The Sun.
London, England, 1836-05-13 00:00:00

N
•••„ •

SPTZRIT. OF THE PUBLIC'JOURNALSoki

The rapidity with which Bills for the avowed pur-
pose of relieving the distressed .peasantry in Ireland
follow upon each other's heels, can hardly keep /pace
with. the occasions that daily arise for-the interposition
of the Legislature between the people of that country
and their landlords. We rarely open an Irish news-
paper, without seeing harrowing details of the extreme
want of the poor, and of the rigorous measures adopted
by the landowners for the enforcement of rack rents.
Cupidity is not, however, the worst cause of the de-
population which is taking place in that unhappy
country. Religious rancour is the great fountain of
that ruin in which the peasantry are engulphed. When
to exorbitant exactions are added political spleen and
religious bigotry, it were wonderful indeed if the
people who are weighed down by these evils, exhi-

biteA comfort in their appearance, or contentment
in their demeanour. What Englishman, with the
heart of a man within his breast,
.could read the
shocking account of depopulation in a district of
the county of Carlow, which' is given in the Dub-
lin Evening Post received at • this office yesterday,
and not exclaim, in the warmth of his indigna-.
tier, that peace ought not to be in a country where
outrages of this sort can, with imuunity, be perpe-
trated by landlords and their agents. Such, we are
sure, would be the language of an -Englishman who •
felt that the soil was . not made by Providence for
landlords solely ; and his words he would follow up
by acts, were the lauded proprietary of this country so
devoid of bowels of compassion as to attempt to ex-
tort the marrow out of the bones of their tenantry,
and when the process of exhaustion was complete,
then to turn them adrift upon the world. Yet such is
the constant practice of. the landlords of Ireland—
of these monsters in human shape, who cry out
against the insubordination of the people, whom their
own barbarous conduct has driven to despair, and
would drive into rebellion, were it not for the in-
fluence of that Priesthood, which it is the fashion with
Tory orators and scribblers to abuse, as if the body
were demons, and remonstrate against a Poors' Law
as inapplicable to the condition of that country !
Doubtless the persons who reduce the Irish pea-
sant to starvation, and sweep whole families out
of their holdings, without considering or caring how
they are to obtain subsiStence, hate the very thought
of a legislative enactment by which their rapacity
would be checked and their cruelty punished ; but we
question if they will, find much sympathy in England
when the independent people of this country under-
stand that scenes such as are described in an extract
from a heart-rending letter published by the Rev.
James Maher, administrator of the parish of Carlow,
in the Dublin Evening Post (inserted in another co-
lumn), do actually occur in the sister country. Gra-
cious Heaven ! are we reading of the wretchedness of
fellow subjects, and is it in an integral portion of the
British empire that these outrages upon humanity are
committed by persons who, perhaps, plume themselves
on their morality, their fine feelings, and their zeal for
the propagation of the word of God—and permitted
by the Legislature ? Alas ! the oppressed and the
oppressors are subjects of the British Crown—and
lrel:and, a country united to us by law, and by a
Community of interests stronger and more binding
than law, is the theatre of the horrible devastation.
Rave we a right to look for peace, prosperity, or
allegiance in a country where the law allows the
peasantry to be thus tortured—and where those
whose immediate interest and duty it is to protect the
people, are themselves the torturers? If a persecuting
landlord; a griping agent, or a fleecing parson, now
and then falls beneath the arm of some victim to his
cruel extortion, the public are stunned by the loud
wailing of the corrupt and fanatical crew who arrogate
to themselves peculiar virtue and godliness ; but to the
lamentation and miseries of hundreds of hunted pea-
sants, ejected from their humble, but to them endeared
habitations, and thrown friendless, pennyless, and for-
lorn upon the highway, with the awful alternative of
dying of famine in the ditches, or turning felons and
perishing upon the scaffold, these vengeful Tartuffes
are (1,...e eado.r., and irtssoiaaado ae fk torpoao. The
period is, however, arrived when the Irish peasant most
be rescued from the grasp of his perseciaors and the
slanders of his canting calumniators. A well-regu-
lated system of Poors' Law will, in a great measure,
cure the evils that have sprung from centuries of mis-
rule, and made the condition of Ireland a.disgrace and
a stumbling block to the British Government. Habits
of temperance, economy, and industry will take the
place of inebriety and imprudence ; and independence,
superseding a slavish subserviency, will mr.ke the Irish
peasantry good citizens and good subjects.—Morning
Chronicle.

The organs of the revolutionary movement have
suspended, apparently, all other machinations, and de-
voted themselves to the one paramount scheme of
abusing and vilifying the Upper House of Parliament.
We have, as usual, " the people of Ireland" dragged
upon the stage, and all sorts of denunciations launched
against the Tory Lords, because they refuse to let the
liberal and lawful Popish priests of that co'intry govern
it in the name (though very far from on behalf) of
that people. The Lords are sworn 'at and threatened
with extinction, because they insist on " irresponsible"
government in Ireland. Now, if ever there was injus-
tice and falsehood, it is this ; for there is and can be
no irresponsible power in Ireland, but that which
founds itself on influences and authorities not ac-
knowledged by the law, nor amenable to the law, and
which, in fact, boast that their mode and sphere of ac-
tion are above, and independent of it. This power is
no other than the dominion of the Roman Catholic
priesthood, which by impelling men through motives
of which human tribunals can take not the slightest
cognizance, does, in truth, exercise a supremacy not
responsible to the law or the Constitution. The Mu-
nicipal Reform Bill for Ireland comes on again in the
House of Lords this day, when we trust the finishing
hand will be given to the good work of emancipating
the towns of Ireland from the irresponsible power of
the priests, under which they must have groaned, had,
the Bill been left uncorrected, and placing them under
the control and jurisdiction of the constituted autho-
rities of the State, which are one and all in their seve-
ral conditions responsible to the supreme Court of
Parliament, and more especially to the representatives
of the people. If the Lord Lieutenant or his Secre-
tary perverts any lawful trust reposed in him to ends
inconsistent with those for which the trust was created,
the means of redress are open and accessible. The
State is all-powerful over its servants. But what re-
sponsibility can be enforced against those tyrants who
are not servants of the State, and whose methods of
operating upon the minds of an immense body of the
King's subjects cannot be brought under the cognizance
either of the civil magistrate or the Legislature? How
bring a subtle priest to the bar of fire House of
Commons for what he perpetrate:; under the meal of
confession, or from the sanctuary
of tha. altar ? No
demagogue so audacious, or Whig so dishonest, as to
deny that the power of flee priest over the multitude is
real ; then let us push_ the point a little bit further, and
require. of them t.,, show in what shape, or to what ex-
tent, it is responsiok. The Lords will, we are sure,
be wise enough, and brave enough, to persist in the
coursed Alley have adopted, and ter vest power in the
hr.nds of par.res who can be punished for the abuse of
it, insteail of confiding it to those who cannot. But
when we hear the House of Louis insulted, and the
arbitrary sway of a hierarchy, or a democracy, each
alike domineering and lawless, preferred to that of a
constitutional monarchy, of which an upper and here-
ditary House of Parliament has for eight centuries
formed an essential branch, what proofs are brought in
corroboration of these licentious calumnies. Is the
House of Lords always in the wrong—we mean when
,j'adged by the standard of popular doctrine ? Look
at the Constabulary bill for Ireland, and see what
havoc the Peers haeee made in the corruption and
profligacy with 'which the 8.41 as first framed
was overflowing. The list ordi.;pectors meditated by
the Whig
own friends, Min'"ers, too'e provided for amongst their
was ,'‘.lginally 42, at 5001. per annum
each .inspector. The Lords, in their excessive passion
for the !waste. 'of' public money, have reduced 38 of
that
0. corps, and dimie'b ierit the expense •by
19.00 a • Tie, -sub-inspectors have been
reduce
' freq ' ea
with a pecuniary saving of
..
1,7501:. pyr. .ern. The paymasters have been re-
duced from '42 to 18, and the expense curtailed by