The Sun.
London, England, 1847-01-26 00:00:00

FROM TIIE MORNING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
TIMES.—The proposition which Lord J. Russell is to
submit to the consideration of Parliament this evening has
an inherent importance, to which even the magnitude of the
present crisis can add nothing. The introduction of a mea-
sure of relief for the poor of Ireland concerns not only present
interests and temporary exigencies, but the necessities of the
rehole empire for all time to come. The condition of Ireland
is, directly, the condition of the British empire. No legis-
ative union can tighten—no Utopian separation could dis-
solve—that intimate and close connexion between the two
islands which has been formed by the hand of nature, and
consolidated by the operations of time. Where position and
circumstance have stone so much, it were vain for the wishes
and theories of men to struggle against their results. It
were as easy to change the geographical longitude of Dublin,
as to untie that social union which exists and will exist be-
tween Ireland and England, independently of the wishes of
the people, or the resolutions of the Legislature. Each year
cements by closer fusion the twain branches of the Saxon
and the Celtic stocks. Those giant ministers of civilization,
steam and iron, deride with Promethean sneer the puny
!seance of faction and the antipathies of fear. Whilst our
passions are the most excited, and our jealousy the most
vigilant, terror and passion are found equally unavailing to
keep those apart whom a higher Power than man's has
joined by the contiguity of position and the bond of mutual
dependence. It does, therefore, become to every thinking
Englishman a question of paramount importance how that
natural unity which already exists shall be best confirmed
by legislative enactments, and that intercourse which can
never be checked shall be carried on to the greatest advan-
tage of both countries. Hitherto the union has been local
and geographical, but not substantial. Ireland and England
have resembled nothing else so much as the dead and the
living bound together by the fetters of a cruel caprice. The
dead body has been convulsed with painful imitation of its
breathing neighbour; the living has drunk in inevitable cor-
ruption from the contagious mortality of its companion. But
this must now be changed. The lethargy of centuries must
be dispelled, and a vital warmth infused into the stagnant
channels of suspended life. Ireland must be one with Eng-
land in the participation of her social and material, no
less than of her political and constitutional privileges.
England .must be freed from the drag-chain rot Irish
improvidence and the contagion of Irish pauperism.
At present, Ireland is paying the heaviest penalty
for the past imprudence and shortsightedness of her
wealthiest and most powerful. sons. But she is not paying
this by herself: England is mulcted for connivance at a
great neglect, which time has developed into a great crime.
The weakness or the indifference of man has given intensity
to the inflictions of Heaven ; and England feels the scourge
which has visited Ireland for the omission of duties which it
was once incumbent upon herself to fulfil, and it is now in-
cumbent upon both to recognise. Celtic hunger and Celtic
fury are gnashing their teeth in alternate prayers and exe-
crations. The redundant tide of Irish misery swells with
ominous din and increasing force upon the high shore of our
cities and chief marts. Each succeeding vessel from the
famine-smitten island brings a new cargo of wretchedness,
elamarous for alms, and resolute in complaint. Bristol,
Liverpool, Stockport, are thronged with this gaunt and fear-
ful immigration. In vain are the necessities of domestic
want and the indigence of native industry pleaded against
the obstreperous demands of this intrusive destitution.
In vain is it urged that the first mortgagees of home
half time, and the English shopkeeper
charity are unusually numerous; that the English arti-
zan is working
receiving half profits. Irish want and Irish per-
tinacity admit of no such reply. The dark and squalid
throng that diminished wages have thrown upon the succour
of parochial or private bounty has received a fearful augmen-
tation to its numbers in the dreary multitude whom a novel
and unheard-of enterprise has landed he our western ports.
Strange that the miseries of life should be coined into a
trade; that the blind eagerness of a starving people, and the
dismay of their richer neighbours, should be wrought out
into a gainful speculation But what more forcible commen-
tary could be exhibited than this upon the two antagonist
lines of policy which have been taken in two states of the

same empire—a policy which has in one given to unexpected
or unmerited poverty a perpetual lien upon consenting pro-
perty, and, in the other, has left it to the casual support of
voluntary benevolence or the dangerouse license of an exact•
ing mendicity? With such a state of things as this before
their eyes, is it wonderful that Englishmen should look with
feelings of curiosity, not wholly unmixed with jealousy, to the
Ministerial plan of poor relief for Ireland? Is it, wonderful that
theyshould demand an equitable adjustment between property
and its obligees in every part of the empire? Is it wonderful that
they should insist on giving to the Irish the same privileges
which are enjoyed by the English peasant? That they
should expect a country which has a gross rental arising
from land to the amount of 12,000,0001. a year to burden
itself for the support of its impotent poor ;—that they should
demand of its aristocracy such a provisien as shall effectually
mitigate the recurrence of a visitation like the present, and
effectually prevent the shameful degradation implied in their
wholesale appeal for alms to the charities of the more pro •
vident people? And is it strange too, that, when they cal-
culate the awful effects which a repetition of such misma-
nagement and of such consequences must infallibly produce
on a population of eight million beings, and of the baneful
influence it must have upon English prosperity and English
tranquillity—is it strange that they should watch with
jealous scrutiny the policy of the Minister and the attempts
made by the more powerful Irish interests to obstruct him in
carrying out a policy, which past history and present emer-
gency prove to be necessary for the security of England and
the prosperity Of Ireland?
CHRONICLE.—One whose faithful performunce of his
own duties as an owner of land, not less than his high per-
sonal character and honourable public services, gives value
to his praise, said lately of the Irish landlords, in their
present difficulties, that " they had conducted themselves in
a manner which reflected the highest honour upon them."
These are startling words. Our respect for any opinion
coming from the Marquis of Lansdowne obliges us to con-
,s.der whether we, and the English public generally, may
,not have done the Irish landlords some injustice. The
Noble Marquis confined his remark to the " present trying
circumstances." We shall keep within the same narrow
limits. Let us try to forget, though but for a moment,
that long and shameful history of past neglect and mis-
conduct which has no apologist. What hare the Irish
landlords done, under the pressure of the present calamity,
to entitle them to such eulogy fyoin an English statesman ?
Let us try them fairly. An objection meets us on the
threshold—" You must not judge of them by an English
standard. They are poor and embarressed ; disabled
from acting in concert by the prevalence of absentee-
ism. They have to deal with a peasantry wretched
and helpless to a degree unknown in England ; and
there is not, as in England, a middle class to share their
efforts or their burdens. It would be most unfair to try them
by an English standard." Be it so. We will not try them
by an English standard. But there is a class with whom
they may be fairly compared. The Western Highlands of
Scotland are inhabited by a peasantry similar to those of
Ireland. Potato food, want of a middle class, impoverished
and absentee landlords, are facts common to the two coun-
tries. Will the conduct of the Irish proprietors, in the pre-
sent trying circumstances, bear comparison with that of their
Scottish brethren? In the course of last session an Act was '
passed authorising loans of money to landlords for drainage.
'lye say nothing now of the policy of that Act. But when
the first indication of famine appeared, the Scotch landlords
proceeded to avail themselves of the means thus afforded
for employing the peasantry. With what result? Sir George
Grey tells us that they have hitherto got through their
difficulties with comparative success. Only two deaths have
taken place from starvation. There has been no waste, no ne-
glect of tillage, no demoralization of men working in gangs
upon the roads, Leok to Ireland. An Act was passed autho-
rising each barony to employ the poor who could not find
private work, the whole of the necessary funds to be ad-
vanced in the first instance by the Treasury. Lord *Chu
Russell declared its object to be to stimulate private employ-
ment. Precautions, which anywhere but in Ireland would
have been successful, were taken with this view. The public
wages were to be fixed at a lower rate than private wages.
Public works were not even to be set on foot where private
and profitable employment could be found for the poor. At
the same time the landlords, like those of Scotland, were
enabled by the Drainage Act to afford such employment.
How did they act? With one accord they flung aside the
Drainage Act, and pat men by thousands upon the roach, to
be paid by the Treasury. It is now perfectly evident that
this reckless waste of public money was incurred in the belief
that they would never be called upon to repay it. Loans
under the Drainage Act they knew must be repaid, but with
respect to advances for public works Sir David Roach
blurted out the truth at aLimerick meeting :—" They say we
shall never be asked for all this money we are getting.' It
was a good opportunity of easing John Bull of his superfluous
cash. While this reckless system was going on, the land-
lords began to cry out more and more loudly against the un-
profitableness of what they were doing. The Government
was charged with producing all the evil, because it was said
that the landlords of a whole barony could not act together
to find profitable employment. The Government. to take
away all excuse, literally suspended the law, and enabled
the landlords of a single electoral division to act together.
But it annexed conditions which would have secured repay-
ment of the public advances. There was a momentary pause.
The clamour then broke out afresh. The new plan was de-
clared to be as bad as the old. The Government was abused,
and the money was drawn out of the Exchequer in fresh
goods to be wasted on the roads. From first to last the ten-
iency of the course taken by the landlords was to relieve them-
selves from every burden, and to cast the whole weight of
alleviating the public distress in one crushing mass upon the
shoulders of the Government. When we look to the
present frightful condition of Ireland when we see
millions of money expended in destroying the habits
of the people, in teaching them to look to Government, and
not to themselves, for support, in familiarising them with
pauperism and strengthening their tendency to combina-
tions—when we see under the form of law the dissolution of
society itself advancing with rapid strides, we are compelled
to ask the Marquis of Lansdowne with the utmost respect—
If the landlords have so acted as to reflect honour on them-
selves, whose misconduct is it that has brought about these
gigantic evils? Who are " the architects of ruin ?" We
cannot even imagine a defence of the Irish landlords as a
class which would not convict the Government of the most
unpardonable folly and incapacity. We are satisfied that the
Government is open to no such imputation. lk htever ex-
perience it had of Irish landlords, it could not anticipate, in a
time of public calamity, the reckless neglect of all their duties
which they have exhibited. With English landlords or
Scotch landlords the measures which the Government
adopted would have worked as they were intended to work,
and even if they had defects, private ant, voluntary zeal
would have made up for toem. They failed and were
turned to mischief in Ireland simply as every other reform
has been and will be perverted which is made dependent for
its working upon a class proved to be incorrigible. What-
ever• I S to be due for the regeneration of Ireland must not be
done by or through the !audlords. The experiment has been
tried too often without success to be now rep: at ed. A differ-
ent and a surer basis rust be found for legislation in the pea-
santry themselves. Trust nothing to the d:scrrtion of nfiena
ho have never shown a common feeling, or the senseo t
common interest, with that peasantry. Trust everything
the adaptation of laws and institutions, to the ways if'teleiliveekco-
ing andsicting which prevail amongst the peasantry
otltrm
English
itstead of hoping to reproduce the relations
agricultural life and the advantages of our ruralre whiy
defiance of all existing facts, tendencies, and p )
not endeavour to enlist the ruling passwriohnofntobtebstrienshdpienasatilltat
on the side of industry and order? y
mind the feelin
3ch tie at the root of civgs and habits which,you cannot destroy with
the interests as,i spousibilitiense
T of the Irish peasant, we
an improvement.
f-
lare told, is languid and fitful, and his wretched wages are but