The Sun.
London, England, 1836-08-16 00:00:00

PRI

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

From the report of the earlier proceedings in the
House of Lords on Friday night, the public may have
collected additional reasons for concurring in the cha-
racter we have often, in the honest discharge of our
public duty, given of the Irish landlords. A griping,
tyrannous, unfeeling class, grudging the scantiest meal
of the coarsest food to the tenanty who toil from year's
end to year's end to glut their cupidity and swell their
rack-rents—these men never interfere with local Acts
of Parliament, unless to mar the benevolent intentions
of the legislature, or to introduce, furtively, some flagi-
tious clause, by which their own vast and grossly-
abused power over the wretched occupier may be in-
creased. Let a measure be proposed, the object of
which is to improve the condition of the peasantry,
and, as the principle and first step to this desirable end,
to limit the capacity of the landlords to grind, to harass,
and to plunder—such a measure, for instance, as the
Grand Jury Bill—the representatives of the landed
proprietory—they who exhibit in their own :treatment
of the tenant every vice that is found in each— and all
of the very worst of the grasping class, are sure
to be found arrayed in fierce hostility against the
beneficial proposition. And should these persons
happen, even by accident, to sanction a good Bill,
framed for the general interest, a glance will always
suffice to show the selfishness of the motive which
leads to so unusual an event. Of this class there are
some to whom these remarks will, in the opinion of
Irishmen, appear to apply with peculiar fitness. 'We
need not name them when we say that they are as
bad landlords as they are malignant in their prejudices,
unscrupulous in their assertions, and unprincipled in
their political oscillations. Unfortunately for Ireland,
and indeed for the empire, which must suffer as long
as Ireland is a prey to extortionate landlords, these
individuals, though peculiarly vicious in several res-
pects, as bad landlords, have many equals : the proof
of which is supplied by the squalid appearance, the
hungry hearths, the filthy hovels, and the prevalent
mendicancy of the peasantry. Every native of Ire-
land knows this to be the case—every tourist or writer
upon the state of Ireland has borne witness with hor-
ror to the fact—the mass of evidence and of reports
supplied by the two Houses of Parliament for
the last fourteen years, is replete with damning
proof against the landlords of that country. And
it is in the face of all this notorious evidence
of glaring delinquency that an Irish Peer stands
up —if reported rightly —to defend the Irish
landlords, whom he is pleased to designate as " a
much calumniated class of persons 1" The occasion,
which called forth this chivalrous vindication, was, we
think, rather unfortunate ; it was not, certainly, calcu-
lated to give force to the Noble Lord's assertion. A
Bill was brought in by Mr. Lynch, the learned and
excellent representative of Galway town, for the pur-
pose of extending the jurisdiction and regulating the
proceedings of the Civil Bill Courts in Ireland—
courts which have worked well, but needed an enlarged
jurisdiction, in order to produce all the good which
was expected to result from such useful local tribunals.
This Bill passed the Commons. On reaching the
House of Lords, it was, of course, as Lord Wharn-
cliffe has declared, viewed with suspicion, being sanc-
tioned by Ministers, intended for the benefit of the
people, and approved by the representatives of the na-
tion. Still so excellent were its provisions, that even
Lord Lyndhurst, with all his dexterity and destruc-
tiveness, could find in it little to warrant his mis-
chievous intermeddling, and the suspicious Peers
seemed content with its clauses. However, it seemed
-
=meet to infuse evil into the existing good ; and, accord-
ingly, a clause was inserted by the Peers, the ob-
ject of which was to increase the means of exercis-
ing tyranny already possessed and abundantly
em-
ployed by the landlords. By that clause the Assistant
Barrister was empowered to eject tenants holding on
parol demise, in case of non-payment of rent. This
is a power not possessed by the superior courts ; and
for a plain reason. The Legislature is averse to te-
nancy-at-will. It does not like to see the tenant at the
mercy of the landlord, subject to his caprices and
liable to be harrassed at his whim. A tenant, there-
fore, occupying by mere parol demise, cannot be
ejected for non-payment of rent in the almost summary
way that a leaseholder who enjoys a right, and neglects
to fulfil his part of the condition entered into with a
view to obtain that right, may be ejected. To confer
stash a power as the clause in question involved upon an
inferior tribunal, while it was not possessed by the su-
perior courts, was then not only anomalous, but even
unjust, and at variance with the whole scope of the set-
tled policy of the Legislature. The Commons disa-
greed from the proposed innovation, and returned the
Bill to the Lords freed from this pernicious clause.
Lord Plunket moved their Lordships to agree in
the change made by the Commons, and was
supported by Lord Wynford. But Lord West-
meath took a different view of the matter. He
insisted on the retention of the clause, by which
the Irish landlords—himself amongst the number
—would be enabled to frustrate the policy of the
Legislature, which is opposed to tenancy-at will ;
at the same time that they could eject the holders by
parol demise, as if they held by a former lease. The
Noble Marquis wanted, in fact, to be empowered by
Parliament to treat the people of Ireland as his serfs—
to do what he liked with his own. At present there
is a check upon this free-will of the landlords. If they
give a lease, they grant an interest to the tenant, and
then, the rent not being paid, they may eject ; but if
their cupidity lead them to manufacture tenants at will,
from whom they may extort increased rent at their plea-
sure, then they give no interest to the wretched tenant,
and then, as a just consequence, they cannot summa-
rily eject for non-payment of rent ; it being the settled
rule of the Courts that ejectment must be supported
by written evidence of the contracts. This salutary
system the clause already alluded to would change. It
would enable landlords to grab all the value of the soil
and of its cultivation—it would give them the fee of hu-
man industry and labour, as well as of the earth ; and
it would absolve them from all the liabilities attached
to their condition, while it destroyed the wily motive—
self-interest, which now coerces the landlords of Ire-
land to treat the tenantry with humanity.
Such was the clause which Lord Westmeath
advocated ; and it was while exerting his ener-
gies to have it retained in the Bill—a, waste of lungs
on his part—for even the Tory Lords deemed the
clause too bad" to support the Noble Mar-
quis- pronounced the sort of negative panegyric already
1
quoted, upon the landlords of Ireland ! We much
doubt, however, if Lord Westmeath has raised his
own character by his defence of the very worst land-
lords in Europe,
any more than by his very intempe-
rate, very unfounded, and most unjustifiable attack
upon the Attorney-General for Ireland—an attack so
unbecoming and so contrary to fact, that even the
Standard Iras been scandalised by it. We feel as-
sured that Mr. O'Loghlen will treat the attack with
contempt. Still Noble Lords ought to speak truth
when they. assail their equals in every respect—their
superiors in all that dignifies our nature. Mr. O'Loghe
len, it has been asserted, vas a repealer. The asser-
tion is notoriously at issue with truth—no matter from
what quarter it has or may come. And as to the
Right Honourable Gentleman's being a Catholic, we
suspect he is not on this account a worse subject, or a
worse Christian than his Protestant calumniator, who
must have forgotten certain speeches spoken at Mul-
lingar and at. Home's Auction Mart, else he would
never have given to his tongue so loose a rein on a re-
cent occasion. As to the Civil Bill Courts Bill, it has
obtained the assent of the Peers in its really amended
form, and will speedily be one of the most useful Acts
passed in the present session.—M
orning Chronicle.
Mr. O'Connell has taken his leave of Dublin, after
organizing a plan for Ministerial agitation during the
recess. Daniel is now entirely devoted to the support