The Sun.
London, England, 1831-01-07 00:00:00

shared this motive, but every Magistrate who owns hind
must, in his rents, experience the benefit of a con-
trivance which reduces the gross amount of wages and
poor-rate, at the expence of the unmarried and unburdened

labourers.
If, then, this practice is authorised by law, I can only
complain of it as cruel and unjust to me, and such as are
in my circumstances ; if it is, as I am informed, unautho-
rised by law, then I sly the law has been broken to my
great injury, and I claim its protection. I claim to be
allowed to Drove the injury I have suffered from its in.
fraction, and require compensation from the parties who
have so conspired to injure me for their own benefit. In
either case, I humbly and earnestly entreat the attent on
of your Lordships, and of my countrymen at large, to the
injustice which has at all events been inflicted on me, and
which has driven me unwillingly into the position of an
offender against those laws, which, if 1 had ever felt their
beneficial influence, I should have been foremost to respect
and support.
My Lords, lam a prisoner—l ant a pauper. But, if
you are here to administer justice, then I call on you to
administer it impirtiaLv. Let not the rich and educated
offender escape, while the
poor and ignorant feel your
severity. It the rank, the station, or the difficult circum-
stances in which the Magistrates and farmers have acted,
are admitted its an excuse for their infraction of the law,
surely the same excuses plead a thousand times as strongly
in palliation of the offence of the labourer.

IRELAND.

(From the Dublin Mercantile Advertiser.)
IRISH STAMP DUTIES.

We are rejoiced to be enabled authoritatively to
state, namely, upon the best authority possible, that
of the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Spring Rice,
that there i, no intention whatever to bring forward
Mr. Goulhurn's Stamp Act. The following letter
has been addressed by Mr. S. Rice to Mr. Robert
Roe, the Secretary of the Council of the Chamber
of Commerce : _ _

" London, Dec. 31, 1830.

" DEAR SIR,—I feel much obliged by your letter of
the 2sith of December, as it gives me the opportunity of
enabling you to contradict from authority that most ex-
traordinary misconception which has attributed to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer an intention of introducing
the Stamp Duties for Ireland, proposed in the last Session.
Nothing can be more groundless than such a supposition.
To the general spirit of that former proposal, I see the
same objection which I explicitely stated both in Parlia-
ment and at the Meeting of Irish Members at the Thatched
House. The proposal for an increased duty on Newspapers
in Ireland appeared to me equ iliy ind:fensible as a in,,ature
of finance and as a measure of general policy, both on its
imposition of new re•trints upon the circulation of knew-
ledge, and the active controul of public opinion.
" Nothing that fell front Lord Althorp could have fairly
given rise to these extraordinary misapprehensions, which
' you may therefore, on my authority, contradict, in the
most direct anti unqualified manner.
" I am, my dear Sir.
" Your very faithful humble Servant,
" R. Roe, Esq." " T. SPRING RICE."