The Sun.
London, England, 1831-08-31 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE-PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We have as yet received no further accounts 1
(ram Warsaw, to contradict or confirm those which
we yesterday extracted from the Prussian Papers.
But in the absence of positive intelligence, we are
happy to say that the more we reflect on the Prus-
sian statements, the less probable they appear. In
the first place, the Polish Diet and the Govern.
meat, which have hitherto exercised such unresisted
power, and which have shown theMaelves so hostile
to Jacobin or revoliitionary excesses, are not likely
all at once either to have changed their policy or to
have lost their influence. In the Chamber or
Nuncios a motion was made by M. llaysin, on the
Ist inst., to address all the people and representa-
tive assemblies of Europe, on behalf of suffering
Poland, and to call upon them to come to her
assistance, in spite of the orders of their respec-
tive Governments. This propagandist proposition
was lost by a great majority, showing that
the Polish Legislature could despise the ravines
of clubs and the menace of tumults. In the
second place, the patriotic club, to whose charge
all this revolutionary mischief is ascribed, has been
twice or thrice dissolved—is generally discredited
by people of all classes—consists of very few mem-
bers, and exercises very little influence. Is it likely
that some hundred hot-headed students, composing
this association, could cashier the General-in-Chief
of the army with 50,000 bayonets at his command,
and appoint one of their own partisans in his place ?
The fact may by possibility be true, but is extremely
improbable. A single squadron of horse would have
dissipated a club so composed, and so powerless.
In the third place, it is scarcely to be conceived
that the members of a Government, which has
hitherto been so popular as that of Prince Czar-
toriski, could be displaced at once to make room
for two men so discredited as Generals Kruko-
wieki and Prondzinski. The approach of the
Russian armies to Warsaw, and the consequent
interruption of all communication between the rest
of Europe and that city, allow scope for these
fabrications which the Prussian Government has
ahown itself too apt to encourage. The lie (if it be
one) may last a fortnight, or till a decisive battle
takes place; and in the mean time the friends of
Poland are kept in suspense, or are prevented from
acting with the requisite energy. We shall not,
however, disguise our conviction, that if the accounts
which we yesterday published should turn out to
be correct, the cause of Poland is lost, and that, for
a reason, streams of noble blood have flowed in vain.
The promotion of the two Generals above mentioned
to the head of the Government and the army, would
be both the evidence of a deadly schism in the State,
and the immediate precursor of Polish subjugation.
All those who have hitherto defended the good
cause with their swords, or supported it with their ,
counsels, would refuse to range themselres under
men whom they deem unworthy of their confidence,
and who would betray them into the hands of their
enemies; a civil contest would thus arise with a
foreign foe at the gate.—Times.
It would be extremely unjust to Mr. Sadler, and
in itself a very heinous abuse of the spirit of political
hostility, for the friends of Emancipation and Reform
to deny that gentleman their cordial thanks for
his wisdom and humanity in bringing forward
the question of Irish poor laws. His speech on
Monday evening was able and eloquent, nor are we
among those who consider it a defect that he treated
the subject broadly, or what some call vaguely,
since, in fact, until the principle of poor laws for
Ireland be admitted, there could be nothing more
preposterous than an address to the house of Com-
mons, recommending any detailed measure, which
the opponents of all poor laws would say triumphantly
was beginning at the wrong end, and putting the
cart before the horse, &c. As for the objections by
which the proposal in favour of the poor laws has
been met, they amount pretty much to this,—that
" great inconvenience might attend them." Incon-
venience ! attending the administration of a remedy,
when the disease is nothing less than incessant want
—frequent famine—extensive sickness—wholesale
death—and, as plainly proved by Mr. Sadler
from official documents, an abridgment of the
duration of human life so striking, that it has
amounted to an average of ten per cent. upon
the entire population : in other words, that so long
ago as in the year 1821, 600,000 inhabitants of Ire-
land died annually under 40 years of age, above the
number which would have perished so early, had
subsistence, the main prolonger of life, been fur-
nished to the people of that country in the same
proportion as to Englishmen. Want, we are appre-
hensive, has still been increasing since 1821, and
with it the curtailment of life among the Irish pea-
santry. It is said that a subsistence by means of
poor-rates would engender idleness among the lower
class of Irish, and would quell every sentiment of
manly pride. It might, we acknowledge, make one
indolent man here and there more idle; but as a
counterpoise, the poor-rate would save 20 of the
industrious, who cannot find employment, from tile
jaws of death. With regard to the proper objects
of relief under the poor laws, it is fair to state our
fear that it would be fruitless to attempt the limi- .
union of such succour to merely the sick, the
aged, and the infant poor. Suppose the father
of a family, willing to work, but unable to com-
mand employment, how many days, we should
like to know, would elapse between his destitu-
tion for want of wares, and the illness of his fa-
mily for want of food ? Make the amount of aid
as slender as possible,—barely enough to keep " life
and soul together," as they say,—and the condition
of those receiving it will not be so enviable as to
render them enamoured of parochial assistance, com-
pared with regular labour. Then let the fact be
well inquired into, whether a labourer applying for
relief be a compulsory or voluntary pauper. There
are few things more easily ascertained by parish au-
thorities than the existence or non-existence of a
demand for labourers in their district, and from wil-
ful idleness we would steadily withhold all succour.
But can there be any thing more monstrous than
the practice of urging against poor laws their ten-
dency to produce in individuals some evil disposi-
tions, out of which poverty might perchance be
engendered, overlooking all the while the certainty
of their effecting on a large scale the one great and
transcendent object—the mitigating or preventing
the visitation of absolute famine, and giving an as-
surance to society that men and women, and helpless
children, will no longer die of hunger ? If charity
be cooled, it is because charity, as the exclusive
hope of the miserable, will be superseded. If Irish
charity had heretofore proved adequate to the melan-
choly occasions for its exercise, it is clear that the
cry for poor laws, now become irresistible, would
never have been raised; so thet,in truth, the reason-
ing of the anti-poor law system is this :—Let the
Irish landlord continue his oppressions, let tile
wretched labourers perish by whole provinces, for
if with the impunity you take away the temptation
to oppress, and if by law you save the lives of Ilsoua
sands of your felloweereatures, take care lest—at?
lest you blunt the edge cf your sentimental charitytf--
which requires for its whetstone the intolerable suf-
fering of the poor of Ireland; that suffering which,
under correction we say it, has never been relieved
by the fine sentiment alluded to : quite the con-
trary; the sentiment, we are told, feeds upon
it, whereas English pity, and English money,
have been, and will for ever be, resorted to as
the only real source of alleviation to Irish
wretchedness until the domestic or absentee
authors of that wretchedness shall be forced
in their own persons to taste their full share of its
bitter and unpalatable fruits. It is, in short, the
people of England who have
the burden
divided,
though we confess not
equally, th
.. c:f the
Irish landlotds, oppiession or
of I
11111PolocYr.laws in IT.-
position to the establishment lp
land is an exclusively and chara:tienis3tically Irish
position. Lord Limerick,— well knowr.i si
Lnce us
campaign of 1798, to which, indeed, his ordship
has (to the astonishment of many people) referred
" This sentimental humbug was ably and acutely ex-
posed by Mr. Sheil.