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-
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 appreciated
the responsibilities by which the benevolence of her
MAJESTY'S Ministers was necessarily, to a great
extent, restrained at all times. He knew that while
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. iO'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 cf the country, I announce em-
phatically my opinion that the people will starve in
.housands."

men.

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. lie says, indeed, most distinctly upon this

point—

"Last year, when the calamity was not near so greats
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
tLe " 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. He has overlocked 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
11 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 corn-
misseration for his countrymen, and the intensity of
his desire to ameliorate their sorrows. While she
possesses hearts so alive to her sufferings, and coup
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 ()-
O'CONNELL will be hearkened to by our Liberal Go.
vernment.

We, on Monday, alluded to the visit which the
lion. 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 his gained amongst persons of every class
in society, from the wisest and most intellectual of
our statesmen, the highest and most patriotic of our
nubility, 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 zealou

acivocates, may well utter joyous pceans. But there
were other subjects introduced in his speech, 7.'hich,

although of less vital importance to the public
generally, and having lees influence on the national
wealth, cannot but prove deeply interesting to the
philanthropist, to the man who feels himself concerned
in anything relating to the welfare and happim:•ss of

his fellow-men.
First in importance and interest amongst topics of
this class stands the question of military flogging—a
system the horrors and atrocities of which are now
fully understood by the nation, against -which the
voice of public opinion has been most loudly uplifted.
Dr. BoweING had long been the opponent of that vile
description of punishment which, in nine cases out of
ten, destroyed the moral character, the feeling of in-
dependence and honour of every man who had been
subjected to the deep degradaAon of the lash, and
which, often inflicted for the most trivial and insig-
nificant cause, occasioned an untimely and painful
death to the unfortunate victim. Had Dr. Bownisto
rendered no other service to the public, had he been
an indolent and careless man, negligent of the great
duties which every representative of the people takes
upon himself on entering the Senate-house, he would
have gained immortal honour for the course he
adopted on that question. He seized the golden
moment, he availed himself of the intense enthusiasm
pervading the public mind, which had been thoroughly
aroused by the horrors detailed at Hounslow during
the proceedings of the inquest held on the body of
the martyred WHITE. He gave notice in the House
of Commons of a motion for the total and immediate
abolition of the abomination, and firmly resisted all
solicitations to relinquish or delay his motion until the
public mind was less excited and less sensitive on the
subject; he was told that he might embarrass the
authorities if he brought forward so ticklish a ques-
tion, and assured that if he would only wait every-
thing that was possible under existing circumstances
would be done ; but the Learned Doctor was too well
aware of the real value of such assurances to let slip
the favourable opportunity ; he knew that every
valuable and important reform has been obtained by
the pressure from a ithout, that he might never again
find a moment so propitious, and gallantly and un-
hesitatingly he persevered. His answer to the so-
licitations so made to him is deserving of the highest
credit, and should be a model to every independent
senator under similar circumstances. It was, " that
if any fragment was left of the system, that system,
he would still denounce and endeavour to overthrow:
His firmness and perseverance were not thrown away.
A vast improvement was effected ; new rules and
regulations were promulgated, by which the number
of lashes which could by any possibility be inflicted
was reduced to fifty, one fourth part only of the
number that was formerly sanctioned. The oc-
casions, too, on which the cat could be called into
operation were greatly restricted, and the greatest
precaution directed in every case, in order to ascertain
that the victim was in such a state of health as to
enable him to endure the torture without danger to
his life. Had the Doctor been satisfied with the as-
surances so made to him, it is, to say the least of it,
probable that the measure of reform would have been
more tardily granted, and of a more stinted character.
He was asked if he would be satisfied with these re-
gulations ? but his answer was, " No; while there
is a power to inflict one single lash on the back of Coe
soldier I will still protest, and divide the House ;'
and to that pledge he continued faithful; he brought
forward the subject in a speech of the most thrilling
pathos, the highest eloquence—one that will not
speedily be forgotton by any person who had the
good fortune to hear it, and which, although he failed
on that occasion in obtaining a majority, planted the
good seed that must speedily come to maturity arid
bring forth its fruits in due season. We need not to
urge the Honourable Gentleman to persevere in
this course ; we doubt not that :he will do so,
and bring all the energies of his enlightened
and powerful mind to bear on the question
wheresoever and howsoever it is suffered to exist.
We would remind him that our naval brethren are
still exposed to the cat, that to them its horrors have
not been mitigated, that a commander may still at
his mere will and pleasure sentence any one of his
seamen to the gangway, where four dozen lashes,
fully equivalent in point of severity, it is said, to two
hundred lashes, as administered in the army, may be
given without his being permitted to speak in his
own defence, or even to inquire the cause of his
punishment ; we would urge him to inquire into the
manner in which the cat is still used in some of our
prisons, where children of eight or ten years old have
been flogged in the most cruel manner—where a boy
of twelve years of age has fainted during the course
of the flogging, and been declared by the surgeon
unable to bear any more. These things cannot be
suffered to continue unnoticed, and they will afford
an ample opportunity to the Learned Doctor for exert-
ing himself in the cause of humanity during the
ensuing session—exertions which we most sincerely
hope may be crowned with well-merited success.
The other views put forward by Dr. Bowersfo
were of the most comprehensive and liberal character.
Full and equal justice to Ireland— the same rights, the
same laws, the same recognition of privileges which,
in every free country, ought to belong to every free
man—the education of the people—improvements in
ventilation and draining, and in the recreations of the
people, were all touched on in the most masterly
manner. There was one subject, however,
which he omitted, and for which he might
justly have claimed credit. We allude to
the absurd and unjust quarantine laws, by which
trade and commerce are fettered, free intercourse with
other nations restricted, morality injured, and vast
sums of money annually waste tagis thrown away.
Dr. BOWRING has called attentiOnrrothe anomalies of
the present system, explained the true theory of con-
tagion as adopted by the persons of talent and ability
who have recently directed their attention thereto,
and proved how useless as well as vexatious are
the existing precautions, and through his exertions
we may reasonably hope for a speedy amelioration
therein. We trust that many other legislators may
imitate the example of Dr. BOWRING in rendering an-
nual accounts of their conduct ; and if they as Well
deserve the approbation of those they represent in the
Legislature as the Learned Doctor, they may fearlessly
meet the people, and be certain of being greeted with
the same unanimous applause that was accorded to
the Honourable Member.
ed Alll.

The Diet at Frankfort has voted a recompense of
100,000 florins to Dr. SCHONBEIN and Dr. BCETTIGER,
the inventors of the gun-cotton, provided the federal
military commissioners and the authorities of May-
ence, after seeing it tried, should pronounce it to be
a substitute for ordinary gunpowder, and to possess
advantages that the latter has not.
The Diet afterwards adjourned to the 14th of
January, when the question of the Duchy of Schles-
wig-Holstein, and that of the liberty of the press,
will come under discussion.

Basle city has followed the example of Geneva.
Exasperated at the temporising conduct of the Grand
Council on the subject of the Jesuits, the people rose
on the 22d in open insurrection, and commenced un-
paving the streets. The Grand Council immediately
resigned, and henceforth Basle city and Basle
country will form but one canton. This, with the
vote of Geneva, will secure in the Federal Diet a
majority sufficient to pass an enactment ordering the
expulsion of the Jesuits and the dissolution of the
league of the Catholic cantons.
The elections at Geneva took place on the 24th.
Upwards of 7,000 electors voted. The result has
been to give an overwhelming majority in the Grand
Council to the Liberal party.

Madrid papers of the 19th have arrived. The
mails of the 20th and 21st are still due. They have
been detained by the floods in the south of France.
The French Ambassador's ball, on the 18th, had
gone off very brilliantly. The QUEEN and the IN-
FANTA, who were present, treated the daughters of
CHRISTINA and MuNoz with such marked attention
as to attract general notice.
Mr. 13unwER. was still at Aranjuez.
The British squadron was to leave Cadiz on the
17th, to re. enter the Straits, and cruise along the
eastern coast of Spain.
The Duc D'AumAnE was to leave on the 20th, and
the Duke and Duchess of MONTPENSIER on the 22d,
for France.
These papers contain important news from Por-
tugal. The intelligence from Lisbon is to the 14th.
This news fully confirms the intelligence of the