The Sun.
London, England, 1847-02-16 00:00:00

CABINET COUNCIL

A Cabinet Council assembled at twelve o'clock this
day, at the Foreign Office, Downing-street.
Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, Lord Lans-
dowhe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and most of
the Ministers attended.

Dissimilar as the Parliamentary sessions of forty-
six and forty-seven are in all other particulars, upon
the protraction of impotent debates they preserve a
striking and mournful resemblance. We have al-
ready and repeatedly given the Noble Lord the re-
presentative of Lynn every credit for the most bene-
volent and magnanimous intentions with regard to
Ireland, but we are, nevertheless, persuaded that this
benevolence would have but comparatively little
attraction to the Noble Lord and his colleagues, were
it not intimately blended with the embarrassment of
Government and the procrastination of the labours of
the Legislature. Did Lord GEORGE BENTINCK feel
morally convinced that the introduction of his Irish
railway scheme would prove as advantageous to the
interests of the Administration as it is certain to be
rejected, we question whether he would have exhi-
bited such an ostentatious sympathy with a starving
peasantry and a dejected population. 'We will concede
to Mr. DISRAELI the accuracy of his terse panegyric
upon the railway measure now under the considera-
tion of the House of Commons ; we will concede to
him that it were scarcely possible fur any one to
contend that that measure was " conceived in a spirit
of faction or matured by the calculating craft of a
scheming ambition." But, with all deference to the
gentleness of intention, we must still continue to
doubt the wisdom of the conceptions of the Noble
Lord. Notwithstanding the agreeable and sparkling,
pleasantry with which the Hon. Member for Shrews-
bury endeavoured to disprove the insinuation that
the "navvy " is a gallant, gay Lothario, and to de-
monstrate that, on the contrary, that industrious
labourer is usually a very comfortable Bene-
dict with children, amounting on the average
to a baker's dozen, we must still continue
persuaded that the class of men engaged in the con-
struction of railroads is not exactly the class needing
assistance at this crisis. It would savour little of agri-
cultural economy to expend all our guano, and tillage,
and tilage, and irrigation, and so forth, upon the most
productive portion of a farm, abandoning only those
portions the aridity and barrenness of which most
imperatively demand supervision and cultivation ;
and it would savour still less of political economy to
lavish the whole patronage and munificence of the
Legislature upon the most thriving members of the
community, leaving to their helplessness and wretched-
ness the emaciated and the famine-stricken. And
that alone would be the operation of the Railway
Bill of Lord GEORGE BRISTINCK. Enlarge as
Honourable Gentlemen may upon the benefits
accruing to the population of any country from the
systematic introduction of railways and the conse-
quent facilitation of transit, the bestowal of
16,000,0001. at this moment upon that gigantic ven-
ture would only conduce to the pampering of those
who are already in excellent circumstances, and the
detriment of those to whom assistance is most

requisite.
Look at the matter in its homeliest light, and that
alone is the conclusion at which every sensible and
unprejudiced man must arrive. Ireland is not merely
threatened with starvation, she is suffering from an
unparalleled dearth and an inexorable famine
Hitherto, as Mr. DISRAELI felicitously observed,
" the Irish question has been how Ire-
`and is to be governed; now the Irish
question is how Ireland is to be fed!" There is the
difficulty condensed into a sentence. " How Ireland
is to be fed." Not whether Ireland is to be fed, but
how Ireland is to be fed. The matter of dispute,
therefore, is, as to the manner in which provisions
should be placed within the reach of the destitute.
By an unanimous opinion it has been decided a
considerable time that assistance in the shape of alms
and bounties would, if possible, be worse than no
assistance whatever. Employment, therefore, is uni-
versally acknowledged to be the only safe channel
for the distribution of relief to the penniless and dying.
Upon the suggestion of the Government Parliament
is to disseminate employment throughout every
quarter of Ireland, northwards, southwards, east-
wards, westwards, inland, along the coasts
of the Channel and the Atlantic, to the
dwellers in towns and villages and hamlets, to
the farm-servants among corn-fields and to the
peat-cutters among bogs and quagmires. And
this diffusion of employment throughout the length
and breadth of the island is rendered possible by the
succession of measures introduced by the Cabinet—
the Poor-law extension, the reclamation of waste
lands, the loans for agricultural improvement, and the
completion of the roads already undertaken. But
the Noble Lord the Member for Lynn is averse to
these moderate modes of unravelling the threads of
Irish distress. He demands a comprehensive enact-
ment ; he wants a measure that will shed
a brilliant though somewhat meretricious lustre
upon the Legislature ; he regards the ex-
traction of wealth and sustenance from mere mo-
rasses and heaths as peculiarly ignoble. Give us the
wizard spells of science, he exclaims, give us the
wand of the mechanician and the magic circle of
the engineer, and we will conjure you up a paradise
of happiness out of this wilderness of misery and
desolation. We will treble the crops of Irish agri-
culturists by a gradient and carry on the affairs of the
nation swimmingly upon the broad gauge. Ireland
has been plunged into its present difficulties by a too
general reliance upon the potato dibble, she shall be
extricated by the theodolite. Literally these are
the arguments and anticipations of Lord GisoaGE
BENTENcx and his supporters. They would sacrifice
the interests of the starving peasantry for the iclat
of fattening the robust navigators—be those naviga-
tors gallant, gay Lotharios er Benedicts
with families as extensive as that of the
old lady in the nursery-rhyme, who " had
so many children she didn't know what to
do." Lord GEORGE BENTINCK'S Irish pyramid is
bottom upwards, the foundations upon which it is
built are in nubibus, and its point forms a very un-
stable and ricketty basis. The Member for Lynn is
not destined to extirpate the reptiles of poverty and
famine from Ireland. Lord GEORGE is but a sorry
substitute for Saint PATRICK.

The arrival of the mail-steamer Hibernia has
furnished us with intelligence from the United
States and other parts of America. Great com-
mercial excitement, occasioned as well by the political
as the mercantile new received from our shores