The Sun.
London, England, 1836-06-24 00:00:00

ness. We have received letters from several high]

respectable perso.ns in Ireland, stating that the labour-
ing poor around the whole north-western coast are in a
state of the most deplorable destitution ; and what is
still more disheartening, there is little or no prospect of
their obtaining relief, unless the Legislature take some
steps to assist them. They are literally starving ; and
though many of them would work for mere sustenance,
there is no one to employ them. From the potato
crop—which has all but entirely failed—they can
have no hope ; and thus the poor famishing crea-
tures must perish, if left unaided:by the Government.
Now it is morally impossible that such a state of

things can continue much longer, even in unhappy
Ireland. The conviction that without a well-digested
system of Poor Laws—a system based on the prin-
ciples laid down by the Poor Law Commissioners in
their last Report—lreland can never be permanently
prosperous, peaceable, and contented, is fast gaining
ground in England and Scotland. Men begin to
_ _ ...

perceive that without Poor Laws capital will never
flow into Ireland—the employment of the poor will
never be permanent—and that the periodical return
of famine must be as regular as the seasons. The
situation of the poor peasantry of the North of Ire-

land is not worse than the late Mr. INGLIS, in his
summer Tour through Ireland, found it to be in 1830
in most of the southern districts. The following is
his harrowing account of the state of the poor in the
city of Limerick :
" My enquiries in Limerick were prosecuted with all the
care I was capable of bestowing. I spent a day in visiting
those parts of the city, where the greatest destitution and mi-
sery prevailed. I entered upwards of forty of the abodes of
poverty : and to the latest hour of my existence, I can never
forget the scenes of utter and hopeless wretchedness that pre-
sented themselves that day. Some of the abodes I visited
were garrets, some were cellars : some were hovels on the
ground floor, situated in narrow yards or alleys. I will not
speak of the filth of these places, they could not be exceeded in
places meant to be its receptacles. Let the worst be ima-
gined, and it will not be beyond the truth. In at least three-
fourths of the hovels which I visited, there was no furniture of
any description, save an iron-pot ;no table, no chair, no bench,
no bedstead, two or three little bunches of straw, with perhaps
one or two scanty and rugged mats were rolled up in the corner.
The inmates were some of them old, crooked, and diseased ;

some younger, but emaciated, and surrounded by starving
children ; some were sitting on the damp ground, some stand-
ing, and many were unable to rise from their little straw heaps.
In scarcely one hovel could I find a potatoe. In one which I
entered, I noticed a small opening into an inner room I
I lighted a bit of paper at the embers of a turf which lay in the
chimney, and looked in. It was a cellar wholly dark, and
about twelve feet square : two bundles of straw lay in two
corners : on one sat a bed-ridden woman ; on another lay two
naked children, literally naked, with a torn rag of some kind
thrown over them both. But I saw even worse than this. In
a cellar which I entered, and which was almost quite dark, and
slippery with damp, I found a man sittinc, on a little sawdust. He
was naked, be had not even a shirt ; a'filthy and ragged mat
was round him : this man was a living skeleton, the bones all
but protruded through the skin : he was literally starving."
"In place of forty hovels, I might have visited hundreds. I
did not select, and I have no reason to believe that the forty
which I visited were the abodes of greater wretchedness than
those I passed by."
Were the above related of African savages, the
House of Commons would not lose a moment in adopt-

ing some measure calculated to remove, or at least di-
minish,
such a mass of-misery: But as it only regards
Ireland, years are allowed to roll over before any.,Steps
are taken to, alleviate the distresses of the sufferers.
Let the advocates of the efficiency of voluntary sympa-
thy test the truth of their doctrine by this fearful ac-
count of the misery of the poor of Limerick. If that
be not enough, they need only turn to the evidence given
before the Irish Poor Law Commissioners in the
course of the last year. They will hardly turn up a
page which will not supply them with such paragraphs
as the following :
" In the parish of Castletown, County Westmeath, nut of a
population of 10,553 there were 7,070 sleeping on the floors of
damp cabins without bedsteads."
" There is one village of 45 families, comprising 206 souls,
having only 39 blankets ; 16 of these families, being 84 per-
sons, havingbut 7:1 blankets among them, that is one blanket
to every 12 persons; these blankets are scarcely anything bet-
ter than spent worn-out rags. Many have no blankets at all,
but sleep on the floor, having no covering but the rags they
wear by day."
The cup of misery here is so full, that a single
drop must cause it to overflow. Here is permanent
starvation in one shape ; so that nothing remains but
to diminish the peasants' supply of vegetable nutri-
ment, to make them miserable to an extent of which
happily Englishmen can form no adequate conception.
We trust, however, that the Government will extend
a helping hand to the sufferers, till a Bill can be
brought forward, for compelling the landlords to be-
come the natural guardians and protectors of their
harassed and oppressed tenantry.

The French papers of Wednesday have been re-
ceived. We find the following in the official columns
of the Moniteur :
A despatch from Bayonne announces that, on the 15th of
June, the Carlists Chiefs declared to Don Carlos that • the
troops, being no longer able to subsist, were determined on
transferring operations to Arragon. Endeavours were made
to appease them by distributing to them the reserves of grain
of the Amescoas; but another Council was to be held on the
19th of June.
Private letters from St. Sebastian state, that Gen,
EVANS is so disgusted with the intrigues carried on
by CORDOVA against the Legion, that it is doubtful
whether he will remain in Spair till the Close of the