The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-27 00:00:00

, r ftje
_ Inn 4

LONDON, FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 1849.

Three important Bills relating to Ireland were, last
night, introduced in the House of Commons, while
the Lord Chancellor, in the House of Lords, brought
forward another measure, the utility of which has
long been recognised. The mischievous results of
the existing leasehold tenure of lands in Ireland have
been commented on by every writer on Irish sub-
jects. The greater portion of the lands in that
country are held under leases, for what are termed
"lives renewable for ever." This tenure has proved
a fertile source of litigation between the nominal
landlords, who have no real reversion in
the lands, and but little beneficial interest be-
yond the reserved rent and the tenants.
The former were anxious to take advantage of any
errors that might have been committed by the latter
which might disentitle them to the benefit or the
covenants for perpetual renewal, and this anxiety was
increased by their legal advisers, fur the cost of a
suit for renewal generally fell upon the plaintiff, who
applied for a specific performance of the agreement.
The lands were neglected in the interim, neither
party being willing to expend money on the improve-
ment of lands that might eventually turn out to be
the property of others. The doubtful character
of the ' title was thus exceedingly in-
jurious to all partiikr-Ao the landlord, to the
tenant, and still more so to the labouring population
of the vicinity, who were deprived of the employ.
nr4,,lv'hich they might otherwise reasonably have
elpected, and who were thus forced to look for main-
tenance to the poor-rates, in place of earning their
own support by their honest industry. Lord COT..
TENHAM has, however, at length, in accordance with
the recommendation of Lord DEVON'S Commission,
brought forward a measure by which the tenant will
be enabled to convert these leaseholds, renewable
for ever, into fee-farm grants, by securing a fair
rentak.to the head landlords thereout ; and there were
few subjects relating to Ireland, on which legislation
was more urgently required.
In the House of Commons, the Premier brought
forward a 13111 to amend the Acts passed
for the relief of the destitute poor in
Ireland. His Lordship brings forward this measure
'ell VI- . • nment responsibility, and without wait-
' -- 1
,;ice . 44 " .1"q• .rt of the Select Committee which had
Isle - -,-4tt- • •
' . ,:;: . i.,y. .to inquire into the subject. We have
filt.-414.4,."1". at considerable length to the Mini-
',' t' • t'''' 1,. . dations to that Committee, which
4
. 0 .." ; . ti. • "
_ t:,! ' 1:110, 8 of the De Vii meow. We Dab
47

14

11

therefore, shortly state that its principal features
shall be a maximum of five shillings in the pound, on
each separate electoral division—that any
balance is
to be provided for by a rate, not exceeding 2s.in the
amount
pound, on the entire union in which that electoral
that can be
district is situated. The highest
therefore levied, even on the worst circumstanced
land, will be seven shillings in the pound. Any
further surplus must, of course, be provided far eitl..er
by a national rate in aid or from the Cemeolidated
Fund. There are other minor alterations. which are,
generally speaking, steps in the right direction. The
Poor-law Commissioners are to be empowered to
settle past liabilities in certain unions, so as to enable
them to start fairly, without being crushed by the
weight of arrears that could never be levied, and
which would only have , the effect of
preventing the cultivation of lands that
were heavily in arrear for poor-rate. The landlord
is to be empowered to deduct the proportionate
amount of poor-rate that he may be required to pay
from jointures and rent-charges created under family
settlements. The manner in which the rate has
hitherto been divided between the landlord and tenant
is also to be modified, and henceforward the tenant
cannot under any circumstances deduct more than
one-half the rate from the landlord. And, in order
to encourage improvements, no re-valuations are to
take place for a period of seven years. These
are the main features of the present Bill,
it being intended that other provisions connected with
the subject, which are at present under consideration,
shall be made the objects of special legislation.
By far the most important, however, of the con-
templated enactments is the Bill to facilitate the
sale of Incumbered Estates in Ireland, which was
brought forward in a most clear and lucid speech by
the Solicitor-General. The Right Honourable
Gentleman candidly admitted that the Act of
last session had proved a complete failure, that its
chief provisions had been found wholly ineffectual up to
the present time. The forms of ,the various proceed-
ings also entailed considerable expense on the unfor-
tunate proprietors, whose embarrassments were already
sufficiently onerous, without the addition of enormous
costs to absorb the trifling balances that might remain
for their use, after satisfaction of the various charges
and incumbrances affecting their former properties.
Any [trifling alterations could scarcely remove
the adnitted grievances, 5o long as the
rules of the Court of Chancery were strictly
adhered to. Nothing would prove really effectual
that did not confer on every purchaser a Parlia-
mentary title, constituting a completely nett, root of
title. This view, we are happy to say, the Ministers
have adopted, and an enlarged and comprehensive
measure has indeed been brought forward, consti-
tuting a new tribunal, which shall be fettered by no
petty rules, but may deal with the properties en-
trusted to its charge on purely equitable principles
such as those by which we might suppose the
Court of Chancery to be influenced on its first
creation, before a series of precedents had arisen to
control the discretion and restrict the power of the
presiding judge. A Commission is to be formed
consisting of three paid Commissioners, with a secre-
tary, who should follow the course formerly pursued
by the Commissioners appointed to distribute the
20,000,0001. compensation to the owners of West
Indian estates. That they should frame a set of
rules for their own guidance, to be submitted to the
Privy Council in Ireland; and when sanctioned by
it, to have the same power as if enacted by Par-
liament ; and they should be empowered from
time to time to alter and vary these rules. They
are not, however, to make any rules by which fees of
any description should be levied. This is indeed an
important restriction, by which many serious
objections to the Commission will be obviated.
These Commissioners may deal with every applica
tion that may be submitted to them within three
years from the date of their appointment. The
period will, however, be probably extended for two
years in addition. These Commissioners will be in-
vested with all the powers of the Court of Chan-
cery with respect to the production of evidence.
Their decision will be final and unimpeachable. Upon
application of an owner or incumbrancer, they will
be authorised, after such preliminary inquiries as
they my deem expedient, to proceed to a sale of the
property in such manner, and in such portions, as
they may think proper. The conveyance will be
made in a sh)rt and cheap form, similar to that
now adopted in the conveyance of Crown
lands, and it will vest the property in the pur-
chaser, giving him a clear title against all the world.
He will have no difficulty in obtaining the lands, for
something similar to a writ of possession will be is-
sued. He will thus get the lands he may have con-
tracted for with a clear, and simple, and, above all, an
imperishable title. The purchas3 money will be
paid into the Bank of Ireland, to be distributed among
,he parties who may establish their claims with re-
spect thereto.
This is indeed what was required for Ireland—
what we have so often insisted on, and what Sir
ROBERT PEEL more recently advocated. We con-
gratulate the Government on having, even at the
eleventh hour, cast aside the trammels by which their
good intentions were neutralised and rendered of but
little effect. At length they have brought forward a
measure suited to the emergency, and its beneficial
results will be speedily perceptible in the amelioration
of the social conditioa of Ireland, which will no longer
constitute the chief difficulty of the Cabinet for the
time being.

The Solicitor-General also brought forward
another Bill, granting additional powers to persons
having estates for life, or other limited interests, to
grant leases of the lands which were for the time
being wholly vested in them. This will also be pro-
ductive of the most beneficial results throughout the
entire country.

Denmark would appear to be losing ground before
the flagitious but victorious Prussians. At least
such would seem to be the result of the second cam-
paign in Jutland, according to the statements made in
the German newspapers. We rather suspect, how-
ever, that true prudence suggests to us the propriety
of receiving those statements cum grano salis. Re-
membering the sort of ministerial filtration which
the intelligence from Hungary has all along been
subjected to on its passage through Vienna, we can-
not but conceive to ourselves the possibility, just the
bare possibility, that the accounts from Schleswig
are, by the contrivance of the Berlin Cabinet, passed
through precisely such another official colander.
Knowing the heroism of the Danish forces, bearing
in mind the untramelled position of the Danish
Government, and recollecting the amplitude of the
resources and the elasticity of the character of the
Danish SOVEREIGN, we cannot but look with doubt
upon the dispatches received at intervals from the
seat of war—recounting the interminable triumphs of
the invaders and the continual misfortunes of
the defenders of the Northern Peninsula. Impressed
with a conviction that- these narratives are in most
instances garbled, and in several altogether erroneous,
it is with peculiar satisfaction that we observe, from
an announcement made in the columns of the Ber-
lingsche Zeitung, that it is the intention of the Admi-
nistration at Copenhagen to publish henceforth, in
extenso, the reports of the Danish commanders imme-
diately on their• arrival in the Danish metropolis.
By this arrangement all further misapprehension will
be rendered impossible ; for the comparison of the
conflicting accounts furnished by the belligerents
themselves will enable every sagacious mind to arrive II
at a rapid and accurate conclusion.
Taking for granted the correctness of the informa-
tion received via Hamburgh, it would assuredly
appear to those who are unacquainted with the
relative strength of the hostile Governments, that the
army of his MAJESTY of Denmark has no
very auspicious prospect in reference to its
struggle with his daring and formidable an-
tagonists. The latest intelligence recounts
the progressive advance northwards of the German
assailants and of their auxiliaries, the rebel band of the
Schleswig-Holsteiners. Under the command of Gen.
VON BONIN the aggressors have not only passed the
Eider, but have even crossed the waters of the Skod-
borg. They have passed onwards from Flensburg to
Apenrade, from Apenrade to Hadersley, from Ha-
dersley to Kolding ; and at Kolding, the frontier town
of North Jutland; situated at the extremity of the
Fiord of Dreyens, the belligerents appear to have, on the
morning of the 20th inst., crossed swords, and to have
contended with enthusiasm for the mastery. Of Course

th a Prussian authorities assume the glory of the victory
tot 'hems& yes—asserting not merely that their soldiers
rem wet% upon the field of battle, but that Kolding
was in flames, and that the Danes were retreating in
precipitate confusion on Veile and Friedericia. Yet,
eve' A ftccgrdi.ng to their own statement, the troops of
iireneral BONIN have suffered severely in
the ferocious struggle, which commenced shortly
after daybreak and did not terminate until night-
fall. IN) enhance the importance of the battle, it is
observe( 1, in the Borsenhalle accounts, that the courier
who ha, 1 arrived with the information had perceived a
glow up on the horizon from the blazing city of Kold-
ing, even when he was as far removed from the con-
, flagration as Apenrade. From all this it may be
L imagined that the game of war is already up with
the Danish SOVEREIGN. Seeing that his German
antagonists have traversed the whole of the Scandi-
navian duchy of Schleswig, have taken and destroyed
the city of Kolding, and have carried the disasters of
the campaign yet further into his dominions—it may
be conceived that nothing further remains to the
KING but to throw down his sword and submit to
the dictation of terms by the Cabinet at Berlin. Far
from it. The resources of Denmark are too
copious in their extent and too extraordinary in their
character to.render any such pusillanimous proceeding
necessary. The very successes of the Prussians and
Schleswig-Holsteiners will only tend to facilitate the
Danish efforts at retaliation. Let the conquerors
march onwards, in the blind delight of their victories,
towards the sound of the Ager and the cape of the
Skew—and so surely as they do, they will taste the
bitterness of their ultimate discomfiture. With a
naval force like that at his disposal, the King of
DENMARK might set almost half-a dozen such expe-
ditions at defiance. Isolated from any direct attack
upon his capital and his most important dominions—
possessing an impregnable stronghold in the islands
of Zeeland and Funen, of JEroe and Langeland, of
Falster and Moen, of Taasinge and Laaland—the
Danish MONARCH would always retain at
his command the means of wreaking upon
any German enemy a frightful and disastrous
vengeance. By blockading the ports, by harassing the
invaders of his peninsular provinces, and by cutting
them off from the continent in the event of their ad-
vancing rashly upon the extremities of Jutland, he
would be enabled to strangle the energies of an as-
sailant otherwise of vastly superior vigour. Any
attack upon Denmark on the side of Germany must
always be a venture of the most hazardous and
perilous description, seeing that the aggressors would,
throughout the whole of the campaign, be liable at
any moment to be assaulted in any direction. The
insular strength of Denmark would provide the de-
fenders with a secure and unapproachable magazine
of danger. The surrounding waves of the Baltic and
of the German ocean, together with the deep and in-
tricate indentations made along the entire coast of
Jutland by its fiords or estuaries, would jeopardize
tke fortune of the invaders even in the hour of their
greatest apparent advantage, by placing them
in a situation in which they might very readily he
surrounded. We are consequently very far indeed
from viewing the Danish army as one in any very
alarming extremity. On the contrary, there are
ample reasons for considering its iniquitous assailants
as very dangerously situated.

The atrocity of the war made by Prussia and other
German principalities upon Denmark—a war not
second in infamy even to that declared by Naples
upon Sicily, or of that proclaimed by Austria upon
the Hungarians—imparts to the cause of the Danes a
sanctity which must inevitably tend to its ulterior
success. Any adverse conclusion to the campaign,
any conclusion which would enhance the dominions
of Germany by the spoliation of Denmark, would be
a blot upon the reputation of England (were she to
look on unconcernedly at such atrocious
robbery), which nothing could ever obliterate.
That Lord PALMERSTON will permit the fame
of Great Britain to be tarnished in this
manner, we do not for one moment anticipate. His
temperament is too chivalrous to admit of the possi-
bility of his beholding the dismemberment of an
ancient and honourable ally, without stretching forth
a finger of assistance, or raising one cry of indigna-
nation. His judgment is too keen and sagacious not
to recognise the atrocity of the conduct of Germany
in claiming to herself a duchy to which she has not
the faintest ves'ige of a right. Upon the chart of the
world is branded the infamy of the whole transaction
on the part of Prussia in ktttrs as venerable very
nearly as the science of geography. Under the
southern boundaries of Schleswig, along the southern
bank: of the Eider, within the northern frontiers of
Holstein, there is, in every large map of Europe pub-
lished during the last two or three centuries, this old
Latin line :

" Eydera Germani terminus ImperiC

In defiance of that solemn assurance that Schleswig
and Holstvin are separate and not identical, in
defiance of the records of history and of the im-
memorial rights of Denmark, Prussia has led a
robber-army across the limits of Jutland. And
why ? Because the adventure was " convenient."
The war is strictly a guerre de convenance—a thing
as execrable in its way as a marriage de convenance.
To prevent any loss accruing to our noble ally Den-
mark in consequence of this lawless aggression of
Prussia upon Jutland is a solemn duty devolving
upon England—a duty in which our national honour
is seriously concerned.

We give elsewhere a letter from Mr. BaowN, M.I"
for Tewkesbury, on the practical mode of carrying
out Sir ROBERT PEEL'S plan in Ireland. Mr.
BROWN is the author of the pamphlet on reproduc-
tive measures for Ireland, called " Irish Wants and
Practical Remedies," which has had so much influence
with the Cabinet on the Irish railway question.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Path papers of yesterday.
The Moniteur contains the following announce-
ment :

s a
g"eA
ttherloe
ug
gr ahphni caydoi snpnaetcohf havinga announceleon uonda
ptahretep aosh-
his way to Paris, without conge' MPoNapoleon Bonaparte
is considered as haring resigned, and has been deprived
of his functions, by a resolution of the President of the
Cou
Ministry
ne il fMi nt ater
succeeds.
' between
to
Republic,
rhe
plan
token
of to-
day
a reactionaryy
ina
admiration ; it is to create dissensions
the
PRESIDENT of the Republic and his relations, so as to
completely isolate him in order the better to be
enabled to overthrow him and restore the BOURBONS.
If LOUIS NAPOLEON is so aristocrat-ridden as to con-
sent to be the warming pan of his ci- devant gaoler,
or so dull as not to perceive the guet a pens
laid for him, it is satisfactory to know
that there are others of the BONAPARTE family
who more resemble the EMPEROR in acuteness, in
spirit, and in democratic feeling. At
-,APOLEO7I
BONAPARTE has, it is said, protested against the
suicidal intervention of France in the affairs of Rome.
The National Assembly has refused to grant to M.
DELAMARRE the permission which he asked to pro-
secute M. LEDRU ROLLIN.
The French Mediterranean fleet has received orders
to rendezvous at Ajaccio, in order to be ready to pro-
ceed to any part of Italy where its presence may be
required.
The Journal des Debuts announces that M. Boss
LE COMTE, the French Minister at Turin, has been
instructed by his Government to encourage the King
of S&RDINIA to reject the terms of peace attempted
to be enforced by Marshal RADETZIET. It adds that
orders have been forwarde I to the Sardinian Admiral,
ALBINI, to remain in the Adriatic until the existing
difficulties shall have been removed.
A preparatory electoral meeting took place at
Lizieux on Wednesday—M. TARGET had 246 votes,
M. GUIZOT only 67.
PARIS BOURSE.—MURSDAY, APRIL 26.
TIEREE o'CLocK.—The news from Italy and from
Sicily had a very farouraSle effect on the Money Mar-
ket to-day; the rise in the Five per Cents. being nearly
1 per cent. above yesterday's closing prices. A slight
improvement was evident in Railway shares. The new
Loan for the city of Paris was taken to-day by MM.
Pe_:het-llethomas and Co., at 1,105 f. 40c. per obligation
of I,ooof. each. There wr.s only one other competitor.
Exchange on London (30 days), 25 321, money; ditto
(90 days), 25 20, money.
BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE
LONDON STOCK-EXCHANGE, APRIL 2C.
East Indian, 3N—Great Indian Peninsula, 47i —Tours
and Nantes, 3%.

DEATH OF THE REV. DR. 111.1ACDOITA.LD.-4V6 re-
gret to announce the death of the Rev. Dr. Macdonald,
minister of the Free Church at Urquhart, in the barony
of Ferintosh, Ross-shire. He expired on Monday even•
ing, the 16th instant, in the seventieth year of his age.
About two months since he sustained a slight bruise
on one of his feet, caused by the pressure of a tight
boot, and the wound being neglected, mortification en-
sued. Early amputation might have averted the calamity,
but this
tishewdaisagenots:o rseystoeratded ,atnod;
tearo, mdinaaftteerd
fv4atrairys._alitertrynaa-
..
nen Courier.