The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-07 00:00:00

and I?roperty. Lord Clarendon, in his letter, observed
that Ireland had been too long trained to a system of
agitation, and that it was to secure to Ireland continued
repo te, so vitally essential to her prosperity, that he
aske I for the renewal of those extraordinary powers.—
He ( Mr. Moore) thought he could take to himself the
credi .t of having opposed and discountenanced the agita-
tion referred to at least as long, as steadily, and as ho-
nestly as her Majesty's Ministers. He remained in pri-
vate life for years because he would not lay down his
honour before the standard of agitation, while her Ma-
jesty's .Ministers were dispensing place and patronage
from tin use (the Treasury) benches beneath the wing of
one agitator, just as they were now sitting there under
the wing of another.—(Hear, hear.) Nothing, he
thought , was so bad as agitation, unless it was the aban-
donmeu t of public principle, and the persecution of for-
mer associates when they became no longer necessary.
Mr. :MUNT2 regretted to be obliged to say, that he
felt it q uite impossible to support the Government on
this oc casion.—(Hear, hear.) He always wished to
support them, when ho could consistently with justice
and honour ; but, if the same circumstances existed in
England as now existed in Ireland, he should not vote for
the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act—(Hear, hear)
—and, although there had been different circumstances,
it appeared to him, from the statement of the Home
Secretary, that they were so completely altvred that
there was no pretence for this measure.—( Hear, hear.)
As to the Lord• Lieutenant's letter, asking for certain
powers in order to prevent political agitation, where
would her Majesty's Ministers have been without
political agitation ?—(Hear, hear.) Where would the
liberties of England have been without agitation ?
(Hear, bear.) Every one had a right to agitate, if he
did it like an honest man, and he (Mr. Muutz) would
oppose any Government that would coerce the people
from doing it.—(Hear.)
Lord J. RUSSELL—It is very easy to follow
the course of the Hon. Gentleman who spoke last
but one, and when the immediate urgency of danger is
past, to laugh at that danger—(Hear, hear)—and when
security is obtained, to make light of the precautions by
which it was procured.—(Hear, hear.) I admit at once
that the case we have to lay before the House is not
similar to that which we had last year, when insurrec-
tion appeared to be impending—when the urgency was
so great that this House almost unanimously passed in a
single day a measure of such vital importance, and I will
say as hostile to the general liberties of the country,
as the measure now under consideration.—(Hear, hear.)
But when the Hon. Baronet (Sir H. W. Barron)
gives his reasons against the measure—(A laugh)—l
own that they appear to me to be reasons which my
Right Hon. Friend might very well have urged in his
opening speech.—(Hear, hear, and a laugh.) The Hon.
Gentleman says—" Waterford was in a state of the ut-
most alarm; it was expected that rebellion would imme-
diately break out; this measure was passed, and I now
find that the country around is more tranquil than it has
been for three years, that that alarm has subsided, that
confidence has taken the place of panic, and that men
feel they are no longer living under the apprehension of
outbreak." Why, I should have thought that was as
great a panegyric as could well be passed upon the effects
of the measure.—(Hear, hear.) But the lion. Gentle-
man gives further reasons, for he says—" I must say,
likewise, that the Act has been administered with great
leniency, that nothing could be more judicious or more
merciful than the conduct of the Lord Lieutenant in the
administration of the great powers confided to him."—
(Hear, hear.) If here is an Act which has not only
produced the most beneficial effects, but which has been
so administered that no fault is to be found with the au-

thority to whom that administration is confided—l say
here is a case for continuing at least for come time
longer the beneficial operation of that Act.—(A cry of
" Ohl" answered by cries of " Hear, hear I")—commit
ting it to the same administrator—(Hear, hear)—and
taking care not too soon to remove the bandage, lest the
wound should bleed afresh in consequence of which you
found it necessary to take your precautions.—(Hear.)
The lion. Gentleman who spoke early in this debate laid
great stress upon one particular paragraph of the Lord-
Lieutenant's letter, and endeavoured to infer from it that
it was on account of agitation, and because that agitation
was for an unattainable object, that the suspension of
the Habeas Corpus Act is now proposed. Now I think,
although there was some plausibility in that statement,
it took its whole force from separating that paragraph
from the general tenor of the letter, by removing it from
the context, and thus not placing before the eyes of the
House the whole case which the Lord-Lieutenant has
desired to place before them. It would not, I admit, be
any ground for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act
that an agitation was going on, and was for an unattain-
able object; but, when we have found that agitation,
after continuing for many years, and displaying in its
course a singuter mixture of vehemence and of patience,
of continued disappointment and of revived hopes—a
system which could only be kept up, as I believe, by
the influence and the talent of one man—has at length
led to what might have been expected some time
before—the separation and division of those
who agitated for that object into two parties,
the one still clinging to a hope that by continued
and organized agitation they might eventually attain
their ehject; the other declaring that it was useless to
expect anything from discussion—that the time had
arrived when they must take measures to prepare and
organize rebellion, and to attempt to wrest by physical
force that which they had failed in obtaining by petition,
by discussion and agitation,—then I say that the para-
graph of the Lord-Lieutenant's letter bears a more sig-
nificant sense, and is well worthy of being taken into
consideration by this House,—(llear.) Such has been
the course of events. There was a separations—the
Honourable Member for Limerick speaks of it him-
self—a separation Ie:AA-eon those who said that there
was still a hope of this which I maintain is an neat-
teinable object (in which I quite agree with the Lord-
Lieutenant), and who still said that they would con-
tinue their organized agitation for that purpose, and an-
other party who in the most open way, in a way I
believe to which there is no parallel in the his-
tory of the world, began declaring that their object was
treason—(Hear, hear)—that what they wished was to
drive the Lord-Lieutenant from the castle of Dublin, to
plant there the rebel flag, to kill or to seduce hrr Ma-
jesty's troops, to thrust from the soil of Ireland every
authority placed there by the Queen, to instal a Provi-
sional Government in the place of the legal Government
then existing in Ireland, and to inflict a blow upon what
one of them was pleased to call " the accursed British
empire."—(Hear, hear.) Such was the language used
and published, and the newspapers containing such
open avowals of treasonable designs were, as I have
been toll by Irishmen living in Ireland, having no
efficial authority there, read with avidity by the peasants
and tradesmen in the country and in the towns through a
great portion of Ireland. The Hon. Member says that
there was not such a course of prosecution taken by the
Lord-Lieutenant as would have put a stop to that evil in
its commencement. I totally deny that that was the
case. As soon as the Lord-Lieutenant could obtain
from the law officers an opinion that there was any
chance of a successful prosecution, he directed those
articles to be prosecuted.—(Hear, hear.) Those who
remember the events that took place last year may re-
collect that, in some instances, those prosecutions were
successful ; in several others they were defeated ; and I
may say that, in those cases in which they were defeated,
any man in this country reading the paragraphs that
were prosecuted would have said that sedition was the
mildest word that could be used with respect to their
character.—(Hear, hear.) But the evil became more
dangerous ; the effect of baffled prosecutions was to
give increased power to those who sought to effect their
purpose by rebellion. Clubs were formed ; those clubs
were directed to procuring arms ; about 7,000 members
were enrolled in Dublin alone ; the system spread with
marvellous rapidity ; almost in every town there was
a combination under some name or other with
a similar object in view. Precautions were thought
necessary. The lion. Member who spoke last but one
says that the Lord Lieutenant made the giants first.
gtoe otafkwear very in
and then slew them; all I can say is, that persons used
tthoe field,waanddidwahootheinskhoiat,nbtehaeeiartkkntoksteraled
great precautions—(Hear, hear)—lest an outbreak at
Dublin or elsewhere should cause a surprise and a sud-
den loss of blood, although the triumph might ulti-
mately rest with the Queen's troops.—(Hear.) Such
was the state of things when this House thought it ne-
cessary, on the demand of the Government for fresh
powers, to pass the Bill for a suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act. But although that Act was most effectual
—although the attempt at insurrection very quickly
failed, we are not to conclude from that that if no
precautions had been taken, if those prepara-
tions for rebellion had been allowed to go on
till harvest and the period immediately after hare
vest, there would not have been a sanguinary out-
break in Ireland, and a contest, in which I have
no doubt the Queen's troops and the loyal subjects of her
Majesty would have been successful, but in which their
success would have been attended with calamities such
as every Member of this House would deeply deplore.—
(Hear.) Why, then if, so far from its being "a mock
rebellion"—if; so far from there having been no danger,
there was considerable danger, and that danger was only
averted by extraordinary measures, I do say pause for a
time before you deprive the Lord-Lieutenant of the
means of preventing the commencement of similar move-
ments having a similar object in view.—(Hear.) The
Hon. Gentleman the Member for Waterford (Sir H. W.
Barron) spoke with respect to some other matters,
and, like many Members coming from his country, I
think he confounded things which are within the
power of Parliament, matters for which we may be
Justly reproached and criticised, wit's matters over
which we have no control whatever.—(Hear, hear.)
He said there was great discuntont in Ireland, and
that that was caused by the present state of poverty
and distress in that country. Now, with respect to
that distress, there are two circumstances most apparent.
There is one, which is the infliction of the loss of the
staple food of the country, beyond the power of man to
avert; and there is the choice of that particular food as
the staple food of the people, and that it was in the
power of man to prevent. It is a food which every one
knows is of so cheap and low a nature that those depend-
ing upon it cannot go to any cheaper food when they are
deprived of it.—(Hear, hear.) It is a kind of food that
does not keep beyond the next harvest like the corns of
different kinds, and its deficiency in one year cannot be
supplied by the abundance of another.—(llear.) It is,
moreover, a kind of food liable to disease, that often
sweeps away the greater portion of the crop. Now, in
the last year, in Ireland, after repeated losses, espe-
cially after the losses of 1845 and 1846, it was—l will
not say unnaturally, after being; for so long a time ac-
customed to it—but it was, as I have heard, the desire,
the passion, of great masses of the people to revive that
food—(Hear)—and there were no little means of comfort
remaining which the peasantry were not ready to part
nth in the hope of obtaining a renewal of the food, on
the plautiog and produce of which they had so lung re-
lied.—(Hear, hear.) The failure of the potato, however,
in the past year has been as bad as in any year ;
preced-
ing • and many who were ill the hope ei obtglan