The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-11 00:00:00

111111 k.
3 4.0„. 11.1
levranti.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1849.

Sir ROBERT PEEL'S great and comprehensive pro-
ject for the regeneration of Ireland, has been re-
ceived with the utmost enthusiasm by persons of all
shades and varieties of political opinion in that coun-
try. The substitution of a solvent and unembar-
rassed proprietary in the place of the present no-
minal. owners is recognised on every side as the only
mode by which the permanent prosperity of the
nation can be attained, by which its able-
bodied population can obtain fair employment,
and - the national capabilities of the soil may
be fully developed. It is in fact the master-key, by
which alone the field of industry in Ireland may be
opened. We have long since pointed out the fatal
consequences of the enormous encumbrances—the sad
results of their own or of their progenitors' extrava-
gance and imprudence—by which the proprietors of
real estate in Ireland are but too frequently burdened,
and also of the strict entails and settlements by which
the greater portion of the land is tied up. In the
great majority of instances the apparent pos.
sensor is not really the owner, nor can
he deal with the lands in that capa-
city. In place of being worthy of censure, his
condition is truly pitiable. Without power or in-
fluence, Is ithout any prospect of ever retrieving his
position in society, he struggles even against hope
and is• but too happy if he can (after keeping down
the interest of the mortgages, and satisfying the
family. charges and the public burdens) obtain a
scanty annuity for his own purposes. With a large
and showy rentroll, entitling him to take up a posi-
tion among the magnates of the land, he has
really' but a small income at his own disposal.
Under sach circumstances, it is by no means surf
prising that he should endeavour to maintain an esta-

blishment more suitable to his apparent than to his
real condition, and that he should increase his embar-
rassments in the vain attempt. His own necessities
render him utterly powerless for any good purpose ;
he cannot expend any money in improvements, how-
ever beneficial they might prove, or ample the return
that might reasonably be anticipated. His present
wants are all that he is enabled to look to, and though
perhaps naturally a kind-hearted and benevolent
man, he is compelled to screw up his rental to the
utmost pitch, that he may be enabled to meet his
own pressing liabilities. Whatever may be his in-
clination, he cannot afford to encourage the improv-
ing tenant, if such encouragement should involve any
pecuniary sacrifice. He therefore lets to the highest
bidders, to those who will be contented with the
scantiest diet, without scrutinising too narrowly their
chara4ers or the real prospects of payment. If lands
should fall out of lease he raises the rents, without
making any allowance for unexhausted improvements,
if such things should be possible under such a system.
He cannot in fact afford to be just, and perhaps after
all his ineffectual struggles he may be usable to
satisfy the claimants on his estate, which is conse-
quently confided to the tender mercies of the Court
of Chancery. There his embarrassments are increased
and
utmost,
by the accumulation of enormous costs, hist osun-
fortunate tenants are ground down to the m
while no aid can be afforded under any circumstances.
Eves the trifling expenditure which took place
on the lands while the impoverished inheri-
tor resided on the family mansion is withdrawn;
the entire produce is absorbed in making up the
sums that must be paid into Court when the Receiver
is called upon to pass his annual account.
Such is the system which Sir ROBERT PEEL be-
lieves to be destructive to the future prospects of the
country, and which must be abolished, if we desire
to see the sister kingdom elevated in the scale of
nations, and .to witness a permanent amelioration of
her social condition. _ _

Impressed with these convictions, he desires to in-
duce capitalists to invest their money where there
are so many inducements. He is well aware that

purchasers may generally be looked upon as persons
likely to improve their newly-acquired properties. I
In calculating the amount that they propose to lay
out they do not regard the purchase-money alone,
but they also consider the sums that may be re-
quired to bring the lands into the best con-
dition, to drain the soil and to erect the
necessary offices for the due enjoyment of
the several farms. By these means extensive
employment would be afforded to the people—industry
would be encouraged—while the value of the lands
would be materially enhanced. It would be parti
cularly desirable that small capitalists should be en-
couraged, that a sturdy yeomanry should be obtained
to plough and cultivate their own farms for their own
use, without being liable to any demands but those
of the public collectors. It z;•as by such men that
Ulster was colonized, that the most barren soil was
rendered the most productive, and their descendants
have still maintained the character, and followed in
the footsteps of their proger.itors. It is by
such men that Munster and Connaught can be
civilized, improved, and assimilated in their con-
dition and property to the northern province, and
such men can only be obtained by abolishing the
cumbrous technicalities by which the law of real
property is incumbered, and by the adoption of a
cheap, expeditious, and secure mode of transfer, by
means whereof lands could be disposed of with as
much freedom and security as any other description of
property.

It can scarcely be forgotten that upon the occasion
of the bombardment of Vienna by Prince WIN-
DISCHGRATZ, a certain anonymous Oxonian acquired
a momentary and rather unenviable notoriety by a
disgraceful correspondence, written by himself from
that scene of pillage and slaughter. It will be re- '
membered by the majority how this veracious gentle-
man traduced the unfortunate inhabitants of the
Austrian capital! how he trampled upon the
fallen, how he cracked his sardonic jokes at the
students who were being shot down in the
trenches in battues, and who, only a few
days before, had received him amongst them-
selves with fraternal hospitality ! Well just
such another credible and creditable authority
has recently made his appearance among the Hunp,m-
rians. This time, however, the Sir Oracle is an
anonymous military personage—always anonymous !
The public are now expected to swallow the paper pel-
lets not of a graduate, but of a subaltern. The infamy
of the calumniator is generously diffused by him not
over a venerable university, but over the surface of a
noble and honourable profession. We are to chew
the leek while Captain BOIILDIL, with an unbounded
capacity of imagination, and an unbridled license of
expression, tells us all about his travels and ad-
ventures.

His narrative opens in the approved style of
romance, almost, indeed, in the imprescriptable
phra'eology of G. P. R. JAMES—" One incle-
ment evening in January, two travellers might
have been seen wending their way down
the declivity which leads towards Debreczin."
One of these travellers was your humble servant, the
annonymous " British Officer "—the other was con-
ducting him, in the character of a prisoner, to a more
secure place of confinement. With that delicacy of
language so becoming him as a gentleman and an
officer, the narrator describes his escort in the most
felicitous terms, as " a drunken scoundrel of a cor-
poral." Not that the poor fellow is to be regarded
as a votary of BACCHUS, or a moral opponent
of Father MATHEW, or a physical opponent of Er.
CULVERWELL—for the phrase is very loosely employed
by the writer throughout his correspondence as a
general epithet, without any exact meaning beyond
that of direct scurrility. It figures, indeed, wherever
he happens to be at a loss for an opprobrious adjec-
tive—and we thus hear him speak more than once of
" the drunken soldiery," and the like. Well, be it
known, this " drunken scoundrel of a corporal" leads
the unfortunate British officer a precious dance over '
the country—showing him in his state of incarcera-
tion " like a wild beast," sometimes, " when
a sufficient number of curious were collected
outside"—or telling (not to the marines,
but to the peasantry) the most extravagant tales
about his charge, in the different villages through
which they happened to pass. But this is not all, he
is dragged into the presence of the renowned Leader
of the Hungarian Revolution—" Mr. Kossuru," as
he calls him with the spiteful flippancy of a chamber-
maid, as if a mere prefix of " Mr." could have de-
graded the glory of a TELL, or a HOFER, or a WAL-
LACE ! And Mr. KOSSUTH of course incontinently flies
into a violent psssion, " putting himself into one of his
theatrical positions, and in the most insulting language
ordering that on the following day I should be brought
before a drum-bead court-martial and shot." How
the British Officer managed to escape from these im-
minent and extraordinary perils he does not conde-
scend tomention. And certainly it does appear most
miraculous how he contrived to get o of the clutches
of such savages as he describes the riungarian pea-
santry to be, or at least to escape without losing his
nose, or one of his ears, or some other indispensable
feature. Yet he does escape unharmed and escapes
from a rabble habituated, according to his account, to
daily assassination. " This system," says he, "is
now a favourite one with Mr. KOSSUTH and
his myrmidons: they abuse a person to the mob, the
mob then murder this person, and then they shout
La justice du people,!" A polite mob, by the way,
to utter their cries in the elegant idiom of the Pari-
sians—instead of in their own rough vernacular. But
looking at the matter seriously—here, the very
writer of the abbve paragraph, has himself been abused
to that mob, over and over again, in various Hun-
garians villages, and yet he comes out of the bloody
ordeal scatheless to tell us all about it, and to malign
the very people who have spared him his miser- ,
able existence ! As to Kossum's brutality
--we beg pardon of the British Officer—as ,to
Mr. KOSSUTH'S brutality of deportment the descrip-
tion tallies exactly with those furnished to the last
generation about NAPOLEON kicking his marshals on
a reception day, beating his wife, swearing at his
mother, and introducing the manners of the most dis-
orderly barrack into the imperial saloons of the
Tuileries—accounts which were believed, even in
their best days, only by Mr. SAVAGE LANDOR and
half-a-dozen old women in some out-of-the-way
corner of the United Kingdom. The Hungarian
movement of independence is not to be impeded by
any cock-and-a-bull story about a convicted forger
acting as the secretary to the Chief of the Revolu-
tion, any more than the English Revolution could
have been prevented by asserting that SCHOMBERG
cheated his antagonist at trick-track, or that a liaison
was thriving between some nameless frau and WIL-
LIAM the Stadtholder.

Everything that is of the smallest importance is
" let out" reluctantly by the British Officer in the
midst of his vituperations. He says, in one sentence,
that " BEM's career is run ;" and yet immediately
afterwards it is acknowledged that the Austrian
troops are at Rimnik in Wallachia. How come
they in Wallachia at all, unless our previous accounts
are correct, that this same BEM, whose " career is
run," had gained a great victory over the Imperial-
ists, and had driven them in confusion be-
yond the frontiers ? Again, about the re-
lative behaviour of the Absolutists and their
opponents in the Danubian Principalities, we
have this decisive admission from the organ of
absolutism :—" The Turks at Galatz," says he, "are
amiability itself, paying in the handsomest manner for
everything they require. The Russians here, on the
contrary, have had their soldiers quartered on the
peasants since the month of November, have forced
to supply
food and fuel, and have not paid a
them
piastre." So much for these involuntary admissions in
favour of the Mussulmen and the Hungarians—so
much for these splenetic and impotent aspersions on a
peasantry who
are rising as our ancestors rose in
1685, to vindicate their nationality and to secure their
independence.

A hint to the army and to the universities !--When
these anonymous scribes compromise the dignity of a
seat of learning and the honour of a distinguished
service, would it not be as well to institute such in-
quiries as should lead to the detection of the indivi-
duals, so that by publishing their names the odium of
their malevolence and of their calumnies might fall
exclusively upon themselves, and not be attached in-
discriminately to their professions?

Lord John Russell has requested the Irish Mm.
bers to meet him in:Downing-street on Wednesday, the
Igtth inst4nt, at eleven o'clock.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris papers of yesterday.
One of the journals says :—"M. TniEas is indis-
posed, but his malady is by no means alarming.
However, Dr. ANIMAL has thought it necessary to
prescribe to him a strict regimen. It was not an at-
tack of cholera, but a severe cold and shivering fits,
which came on after attending the funeral of his
father-in-law."'—On inquiry, we learn that he is now
perfectly recovered.
M. LEON FAUCHER yesterday introduced a Bill
into the Assembly to suspend for a period of three
months Art. 67 of the Law of March, 1831, which
interdicts the officer in command of the first military
division from holding at the same time the place of
Commander-in• Chief of the National Guard. By
the introduction of the Bill, M. LEON FAUCIIER con-
fesses that General CRANGARNIER, in holding these
two offices since December last, has been violating the
Law, and that the PRESIDENT of the Republic has
acted illegally in appointing him to them.
On blonday night, the English party who have
gone to Paris to return the visit of the National
Guards, visited the Opera. The house was crowded
and the strangers appeared to enjoy very much both
the opera and the ballet. Between the entertain-
ments the English National Anthem of " God Save
the Queen," was played by the orchestra out of com-
pliment to the English visitors, who, according to
custom, immediately rose, and were joined by the
whole of the French audience, who remained stand,
ing whilst the national air was repeated in conse-
quence of an unanimous encore.

- The Prefect of the Seine hag invited the English
party to a ball at the Hotel de Ville for to-night.
BRISBANE, the American Socialist, has been ordered
to quit France, by the Minister of the Interior.
M. PROUDHON'S journal, Le Peuple, has been
again condemned to a fine of 6,000 francs.

We read in the Journal du Havre of yesterday :
"The Cosmopolite brings palpable proofs of the
reality of the marvellous treasures embedded in the
soil of California. Among her passengers were two
Europeans laden with the opima spolia of the mo-
dern El Dorado. One of them, named GLEIN, who was
a blacksmith of Hesse Cassel, realised, by the sale of a
small property he possessed in California, 32 pounds
weight of gold. Another man, named MICHEL,
has brought eighteen pounds weight collected by
himself. We learn by this vessel, that a native of
Havre, named Boc, a cooper by trade, who had de-
serted from one of our whalers, after employing him-
self for a month in sterile explorings, at the end came
to a place where, in a few days, he collected gold• dust
to the value of 15,000 f."
The Journal des Pyrenees Orientales of the 6th has
the following :—" The custom-house officers of Saint
Laurent de Cerdans arrested, in the night of the 4th,
four foreigners, who were taken to the prefecture of
Perpignan on the following morning. The Count DE
MONTEMOLINO was recognised among the persons
arrested. He has been placed provisionally in the
citadel, with his three companions. A singular
chance established the identity of the Count. At the
Prefecture he was recognised by the Secretary of the
Prefect, who had attended with the Prince a course
of lectures at Bourges when he was in that city.
After this recognition denial was no longer possible,
and the Prince did not persist in it."
A body of between 200 and 300 Hungarian and
Piedmontese deserters or refugees have passed the
Var, and entered France. They were disarmed, and
sent to Draguignan.

COURS AiiTHENTIQUE.-PARIS, APRIL 10.-Five per
Cents., 89f. 85c. 65c. 60c. 65c. 70c. 50c. 65c. 60c. 55e.;
89f. 60c. 50c. 40c. 35c. 25c. 45c. 40c. 35c.; 89t. 50c. 45c.
40c. 50c. 400. 30c. 35c. 25c.; Four per Cents., 66f.;
Three per Cents., 57e. 56f. 95c. 90c. 85c. 80c. 90c. 65c.
60c.; 56g. 55c. 50c. 70c. 60c. 75c. 50c.; Bank Actions,
2.425 f. 2,430 f. 2,427 f. 50c. 2,425 f.; Romans, 75 75. 1-76;
Belgian Five per Cents., 1840, 921; ditto, 1842, 821;
Spanish Three per Cents.. 31 301. Exchange on Lon-
don, one month, money, 25f. 221 c.; three months, money,
251. 17ic..

BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE
LONDON STOCK-EXCHANGE. APRIL 10.

East Indian, VA—Luxembourg, 2—Northern of France,
111,4—Paris and Rouen, 211,1—Paris and Strasbourg, 4%
—Rouen and Havre, I 1 A/4 .

SPAIN.

Madrid journals of the sth instant have been
received.

A telegraphic dispatch, dated Vittoria, the 4th, has
announced to the Spanish Government that the ex-
King CHARLEi ALBERT, going by the name of Count
DE BARGE, left San Sebastion on the 3d for Vallado-
lid, on his way to Portugal. _ _

The Bolsa was closed during Passion Reek.