The Sun.
London, England, 1847-12-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 11, 1847.

read a portion of the charge in question, which was
to the following effect :—" While viewing the state
of the upper classes we must not forget the middle
and the lower classes. Complaints were made by
tenants against their landlords, and their misfortunes
were attributed to them, but were the tenants
what they ought to be ? While consulting their
own happiness, did they take into consideration that
of the landlords ? Where not the tenants knavish and
apathetic, and apt to think the land belonged to:them-
selves alone ? If the land was cultivated by indus-
trious tenants and generous landlordsit would produce
four times as much as it did. It was said there was
no sympathy for the people ; but thousands sympaS
thised with them—the bishops, the priests, the Legis-
lature sympathised with them. The Legislature' ad
created laws for their assistance, and had passed a
poor-law—the most important law which had been
passed for a hundred years—a law which be had
always wished to see enacted. But so long as murder
and disregard of the laws of God and man continued,
their best friends must blush for them."—(Hear.)
Viscount MORPETH did not wish to prolong this
discussion, but he thought it due to Dr. Ryan to
state that though he was never personally acquainted
with him, he had testimony borne to the conciliatory
character of his conduct, and that he had always
devoted himself to his functions as a Christian bishop ;
and Bishop Jebb, the Protestant Bishop of Limerick,
in his correspondence, bore his testimony to the fact
of the Roman Catholic Bishop having proved a zealous
coadjutor in all Christian duties.
Sir J. WALSH thought this might have been a
hasty expression by Dr. Ryan, but it was an unfor-
tunate one in the present state of Ireland. It was
important to the character of the priesthood.that they
should in the strongest and most public manner dis-
avow the expressions used by some of their body,
which, rightly reported, were deeply criminal, and
which urged their flocks to be guilty of assassination.
Mr. J. O'CONNELL said that the Honourable
Baronet had attacked the Roman Catholic clergy on
mere report. There was no proof of the accusations
which had been made against them, and he lectured
them in a manner which the bishops and clergy; were
not likely much to regard. He (Mr. J. O'Connell)
could bear his humble testimony to the conduct of
his Lordship, Dr. Ryan, and it would be the more
weighty because his Lordship had always kept free
from political parties. He was loved and respected
by all who knew him, and he was the last person he
should have expected to have been attacked. Arfother
prelate had been spoken of by the Hon. Member for
Bridport—Dr. M'Hale. He was attacked simply
because he had congratulated the peoplo on
the unexampled patience with which ! they
had borne the calamity which had befallen
them.—(Hear, hear.) Would any one deny) that
that was the case ? The Noble Lord (the Member
for Marylebone) had said last night that all the mur•
derers went to the priests and obtained absolt
the fact being that they were wretches who had
long out of the pale of,tbe Church; and it was r
too bad to have it said that with such person.
priests profaned one of the most solemn same
of the Church.
Mr. REYNOLDS complained of the attack v
had been made on Dr. Ryan, when it appeared
all he had been guilty of was a statement of fact
scribing the neglect of the lower orders by the hl,
in his diocese. Allusion had been made by the
Member for Marylebone to the speech of Dr. 4
at a meeting at Cashel. He (Mr. Reynolds) dil
justify the expressions that Rev. Gentleman wag
ported to have used; he condemned them, and
gretted that they had been used, and assuming'
the report had been furnished to the Hon. Mel
by an Irish correspondent, he was prepared to es
rate him from the sin of garbling it. He di
charge the Hon. Member with suppressing any f
but he had referred to the speech delivered onl
occasion in question by the Very Rev. Mr. L
and he had found that the Hon. Member ha
given the Rev. Gentleman credit for the expres
which immediately followed the objectionable p
which had been quoted. With the permission
House, he (Mr. Reynolds) would read an ex
The Rev. Mr. Laffan said, " Did he stand the
defence of murder P God forbid. He had ever pre
as far as his humble intellect directed,
with all the sincerity and energy with
his soul was animated, that the blood of man
to heaven for vengeance, and that sooner 'or
the murderer would come to his own destruct
that if he avoided the consequences of his mini
this world (as was almost impossible), assuredly
passing the frontiers of eternity, the Lord es
Justice would deal to him that eternal judd
which they were told awaited the murderer."
admitting that the expressions used in the early
of the speech ought not to have been used, he
Reynolds) thought he was justified in stating tha
Hon. Member for Marylebone ought, in co
justice, to have given the rev. speaker credit fo
expressions which followed. At the same tim
(Mr. Reynolds) was of opinion that no man, wh
dressed in the garb of a clergyman or any
costume, ought to use expressions to the
pie that could by - possibility be missi
strued.--(Heari) ' If the clergy of any sect or d]
mination of Christians had been so virulently attar,
as bad been the Roman Catholic clergy of Irell
he should feel it his duty to stand up in their dere
He had heard the Roman Catholic clergy much I
peached in that House, and he regretted to add,
those who had brought charges against them
failed to give them credit for those deeds of peace
order that they were known to have performed.
him remind the House that the present Lord-I4
tenant of Ireland had instructed his secretary
convey a special vote of thanks to the Right Rev.
Kennedy, Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, fo
exertions, and those of his clergy, to preserve
maintain the peace. In the county of Lime i
within the last six weeks, a disorderly and la
mob of 1,500 persons, in the broad daylight, atta
the workhouse, put the guardians of the poor in
of their lives, seized the cattle and corn of the gen
and carried away their booty into the moun
Three Roman Catholic clergymen followed them,
succeeded in getting all the cattle and corn resto
and by their preaehing had since restored that pa
the country to perfect peace.--(hear, hear.)
The order of the day was then read, and 1
question " That the Speaker do now leave the chat'
having been put, i
Siri H. VERNER rose and addressed the Ho(
but in so low a tone as to be scarcely audible in
gallery. The llon. Baronet was understood to
that however much he was rejoiced that her hfujes
Government'had thought it right even at this
period to propose any measure calculated to rel.
the well-disposed and peaceable portion of the po
lation, and to preserve life and property in Ire]•
still he could not avoid expressing his regret that
the remonstrances which had long since been ma
on the subject of the growing evils of Ireland shoe
have remained till now unnoticed. Early in
present year he had raised his voice in an endeav
to convince the Noble Lord at the head of
Government, and those acting with him, of
inevitable consequences which would ensue
those remonstrances were neglected. At
same time he had moved for returns why
though granted, had not been made, which woo'
have shown that arms had been eagerly pi
chased in 'lreland by men from whom they ought
have been withheld, and the truth of his anticipAtio
on the withdrawal of the Arms Bill in 1846, l
been fully borne out by the events which had
lowed. By the abandonment of that measure by
Government in 1846, permission to possess arms
been given at a most unseasonable tine. At t
period the bad and evil-disposed were demand I
maintenance and support from the landlords
farmers. The two parties were at issue, and this
been the period chosen by the Government for
establishment, in Ireland, of free-trade in arms •
(Hear, hear.) On the 10th of August, 1846, '
Arms Bill came in for a second reading, and on t
occasion the Noble Lord said, " The question
whether all perions whatever in Ireland should
at perfect liberty to have any arms they pie
to introduce any quantity of gunpowder t
please into the country, and to sell that g
powder and those arms in the interior, on
coast, and ih all parts of Ireland. If you gave 'iaa
entire license to theople to have what they choose,
my belief is that you will be giving encouragem?nt
to outrage, and that there will be more offences
against life than if you allowed this Bill to continue.
the Bill
Swucash
carriedl have no doubt that the throwing out of this Bill
would encourage many of those malefactors in ITe-
land who go about selling themselves to connnit
m
Noble Lord on that occasion, and the second reading
of u h
House composed of 79 Members. On the followifollowing:!ter e the
by opinions expressed by the
a majority of 33 iti a
Monday, however, the Noble Lord at the head of the
Government came down and announced the abandon-
ment of the Bill, but "assured the House that the
Government were still determined at all events that
security to life and property in Ireland shonld not be
diminished." Connected with-this proceeding there
was a circumstance which had at the time created great
alarm in Ireland. A gentleman now no more, but for-
merly of great
power and influence in Ireland, for whose
memory he should not utter a word of diarespect (the late
Mr. O'Connell), announced at a repeal meeting in
Dublin the withdrawal of the Arms Bill, on the very
same day that the announcement was made in this
House by her Majesty's Government. The connexion
between Conciliation Hall and Downing-street Was
held to bode no good to Ireland, and the result was
that the moment was seized upon by the people 'to
arm themselves. And what had been the conse-
quences ? Why the Right Hon. Baronet on intro-
ducing the present Bill detailed a long catalogue of
crime, and on concluding his speech admitted that in
every case he had detailed the crime had been com-
mitted by means of fire arms. Nothing could pal-
liate murder, and yet the attempt to do so had been

tion,
bean
they
the
dents

rhich
that
s de-
gher

llon.
ffan,
I not

bon-
eno-
itnd,
Ince.

iim-
!that
had
rand
ILet

made in the course of the discussion on the present
Bill. Murders had been committed, and the widows
and orphans of those whose lives had been sacrificed
cried aloud to the Noble Lord, not for vengeance,
but for that protection which had been denied to their
husbands and fathers. On these grounds he should
give his support to the Bill now on the table.
Mr. ANSTEY was desirous, before the Speaker
'-left the chair, to express his sentiments on the subject
:before the House, and to justify the vote he had already
given. It seemed to him that the measure was based
upon two equally false assumptions ; first, that the
people of,lNland could not safely be entrusted to pre-
serve the' peice of Ireland; and, secondly, that the
Castle authorities in Dublin, or of the Treasury here,
might safely he trusted with an unlimited discretion
over' the property and liberties of the Irish people.
The Right Hon. Baronet (Sir G. Grey) had signally
failed in establishing these two propositions; though
he had succeeded in proving that all former systems
of governing Ireland had failed. This failure was
attributable to the gradual withdrawal of the gentle-
men and yeomanry of Ireland from the care of the
public peace, which had been entrusted to paid officials.
The measure before the House was a step further in
the same bad direction. A few years ago the district
he represented, and other districts of Ireland, were
attached to the cause of order ; they had a direct pecu-
niary interest in keeping down disturbance; but, by the
consolidation of all the magisterial jurisdictions in
Ireland in the vice-regal authority—by the system
of mulcting the whole community instead of the par-
ticular district for the costs of disturbance—by creat-
ing a standing army, in the shape of a constabulary
force, at the direction of the Lord-Lieutenant—there
had been engendered the indisposition to act in the
repression of crime, of which so much complaint had
been made. Well might such a system fall; and it
was most astonishing that the Right Hon. Baronet
should propose to remedy this failure by an extension
and augmentation of the same vicious system. He
(Mr. Anstey) yielded to no one in his abhorrence of
the crimes that had been perpetrated in Ireland ; but
he must object to this Bill, believing that it would be
wholly ineffectual for the repression of such crimes,
and that it would engender a state of things scarcely
less objectionable than that which it proposed to re-
medy. It went to withdraw the whole magisterial
authority of Ireland, and to vest in the Ford-Lieute-
nant a jurisdiction of an entirely different character.
Even were Lord Clarendon an angel of light, the
proprietary might be doubted of investing him,
or rather the Right Honourable the Home Secretary
—for, after all, the matter would rest with him—
with powers so vast and extensive. He had lis-
tened in vain for any fact from an Irish Member, tend-
ing to show the necessity of this measure. True,
there was the disposition to carry arms ; but was not
this accounted for by the way in which the tenantry
and peasantry had been treated? Had the Bill pro-
posed to allow the use of fire-arms to none but those
who paid rates and taxes he might have consented to
go into the Committee; but it actually prohibited the
bearing of arms, in proclaimed districts, to all but
those contained in some few specified exceptions.
This was not only unconstitutional; but a reflection on
the loyalty and good-feeling of all classes, gentlemen,
magistracy, and the people at large. Even the right
of licensing to bear or possess arms was taken away
from the local magistracy. The Bill not only took
away the means of self-defence, but imposed a lasting
and indelible stigma on all classes. Irish Members
were told, " You must either accept this measure,
or propose a better in its place." He denied the
obligation ; he denied the necessity for any
such measure; for all the evils had arisen
from a departure from the ordinary course of law,
whereby gross injustice had been inflicted on Eng-
land and Scotland, through the calls made on the
consolidated fund. Let Government go back to the
ancient principle of laying the burden of crime on
the district, whether a county, a barony, or a town-
land; let them he made answerable for the support of
the families of persons who were assassinated ;
let the local administrators of justice, the grand juries,
be armed with full powers of defence; and let the
system of rural municipalities, which the late Sove-
reign proposed for England, but whose application
was intercepted by the Melbourne Ministry, be esta-
blished in Ireland. The best effects would follow,
agrarian disturbances would be removed, and the
people at large would have a direct interest in the
preservation of order. If a division took place on
this stage, he should vote against the Bill going into
Committee; he had offered it no factious opposition,
having given way on many points ; and he felt that a
resort to all the means of opposition which the forms
of the House supplied could only be justified in very
extraordinary cases, of which he did not conceive
this to be one.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. P. SCROPE rebutted the implied charge
against himself of inconsistency, in having opposed
the last coercion Bill, on account of the widely
different circumstances in which Ireland was now
placed. Former Governments had not only ignored,
but denied, the real causes of Irish discontent ;
agitation had been assigned as the cause ; but it
was now pretty generally admitted that the inse-
curity of tenant-right lay at the root of all these
evils. The Noble Lord at the head of the Govern-
ment, in opposing the last coercion Bill, had declared
his opinion that ejectment from land was the great
source of the distress of Ireland; and, acting on this
belief, the Noble Lord had passed what might be
called the great charter of Ireland—the poor-law.
This was the first of a great series of measures
which Government evidently contemplated for the re-
dressing of Irish grievances; and no doubt a measure
for improving the relations of landlord and tenant
would form one of the number. The Govern-
ment had evidently arrived at a right, conclusion
as to the cause of the evils; but he much doubted
whether the public at large were so well informed
on the subject. The outrages had been represented
as temporary and local; but this was not true, or
only partially so, for they were outbreaks of a long-
existing and deeply-seated malady.—(hear, hear.)
One main reason why disturbances had been more
frequent and serious in the south and west, than in
the north of Ireland, was the fact that in the latter
tenant- right was almost generally recognised—in the
former not at all. In Tipperary, for instance, there
had been more clearances and less recognition of
tenant-right than perhaps in any other county of
Ireland. In support of this statement, the Hon. gen-
tleman read some extracts from the evidence given
before Lord Devon's Commission expressive of the
opinion that the want of tenant• right was the great
grievance. He trusted that the danger of absolute
starvation was at an end, now that Ireland possessed
a poor-law; and thus one great source of discon-
tent and disturbance would be withdrawn. Lo:k
at the state of the occupying tenant who had de-
pended so greatly on the potato—how was he to pay
his rent in arrear, or the rent of this year? It was
estimated that sixteen millions had been lost by the
failure of the potato crop in 1846—a sum equal to the
aegn e
at re rentaltthe prioefs Ireland.tsha
had been
He
greatly
a tly thoughtexag gtehre
at
ed ; chargesbut
they were not the only persons who had used repre-
hensible language. Lord Fitz william had said in a
pamphlet which he had recently published, that the
great evil of Ireland was that there were 7,000,000
of cottiers occupying small portions of land—an evi
which the State must et once proceed to remove—

that was, to destroy the only means of sub,istence of
7,000,000 of people.--(Hear, hear.) Such language
was ,nough to alarm the people, and make them
des, crate. The great evil in his (Ur. Scrope's) esti-
mation was, in not putting it within the power of the
pffrointry of Ireland to improve the land ; and the
remedy' was, to give that security of tenure which
would enable them to do so, and place more at the
disposal of the pkisantry the means of improving the
waste laildHlFl'lr,land.—(llear, hear.) The most
distressed airier in that country might be made
-ft,d!taint4 its population if such means were
adopted: in Glentees, for instance, with a popula-
tion of 47.000 to a rental of 16,0001., there was
waste land enough, as proved before a Committee of
the other House last session, to maintain all the po-
pulation if.ie:evere cultivated; and in Mayo the
quantity oitahtble land might be absolutely doubled
if all the waste land were taken into cultivation.
Nothing more was wanted to remedy the miserable
condition of the peasantry of Ireland and prevent
agrarian outrages than the removal of the evils
which he had pointed out. He did not oppose the
Bid before the House; he only wished to press on
the Government and the Legislature the necessity of
taking vigorous, permanent, and thorough measures
for entirely putting an end to the crimes which all
must deplore.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. SCULLY defended the Irish priests, and de-
clared his conviction that the Bill would fail in its
object. He must admit with horror that many mur-
ders were perpetrated in some parts of Ireland, but
thought the ordinary law would have been sufficient
for the repression of crime if it had been put in force.
In that part of Tipperary which ,he represented,
there were 350 prisoners in the gaol of Clonmel, and
19 of them were charged with murder. These cul-
prits would have to wait until February or March
before they could be tried—why, then, was not a
special commission issued ?—(Hear, hear.) Before
the Government applied for extraordinary, they
should have tried the ordinary powers of the law.
(Hear, hear.) The Honourable Gentleman
then read some portions of the evidence taken before
Lord Devon's Commission, in order to show that
two-thirds of the outrages in Tipperary arose from
the system of letting the land, and the great number
of ejectments. They should, therefore, first find out
the causes of crime, and then apply the proper
remedies for the evils which produced it —(Hear,
hear.) So long as the present law of landlord and
tenant was left unaltered there would not be perfect
peace in Ireland. The two great evils of Ireland
were want of capital and want of employment. He
admitted that the habit of allowing unemployed and
poor persons to bear arms was likely to be abused.
He would not, therefore, be opposed to refusing a