The Sun.
London, England, 1836-12-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We have abridged from the Clare Journal an ac-
count of a meeting of the county of Clare, the High
Sheriff in the Chair, at which resolutions in favour of
Poor Laws for Ireland were unanimously adopted.
was justly observed by the High Sheriff, that the
protection of property, next to that of life, was among
the paramount duties of society. Was it not our duty
to give effect to this principle not alone in favour of
the more affluent classes, but also tb protect the value
of that which constituted the sole wealth of the poor,
the power of productive industry ? " When we hear
that in Ireland upwards of two millions of people are
in a slate of destitution, we know with certainty that
productive industry cannot be adequately protected.
There has been no want of legislation for Ireland, but
it has failed because it has had exclusively for its ob-
ject the interests, in the narrowest sense, of landlords
and parsons, without regard to the well-being of the
great body of the people ; and no community can pros-
per in which the rights and interests of all are not held
in due regard. We are under no apprehension for
landlords if productive industry be only protected,
for the share of produce which belongs to the land-
lords cannot possibly be withheld from them under a
system of law and order. The British Legislature,
carried away by its aristocratic sympathies, has been
blind to the great truth, that the paramount object
ought to be to secure the foundation of society. When
this is done there need be no fear concerning the orna-
mental parts of the social edifice. The spending class,
as Captain Hall calls the gentry, will always be found
where there is anything to spend.
es A well-regulated poor-rate," said the High-Sheriff,
" would in a degree have the effect of an absentee-tax,
from which the resident landed proprietors would derive
important advantages. We should be relieved from the
painful sense of living in the midst of a famishing popula-
tion. We should enjoy that security which results from
the habits of a people taught to respect the laws as the
fountain of their well-being ; the physical and moral condi-
tion of the country would progressively improve ; and the
higher or more affluent ranks, whether resident or ab-
sentee, would be compelled by the urgent sense of self-in-
terest to superintend the wants and ameliorate the condi-
tion of the humbler classes of the country. It is appre-
hended that a poor-rate may encroach upon rental ; but
whatever part is so applied will produce an abundant equi-
valent, and I know no more appropriate application of na-
tional rental than in protecting the great body of the pco-
pl from periodical starvation."
Obedience and protection cannot be separated. The
poor in Ireland receive no protection, and though the
law of the land demands obedience from them, the law
of nature, more powerful, tells them that they ought
not to give it. The divine law never sanctioned a
state of things in which millions of human beings are
deemed merely instruments to enable a few landlords,
through their competition for land, to take all the pro-
duce of the soil excepting the potatoes and water ne-
cessarily to keep the wretched producers in the lowest
state of' existence. The language used by the well-
known Mr. Thomas Steele at the meeting was cer-
tainly strong ; but how is it possible for a man of any
sensibility to witness Irish misery, and express himself
n regard to it in measured language ?
" I have had," he says,
." more familiar intercourse with
the perpetrators of agrarian outrage in Ireland than any
other living man, for I was among the Terry Alts of Glare,
and the %Vhitefeet in Kilkenny, at midday and midnight,
durieg the times of both insurrections. The Whitcfeet
leaders were some of the most diabolical miscreants who
ever infested the world with their pestiferous existence,
hut I wrote-with my own hand for Mr. Spencer
and his colleague that the outbreak of the Terry
Alt insurrection , in this county—an outbreak which
ori,;.inated in destitution and despair—was the very poor-
law of nature, and that the first Terry Alts were not
only justified and sanctified, but that they would net be
justified, before earth or before heaven, unless they had done
it.' I, of course, only speak of the outbreak which was th.a
iramethate, natural, inevitable, and sanctioned result of their
utter destitution, without any shadow of' sympr.tby on the
part of the landlords. I assuredly do not speak of these
fri,chtful and revolting atrocities, the robberies and cold-
blooded murders, and (lancing reels in female costume, and
with painted faces and their guns in their hands, around
dying victims, which subsequently disgraced our country,
and froze the blood with horror at the recital. I knew
and told at the time, that things would inevitably go on
from bad to worse unless measures were taken for the re-
lief of the destitute, for the example of the violation of the
law of society by the destitute was followed by those who
were not in destitution ; and that which was justifiable and
sanctified in one case was deeply criminal in another. By
rebelling against the law of society in Ireland, which af-
forded him no succour, the truly destitute human being
proved his allegiance to the paramount law of nature. Was
lie calmly to see his wife and children perish around him with
hunger, and to perish himself, in a country where there not
only was noscarcity, but where there was a profusion and
superabundance of food, as fine in quality as any in Eu-
rope ? I recollect I wrote in my evidence, for my friend, Mr.
Spencer, and often alluded to it afterwards when I passed
evenings with him at his house in Dublin, the question so
powerfully put, and with such pathetic power, by some of
the first Terry Alts in this county, when they could not
get as much ground 'as even a quarter of an acre to sow
potatoes—' Are we to see our wives and children starving
around us ? are we to look on this quietly, and to starve
ourselves in the neighbourhood of great tracts of land and
districts where bullocks are splitting with fat, to he ex-
ported to England, to pay the rents of absentees, who are
utterly regardless of what becomes of us, from whom their
incomes and luxuries are derived ?' "
The idea of dissolving the Union between Ireland
and this country is, of course, not to be tolerated; but
when Parliament scouted Repeal it necessarily came
under a solemn obligation to do justice to Ireland.
That justice still remains to be done. Ireland has hi-
therto owed her misery to the English connection ; for
had not the resources of England been at the disposal
of the ruling party in Ireland, the evils of that country
would have soon brought with them their own
relief. There is not, in short, on the face of the
earth a country of the dimensions of Ireland with
one-fourth of the people in a state of destitu-
tion ; and such a state of things can only be
perpetuated by means of foreign bayonets. Were
England to leave the Irish to themselves the anarchy
would no doubt be frightful ; but out of that
anarchy a more natural state of things would
ultimately arise. Let the British Legislature bear in
mind that British connection has alone rendered it
possible to delay the remedy, till the evils have accu-
mulated to a magnitude frightful to contemplate. But
former neglect of duty ought not to be a pretext for
still further neglect. The happiness and prosperity of
the people of this island are involved in the question,
and the most ordinary foresight ought to teach us
that in neglecting the Irish we are laying up a store
of calamities for ourselves. In the excellent work of
Mr. iVl'Culloch, just published, " A Statistical Ac-
count of the British Empire," there is an able article
in the second volume on a provision for the poor in
Ireland. He justly pronounces a provision for the
Poor to be the one thing needful in that country :
" The cottiers" he observes, cling with desperate te-
nacity to the patches of land, and no wonder. They are
the only resource on which they have to depend, and if
turned out of them they can hardly escape falling into
the extremest destitution. But as the same calamity
that has overtaken one, or a few, may equally overtake
others, the whole peasantry are instinctively led to com-
bine together, the interest of each being identified with
that of his order, every one looks with detestation upon
any individual, bold enough to come into the place
of an ejected cottier. By so doing he makes him_
self a common enemy, and is marked out for exem-
plary vengeance, which rarely fails to overtake him,
unless he purchase at a high price the good will of the
tenant that has been ejected. It is quite a mistake to sup-
pose, as many have done, that the Irish poor are wantonly
savage and destructive. Nine-tenths of the outrages they
commit are really the result of calculation and foresight, not
of reckless and sudden impulses. They are the efforts of
the peasantry to protect themselves from ruin—efforts
forced upon them by the oppressive conduct of many land•
lords, and by the want of any refuge for the destitute. To
such an extent, indeed, is the present combination of the
occupiers of the soil carried, that whatever may be the
cause of one of them leaving his possession if good will'
be not paid—in other words, if a guarantee of quiet pos-
session be not previously obtained—no other tenant dare
enter upon it. This is so well understood in many parts,
particularly in the south, that the landlord does not ven-
ture upon removing a tenant, though only holding from
year to year, so long as he pays his own rent, unless by
Ins own consent, and even in that case the occupier uni-
formly sells his good will.' This extraordinary state of
things, so unlike what obtains in England or any other
country, has gone far to subvert the right of property ;
it forms an insuperable bar to all improvement ; and
unless effectual measures be resorted to for its suppression,
it may, and indeed most probably will, terminate at no dis-

tant period in the abolition of rent. The institution of a
compulsory provision appears to be the only thing calcu-
lated to overcome this great difficulty. Were it established,
ejection from a small farm and juin would no longer be
identical. The ejected cottier and his family would be
...

supplied with the means of subsistence till they were con-
veyed to the colonies, or till they found some means of
getting employment and subsistence at home."
We quite agree with Mr. M'Culloch that a compul-
sory provision for the poor would lay the foundation of
prosperity and good order. It is quite impossible that
men who are state of destitution will allow other

men to enjoy u olested the fruits of their industry.
We have faired the Irish with an Established
Church ; but the Legislature has forgotten the first
precept of the Christian religion, to do to others as we
should wish them to do to ourselves. The Christian
religion is violated in the condemnation of millions to
destitution that a few thousands may feed in luxury.—
Morning Chronicle.
It is not the first time by a thousand that the coun-
try has had reason to charge these Whigs, who inno-
cently call themselves " Reform Ministers," with hav-
ing made a somewhat mercantile use of that same well-
sounding word " reform." The wholesale packing of
Parliamentary boroughs, by the preference openly and
shamelessly given to such as were sure to be swayed
by Whig-Radical influence, over those where Conser-
vative connections had anything like an equal chance
of success, has been pretty effectually pointed out to
public observation. The packing of the local magis-
tracy, whereby gentlemen of education and respecta-
bility have had their pretensions set aside in favour of
individuals whose fitness for the office consisted in the
excesses of their factious violence, and in their habits
of restless turbulence and agitation, has been signa-
lized in many parts of England. The whole scope
and tendency of the municipal " reforms," as
planned originally by the O'Connell Ministers, was
to set Whig-Radicalism on horseback in all the
towns throughout the kingdom, and beat to the
earth every element of opposition—that is, every par-
ticle of free agency, among the rate-paying inhabitants.
It is to the House of Lords we owe it, that the pro-
jected consequences of the scheme have been, if not
entirely frustrated, yet so considerably mutilated and
crippled as to afford the nation some little breathing
time, with a reasonable opportunity of repairing what
may be defective in the operation of these new cor-
porate undertakings, before they ripen into fatal and
irretrievable mischiefs. That much exists in the
working of the Corporation Bill, which calls for the
further interposition of Parliament, we have daily
knowledge. That the irresponsible power and unre-
dressed wrong inherent in the framing of the ineq.ure
are made manifest by complaints from every part of
England, can be testified by hundreds of our corre-
spondents ; nor need we go to the United States of
North America for proof, that of all tyrants, a tyrant
'injoritg is the most insolent, the least alive to stings
of shame or conscience, and the most difficult to be en-
dured by those whom it insults and oppresses. It is
worst of all when those local functionaries, who are
presumed by law to he safeguards and protectors of the
rights of citizens against illegal outrage, become them-
selves accomplices of the " tyrant majority," in its per-
petration, and when, from the perverse framing of the
" Reform" statute, or its incongruity with the general
maxims of justice, a wrong of which the Reform Govern-
ment" permits, or rather invites, the commission, in its
subordinate partisans, is such, that the superior tribunals
of the country find themselves unable to correct. it. In the
Kentish Observer sent to us a few days ago, a case of
municipal oppression is described, which, from the sort
of hands that corporate power has got into, it was ea:-.;y
to foresee would not be of rare occurrence, and for
which it now appears the law of England affords no
adequate reparation. A letter from a correspondent,
signed " A Subscriber," confirms, and explains more
fully, the statement of the Kentish newspaper, which
refers indeed to an example, not merely of gross, but
of complicated wrong. No less than 15 Conservative
burgesses of the town of Hythe were disfranchised in
effect by a Radical mayor and a Radical assessor, lest
a majority of Conservative town-councillors should
have been chosen. This has been made the ground
of motion for a mandamus, and so far as the matter
has yet proceeded, it would appear that the injured
parties have no redress to look for from the Court of
King's Bench, nor the Conservatives of England the
slightest guarantee against an universal disfranchise-
ment of all but Radical burgesses, on some frivolous,
albeit illegal, pretence or other, for which injustice the
Learned Judges of that Court may be wholly unable
to discover a remedy by any fair construction of the
laws which they are bound to administer. Sir W.
Follett, if any lawyer could succeed, must have been
successful in procuring the issue of the writ for which
lie moved their Lordships. But it seems that the
alleged wrong-doer, the Mayor of the borough, is not
to be visited by mandamus for acts committed during
the last year, because his twelvemonth of maladminis-
tration has just expired ; and neither can the Mayor of
the present year be called upon to answer for such
wrong doings, because (although he happens to be
the same individual, re-elected by his own tyrant ma-
jority), the writ cannot be served upon the new Mayor
for the transgressions of the old one. We are in a
pretty hopeful way with these " Reformers." At this
rate, there is not la burgess in England who may not,
by the arbitrary dictum of a Radical Mayor or ac-
cessor, be stripped of all his municipal privileges,
without the least prospect of indemnification or pro-
tection. So much for the precious Whigs.—Times.
It will be seen by the letters of our Dublin correspon-
dent, that a deputation from the tradesmen of Dublin,
accompanied by Mr. O'Connell, waited on Lord Mor-
peth on last Monday, for the purpose of ascertaining
the intentions of Government respecting the introduc-
tion of poor laws into Ireland. In making this inquiry,
the deputation stated its conviction that great caution
would be necessary in the introduction of any measure
for the relief of the poor, and that in the opinion of
those whom it represented no measure to that effect
should in the first instance extend beyond the relief of
the aged and the sick. From the reply of Lord Mor-
peth, it appears that it is the intention of the Govern-
ment to introduce an Irish Poor Law Bill in the next
session, and that the Law Officers of the Crown are at
present engaged in its preparation. His Lordship, in
stating that he was not prepared to communicate the
precise provisions of the proposed Bill, informed the
deputation that the Government would take any sug-
gestion which might be made to them into consideration.
We have already discussed the question of poor laws
for Ireland at considerable length, and have not as yet
seen any reason to change the conviction which we
have always expressed, that poor laws should be re-
garded in no other light than as an immediate alterna-
tive against starvation, and that their introduction into
Ireland should be considered merely as a temporary
expedient to relieve existing distress, until their neces-
sity be removed by the enactment of measures of a
sounder policy. Rather than that a permanent sys-
tem of poor laws should be established in Ireland, we
should prefer leaving the people as they are, until the
accumulation of their wrongs and sufferings should
Make the observance of the natural and moral law of
self-preservation paramount to legislative enactments ;
in other words, we should prefer seeing them help
themselves, even by questionable means, rather than rest
content with the supply of their mere animal necessi7
acuities
ties, and drag out a brutal existence heedless of
tfheir
of being,
degradation. In the one case, the better
their though misapplied, would
be kept still i
healthy ton in
in '
action and might be restored to a
e ; but the other, all men's best attri-
butes and aspirations would be destroyed ; and with
time consciousness •
of having lost his independence, lie
incentive toa exertion, and become a
would lose the
very drone—a nuisance upon society. We ask the
most distressed
pauper in Ireland the question—
whether he would
Prefer the means of procuring suste-
nance by his own exertion, or by parochial relief ? It
is obvious t • every independent mind • min must prefer the
former; ! one one but the lazy and indolent could
choose t., r. For which class of persons, then,
shall we le''' " ? Shall we open
te a mode of occupa-
tion to industry, or pander to the sloth of idleness ?
We are aware that there
,are in Ireland masses of
people whose necessities are so urgent, that to doom
them to wait until the operation of reformed :
institu-
tions—even if these reforms were not so strongly op-
posed as they are—might give them relief, would be
equivalent to passing on them a sentence of death.

For these we are anxious that relief should immediately

be provided ; but as in Ireland, above all countries,
pauperism is the result of bad and oppressive laws,
and not of natural deficiencies, we wish to remove the
cause rather than apply a remedy to the effect ; and,
therefore, it is an improved system of government, and
not to the establishment of poor-laws, that we shall
look for permanent relief for the miseries of our Irish

fellow-subjects.—Morning Advertiser.
The subject of church rates has been very well and
seasonably handled, in an article of the newly published
number of the quarterly Review. We do not mean
to say that any new matter has been brought forward,
or that an elaborate dissertation has been given upon
either the law or the history of church rates ; but the
reviewer has done something much better—he has
with brevity and distinctness, and considerable force,
stated the public question as it at present stands, and
ranged together the arguments, which, if not new, are
not the less cogent, for resisting the attempts of those
who would take away the national support of church
buildings, which is afforded under the name of church
rates. As this subject will doubtless be one of those
which will engage much and earnest attention during
the ensuing Session of Parliament, it is very expe-
dient—to the end of its fair and holiest considera-
tion by the 'public, as well as by Parliament—that
the facts which bear upon each side of the ques-
tion should be laid down with temperateness of man-
ner, and, if possible, without any prejudice of judgment.
While the office of a quarterly reviewer is to lay before
the public the whole of a question which he undertakes
to discuss, it is obvious that the space of a newspaper
is seldom sufficient for more than one or two principal
points at a time ; we shall, therefore, with reference to
the subject in question, touch upon that 'point which
is most frequently set up by Dissenters against Church
rates. Why, says the Dissenter, should Ibe obliged
to pay for maintaining a building which I never use—
nay, more, for a building which is devoted to a use
that Ido not altogether approve ? This is an objec-
tion which many think a cogent one, and which al-
most all will admit has a kind of surface plausibility
in it which entitles it to an answer. The sufficient
answer we conceive to be this—that though there is
no reasonable claim upon the Dissenter as an isolated
individual, to pay for that which he does not ask for,
and does not think he requires ; yet, looking upon
him as a member of a national community, and en-
joying the advantages arising out of that membership,
there is a reasonable claim upon him for the support
of the national Church. In other words, the Dis-
senter, as well as the Churchman, has the advantages
of a national Government. He is protected against
the aggression of those stronger than himself, whe-
ther they be his neighbours, or foreigners ; a national
Church is one of the institutions which the national
Government deems necessary, and it is as a subject
of that Government, not as a user of the church build-
ing, that Church-rate is payable by the Dissenter.
No man in a political society can he allowed to cut and
carve out 'of the regulations of that society the part
which lie likes, and will pay for ; and, on the other
hand, the part which lie does not like, and will not
pay for. He ought to take the whole or none. If
lie does not like the national institutions, let him try
to alter them by lawful means, having regard to the
interests of the whole community ; and if he Cannot
succeed, it is his business to be quiet, or to go else-
where, to seek national institutions more to his mind.
The Dissenter may think that there ought not to be
a national Church at all ; and if be does think so,
there is nothing unreasonable in his taking lawful and
honest means to induce the nation to dispense with a
national Church ; but that is a very different matter
from the refusal to support a national Church, while
such an institution exists. Such a refusal is excessively
unreasonable, for it is a denial to submit to the acci-
dent, while the subject out of which the accident springs
is submitted to. The Dissenter may answer that he
resists the accident (church rates) because he finds he
is able to do so with some effect, and does not resist
the subject (an Established National Church), be-
cause the preponderating power in the nation is so strong
in its favour, that if he attempted to resist it, he could
have no chance of success. But this is not honest. It
is as if a man should say, I will resist the tax-gatherer
because I am stronger than he, and able to beat him,
but I will not attempt to get rid of the tax, for I
know lam not strong enough to succeed ! There are
some who resist Church-rates, as they say, for con-
science sake ; we take leave to tell them that it is a
very dull sort of conscience which thus leads them,
and we fear it must have its seat neither in the heart
nor in the head, but in the breeches pocket. Con-
science, which is led by •reason, would teach them
something very different,—it would teach them that
so long as the national institution subsists, it is upon
the presumption that it is a benefit to the whole na-
tion, and that every member of the national community
is bound to support it. The Quarterly Reviewer shows
that there are several matters approved of by the Dis-
senters, which, by a decree of the Legislature, the
whole nation is bound to support, though they are re-
pugnant to that which a faithful member of the Pro-
testant Established Church believes to be right. But
Protestants of the Elstablishment do not on that ac-
count attempt to separate themselves from their na-
tional obligations, in order to spite the Dissenters. It
were easy to go a stage further with the argument,
and show that the National Church is a benefit to
the whole nation, including, of course, the Dissenters
—but that point we cannot enter upon at present.—
Morning Herald.
Sir William Molesworth has had a long correspon
deuce with Sir Hussey Vivian upon various subjec
the representation of East Cornwall, the ballot, the
position of the Government, the treachery of the
Whigs, and the triumph of the Radicals. Sir Wil-
liam Molesworth, it seems, in announcing his purpose
to retire from his seat for East Cornwall, declared his
intention to support any candidate who would pledge
himself to vote for the ballot; and this declaration
strangely enough appears to have induced Sir Hus-
sey Vivian, who will not pledge himself to vote for
the ballot, to calculate on Sir William Molesworth's
assistance. Sir William Molesworth has given to
the world, in the columns of the Morning Chro-
nicle, the elaborate epistles in which the reluctant
General' is lengthily and laboriously undeceived.
In our observation of the literary duel between
the Whig and the Radical all our sympathies are
naturally on the side of the former. Sir Hussey, we
believe to be a gallant officer, and an honourable man.
He has not forfeited his own character, by malignant
attacks on the character of others. He has not dis-
graced the Parliament with calumnies, nor the press with
libels. He has not used for dishonest purposes, do-
cuments obtained by not more dishonest means. He
is not the Editor of the London Review. But our
predilection for one of the disputants, does not blind
us to the result of the dispute. Sir William has un-
doubtedly the best of it—not because he is an able
writer, for we never saw sentences more awkwardly
put together than Sir William's, always excepting
Lord John's ; but simply because he has no occa-
sion for equivocation or reserve. Sir William writes
badly, but he writes what he thinks ; Sir Hussey
writes badly, and writes what he does not think. Sir
William asks, " Are the Ministers you prepose to sup-
open question ?"
impertinence if I
showed
psoirr.tHpurespseayrerdeptioiems,ak,,e
"Not
te
hbaavlilnogt
a an
seat in the House
of
any Commons,
nn
curiosity
shouldnsi
ty nn btehe point.
gui l tSir William y
in-
quires—" Will you, yourself holding an office under
these Ministers, be free to vote according to your opi-
nion on the ballot ?" Sir Hussey blusters, No love
of office shall prevent me from exercising my discretion
upon every important question." Sir William thrusts
boldly, " Aye or no—will you vote for the ballot ?"
and Sir Hussey parries clumsily, " Neither aye nor
no ; I have not made up my mind." The young
statesman and the old soldier both see very clearly the
difficulties of the position of the Whigs ; and the same
circumstances which make the assailant valiant make the
defender afraid. The fact is, Sir William Moles-
worth has stated, and as we have stated before him,
that of the supporters of Lord Melbourne's Cabi-
net, both in Parliament and out of Parliament, a
majority are for a revolution. A gentleman who ad-
dresses the electors of a popular town or county with a
statement that he is favourable to Lord Melbourne's
Administration, but hostile to a revolution, at once
disgusts the larger half of those whose aid he solicits.