ravenous agitators. If their Lordships had cut
down the place-multiplying provisions of the Whig
Registration Act for Deaths, Births, and Marriages,
in the same spirit of slashing improvement, the pub-
lic would have had reason to be thankful to their vi-
gilance for protecting them from the creation of ano-
ther cluster of gross jobs by the Ministers, whose
watch-words were, " retrenchment and economy."
Never was there a set of " virtuous and disinterested"
patriots who held in such unspeakable abhorrence the
extension of Ministerial influence by venal patronage
than the Whigs when out of office. No sooner, how-
ever, had they succeeded in attaining the great object
of all their patriotic aspirations—place—than they
went to work in creating lucrative appointments, with
the view of extending the influence of venality and cor-
ruption in a way that threw the worst Tory doings in
that line quite into the shade. Commissions upon
Commissions were issued to provide for their cornice-
. tions and for those of Members of Parliament, hungry
patriots and Whig-Radical scribes, whogave them their
support. Never were so many bribes held out by any
Administration to, buy of the independence of the
Bar ; yet in spite of those multiplied bribes the
Bar remains essentially Conservative, for few, ex•
cept the obscure and briefless of that profession,
have accepted the Ministerial doles. The Regi-
stration Act is part and parcel of the grand de-
sign of the Whigs to get all the local government of
the country within the meshes of the net of Treasury
influence. What has taken place in Marylebone is a
tolerably good illustration of its practical working, as
far as ministerial patronage is concerned. There time
appointment of a superintendant-registrar and four dis-
trict registrars has taken place as the Act prescribes,
the former by the Registrar-General who holds his
office at the pleasure of the Minister of the Crown,
the latter by the Poor-Law Commissioners. And
whom have they chosen for those offices ? Persons
who were fierce opponents of the Poor Law Amend-
ment Act, and who, as such, pretended to be exceed-
ingly hostile to the system which grinds the faces of
the poor, and gives large salaries to the arbitrary Com-
missioners. The remarks of a writer who signs him-
self " A Friend to Local Government," ably exposing
this job, having recently appeared in the columns of most
of the independent Papers, we need not here go particu-
larly into it. The object of the framers of the law in
giving this additional patronage to the Poor Law Com-
missioners is obvious ; but we are quite sure that the
scheme will prove abortive. The indignant feeling
which the cruel working of that inhuman and demo-
ralising Statute, the Poor Law Amendment Act, has
excited throughout the country, cannot be put down by
the sedative application of such arguments as have
been used to quiet the Radical Vestrymen of Mary-
lebone, in all the parishes of England. A great deal may
no doubt be done at the expense of the country in pen-
sioning off opposition to the Malthusian law, but, ne-
vertheless, the Christian benevolence and morality of
England will eventually triumph over that flinty-
hearted " philosophy" which covers the land with
workhouse Bastiles—prescribes the minimum of human
subsistence to the famishing poor, who have wasted
their health and strength in the service of society--
confounds the fate of honest poverty with that of
sturdy vagrancy—drives the wretched female victims
of libertinism to desperation, and is daily making more
and more familiar the horrible crime of infanticide. If
the Lords had stopped this disgraceful Whig law as
well as some others, what evils they would have averted
from their suffering fellow-creatures—what gratitude
they would have deserved from humanity !—Morning
Herald.