The Sun.
London, England, 1838-10-16 00:00:00

TO DANIEL O'CONNELL, ESQ., M.P.

Sift,—There are so many of all conditions who take the li-
berty of writing and appealing to you, that you can hardly
wonder, if another, whose name is unknown to you, should
offer a few reflections. The only thing at all extraordinary is,
that he abstains from eulogy or invective.
To come at once to the point.
No question has been more agitated or less sifted than the
question, what is conducive an effective to the pacification
and prosperity of Ireland ? The debaters on tbis subject have
usually been hot-headed and ignorent men, who delivered
such opinions as they fancied most agreeable to their party.
I speak of those whose opinions are likely to gain attention—
the Members of Parliament. With your experience and
acuteness, have you really been deceived by expectations
and promises? If so, and you are disappointed in past
hopes, beware of what you cherish for the future. Above
all, do not believe that by re-constricting a House of Com-
mons in Ireland you will obtain your object. Recollect the
last. Was there ever so desperate a gang of scoundrels united
in one confraternity ? How few abstained from the open sale
of their constituency 1 and how many of the other House are
at this moment in the full enjoyment of their prostitution !
We disfranchise a miserable town for ever, where a few
drunkards are instigated to bribery, for one vote, on one
occasion ; yet do you not every day see Irish Lords, with
foreheads unbranded, and with ears unslit, who sold the fee-
simple of their votes for ever ? How happens it that you
never have arisen from your seat and demanded, if not
judgment on these traitors, at least a final cessation of such
infamous hush-money, and an instant abolition of their pen-
sions ? The law empowering them to receive from the coun-
try the wages of iniquity would be repealed with unani-
mous approation ; any supporter of it would expire under
the vengeance of the people. With all our reforms and
regulations, and alphabetical schedules, and stringent tapes,
the most zealous partisans of good housewifery, having
stripped the first skin off the onion and blown it away as
unserviceable, come to the second and find it tough and
intractable. They must bring it over the coals and keep
it stewing, if they expect from it any nourishment. They
begin to think it as impossible for a public man to be an
honest man, as for a public woman to be an honest woman ;
and they see this only difference, that the public woman may
keep her appointment, which the public man of late is never
found to do. A fine bill of fare was laid before us ; but at
last we are reduced to our old regimen ; the Ministers find
bubble, and the people squeak. When you pluck and pinion
your own defaulters, all that was granted to them in any
shape ought to be applied to the comfort and instruction of
our poor. No doubt you smile at so inadequate a project;
and well you may, if nothing lies beyond it. This was only
suggested as the most obvious, and the first and foulest
stumbling block of offence. Furthermore, then, let every
diocese in Ireland have both its Protestant and Roman Ca-
tholic bishop. Let each enjoy the ample pay of twelve
hundred pounds a-year ; a larger sum than is the average sti-
pend of the bishops in France and Italy; a larger sum, by
more than double, than is granted to our generals and admi-
rals after a half century of service, after a life of danger, after
a separation from friends and families, after a loss of health
and limbs. Let the total of church lands be sold in small
divisions, year after year, to supply a fund for schools and
colleges, in which morality and religion shall be taught more
effectually than invidious wealth can teach them ; these be-
ing the objects for which all forms of worship were esta-
blished. Thereto might be added whatever is above five
hundred a-year in church livings. I see no more injustice
or hardship in this curtailment, than in reducing to half-pay
the officers of the army and navy. We do not say to them,
" You shall enjoy your full pay during your lives ; but
your successors shall receive only half-pay ;" why should
we, then, to another profession, as much under the head of
the church as these are under the head of the army? Is it
because toe one is remunerated in silver and gold, the other
in corn and cattle ? Whoever is paid by the nation may
lawfully be paid in such proportions as the nation shall ap-
point. Livings have been sub-divided; why may not bishop-
rics? In fact, the only reformed church is the Papal; and
thousands are daily taking refuge with her, from the avarice,
fraud, and hypocrisy of her blustering, bloated sister-in-law ;
from the sale of whose false curls and pigments and perfumery,
not only might enough be added to schools and poorer
benefices, but much would remain, which might be applica-
ble to noble plans of colonization. No doubt can be enter-
tained that our gracious Queen would joyfully contribute to
them her extensive possessions in Ireland, from which her
Majesty derives but small revenue, and industry no advan-
tage. Enough might be sold by auction every year to conduct
into Canada and Australia twelve thousand men, women, and
children ; to supply each labourer with an axe and spade,
with clothing for two years, and with sixpence daily to both
old and young, for the first eight months. Would not this be
better than to immure the healthy, although within sight of
home ; and if beyond the sight of their friends, by no means
beyond the hearing of their voices ? Doubtless these are bene-
fits, gratuities, blessings ; but can we invent none greater ?
none more congenial ? If such questions are vagaries, quite
unworthy of the politician, let us consider whether nothing
can be thought of more convenient and serviceable to ourselves.
Is colonization less advantageous to us than the same expendi-
ture of our wealth in workhouses, which some of the Irish will
look upon as prisons, and others as the out-works of fortresses
ready to be voided of their inmates and to be converted into
barracks at the first panic of an irresolute Ministry ? The
money destined for this unpopular scheme would be much bet-
ter expended in canals and railroads, on which a large propor-
tion of the same poor people may be employed whom our le-
gislators are preparing to immure. Let ten acres in Canada
and Australia be allotted to every man, woman, and child who
emigrates. In a very few years our remaining colony in Ame-
rica will support a population quite adequate to counterba-
lance the French inhabitants. Ilence a third of our customary
f )rce will be sufficient to maintain the tranquillity of the country.
These considerations alone, leaving aside humanity, would have
their weight, were any consideration so weighty as power and
patronage ; and I address them, Sir, to you, as able to force
our Administration on the line of duty, or to crush and scatter
it if refractory. You will find that if the system of coloni-
zation is carried on for twenty years, your country, instead of
losing in population will much increase in it; poverty alone
will diminish ; crimes will grow less atrocious; political and
religious differences will be forgotten in the circle of domes-
tic comforts; new interests will spring up between man and
man visibly and tangibly, and old animosities will subside and
cease. Indeed, lam convinced that at the expiration of
twenty years not only will your numbers be much greater,
but that your wealth and prosperity will advance in a still
higher degree by the perpetually moving current of a well-
regulated colonization. The blood suckers of stagnant Ire-
land will no longer be able to derive forty or fifty shillings
a-year from a solitary acre of potato ground ; for, suppose that
regrating of land is not repressed by law (as it ought to be)
like regrating in the market, yet such will be the quantity
brought into cultivation at home, and such the facility of ob-
taining it abroad, that middlemen will be found only in your
circulating libraries, and their suzerains must return from
England and learn arithmetic and humanity in your parish
schoolrooms. I am, Sir, &c.,
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
Bath, September 25.

TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, ESQ.
" Thus shall memory often in dreams sublime,
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over ;
Thus, sighing, look through the waves of time,
For the long-faded glories they cover."

Darrynane Abbey, October 4, 1838.
Sir—You wrong me much in supposing that I do not know
you. " Not to know you were to bespeak myself unknown."
Little do you imagine how many persons besides myself have
been delighted with the poetic imaginings which inspired these
lines on one of the wonders of my infancy—the varying sounds
emitted by marine shells_

" Pleased, they remember their eugust abodes,
And murmur, as the ocean murmurs there."

Would that I had you here, to show you " their august
abode" in its most awful beauty. I could show you at noon-
tide,when the stern south-wester had blown long and rudely, the
mountain waves coming in from the illimitable ocean in ma-
jestic succession, expanding their gigantic force, and throwing
up stupendous mountain-cliffs that fence not only this my na-
tive spot, but form that eternal barrier which prevents the wild
Atlantic from submerging the cultivated plains and thigh
steepled villages of proud Britain herself. Or, were you with
me amidst the Alpine scenery that surrounds my humble
abode, listening to the eternal roar of the mountain torrent as
it bounds through the rocky defiles of my native glens, I would
venture to tell you how I was born within the sound of the
everlasting wave, and how my dreamy boyhood dwelt upon
imaginary intercourse with those who are dead of yore, and
fed its fond fancies upon the ancient and long-faded glories of
that land which preserved literature and Christianity when the
rest of now civilised Europe was shrouded in the darkness of
godless ignorance. Yes! my expanding spirit delighted in
these day dreams ; till, catching
from them an enthusiasm
which no disappointment can embitter nor accumulating years
diminish, I formed the high resolve to leave my native land better
after my death than I found her at my birth, and, if possible,
to make her what she ought to be
" Great, glorious, and free
First flower of the earth, and first' gemoithe sea."
Perhaps, if I could show you the calm and exquisite beauty
of these capacious bays and mountain promontories, softened
lovely evening, till
in the pale moonlight which shines thisP
all which during the day was grand and terrific has become
calm and serene in the silent tranquillity of the clear
you would readily admit that the man who harsnblegehnt—
perhaps
so
often called a ferocious demagogue, is, in truth, a gentle
lover of Nature, an enthusiast of all her beauties—
Fond of each gentle and each dreary scene,"
and catching from the loveliness as well as the dreariness of the
ocean and Alpine scenes with which he is surrounded a greater
in
ardour to promote the good of man, his overwhelming ad-
miration
of the mighty works of God.
Let me now proceed to answer the matters of your letter.
They are various, desultory, unconnected ;deslomeotfliiintgs
imagi-
nation atghie_
disorder of unsettled poetry, and a go
nation and fiction. Sometitnes you make statements, and then
again you ask questions which imply the allegation of facts
that never existed. I will follow you as well as I can, de-
ploring that a man of your talent should be so entirely
ig-
norant of the real state of Ireland. You speak to me as to
a man familiar with fallacious hopes and unexpected
dis-
appointments. I am not so. My experience is of a success
almost equal to my own hopes, and beyond the expectations
of those who acted with me. I am the organ of a brave, a
generous, and, above all, a religious people. Why should I
despair ?
You tell me authoritatively " not to believe that by recon-
structing a House of Commons in Ireland I will obtain my
object." Sir, I place no faith in your counsel. I know as
fact, that no country ever progressed so faseand so extensively

in agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial prosperity, as
Ireland did during the period that intervened between her as-
sertion of legislative independence and its extinction. It is
much safer to judge of the future from the past than to con.
fide in your opinion, who seem, indeed, to know nothing of
the matter.
Younext proceed to ask me, " Was there ever so desperate
a gang of scoundrels united in one confraternity as the last
Irish House of Commons 2" Your question is an indiscreet
one, but I reply to it at once. YES—I have seen a more des-
perate and despicable gang of scoundrels—of scoundrels with
infinitely less of temptation, yet infinitely more voracious of
rascality. Yes—l have known scoundrels of so atrocious a
description as to cant incessantly about religion—as perpetually
to boast of the purity of Protestantism and their zeal for its
maintenance, and yet to adopt, as one great mode of sustain-
ing their pious objects, the most gross injustice committed
through the medium of diabolical perjury 1
You are, indeed, an incautious advocate of the continuance
of the Union! The Irish people are entitled to have their
Parliament continued, unless it has been extinguished by a
valid law. It is a maxim of British jurisprudence that fraud
vitiates everything. More than one private Act of Parliament
has been set aside for fraud by your Court of Chancery—your
Court of Conscience. You say that the Union was the act of
the most desperate gang of scoundrels that evor existed—the
proof of their scoundrelism consisting in their having passed
that very Act. Can the magnanimous people of Ireland be
bound by that desperate scoundrelism ? Arc the people of
Great Britain justified in conscience, in justice, in honour, in
availing themselves of a scoundrel trick? I thank you, good
Sir, for your character of the last Irish Parliament, and for
giving me as a proof of that character—THE UNION.
Anxious as I am to avail myself of this admission, I must,
however, proclaim that you do injustice even to the Union
House of Commons; for, in the first place, a majority of the
Members in 1799 rejected the Union proposal; a majority of
the Inisii Members were against it even in the year 1800.
But how was that majority turned into a minority ? Why, by
the Government, the infamous Castlereagh at its head, pur-
chasing up a sufficient number of the rotten boroughs, and re-
turning for them Scotch and English officers and adventurers.
It is some comfort, at least, that it was Scotch and English
scoundrels who really carried the Union ; and I wish you joy
of being the cause of making this fact also prominent.
You proceed to ask how few of the Irish House of Com-
mons abstained from the open sale of their constituents. You
seem to be completely ignorant of the facts. Almost all those
who had constituencies refrained from the sale of them. When
the Union vote was carried in a House of 278 Members by no
greater majority than 43, the minority was 117 ; and, if it had
come to a casting vote, the Speaker would have voted with
the Members who composed the minority. The men who re-
fused to sell their constituents were thus 118 to 160. Twenty-
two more Irishmen would have rendered the Union impos-
sible; and yet the existing 118 are confounded in your indis•
criminate vituperation with the desperate gang of scoundrels,
Scotch and English as well as Irish, who belonged to the
majority.

If you knew the history of that period, too, you would esti-
mate highly the virtue of that glorious minority, who with-
stood every temptation to barter away the rights and liberties
of their country. Show me any one hundred and eighteen
Englishmen or Scotchmen that ever resisted such unparalleled
powers of intimidation and corruption. The pecuniary bri-
bery alone exceeded three millions sterling, exclusive
of one million two hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds,
which more recent Parliamentary Papers prove to have
been laid out in the mere purchase of boroughs. Why, the
teeth of your modern Parliamentary scoundrels (for I use
your own, your gentle word) would water at the idea of three
millions in solid bribes I I suppose you are convinced that it
would be impossible with that money to bribe one hundred and
sixty of the present House of Commons ! ! I shall leave you
in the undisturbed possession of that opinion. But it is my
duty to tell you that other and equally vile instruments were
used in order to influence the majority. Perhaps you do not
know that the habeas corpus Act was suspended and martial
law proclaimed, during the entire period of the Union dis-
cussion !

The means, supplementary to mere corruption, by which
the Union was carried, I shall describe—not in my own words
but in those of Lord Plunket, the present Lord Chancellor of
Ireland. Listen, I pray you, to Lord Chancellor Plunket's de-
scription of these secondary means. They were, he said, and
he said truly--. _ _

The Deprivation of all Legal Protection to Liberty, or
Life.
" The familiar use of Torture.
" The Trial by Courts Martial.
" The forcible Suppression of Public Meetings.
" The total Stifling of Public Opinion, and the use of
Armed Violence."

You may imagine that men of the rank of Members of Par-
liament were not likely to be intimidated by these means.
But in Ireland at that period, no rank, no statism, no respecta-
bility, could protect the victim of despotic power : it was a
reign of terror. Sir Edward Crosbie, a Baronet of ancient
and most respectable family, of unquestionable loyalty, was
hanged by the sanguinary caprice of some officers of the Car-
low garrison. Mr. Devercux, of the county Wexford, was
hanged, it was afterwards said by mistake 1 and the fate of
young Mr. Byrne, of Ballymanus, acquitted, but executed—
left no man secure for one moment of his liberty or his life.
Sir, the Union was carried by more crimes than have ever
as yet been inserted in your calendar. Calling the Irish
Members scoundrels will not do ; it will not cover the hideous
atrocities by which that fatal measure, the Union, was achieved.
More of the villainy that achieved it was perpetrated out of the
House than within its walls. Blame me as much as you may,
for endeavouring to restore to Ireland that Legislature of
which she was so basely swindled and so criminally deprived.
I thank you for giving me this other opportunity of informing
the youth of Ireland how it was that their national indepen-
dence was annihilated. I confidently hope that the lesson
will not be thrown away ; and whilst I keep the boiling of their
young blood within legal and constitutional channels, I have
no fear but that they will in due time remember that their
country seas a nation, and must be a nation again—either by
being embodied upon equal terms in the British community, or
by obtaining- equal rights and liberties for themselves.

If this were the place for it, I could prove by historical do.
cuments that the Irish Parliament was, beyond any compa-
rison, more independent, and evinced more instances of disin-
terested patriotism in the course of a few years, than did the
Parliament of England from the accession of the House of
Brunswick to the death of George the Fourth.
If I had your talent for calling scoundrels, what should I
say of the British Parliament that passed a vote of approba-
tion of the Walcheren expedition ?—that voted as a matter of
fact that a pound note and a shilling were equal in value to a
golden guinea, at the very time that every member of the
House who happened to have a guinea in gold could at once
obtain for it a thirty-shilling note of the Bank of England ?
And, above all, that passed a vote cf approval of the sangui-
nary massacre of men, women and children—aye, of English
men, English women, and English children, by the yeomanry
and army at Manchester.
Scoundrels, indeed I—why the Irish Parliament rise in the
comparison, almost beyond the powers of calculation 1
Look, however, to modern times. Since 1829 the Irish
people at large have participated in the representation of their
own country. Compare the conduct of the majority of the
Irish representatives since that period with that of the English
Members, and you will find that we have voted for every exten-
sion of public franchise or privilege, and for the diminution of
every public burthen, whilst the majority of the English
Members in most instances have voted directly the other way,
There is no reason in the world why I should not be .con-
vinced that if the Union were repealed to-morrow, the Mem-
bers of the Irish Parliament would not (to say the least of
them) be as honest, as intelligent, as independent, and as
patriotic as any men who have ever sat in the British House of
Commons.

You are next pleased to propose your remedial measures for
Ireland. In the first place, after twining through all possible
mazes of culinary metaphors, you gravely suggest that I
should apply to Parliament to confiscate to the profit of the
poor of Ireland the titles of the Irish Union Peers, and the
pay and pensions and other bribes, of the majority who carried
the Union.

This would, indeed, be a wretched provision for the Irish
people. Ido not know what value could be set upon the titles
which were obtained in exchange for Union votes. We con-
sider them little better than nicknames, and, so far from desir-
ing to participate in them, the Irish poor are content that the
Union Lords should not only bear these nicknames, but should,
in addition, take the more appropriate title of " scoundrels,"
which you have bestowed upon them. Let them enjoy both ;
and let us say no more of that matter.
As to the bribery, indeed, and the pensions—that is quite
another business. These are materials of a different value.
The bribery was extended not only to the union Members of
Parliament, but to every man who could in any way influence
a vote, write a pamphlet, make a speech, or propose an ad-
dress in favour of that measure—not only to every man who
had any influence to support it but who affected to have such
interest. Here would be a lot of prizes, indeed, here would
be something to feed the poor—if we could get at it. Aye,
there lies the rub; that is the difficulty of difficulties. The
money has been expended, eaten, drank, gambled; squan-
dered in every vice and in every profligacy. The individuals
who received it have sunk into oblivion, and are as personally
rotten as they were politically so. They lived detested and
they died despised. HE, the leader of them all—Castlereagh
—avenged his betrayed country by cutting his own throat, to
avoid the false imputation of another horrible crime of which
he was guiltless. Oh ! how his country was revenged I Al-
most all the rest of them are dead and forgotten. There are
few, indeed, alive. Of the pensioners I know but one who
survives. There are, indeed, but few living, and it would be
trifling to strip these wretches. They are almost all gone—.
How are they blotted from the things that be I
How few—all weak and withered of their force,
Stand on the verge of dark eternity,
Like stranded wrecks ! the tide returning hoarse,
To sweep them from our sight.
No, Sir • your plan will never answer. You might as well
require the worthy Aldermen of the City of London to dis-
gorge for the benefit of the poor the civic feasts of the last
twenty years. Thy image is a coarse one, but it is not
therefore the less accurate.
Your next plan borders on the facetious. It is the having
a Protestant as well as a Catholic bishop in every diocese in
Ireland, at what you call the ample pay of 1,2001. a-year each.
As to the Catholic bishops, we have already one in every
entryh- seey v
wenouilnd, ailnld—eoeudr,
diocese • there being, I bless God,
archbishops and twenty-three bishops.
consider 1,2001. per annum each an Ample endowment ; bat
they are too wise and too pious to have anything at
r.-o,ltiesi::dnagtr-
with a state endowment. Pass them by.
You must surely be in jest when you talk of 1,2:004 a_ye
to a Protestant bishop. Why, what would
bishop be with 1,2001. a-year, Oh, ridiculous llt would be