The Sun.
London, England, 1847-06-17 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT

ROUSE OF COMMONS, June 16. '
(Continued from our Afternoon Edition of yesterday.)
AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.
Mr. P. BORTHWICIC wished to know, after what
had fallen from the Noble Lord last night in reference
to the motion of the Member for Montrose, and the
amendment of the Member for Finsbury (Mr. Dan-
come), relative to the interference of the British in the
affairs of Portugal, whether the Hon. Member for
Finsbury had consented to bring forward his amendment
as a substantive motion.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL said, with regard to the
resolution of the Hon. Member for Finsbury, that the
constitutional rights of the people should be observed,
he did not consider it was of much importance whether
it was proposed or not, as the Government felt that it
was their duty to see that the liberties of the people
should be maintained.—(Hear, hear, and cheers.) He
was happy to be informed, within the last ten minutes,
that dispatches had been received from the Portuguese
Government that they were prepared to extend to
the prisoners who were lately taken by the British naval
force as full and ample an amnesty as was guaranteed in
the original conditions proposed by the Powers who had
signed the articles for the intervention.
Mr. DUNCOMBE thought that the Hon. Gentleman
(Mr. Borthwick) ought rather to have asked the Hon.
Member for Montrose what his intentions were.
—(Laughter.) For his own part he thought that
from the reception his resolution had met from the
House, as well as from her Majesty's Government,
he should rest satisfied. At all events, he con-
sidered that the Honourable Gentleman who had in-
terposed to put an end to the discussion, and the party
with whom he acted, and who had given vent to such
indignation at the conduct of the Government with
regard to the intervention, should be consulted as to
the course they would wish to adopt under the cir-
cumstances.—(Laughter.)
Mr. NEWDEGATE defended the course he pur-
sued last night in moving that the House be counted.
He justified his conduct by stating that when he made
that motion there was not a single Cabinet Minister on
the benches opposite.—(Oh, oh !)—[Mr. Hume entered
the House at this moment, amid much laughter.]—And
on his own side of the House he was solus. He consi-
dered, therefore, that he was justified in adopting any
course rather than that the debate should proceed under
such circumstances.—(Oh!)
Mr. HUME agreed with the Honourable Gentleman
who had just sat down, that he occupied a very singular
position—(Laughter)—and he must say, that it was
little creditable to the Government that this occurrence
took place. For his own part, he did not believe that
it could have taken place without an arrangement to
that effect.—(Hear, hear.) The Right Hon. Baronet
who had addressed the House last night, in a tone of
the greatest acerbity, and his whole speech was a
tissue of the grossest absurdities and misstatements,
He believed that the House was counted out by a pre-
vious arrangement; and he considered it very discredit-
able that it should be so on a question of that import-
ance. He had no remedy for it but a renewal of his
motion ; but he did not think the House was disposed
to follow him in adopting such a course. He would not,
therefore, adopt that course, unless some further acts of
Colonel Wylde, who had acted as a firebrand in Por-
tugal, should force this upon him. At present be thought
he had done his duty, and he deeply regretted that the
debate had terminated as it had done.

1 -foiCIT6E4-iiii, said that it was not his in-
tention to defend the Right Hon. Gentleman the Member
for Tamworth from the misrepresentations which had
been made respecting him, considering, as he did, that,
in his admirable and comprehensive speech, he kept
closely to the facts of the case, and deduced inferences
which in reason it was difficult not to perceive.—(Hear,
hear.) But the Hon. Gentleman who had just spoken
said: that there was an understadieg between the two
parties that the debate should be disposed of in the way
it had been, and the Hon. Gentleman who counted out the
House said that no Cabinet Minister was present at that
time. He (Lord John Russell) considered that no one
was so great a loser by that step as her Majesty's Go-
vernment.—(Hear, hear.) He thought an attentive
perusal of the papers and of the speeches made during
the continuance of the debate would make it apparent
that the division which must have ensued at
the termination of it would have given a
considerable majority to the Government—(Hear)—
and there were undoubted advantages which they had
lost by the abrupt and unexpected termination of the
debate.—(Hear, hear.) And, therefore, when he saw
that the opponents of the motion were very great losers
by the motion, he was at a loss to understand the accusa-
tion of the Hon. Gentlemen.—(Hear.) Although he did
not think that there was an exact precedent for such an
interposition as that which had taken place—resembling
as it did none of those mythological interferences of anti-
quity in which the goddesses were represented to carry
away a hero in a cloud, whence he got into a difficulty
from which he could not escape—(Laughter)— although
nothing of a similar nature was recorded in their own
time, he could not but believe that the circumstance
might be accounted for without ascribing it to
a previous arrangement.—(Hear, hear.) The Honour-
able Gentleman said that he would not bring on
his motion again, and in this he acts rightly, as in that
case he will save himself from the reply of his Noble
Friend the Secretary for Foreign Affairs and from the
division which would ensue. With regard to the charge
of the absence of the Cabinet Ministers, he wished to
observe that his Noble Friend the Secretary
for Foreign Affairs had only left the House
for a short tame—(A. Voice—.. No, he was in the
House")—and, for his own part, he and his Hon. Friend
the Chancellor of the Exchequer had, after the speech
of the Right Hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth,
gone to the House of Lords to see what was going on
there—("Hear, hear,' and laughter)—snd, from the pre-
sent construction of the Houses, there was not
time to be back before the House was counted
out. The Noble Lord defended the conduct of Colonel
SVylde in Portugal, and said there was no justification
for the charges which were made against that officer.
He was appointed to the office in consequence of his
knowledge of Spain and of the great services he had
performed there when Espartero was in power, to whom
he had given the most efficient and useful advice.
No man was more anxious for freedom and constitutional
rights than he was. He was desirous several times to
be recalled, and it was only at the instance of her Ma-
jesty's Government that he consented to remain in the
difficult position in which he was then placed.—(Hear.)
Sir JAMES GRAHAM defended the Right Hon.
Gentleman the Member for Tamworth from the accusa-
tions which had been made against him by the
Honourable Gentleman the Member for Montrose.
And first, with regard to the charge of absur-
dity, he would leave Europe and the world to
decide whether that charge more properly attached
[ to his speech or to the resolution of the Hon. Gentleman
himself—(Hear, hear)—and to those by whose interpo-
sition the debate was abruptly brought to a close.—
(Hear, hear.) With regard to the charge of .mis-
statement, if the Honourable Gentleman the Member
for Montrose would renew his motion he would have
an opportunity of knowing that the facts referred to by
the Right Hon. Gentleman the Member for Tamworth,
were not less accurate than they were perspicuously
stated.—(Hear, hear.) For his own part, he had to
observe, with all deference to the Hon. lyiember for Bolton
(Dr. Bowring), that he preferred to go to dinner rather
than listen to his speech.—(Laughter.)
After a few words from Mr. STAFFORD O'BRIEN,
Mr. NEWDEGATE said that the Right Hon. Gen-
tleman had given them good reason to understand that
his appetite, if not his will, was in collusion with those
who terminated the debate.—(Laughter.)
Mr. HUDSON said, that although he was absent at
the time the House was counted, he was not aware of
any such intention being in existence. He thought that
it was merely an individual act, and therefore blame
should not be oust upon a whole party. If the House
did not wish to be thus adjourred, care should be taken
that when a question of this importance was in agitation
a sufficient number of Members should be present.
TENANTS (IRELAND) BILL.
On the order of the day being read for resuming the
adjourned debate upon the second reading of the
Tenants (Ireland) Bill,
Mr. S. CRAWFORD said that he hoped in the
few words which he had to say upon this subject he
should be able to show that a most disorganised system
between landlord and tenant existed in Ireland, and that
the condition of the tenantry was such as to claim and
demand from that House a due consideration of their
state. It was impossible that either landlord or tenant
could be placed in a just and proper relative position until
many of the abuses which had crept into the system
were removed by the intervention of the House. The
landlords said that their rights had not been sufficiently
protected. He (Mr. S. Crawford) said that
not only had their rights been sufficiently pro-
tected, but that they had had too much pro-
tection, and that powers had been entrusted to them
which they ought never to have had, and which they
had used to the utmost extent, so as to be productive of
mischief to themselves and their tenantry also. He
could inform the House, also, that not only had these
legal powers been used to their farthest limits, but that
they had been exceeded in the most fearless manner,
for in many instances tenants had been ejected without
even the warrant which was required by the law which
then existed. The system of subdivision of land had
been for a great many years promoted and forced by the
law, and that subdivision was at present in a great mea-
sure the cause of the unsatisfactory position both of the
landlords and tenants of Ireland. The landlords had
themselves encouraged the system, and they, therefore,
ought not to be the parties who should
be the first to complain when the conse-
quences of their own acts reflected upon themselves.
The Hon. Member then cited a number of instances
from the Parliamentary reports, and proceeded to say
that here there was a plain inference that there ought to
be a legal enactment on the subject. There had been
meetings in different parts of the country, all of which
had come to resolutions which acknowledged the
tenant rights, and asserted that the rights of those
tenants ought to be respected. But ho had another and a
stronger resolution to place before the House. It was a
resolution passed at a large meeting of landowners at
Dublin, the Marquis of Ormond in the chair, and the
gentlemen then present had been unanimous in support-
ing the principle which he advocated. He had first in-
troduced this principle
inciple in the shapo of a Bill in 1835.
He had
againbroughtand
it before Parliament
in 1840, next in 1842,
thena again in 1845 ;
and he had trusted that her
as now constituted, would have takensty's Government
up the subject,
and settled the principle which he desired to be adopted
But if the Government did not interfere it was the -duty. 1
of the House to regulate the matter, and the
preamble
of the Bill sufficiently showed the anxietyo the
promoters to improve the condition of the tenant in
Ireland. The chief object was to secure to
the tenant the value of the improvements which
Ao had tide 01 the property which he occupied.