The Sun.
London, England, 1846-04-25 00:00:00

An HONOURABLE MEMBER remarked, that the remark
had been used by the Morning Herdd.
Mr. ROCHE said, No ; it was used by the Times news-
paper. The Right Hon. Baronet depended a great deal on his
free-trade measures; but he (Mr. Roche) would ask if free
trade would take the people of Ireland out of their slough of
suffering? If so, then ought the Right Hon. Baronet to
apply free-trade measures at once—( Hear, hear)—and not
hold it in abeyance while he destroyed the liberties of Ire-
land. If the people of Ireland were to be free, it seemed they
must starve ; but if they were to have food, it was upon the
condition of their being enslaved. But they (the representa-
tives of Ireland) said they must not enslave the people of Ire.
land. He must say, he had more hope from the statements
which had fallen from the Noble Lord (George Hentinek)
than anything he had heard for many years in that House. In
the great county which he represented he did not know any
good the Government had done in the way of relieving the
people. In illustration of this, he might refer to
the parish in which he resided, with the clergyman
of which he had had the correspondence already
referred to. That correspondence was about the making of a
road for a better connexion with the harbour of Cork, and to
employ the people. He (Mr. Roche) wrote to the Board of
Works, stating that the resident proprietors were prepared to
advance one moiety, if the Board of Works would advance the
other. After some correspondence it was arranged, so he
understood it, that an engineer should be sent to survey the
road, and he had made, he (Mr. Roche) believed, a favour-
able report. Subsequent to that he wrote to the Board of
Works for information as to the way the instalments should be
raised. That was on the 6th of April, and yesterday a letter
was forwarded to him on the subject, dated the 18th of April.
In the interval nothing had been done to meet the case ; this
showed the way the executive Government of Ireland acted;
not applying themselves to the question as they ought, but
going on in the old jog-t:ot system. This mode of adminis•
tering relief was a perfect farce ; nay, it was worse
than a farce, it was tragical to the people of
Ireland.—( Hear, hear.) The Government was evidently not
equal to the occasion. They undertook the Government of the
country and pretended to be doing a great deal, and when he
made an inquiry, he found them going on in the old system, and
mystifying and deceiving the people of Ireland. The relieving
the distresses of the people of Ireland was a much more absorb-
ing question to him than any other question, and therefore is
gave him great pleasure to hear the Noble Lord say, that he
was prepared to give them full measure of relief. The speech
of the Noble Lord, he could assure him, would be read with the
greatest satisfaction on the other side of the Channel, and his
name would be received with honour and respect for the senti-
ments he had uttered. Again, he (Mr.. Roche), asked the
Right Hon. Baronet, what had he done--4vhat was he doing to
relieve the existing distress? He (Mr. Roche) maintained
absolutely nothing. In conclusion, he was glad that the Hon.
Member for Limerick had brought the subject under the con-
sideration of the House ; in doing so he was entitled to the
support and gratitude of every friend of Ireland.
Mr. BELLEW complained of the want of parties duly
authorised by the Government to go through Ireland, and look
after, and report upon the works necessary to be carried out.
In many instances already, though grants had been made, the
works had not been undertaken, from the want of parties to put

them into orration. He would speak for his own county,
where no progress had been made in the proposed works. He
must say, he did not agree with the Hon. Gentleman who had
last spoken, in his estimate of the speech of the Noble Lord
(Lord George Bentinck). He (Mr. Bellew) happened to be
in favour of a repeal of the corn-laws, though not a repeal of
the Union, and he would not be bribed even by the promise of
a million from the Noble Lord, to forego his opinion on these
subjects.—( Hear, hear.) He complained that the Irish land-
lords had not done their duty, and that whatever advances were
made by the Government would fail to a great extent, unless
the landlords were brought to perform their share. The evil
was, public opinion was not strong enough in Ireland to make
the landlords do their duty. In that case, they ought to have
a law, to make those who had to give to those who had not,
even though the principle of it might not be in accordance with
political economy.—(Hear, bear. )
Mr. E. B. ROCHE explained.
Mr. S. O'BRIEN said that this was not the first time he
had expressed his want of confidence in the Board of Works in
Ireland, and he did not think the suggestions offered by the
Honourable Member who had heit spoken would supple the de-
ficiency. He (Mr. S. O'Brien) had gone over to Ireland, and
he found the state of the potato crop there even worse than it
was represented, and the answers received from the Board of
Public Works showed that no reliance could be placed upon
them. He (Mr. S. O'Brien) then wrote to Lord Lincoln,
stating that he was willing to take charge of his
own people, but as the necessities of the neigh-
bouring district were so great, he could not undertake
to support them all. He wrote to Lord Lincoln on Friday.
His Lordship replied on Sunday, and said that he would on his
own responsibility send down a Government officer, and on the
Monday Mr Griffiths arrived in the district, and on the Wed-
nesday numbers of the poor were set to work. When he,
therefore, heard the remarks of the Hon. Member for Cork
that evening, he could not help saying that it would always be
a subject of satisfaction to him to bear witness to the zeal, the
exertion, and the 'ability displayed by the Earl of Lincoln in
his official capacity—( Hear, hear)—and be was sure that the
Right Hon. Baronet might receive his statements with any
confidence; and it did give him (Mr. O'Brien) the most
sincere pleasure thus in his place in Parliament to do justice to
the kindne,s'receivel from Lord Lincoln. —( Cheers. )
Mr. CALEB POWELL would wish to say one word in
reference to an allusion made to a Noble Lord in Ireland,
whose name was returned in the Report of the Board of Works
as making an application for 5001., with the view of construct-
ing a fish-pond on his own estate. He (Mr. C. Powell) did
not for a moment doubt that this application could be satisfac-
torily explained from the fact of the well-known philanthropy
and patriotism of the Noble Lord. That Nobleman resided
on his own property—(Cheers)—and he was profusely
lavish of his expenditure for the good of the tenantry. To his
(Mr. C. Powell's) knowledge he had spent 5001. a week f r
many consecutive weeks. The same feeling might have
prompted the Noble Lord in this application to Government.
Mr. D. BROWNE thought that the Government had ex-
hibited a most benevolent feeling towards Ireland, but they
were mistaken in the means of carrying it out. He quite
agreed with the Hon. Member who stated that there was abun-
dance of food in Ireland, but that, in consequence of the
scarcity of work, the people had no means of purchasing it.
He always agreed with the Noble Lord, that unless the land-
lords did their duty, they would be under the necessity of esta-
blishing a poor-law system in that country, which would give
to the poor an absolute title to relief.—( Hear, hear.) But he
thought that the Noble Lord had not properly stated the senti-
ments of the Rev. Mr. Hughes, who was an intimate friend of
his own, and who had supported him throughout the whole of
his political career, when he said that the repeal of the corn-
laws would make all Irish landlords repealers. He (Mr.
Browne) believed that Mr. Hughes would hail the removal of
the corn-laws as one of the first boons that could be offered ;
and he quite disagreed with the Noble Lord, when he asserted
that this Government measure for the repeal of the corn-laws
would prove disadvantageous to Ireland. He would, with the
permission of the House, illustrate the view he took of this
subject by a reference to matters of history. In the reign of
Charles 11. the Irish people memorialised the Government of
this country, through the then Lord-Lieutenant (he believed
Lord Ormond) that the imposition of a tax on Irish food,
imported into England, would inflict utter ruin upon
Ireland, because they would not then be able to
keep up their standing army. The tax was, however,
imposed, and the Irish were consequently obliged to direct their
energies into other channels. The result was, that the coun-
try increased in prosperity from the establishment of the linen
and other manufactures to such a degree, that an after petition
prayed that a tax might be imposed upon every article of ex-
port.—(Laughter.) He for one would express his gratitude to
the Noble Lord for the conciliatory tone in which he had re-
ferred to the policy to he pursued with respect to Ireland. It
was always pleasing to hear his country spoken well of, and the
Noble Lord had shown his appreciation of their sufferings, by
not only sanctioning the importation of corn duty free, but by
expressing also his readiness to go to the public treasury for a
fund to meet the distresses of the country. But he wished to
call the attention of the House to a motion which had imme-
diate reference to the district with which he was more immedi-
ately connected. He referred to a communication which had
taken place between Mr. Kennedy, chief secretary of
the Relief Board in Dublin, and the Rev. Mr.
Moore, an estimable Protestant clergyman of Cong, in
Mayo. Mr. Moore lived in his immediate neighbourhood.
He (Mr. D. Browne) was a Roman Catholic, and Mr. Moore,
as he had stated, was a Protestant clergyman, yet they lived
on the most friendly terms, and he was therefore enabled to
speak to that gentleman's usefulness in the district. Mr.
Moore apprehended that famine would assail their neighbour-
hood, and with the most praiseworthy intentions (because the
unfortunates whom he intended to benefit were all Roman
Catholics) went to Dublin, and obtained an interview with
the chief secretary. The Rev. Mr. Moore stated that a con-
siderable time elapsed before Mr. Kennedy would deign to
notice that he was present; he seemed too busily engaged in
giving directions to his clerks and the printers ; and when at
last he did see Mr. Moore, and when that gentleman told him
that there were great apprehensions of famine in his district,
the secretary very coolly referred him to the poor-house
of Balinrobe, because there alone could he or they
obtain relief. He (Mr. D. Browne) was a guardian
in the union of Balinrobe, and he could inform the House that
one-fiftieth of the inhabitants of the district in which Mr.
Moore resided could not get relief there. Mr. Moore then
addressed a letter to Lord Lincoln, but the Noble Lord himself
did not deign to reply to it. He, however, sent an answer
through Mr. Penefeather (a most unintelligible answer),
stating that the relief afforded would be regulated by the man-
ner in which the landlords would perform their duties. What !
was relief to be tested by the scale of a landlord's moral obli-
gation ? If Mr. Penefeather had told Mr. Moore that relief
was to be given commensurately with the amount of the land-
lord's subscription, that would be intelligible enough, however
unsatisfactory it might have been to Mr. Moore, who was sur-
rounded by property belonging to absentees. His Reverend
Friend afterwards wrote to the Lord-Lieutenant, stating that
they did not ask a boon from Government, all they wannttede
being a cargo of Indian corn to regulate
the
pricesto his
market. It was ten days before he received a replyi
communication, and that a most unsatisfactory one, beca
m-
Auise
merely referred' him back to Mr. Kennedy. (The Hon. e
her here read the correspondence which had taken place be-
tween the parties.) What was the deduction to be drawn ? That
however benalicially inclined her Majesty's Government might be
towards Ireland, her people might be allowed to starve until
they had first ascertained what were the intentions of the land-
lords. The people might, however, die while this relief body
in Dublin were deliberating as to the propriety of giving re-
lief. Why, the people in Ireland had been waiting for upwards
of a century in expectation of • getting justice from their land-
lords; but the people were at their mercy, and they got no
justice. The landlords in England recognised the principle
that labour had its rights as well as its duties ; but in Ireland
the landlords recognised no such principle. The Hon. Mem-
ber concluded by impressing on the Government the duty of
coming forward immediately to alleviate the distress in Ireland.
Mr. SHARMAN CRAWFORD coincided in the opinion
of lion. Members who had spoken before him, that the time
had come when a tax should be levied on the land and landlords
for the support of the poor in Ireland. Her Majesty's Govern-
ment had taken on themselves the responsibility of providing
for the poor in that country, and he trusted that by some g
mea-
sure of this kind they would redeem that pledge. He (Mr.
S. Crawford) would give the resident landlord a fair draw-
back f rem this tax. There was another part ofthesubject to which he would refer shortly. He
was
sorry to hear the Hon. Member for Limerick describe
the
s
repeal of the corn-laws as solely an English question. He
(Mr. S. Crawford) thought it was more important as an Irish
question ; and he had no doubt, if the duty on en
abolished, very considerable benefits would accrue toe the were
abolished, Irish
e
people. If they were to be taxed for the support of the poor,
it furnished the greater reason why they should have cheap'
food in the country. He did not blame Irish Members, be.
cause tbey gave a legitimate oposition to what was called the.
Irish Coercion Bill. But he did hope that they would limit
the discussion to what was really necessary on the subject.
He was, therefore, most anxious that the Bill for the total and
entire abolition of the corn-laws should be proceeded with ;
because of all other things that were necessary for the iod
and prosperity of Ireland, during the present crisis, cheapness
of food was the moat needed; and he, therefore, hoped that
some arrangement might be made, whereby the measure could
be proceeded with without any further delay.—(Cheers.)
Mr. O'CONNELL was sure that it would be admitted that
he did not at all question the good intentions of the Govern-
ment towards Ireland, when they proposed their measure for
the relief of the people during their present misfortunes.—
( Hear, hear.) He would be ashamed of himself if he doubted
the goodness of their intentions is proposing that measure, but