The Sun.
London, England, 1836-12-26 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1836.

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LONDON,
MONDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 26, 1836.

The natural and moral right of the poor of Ireland
to a life-sustaining share of the products of a soil, ren-
dered valuable by their ill-requited industry, has never
been called in question. If hitherto no law of the
land have restrained the power of a wealthy aris-
tocracy, who, with a narrow-minded selfishness, suc-
cessfully resisted the recognition of this indefeasible
right, the pretext for such omission has been that none
of the systems based upon this right was suited to the
meridian of Ireland. Legislators and Statesmen all
contended that the remedy was a thousand times worse
than the disease, no matter in what shape adopted ;
and upon this question only did they preserve a con-
sistency in their apparent zeal for the social and moral
happiness of Ireland, which contrasts strangely with
their general treatment of the inhabitants of that
country. Was it found necessary to terrify England
by the fear of a coercive system of policy, unless
she acknowledged the just ascendancy of the leading
faction at Court ? A Coercion Bill was instantly
passed for Ireland. Was it deemed expedient to ac-
custom the people of this country to violations of the
British Constitution by the Law-officers of the Crown ?

The most peaceable districts in Ireland were proclaimed
in a state of rebellion, and escheats were only limited
by the silence of the courtiers, when sufficiently enriched
with grants to which neither themselves nor the Crown
had any just title. Was it judged convenient to rid
this country of a public man, influential and dangerous
from his family connexions and borough ownership,
but, either on account of his ignorance, his vices, his
principles, or his physical infirmities, disqualified to
fill any public office of trust in England ? In what
way did the Crown dispose of him ? Why, send him
to Ireland, to be sure. Wisdom, virtue, a love of jus-
tice, and the use of the ordinary faculties of speech
and action, were not absolutely necessary to the mis-
government of any people—and still less to the mis-
government of a people broken-spirited by oppression,
and habituated to every conceivable species of mis-
rule. But from the evils said to be inseparable from
a Poor Law, Ireland was carefully and assiduously
exempted. Her poor were protected from the conta-
mination of workhouses, in order that they might
starve in a state of unsophisticated innocence. Her
people were suffered to beg in thousands, rather
than expose them to the perils of contracting a fond-
ness for food, with a philosophical contempt for
the pleasures of excessive drudgery. To keep charity
alive in the hearts of the rich mendicancy on the part
of hundreds of thousands of the working classes was
not only tolerated but defended. Charity in Ireland
was always a dear commodity, notwithstanding all that
has been said and written to the contrary. The prime
cost of the article is still enormous. Mr. MICHAEL
STA UNTON, whose statistical information is so justly
a speech addressed to the Na-
celebrated, stated in
tional Association of Ireland on Tuesday last, that the
cost in human life alone, for the voluntary sympathy
of the rich for the misery of the poor of Ireland, ave-
raged an annual sacrifice of forty-four thousand indi-
viduals ! What an awful price to pay for the culti-
vation of what in rich men is more a sentiment than a
virtue. Forty-four thousand individuals annually de-
prived of existence for the encouragement of Christian
charity in a Christian community ! Hear this ye
starve-beggar economists—ye sticklers for voluntary
alms-giving. It is scarcely necessary to quote the fol-
lowing extract from an article on Poor Laws, which
appears in the third Number of the Dublin Review
—which has this instant been put into our hands—in
order to prove that " the voluntary principle of cha-
, ritv," as it is called, is wholly ineffectual as a means of

removing the tnass holy ekigifig iii
Ireland i and that even Were it otherwise; the encou-
ragement of such a prinCiple as it is now alloWed to
operate, would brit tend to, the inb-eak bf
head
*.e heed not the sentimental cant, with which many in-
terested, and some well-meaning persons, meet the propo-
sition of a legal assessment. They are apprehensive, for-
sooth, that the kindly and generous feelings, which form the
basis of voluntary benevolence, will be utterly dissolved,
and melt away before the constraint of the law ; and that
the amiable dispositions and sensibilities of the Irish charac-
ter are in danger of being obliterated, by being brought into
contact with any other kind of obligation. They think it
as absurd to require humanity, as Falstaff did to expect
truth, upon compulsion ;' and they would, perhaps, stand
aghast if they were told, what is, nevertheless, true, that
the charity, which they would fain portray in such ethereal
and unearthly guise, coincides, in all. its distinctive qualities,
with the poet's loose conception of the most gross and vici-
ous form of earthly passion :
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.'
" There might he something like reason in what they say,
if men were, or ought to be, the mere toys of impulse,
moved or blown about, in every situation, by their feelings
without the rule of judgment. But when we apply such
romantic jargon to the deliberate consideration of a most
solemn. and serious duty, it becomes not only ridiculous, but
in a very high degree culpable ; being injurious alike to the
true moral sense, and to the interests which it is brought
forward to serve.
" With respect to the practice of voluntary alms-giving
in Ireland—as far as it proceeds from motives of pure bene-
volence and religious duty—which we are sure it does, in
numerous instances—we have no fear—there are, indeed,
no grounds for fearing—that the force of those sentiments
would be weakened by a legal provision for the poor ; but,
at the same time, we are as firmly convinced that the relief
now distributed through their impulse and suggestion, would
not be rendered spontaneously available to the purposes, or
amenable to the rules, of such voluntary associations as the
Report contemplates. On the other hand, if the charity
called Voluntary' be extorted in any instances—and we
are sure it is in many—by improper importunity, by terror,
by the exhibition of fictitious distress and exaggerated
misery, if it be lavished without discrimination or reflection,
and do, in fact, cherish and perpetuate the evil which it is
meant to remove, then, the sooner that kind of benevolence
is got rid of the better. Finally, whether the principle be is
mixed, or purely charitable, whether it be such as deserves
unqualified encouragement, or such as would be improved
by correction and reform, experience proves, that it is not to
be relied on, as adequate to the distresses of the poor, or
sufficient to enforce their claims upon the community at
large. Does this voluntary benevolence stimulate those
who witness it, to go and do in like manner ? Does it melt
those to pity who have no pity ? Does it thaw the icy
heart of the miser, subdue the forestaller, arouse the heed-
less, or shame the unfeeling? No ; but it relieves them
from the necessity of giving anything. It saves them, as
well as their benevolent neighbours, from pillage. It keeps
the destitute and importunate from their doors. It acts as
a direct bounty upon selfishness and inhumanity, while it
taxes the good, in exact proportion to their goodness."
The few clamourers who oppose the establishment
of a system of Poor Laws in Ireland, on account of
the evils inseparable from every such system, will do
well to compare their worst abuses with the " living
death," which so many thousands of their fellow-
creatures must endure in a land, where upwards of two
millions of people are for thirty weeks in the year
without half a necessary supply of the coarsest food.
Let them mark the expense at which the poor of
Ireland purchase the virtues of gratitude, and a
fondness- for labour, for which they are distin-
guished, and say then does Heaven require that
the most exalted qualities should be fostered at such 'a
charge ? If the Irish aristocracry cannot be charitable
under a system of social Government which shall
have the effect of saving the lives of thousands of their
fellow creatures, now sacrificed to their ignorance,
their selfishness, and their caprices—why then with
them rests the responsibility. We are more interested
in saving the lives of the poor than in fostering the
maudlin sensibilities of the rich.
It is admitted on all sides that something must be
done for the poor of Ireland. The abolition of tithes,
the reform of the Corporations, the appointment of a
Catholic magistracy, and all the other reforms included
under the cry of " Justice for Ireland," will not fill
the starving peasant's belly, if a Poor Law be over-
looked. The first want of the Irish poor is food ; the
next the means of self-supplying it by honest industry.
There is not an argument employed against the expe-
diency of establishing a system of Poor Laws in Ire-
land, which do not apply with much greater force to
the people of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Mecklen-
burg, Wurtemberg, Prussia, and Bavaria—and yet in
all these countries Poor Laws are established, and
what is much more, operate beneficially.
In Denmark all persons are entitled to relief who
are unable, by their own labour, to earn the means of
subsistence; whether such inability is the consequence
of bodily infirmity, want of work, or very low wages.
The rate is raised by each town and parish for the
support of its own poor, and those supported from the
common fund are obliged by law to repay the money
thus given to them as soon as they are in a condition
to afford it. The people generally are comfort-
able, and there is neither mendicancy nor deaths
from starvation in the country.
The system of Poor Laws established in Sweden is
highly objectionable, inasmuch as it places the liberty
of the able-bodied pauper under the direct control of
the Government police. Every town and parish sup-
ports its own poor, as in Denmark ; mendicancy is un-
known ; but the interference of the Government is
everywhere too visible. The peasants generally are an
hundred times better off than the same class of per-
sons in Ireland.
In Norway the poor of each parish are billetted
upon their rich neighbours. Every large farmer, in
proportion to his wealth, must take charge of so many
paupers. This system works well in Norway, but is
wholly inapplicable to the state, religious and moral, of
such a country as Ireland.
In Wurtemberg the Church propetty is entirely
devoted to the maintenance of the poor. Any officer
suffering any individual to die of hunger within his
district, renders himself liable to be tried for murder.
Complaints have been raised against the ingratitude of
the paupers ; but it is not the less true, that in Wur-
temberg, Mecklenberg, Prussia, and Bavaria, the con-
dition of the poor is much more comfortable than it is
in England, and that they are neither wanting in habits
of economy or industry.
There is, therefore, no just cause for dreading that
a good Poor-law would operate banefully upon the
moral habits of the Irish poor ; while there can be no
doubt but that it would save the lives of the thousands
who now annually die of hunger ; and of the still
greater number who:die of lingering diseases, engendered
by cold and famine.

The electors of the great and influential county
of Mid-Lothian, gave a grand dinner to`Mr. GIBSON
CitAIG on Thursday last. Mr. CRAIG stood for the
county at the last election, and though he entered the
lists only at the eleventh hour, owing to the abrupt and!
unexpected retirement of Sir JAMES DALRYMPLE,
and of course at an incalculable disadvantage, com-
pared to what lie would have done had there
been time to mature those arrangements on which so
much depends in a contested election, he very nearly
obtained a victory over his opponent. Of his suc-
cess at the next trial of strength that may take
place between the parties, there is not the least
doubt entertained by those who are capable of forming
a correct opinion on the subject ; and certainly the im-
posing character of the meeting to which we have
alluded, is calculated to impress even all those who are
not so well qualified to judge with the same convic-
tion. The electors who met on this occasion, and
among whom we find the elite of the county in wealth,
respectability, and talent, were obliged for want of a
room sufficiently large to divide themselves into two
parties. Nearly 300 dined at the White Hart, Dal-

did half as many More at another inn in the
sdme
All there; too; ‘Vere botinficie' not persons
bollp.,Cied froth the high-ways and bve-:*dyoi iceoiding
td `form rnac e.
0 A
Mr. GIBSON CRAIG aii acitnirable speech,
which we regret our inability to lay before ctl! reaclerS
at full length. We cannot, however, deny ourselves
the pleasure of a short extract or two.
We can hardly persuade ourselves that the " fac-
tion " will be much flattered by the picture which Mr.
CRAIG draws of them in the subjoined sketch. It is,
however, not only a likeness, but true to the life.
" Nothing could be more humiliating than for a statesman
of the Tory party to look back, and, considering the power
and influence they once possessed and still hold to a certain
degree, think by what inconceivable blunders they had allowed
the power to be wrested out of their hands. They seemed as
if they had lived in another atmosphere, and to have been
utterly incapable of judging of the opinions of the people ;
indeed they appeared to take the public opinion from cote-
ries and dinner parties of their own. They, in fact, insisted
on ruling this country on the principles of their ancestors,
which were just as well suited to the present times as if
they walked about in their bag-wigs and square-cut coats.
These were the men who were satirised by Swift as the
tailors of Laputa, who botched the coats by cutting them on
mathematical principles, without regard to the bodies of
those who were intended to wear them.—(Cheers.) These
were the men who with self-complacency indulged them-
selves in lordly reveries, and never dreamed of their danger
until they were rudely awakened by the flapper of public
opinion.—(Loud cheers.) Their whole opposition was like
to the conduct of a child who holds the safety-valve, and
thinks he increases the power of the engine, while he is
only forcing it into activity to accelerate its explosion. They
might clog the machine, and load it until it burst ; but he
maintained that they wanted the skill-4)f the engineer to
conduct it, and notwithstanding all their past experience,
were as dogmatical as ever in the belief of their own infalli-
bility."—(Loud cheers.)
After giving a remarkably clear explanation of the
Irish Church Bill, and vindicating it in a powerful
manner from the misrepresentations of the Tories, Mr.
CRAIG makes the following happy application of the
argumentum ad hominem. Let the Scotch Tories
lay it to heart : •
But does any one not know that the Church of Scot-
land has been founded on appropriation from the time that
it was established on the ruins of the Church of Rome, and
that a certain part of the funds have been only applied to
the purposes of the Church, and the remainder put into the
pockets of the landholders? You have not only the autho-
rity of the early Reformers for this, and Acts of Parlia-
ment down from that time, but the law and practice of the
country at this moment.—( Hear, hear, and laughter.) And
then Sir G. Clerk, in allusion to the Irish Appropriation
Clause, talked of the downfal of the Church, and his friends
shouted sacrilege. Now if that were really the case, the
least they could do is to pay back to the Church the plun-
der which they or their ancestors have taken for centuries ;
and further, if they would not incur the guilt of wilful sa-
crilege, they should in consistency throw the whole unap-
propriated teinds into the extension fund of the General
Assembly.—(Loud cheers, and hear, hear.) If these gen-
tlemen should plunder and sacrilege, that is the way of
proving their sincerity, otherwise we must throw doubt
upon it. I say that any Scotsman who objects to this
principle of appropriation, must abjure the Constitution of
the Church of Scotland, and must acknowledge that that
regulation of the funds, has been a main evil to the
Church—otherwise that man is not entitled to hold
.hose doctrines as to the Irish appropriation clause."