The Sun.
London, England, 1846-10-28 00:00:00

t) its recent inactivity, and the pecuniary help de-
rived from the Legislature to be merely meted out
according to that already afforded, the prospects of
our sister island are truly desolate, the probability
of her emerging unscathed from her present terrific
ordeal are wonderfully insignificant. But our
expectations are not of this mournful character; we
are too sincerely assured of the wisdom and hu-
manity of the existing Administration, and, beyond
this, we are too sanguine of the emulation which must
be excited in the bosom of the Prime Minister when
his forthcoming remedies shall be contrasted with
those afforded by his predecessor, to entertain any
such fearful anticipations, or to continue in such
utter trepidation for the lives of our fellow-country-
men. The dictates of humanity are sufficiently
powerful to overrule the most fanatical parsimony ;
the recommendations of safety will, in emergencies,
dissipate the torpor of the most confirmed sluggard.
At an important meeting of landlords
and relief committees, held recently in Fer-
moy, the Honourable Representative of Cork
entered more largely into the consideration
of the necessities of the people and the inertness of
the subordinate officials, than he has done on any
previous occasion. We are rejoiced to find Mr.
O'CONNELL pleading thus earnestly for his country-
men in the days of their most extreme desolation ;
we are rejoiced to find him standing forward as the
champion of that people who never needed the voice
of an advocate so much as at this particular juncture.
After enlarging upon the intensity of the distress
which is now so prevalent in the four provinces, Mr.
O'CONNELL addressed himself more particularly to a
consideration of the part already taken for its ame-
lioration by the present Government. On this point
the Hon. Member spoke in the most feeling
and impressive manner. He evidently appreciate&
the responsibilities by which the benevolence of her•
MAJESTY'S Ministers was necessarily, to a great
extent, restrained at all times. Ile knew that ;chile:
immediate and well-organised efforts to prevent
starvation were incumbent upon a Legislature, that;
that Legislature was not the less bound to be cautious
in the distribution of public money and in its inter-
ference with the ordinary machinery of the social
system. Mr. O'CONNELL could not possibly have
overlooked these most manifest duties of a statesman,
he could not be blind to facts which every successive
year of his active career can only have forced more
and more deeply upon his conviction.
In the sight, however, of the terrific calamities
which have been latterly accumulating in his native
land, seeing before him the woes of an almost de-
spairing peasantry, knowing that in many a roadside
cabin there are human beings on the brink of a death
by famine, and conscious that those same creatures
speak the same language, breathe the same atmo-
sphere, look upon the same landscapes, and are indi-
genous to the same soil with himself, Mr. O'CONNELL
is roused to a sympathy which in its turn roused his
indignation. We honour Mr. tO'CONNELL for the
intensity of his feelings upon this subject. There is
always something noble and affecting in the spectacle
of a patriot mourning for the miseries of his coun-
try. When we hear Mr. O'CONNELL exclaiming,
" Things are coming to a frightful pass. Don't you
authorise me to tell the Lord-Lieutenant that the
peace of the country is not secure ?—(Loud cries of
'We do.') Don't you authorise me to tell him that
there is actual starvation in the country at this mo-
ment ?—(` We do')—that he will be responsible for
human lives in countless numbers if something be
not done ?—(Hear.) I will repeat the echo of your
voices to the Lord-Lieutenant." When we remem-
ber the enthusiasm of sympathy which such conside-
rations could not fail to excite in a bosom so suscep-
tible to the wrongs of the Irish people, we are not
surprised at what, in other circumstances, would
inevitably have caused us some astonishment ; we
are not surprised to hear the " Liberator" declaring—

•° If Government do not establish depots and scatter
them in different parts of the country, I announce em-
phatically my opinion that the people will starve in
thousands."

We are not surprised at the earnestness of this ad-
juration, because we remember the abyss of human
suffering into which Ireland is being plunged, and
because we remember that the man who announces
this necessity for so extraordinary a remedy is ac-
tuated to its utterance by the depression of a patriotic
heart.

Mr. O'CONNELL adduces, in support of his proposi-
tion, the example afforded last winter by Sir ROBERT
PEEL. He says, indeed, most distinctly upon this

point—

"Last year, when the calamity was not near so great,
most active measures were taken by the Government of
the day, and it is not here alone I raise my voice in ac-
knowledgment to Sir Robert Peel for that. I did so in
Parliament—in my place in the House of Commons, and
in the name of the Irish people I thanked him, and I
received the personal acknowledgments of Sir Robert
Peel, who came across the House to thank me for what
he called an act of generosity, but which I call an act
of justice."

Mr. O'CONNELL must, however, have forgotten that
the " active measures" taken by that illustrious
statesman, namely, the importation of considerable
quantities of Indian meal, were done in secresy ; that
Sir ROBERT PEEL himself acknowledged the absolute
necessity of net interfering with the ordinary arrange-
ments of commerce, and repudiated the notion of
having intended to make a Government-monopoly
by destroying the wholesome competition of indivi-
duals. lle has overlooked the impolicy, to say
the very least of it, of destroying all mercantile in-
dustry in Ireland by rendering the corn-markets of
that country merely the scene of state barterings.
We are persuaded that Ireland is not to be relieved,
cannot be relieved, ought not to be relieved, by
the establishment of Government depots of provi-
sions. That would, in effect, be nothing more than
the removal of one calamity for the substitution of, if
possible, one still greater. The establishment of Go-
vernment depots, taken in connexion with the Go-
vernment employment afforded to the poor, would be
nothing less than the establishment of the odious
truck-system upon a gigantic and ruinous scale.
Nevertheless, while we recognise the impossibility of
acceding to this recommendation of Mr.-O'CONNELL,
we honour him the more for the sentiments
in which that proposition originated. We be-
hold, in the very extremity of the remedy
propounded by him, the earnestness of his com-
misseration for his countrymen, and the intensity of
his desire to ameliorate their sorrows. While she
possesses hearts so alive to her sufferings, and coupled
with intellects so active for the discovery of their
panacea, Ireland need never despair. Even
at this awful crisis of her existence there is hope
for her in the language of her most eminent coun-
tryman. What does DANIEL O'CONNELL say to Ire-
and at this moment ? He says this :
" I belong to no party but the people. I ought to be
attached to the people. I owe them everything, and they
owe me nothing.—(No.) Let no man mistake me, when
I say the people I do not mean merely the poor man,
who earns his precarious livelihood with the spade by
the sweat of his brow, or the cottier or the farmer, but
everybody from the highest peer of the realm to the
lowest peasant boy. 'Tis my solemn duty to attend to
their interests—to watch over the rights of the land-
lords, and the interests of the tenant and the labourer,
and to do injustice to no man, to secure better prospects
for the country and to devote my heart and soul to the
best fulfilment of my duty to you."
Animated with these sentiments, the Hon. Member
for Cork has proceeded to Dublin to represent to
the Lord-Lieutenant--to that Lord-Lieutenant
whom he has so frequently and so justly eulogised
for his patriotism, his benevolence, and his enterprise—
to represent to Lord BESBOROUGH the urgency of this
juncture, the wants of the Irish millions, and the
almost exhausted state of their patience. Ireland
could not have a better advocate in her most terrible
afflictions. We shall anticipate that the prayers of
O'CONNELL will be hearkened to by our Liberal Go-
vernment.

We, on Monday, alluded to the visit which the
Hon. and Learned Member for Bolton, in pursuance
of his annual custom, paid to his constituents, for the
purpose of explaining his Parliamentary conduct
during the past session. We then adverted solely to
the great and absorbing question of free trade, on the
success of which, and the recognition of its great
principle by the Legislature, the vast number of ad-
herents it has gained amongst persons of every class
in society, from the wisest and most intellectual of
our statesmen, the highest and most patriotic of our
nobility, to the humblest artizan, who earns his daily
bread by the sweat of his brow, and who sees in its
adoption the prospect of increased prosperity to his
trade and increased comforts for his family, the
Learned Doctor, one of its earliest and most zeaiou