The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-13 00:00:00

''3,1114,

LONDON:
TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1841.

The Irish seem to be putting their political
barque on a new and a right tack. We have
copied from the Southern Reporter an article on
Landlord and Tenant, expressly written in aid
of Mr. O'CoNNELL's great speech on the same
subject, a copious extract from which appeared
in our Paper of Saturday. Though we differ
very much from Mr. O'CONNELL on the question
of absenteeism, and think that where the land-
lord spends his rent is of little importance com-
pared to the amount he is able to exact, we
have little doubt that one of the main sources
of the evils of Ireland is the mode in which the
soil is appropriated, and the peculiarity of the
relation which has, in consequence, grown up be-
tween landlord and tenant.

So ill do we think of the present 7T.ce of mere
landowners, whose residence in the country,
where they amuse themselves with di,i'.cnsing
law after, their own. fashion,
,and keeping and
killing game for their own sport and
nants' great annoyance, that we regard th
sence as a far greater blessing than their
Tally. We are 4uite sure, to refer to Ireland-;;,7
an example, that the Marquis of HERT.Foan,,'.io
is said never to have set foot in Ireland in his
life, where he is a great landowner, is a far leSs
mischievous person than such resident Earls as
those of GLENGALL, CHARLEVILLE, and RODEN,
whose presence is the nutriment of faction
and strife. Wealth may be employed to fo-
ment divisions, to seduce honesty, to pervert
the registers, to bribe and coerce electors, as
well as to heal disorders and give encourage-
ment to virtue. In Ireland, the Orange resident
landlords, exercising the offices of the Magis-
tracy, were long a great curse to that country,
and an approximation was first made to order,
and to substituting law for violence, when
Stipendiary Magistrates and a Stipendiary
Police superseded the authority of the
landlords and their armed retainers. But
the bulk of the . landlords are Protestants
and Orangemen ; the soil is said to be exclusively
Protestant, and a body of resident Protestant
landlords would be, with all deference to Mr.
O'CONNELL, a sore plague to Ireland. The pre-
sence of the landlords then, without a change of
the tenure, would be of no advantage, and it is
to the-latter, disguised, however, under phrase-
ology less calculated to excite alarm, rather
than to the former, that the Hon. and Learned
'Gentleman and his friends now look.
lie spoke, for example, of there being about
10,000. landed proprietors in Ireland, " where-
as," he said, " if there were 'the same
proportion as in Holland, there would be
1,137,000." He wants, therefore, not that the
present landlords should reside, but that
1,137,000 frugal, independent farmers, such as
*Own and cultivate Holland, should supply their
place. He wants, therefore, a chancre in
the tenure of land, he -wants to substitutec'
the cultivators for the present landowners,
and we are bound to say, fiG far as the
happiness of his country is Concerned, that
we think Mr. O'CoNNELL is not far wrong. He
should, however, speak out, in Order that his
meaning may be known and weighed in Et -
land, and the' public here be enabled to judge
whether or not they will support him.
The appropriation of the soil in other parts of
Europe may be lost in the night of time, and a
long day of prescription may have given the pre-
sent pOssesSors as good as an original title ; but
the appropriation of the soil of Ireland comes
within the compass of modern history, and. w,!
know, as well as we know
the geographical
position of the country, that it was founded in
conquest and usurpation. The first conquest by
England in the reign of HENRY 11. took ph c
long enough ago to have blended the co. -
querors and the conquered into one friend.y
feople, but subsequent and successive confisca- .

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