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

CABINET COUNCIL.

A Cabinet riouncil 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 for 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 BENTINCK. Enlarge RS
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-
land 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 tq be fed." Not whether Ireland it 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 dikse►ninate 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

he Poor-law extension, the reclamation of waste

!antis, the loans for agricultural improvement, and the

completion of the roads already undertaken. But
the Noble Lord the Member for Lynn is averse to

,hese moderate modes of unravelling the threads

Irish distress. He demands a comprehensive enac

ment ; he wants a measure that will shed

a brilliant though somewhat meretricious lustre
upon the Legislature ; he regards the ex-

,raction of wealth and sustenance front 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 inte 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 GEORGE
BENTINCR and his supporters. They would sacrifice
the interests of the starving peasantry for the eclat
of fattening the robust navigators—be those naviga-
tors gallant, gay Lotharios er Benediets
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 asorry

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 news received from our shores
during the past month, has throughout pervaded the
markets of New York and other leading cities.
Greatly enhanced prices have been demanded upon
the chief commodities of trade and commerce. Cotton,
flour, wheat, rye, oats, provisions, and the necessaries
of life, have attained prices which have never been
previously realised. It is considered that these
augmented rates of purchase will not be speedily
diminished. The information which they will gain
by succeeding mails and packet-ships from Europe
was looked for with the
of greatest
the E
amn xpieertoy; ; andof
R riwhen they learn the prohibition
against the further
exportationpresumed
dominions, it may be
, tilt
will be still further at prices generally
United
advanced,,
, how-
e .-er, gratifying to notice-