The Sun.
London, England, 1836-04-12 00:00:00

•
consequence of the arrival of letters from corres-
pondents in Ireland, stating that the Tory party there,
headed by several Members of Parliament,- aro pre-
paring a crusade against any measure which the Whigs
may bring forward for the relief of the Irish Poor.
Their first effort-will of course. be directed against the
reports of the Poor Law Commissioners ; their next to
:brow the country into such a state of excitement and con-
fusion that the Government will throe up their scheme
in despair. One might naturally suppose that the
starvation of 2,385,000 individuals, for thirty weeks in
every year, would afford a neutral space upon which
the Orangeman and the Catholic might take their
stand as Christians and as brethren in the performance
of a common act of charity. Were an Englishman
told that so large a proportion of his fellow-creatures
and countrymen were at all times insufficiently proVided
with the commonest necessaries of life—that their ha-
bitations were wretched hovels—that several members
of a family were accustomed to sleep together upon
straw, or the bare ground, sometimes without so much
as a blanket to cover them—that they were so huddled to-
gether to keep alive the animal Ives:nth in each other—
that their food for twenty-four hour:: often consisted of
no more than one scanty meal of dry potatoes or sea-weed
—and that their clothing scarcely sufficed to conceal
their nakedness ; lie would not stop to inquire, before
opening his coffers to relieve them, whether they
belonged to the faction of his friends or his
enemies—whether they gave spiritual precedence to
the KING, the Presbytery, or the Pepe. And
yet such is the actual condition of the Irish
poor at this very moment. We have not put the case
hypothetically : the miseries which we have supposed
as sufficient to rouse the active sympathies of every
man in England, are now preying upon the vitals of
Ireland. Nay, we have used but the very language
of the Poor Law Commissioners, in the first section
of the Third Report, now presented by his MAJESTY
to both Houses of Parliament. Although in an ar-
ticle which appeared in this Journal of the Gth inst.,
we quoted the identical passage in the Report to which
we more particularly allude, we are confident that the
public will thank us for re-inserting it here :
" A great body of them (the able-bodied labourers) are
insufficiently provided at any time with the commonest ne-
cessaries of life. Their habitations are wretched hovels,
several of a family sleep together upon straw or upon the
bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes even
without so much to cover them ; their food commonly con-
sists of dry potatoes, and with these they are at times so
scantily suplied as to be obliged to stint themselves to one
spare meal in day. There- are even instances of per-
sons beini, driven !,v hunger to seek sustenance in wild
herbs. They sometimes jet a herring, or a little milk,
but they never get meat, excC:it at Christmas, Easter, or
Shrovetide.
" Some go in search of employment !.o Great Britain
during the harvest, others wander through Ireland) with the
same view.
" The wives and children. of many are occasionally
obliged to beg ; they doso reluctantly, and with shame,
and in general go to a distance from home, that they may
not be known.
" Mendicancy, too, is the sole resource of the aged and
impotent of the poorer classes in general, when children or
relatives are unable to support them. To it, therefore,
crowds are driven for the means of existence ; and the
knowledge that such is the fact leads to an indiscriminate
giving of alms, which encourages idleness, imposture, and
general crime."
Is not our previous statement borne out by the ap-
palling picture here exhibited by the Commissioners ?
And yet this picture has nothing in it to awaken the
dormant sympathies of the great bulk of the Irish
landed aristocracy. They see nothing contrary to "the
moral fitness of things" in the mendicancy of thou-
sands of their fellow-creatures, willing and able to sup-
port themselves by honest industry, were they only pro-
vided with employment. They regard themselves as
superior to the drudgery of rendering the poor comfort-
able or happy as the irresponsible inheritors of the soil,
not as the trustees deputed by society to regulate and
improve its management. It. is time they were taught
a different lesson. We know from experience that
is useless to appeal to them as landlords, as the natural
guardians of the poor, as, Christians, and as Irishmen,
against the co.otinuaelce of a state of things which is
fast reducing the kingdom to beggary. They want
the sense to comprehend the extent to which, as land-
lords, they must suffer in consequence of the miserable
state of the working classes. Of the natural guardian-
ship of the poor, and the relative duties imposed by
their station in society, four-fifths of them are as ignorant
as Hottentots. The Christainly duties of the Irish
landed aristocrat—as they are generally understood and
practised by the members of that class—are easily
enumerated :—an annual subscription to the .Kildare-
street Society ; ditto to four or five Biblical Societies
for opening the eyes of the spiritually blind of all
nations ; from fifty to ten pounds a year in aid of the
funds of some coterie of spinster theologians, engaged
in the conversion of every hare-legged bog-trotter who
is willing to exchange an old creed for a new pair of
breeches ; and in seasons of general famine a sub 7
scription for a country soup shop. We know that
there are a few'excellent Irish landlords, but the Com-
missioners found them so few in number, that they
have likened their estates "to green spots in a de-
sert !" Hence the obvious necessity of resorting to
compulsory measures, in order to oblige them to do jus-
tice to society, for whose benefit they are allowed to
inherit their estates.
We observe that two of our Contemporaries (the
Courier and the Chronicle) are 'opposed to the prin-
ciple of making the mortgagees on Irish estates con-
tribute to the poor-rate. The following is the sub-
stance of a leading article which appears in the Chro-
nicle of this morning :
" In our comments on the third Report of the I, ish Poor-law
Commissioners, we observed that the measure recommended
by them of making the mortgagees on Irish estates contribute
to the burden of the poor-rate was somewhat bold. The
Courier attacks the principle of the measure, and adds that it
will be inoperative. " The Connoissioncrs (says our Con-
tcn-roorary) will not be able to perpetrate the meditated in-
justice. They should have kept in mind the sound principle
with which Mrs. Glass commences her recipe for manufactur-
ing hare soup ; 'first, says filo sagacious matron—first catch
your hare ;' so say we to the Archbishop of Dublin—first
catch the mortgagees, and then thrust }our hands into their
pockets l"
" The principle of the Commhsioners is no doubt liable to
ohjection. ' The security of the investment of the incum-
branee,' they say, 'is bound up with the productiveness of the
laud, and the well-being of its inhabitants.' fhe incum-
brancer gains nothing by the improved condition of an estate,
and it is hardly fair that he should contribute towards its
amcliort.tion. the rate of interest agreed on is not arbitrary,
but determined by the nature of the security and the state of
the Money Market, and it may therefore be doubted whether
the Legislature should interfere with the contracting parties."
Witticisms should
go for very little when applied to
time elucidation of such measures as a Poor Law for
Ireland. 'We shall therefore simply observe, in answer
to the Courier and the Chronicle, that the Commis-
sioners have not been umnindful of Mrs. Glass's
principle ; for they have collared the mortgagees, and
hold them as firmly as if they were screwed in
a vice. The Nvay in which they have done this,
is the best that could possibly be imagined. By
levying the rate on the property of the mortgager,
amid giving him the power of deduction from the
ti:nount of the legal incumhrancc upon it, they have
secured the mortgagee. But the Chronicle adds, that
as " the ineumbrancer gains nothing by the improved
condition of an estate, it is hardly fair that he should
contribute towa:ds its amelioration." Our Contempo-
rary must know little of Ireland to snake use of such
language as this. The incumbrances on most Irish
estates swallow up nearly the whole of the rental. The
mortgagees are, in nine cases out of ten, the bona fide
proprietors. Several of the encumbered estates, from
the increasing poverty of the people, are not even
able to pay off the encumbrances upon them.
Is it then no advantage to the mortgagees to
so improve this property as to secure to them
fair return for their capital ? Do they gain
nothing by a change of system, which renders
what they accepted as a doubtful security, and only
paid for accordingly, a safe and a profitably transferable
investment ? Every one at all acquainted with the
bn oref
omfotritigem.giiacrsd uti:romn Irishsexa lcteadm
from
do
romprthpe
ett.,roinwicisrt.
To suffer, therefore, the incumbrancers to bcro free,
would be to strip the Irish landlords of their estates
altogether.
We cannot just now enter fully into the detail's of
the measures proposed by the Commissioners for the re-
lief of the poor of Ireland ; but as the substance of the
Third Report will be embodied in the Bill which the
Government is about to submit to Parliament, we shall