The Sun.
London, England, 1847-03-02 00:00:00

RAILWAYS.
Select Committee on Group No. 12.
Sir John Guest discharged; Colonel Paget seledel, and
added to the Committee.

The Committee of Selection have discharged the Select
Committees to whom the Groups Nos. 5 and 6 have been
severally referred, and have postponed the meeting of the
Select Committees on those Groups to the weak cAnmencing
Monday, March 15.

SMALL MEASURES FOR IRELAND
TO THE EDITOR OF
,Z7HE SUN.
SIR,—At a moment of almost unparalleled difficulty,
when the lives and properties of millions of the people of
this great empire hang, with a painfiiul importance upon
the measures of the Government, arid upon the fiat of
the Legislature—when the heart must be permitted
0) bring her dictates tat the wiee/tom ofohe head—may so
:humble an individual as I am be —permitted, through
:tour kind courtesy, to Offer a few remarks upon the all-
important subject of legislating for Ireland, to bring my
feeble taper to the blaze of light which is now, through
the columns of an unrivalled press, thrown over her
wants and her misfortunes; and to crave your indulgence
while I take a short notice of the ungenerous tone which
has, on this subject, been adopted by what I may call
the great history of " the Times." Feeling, Sir, with
other Irishmen, very grateful for much that this influen-
tial journal and its talented commissioner have done, from
time to time, to rouse our I: ish landlords to a sense of
the duties and responsibilities of their position, and
assured that it is often impelled to do or say what may
wound by a stern sense of public duty, still I can find in
these sentiments little to palliate, nothing to justify, the
recent most unfair, violent, and sweeping attacks, in the t
paper, upon Irish landlords, but am very reluctantly
obliged to join in the almost universal feeling of painful
indignation with which these statements have been re-
ceived. No one is more aware of the high, and often
onerous, duties which the press has to perform in wield-
ing for the public good the enormous power
which its own talent, and public confidence, may
place in its hands—no one more anxious to bear
humble testimony to the wisdom, moderation,
and justice, in which it has generally upheld this sacred
trust, no one more ready to admit that where strong feel-
ings are aroused, it is difficult to stay the pen of an
honest and enthusiastic writer ; still I would ask, in all
courtesy, if, while the dark clouds of a mysterious and
deep affliction, still hang over this ill-fated country,
while the hand of the Almighty has let loose upon it
the withering scourge of famine and of pestilence, while
we know not where His mercy may place a limit to our
sufferings, if, it is only, Sir, at such a season the Times
can strike with such cruel and unrelenting blows the
already overtaxed, overtoiled, and overa bused Irish
gentry, why is it that in this instance, as in that of
the Court-martial, in the seventh Hussars, last Septem-
ber, we find the bulky influence of this journal
thrown so readily and so recklessly into the scale of
public prejudice and misconception—defeating only the
noor ambition of the writer? Colonel Whyte and Lord
St. Laurence, the Adjutant of that distinguished regi-
ment, in the strict and proper performance of a most
painful dutye carried with them in a great degree the
sympathy of a right-minded and intelligent public, when
the Times assailed them and made that feeling universal.
My present object, however, in addressing you, Sir, is
not so much to offer a feeble vindication of my gallant
brother officers of the British army, or to Irish landlords,
as to express my grateful admiration of the manner in
which my talented countrymen have met their ungenerous
assailants; they have replied to empty words by energetic
action, they have met irritation and anger with
forbearance and manly temper, they have borne down
prejudice aril opposition, by an eloquent and earnest
vindication of their character and of their rights ; they
hare appealed in enlightened argument, in a high spirit
of confidence and courtesy, to a noble public, end they
have been met with universal sympathy and respect.
Their time, their money, and their health, are freely
sacrificed to relieve their starving fellow-countrymen,
and God will bless them for it. Most truly have they
proved themselves worthy to cope with the great and
afflicting exigencies of their unhappy country—they
have fairly won the admiration of a world, and can well
afford to pass by such statements as some of those in the
Times and House of Commons, in the consoling convic-
tion that such must ever carry with them their own best
refutation, their own.. most • complete condemnation.
Having thus performed a pleasing duty towards the great
Irish party—a noble confederacy in a noble cause—you
will, Sir, I tun sure, permit me once more to assure you
of the regret I feel in being obliged thus strongly to ex-
press my disapproval of the unmeasured length to which
this paper has carried its condemnation of Irish land
lords, a vast number of whom are not to be surpassed in
the civilised world for every feeling which can adorn
their position or benefit mankind—enlightened, gene-
rous, and humane, the condition of their properties best
attest their worth ; while I must now join in deep dis-
approbation of another class of Irish proprietors, from
whose "penny wise," short-sighted views, reckless or
rapacious conduct, spring up, in my opinion, the chief
sources of Irish discontent, poverty, and outrage. A
man comes to one of these gentlemen with
4001. in his pocket, to take a farm of a hundred
acres. The really needy, or habitually im-
provident landlord, asks him what fine he is
prepared to pay him, as there are many who wish for the
farm, and he cannot afford to let it without one. The man
offers one, or even two hundred, but the previous infor-
mation of an agent or bailiff gets from him finally thy,
third hundred pounds, and he goes into the farm a san..
guine but a ruined man. Glad to get a respectable wile
and family settled, the poor hard-working fellow struggles
on for years, perhapc in want, privation, and in waning
hope, to inevitable beggary, when the exasperated land-
lord enters the house with an execution in his hand, and
drives out upon a cold world an intelligent, respectable,
nod industrious, but heart-broken man, involuntarily to
swell the number of those homeless and forlorn beings
who goad and sting our unhappy country into madness,
- misery, and crime, while the wretched landlord loses in
the non-payment of his rent, and deterioration
of his land, four times the sum for which
he blindly sacrificed perhaps an entire family ;
all the high rewards of his position, and all the be 4
feelings of his heart. In this, Sir, and in small holdings,
below the yearly value of 101., lies the master evil which
afflicts this country, and until this class of Irish pre-
prietors recognise their duty and their interest to be
identical with the great principle of " Live and let live,"
we can hope for little to amend, little to ameloriate.
How great is the contrast, how different the results on
the properties of such landlords as Lord Farnham, Lord
Erne, Lord Besborough, Mr. Sharman Crawford, Lord
Devon, Lord George Hill, Lord Abercorn, Mr. Fortes-
cue, Sir A. Brook, Col. Bruen, and, thank God, an
hundred others. Here you will see the reciprocal
duties of landlord and tenant wisely and warmly
recognised. Here you will see men protected, contented,
and happy, whose sole ambition is in all things to evince
their gratitude to their landlord, and to hand down to
their children a fair farm and a fair fame. When such
feelings spring from the heart, you may feel assured that
the moral and social condition of that people is sound.
Which is best—l would ask of Irish landlords—the
shot of the midnight assassin, the howl of the
starving incendiary around them, or the long loud
shouts of joy which welcome back to his home the
friend, the benefactor, and the guide? Surely, it must
be such sounds as these which make the happy man
happier, the good man better ; it must be such sounds
as these which open wide the fountains of the heat t,
and sends the glad current of life bounding in joy and
triumph over the cares and crosses of a fickle world. I
agree very much with Mr. Hamilton, that it is a series
more of " little measures " which we require than of
great and sweeping changes ; but as few have pointed
any such out, or seem willing to do so, I am sure I will
be allowed to offer one or two suggestions which may at
all events lead to a better and more practical considera-
tion of this important subject. In the first place, I cer-
tainly think an "absentee tax" would be only a fair
instalment of the compensation due to this country for
the money yearly drawn and spent out of it ; and, al-
though I also concur with Sir G. Wood, that some of
the absentee landlords are among the very best, and
might naturally enough strongly object to be thus taxed
to swell the public Exchequer, cause the funds so raised
to be spent on their own several estates, in giving pre-
miums for green crops, cattle, and cottages, draining,
farm servants, and fencing, and I will answer fur it you
will annihilate their opposition ; for this reason—that
although these enlightened landlords do at
this moment spend, and have for years done so,
large sums in the advancement of agriculture and
improvement of their estates, they will have simply to
withhold such portion of that sum as may be equivalent
to the new tax. They are thus no sufferers in their in-
come, and all their best objects are equally attended to,
while the like benefits are compulsorily conferred on the
poor tenants of the thoughtless, the reckless, and the
improvident, and to give them still a direct and pleasing
interest in the benefit accruing to their estates, they
could point out six names of their most respectable
farmers to the nearest deputy-lieutenant of the county,
who should nominate three of these as judges for the
year, for the distribution of such prizes as the tax on the
property may yield. In the next place, Sir, I propose
that money be at once, and for many years to come,
perhaps, advanced in loan from the Consolidated Fund,
for the purpose of giving a stimulus to manufactures in
Ireland—" the steam-engine, the loom, the print work,
the mill, the manufactory—these elements of wearth,
this issue for an over agricultaral population," as the
talented Member for Dublin, Mr. Gregory, justly terms
them ; these are, indeed, what we really require, and
although warmly and gratefullyrecognising the generous
and manly sympathy of 'Lord George Bentinck, and
with ardent best wishes for his success, I did fear
that there were some pints in his measure,e
by
in the moment and manner of bringing it before the
country, which would cause it to be objected to the
,sent chief Minister of the Crown, situated as Lord
pre
John Russell is, and I still think every enactment t of the
kind he proposed must be imperfect, unless aided and
illustrated by the important auxiliary one of encourage-
ment to manufactures, which must always afford the
most certain security for the discharge of interest and
the repayment of capital if something like the following
very simple plan could be adopted :—When an indivi-
dual, or a company, lay out, in raising mills or manu-
factories, say 8,0001., and when this outlay is duly certi•
fied, by accounts furnished to, and attested by, a board
composed of the three nearest magistrates, the execu-
tive, on receiving the same from them, accompanied by
a policy of insurance on the property so far completed,
may surely think themselves safe and well secured in
advancing an equal sum to that already expended. In
doing so a generous and enlightened Minister justly
claims for himself everlasting honour in thus becoming
the happy medium through the high influence of which
is infused into an impoverished country some small share of
surplus English capital, in return for the hundreds of thou-
sands annually drawn from poor Ireland, and squandered
in rich and happy England ; and for the repayment
of which I can imagine no better security than what is
here proposed. I would earnestly recommend, also, that
money be advanced on the same principle, as nearly as
can be, to encourage the construction of a capable and