The Sun.
London, England, 1846-03-24 00:00:00

trees, or of the evil of the Administrations which have con-
ducted the affairs of Irelend, or whether, with regard to the
Miseri idch prevailed among a large per:hm of the people, or
of the crimes and frightful outrages upon life es we,l es piss-
perty, whether resulting from misery or other causes, which
had, 33 it. were, scared the soul of society, and which had
forced then' Lerdshil.s reluctantly to have recourse to mea-
sures of a severe, coercive nature, which broached upon the
natural rights of our fellow-countrymen--all these statements
were bet too true. They could be matters of no controversy.
No person would dispute them. They were reiterated over and
over again in the course of the discussion on the late coercive
measures. But these thin ss, tee existence which we all
deplore, hart (as his Noble Friend who had last spoken had
reminded their Lordships) their root far (feeder than in any
misgovernment of the present or any other day. Its root lay
deeper then its any political agitation of the present day,
although he thought they were not in some sort uncon-
nected with that agitation, 'as he should presently show,
they had had their roots deeper plunged and wider spread in
the social condition of the Irish people. With reference to
their engagements in landed property, and their great predilec-
tion for agricultural pursuits hi their own style he did not
think they could interfere. They could not interfere with the
rights of property, the most sacred of all rights—those sacred
rights upon which society itself depended—tire great corner •
stone of the whole social edifice in every country, as they roust
ever necessarily be. They constitute the line of demarcation
which separates the savage from the civilised state of society.
LI the one property is safe—in the other unsafe. This consti-
tutes the diderence between a governed country and a country
where anarchy prevailed. Here property is safe—there, there
are no sacred rights of property. This constitutes the differ-
ence between the two states of society. It was a wide differ-
ence—it was a contra -t—it was a diametrical contrast between
the civilised and savage state of society. Therefore it is that
property, having all those rights, must be deemed sacred. For
that remote it was that they must in all they did, in all they
said, and in all they meditated to do—make ad spring from this
as from a first principle ; ankno man who desired the name of
a reasonable being, or even a person claiming for himself the
least grain of common sense, or the smallest amount of regee-
thin, can entertain a doubt upon the subjest. Nor could,aay
person suffer a thought to cross his mind—to pass over the
mere surface of his imagination—could entertain for a moment
an hesitating thought—a shade or the shadow of a shade upon
the most sacred and fundamental of all principles—the sacred
rights of property. If, then, there were speculators—practical
speculators—who suffered to pass across their imaginations the
abstract ideas that those sacred rights of property may be in-
terfered with with impunity, and who propouneed this inter-
ference with property as one of their remedies for existing evils,
who carried out the absurd principle for the purpose of deluding
their dupes in the country, who were for the most part ignorant
persons when compared with themselves—but more thought-
less, more reckless than they who suffered it to be said, aail to
go out to the world upon their authority—and propounded
Bills in Parliament of which he had heard that night for the
first time. He could not have believed it possible in this 19th
century, in a British House of Commons, that there could have
been propounded, what htd been called by the gentle phrase—
euphonious and eugnlistic " fixity."—( Laughter and cheers.)
Meaning thereby, by an Act of Parliament, that any person,
being the Occupant or tenant of a piece of land, or other pro •
perty, was to have a personal property nut of his landlord's
estate, in the shape of the house or tenement. or lands, which
he must have occupied for a limited number of veers, and
which he was to become entitled to by payment of 'fixed rent.
That was an interference wills, a desecration of the sacred
rights of property, which their Lordships must strenuously re-
sist, honestly, fairly, openly, downrightly. It was a gross
monstrosity to give the tenant property upon such conditions.
place the tenant in the landlord's place, in consequence of
his having formerly paid the rent. He could only understand
how it was that such a proposal was not instantly put down by
the strong arm of talent in the other House, except that it was
thought, either that the matter was of so little im-
portance, or else so extravagant in itself as not
V) deserve the attention of the House. At all
_

events it was brought forward in the middle of August,
when long discussiolis are deprecated, and Government beieg
anxious for a prorogation, mentioned at the same time that
they intended to sen7l over a Commission. He knew, more-
over, that. a Commission was intended long before that time,
and the Commission, wnen formed, was not formed to. inquire
as to the best mode of improving the sacred and inalienable
rights of property. It was not appointed to inquire into fixity
of tenure, nor the robbery of landlords for the sake of tenants.
It wai lamentable that there should be such a state of things in
the United Kingdom as had grown up in the sister country.
Matters ought to be far otherwise in the management of pro-
perty. The Noble Lord who had just spoken had given us an
illustration. He (Lord Brougham) wAild give his Noble

Friend another illustration, with which he was familiar, to
show him the difference between the two countries. What
would he think of an estate, the rant of which was 13 000 or

20,0:10/. a-year, upon which there were not 80 or I 00 tenants,
but 1,300 or 1,40'1 tenants in chief paying rent, and perhaps half as
many more again—probably 3,000 pad the rent of under-tenants;
none of whom paid en much as 40/. a-year. Numbers of them
paid 71. and IN., and some 10s., 125., and l a. rent. It was
a great mistake to say, that if the land was un.ierlet the law of
Ireland was the same as that of England; and to say it the poor
sub-tenant had paid his rent to the middle-man, ancd the middle-
man should fail, that the landlord coul4 not destrain upon the
sub-tenant. It was a gross mistake—ha cou:d do so, and it
was only an act of kindness or good feeling that he did not do so.
And again in another case, to which the Noble Earl who moved
the addres a averted, which he ( Lord BrouAham ) hoped rarely

happened, that upon a 1: ase being out, ens the owner wishing
to have his farm better cultivated, and in order to bring about
that result, found it necessary to reduce the number of his
tenants, in order that he might apply that skill and capital which
a number of small tenants were not able to command, and were
not able therefore to improve the condition of the land. He
considered it a great hardship that the landlord could rot exer-
cise the powers granted him by law of dismissing all the
small men, and consolidating the farms as had been done in
Scotland some years ago. TO consolidate these farms it must
be necessary that a number of these small men should emigrate.
It was a considerable hardship that a man should not have some
power to act, as he thought for the good management of his
estate. lle would be loath to believe that the example quoted
by his Noble Friend had been =eh followed. It appeared
from his statement that a vast number of persons were evicted
the moment the lease fell in. It was undoubledly right for the
landlord to do that if he thought it was for the benefit of his
estate, and it was nothing more than an set of kindness, and
neither more nor less, on the part of the landlord toward his
tenantry if it was not done mere frequently, and they must be
made by the strong arm of the law to understand that such was
his right; and if he should choose to stand upon his right, they
had no right to oppose, or resist, or thwart him, for that is the
law of the land ; and property would be valueless, and
no longer worth having or cultivating if such laws
were repealed. The landlord had an indissoluble right
to do as he wished with his own estate. He con-
sidered that by passing the late coercion measures fir
putting down outrages, that they had begun at the right end.
He rejoiced to see it. They had armed Government with a
compulsory power, and the first lesson to be taught to the Irish
people was, that they must obey the law ; that they must sub-
mit themselves to the law, and that their agitators and evil
c .unsellors, be they laymen or priests, shall in vain attempt. to
urge upon them to resist the law, or persist in the commission
of outragee; and they should know, and must know, that if
they do so resist and persist, they must suffer the penalty of the
condign punishment of criminals. So carefully did the Noble
Earl abstain from telling them what he wished to propose to
remedy the grievances of Ireland, that it was only when he
alluded to the Irish church, at the end of his speech, that he
(Lord Brougham) could know what tangible remedy he had in
view. The mode of collecting the tithe was, it appeared, the
master grievance. But since 1832, when his Noble Friend op-
posite, with himself, made the change in the tithe, there
was no such thing to be found in Ireland as a tithe proctor.
To use the words of Lord Plunkett, he was as rare to be found
as an ostrich. In the year 1823 he presented a petition in the
other Howe of Parliament, complaining of the maladminis-
tration of justice, and he had occasion then to make observa-
tions on that subject which he regretted were but too tree.
Same of the judges who then executed the law were called
"Union judges." " Post hoc vas propter hoc." in their regard,
as it so happened that they owed their origin to the unions and
were actuated by a strong political bias ever afterwards. He
looked over the statement a few days ago which he then made,
and he could say that no such grievance now remained. It
might be said that political men now sat on the bench. The
question, however, was not what a judge was before his ap-
poinment, but what he had been since. Had the ermine been
stained with faction ? Were they political judges ? It
was said that such appointments were not liked by the peo-
ple of Ireland. He could say that one-half of the population
might disapprove of the appointment, but a half and more ap-
proved of them.—(Great laughter. r No doubt four or five
Judges were appointed, who were said to be political
judges ;but were they the only political judges A former
Government had made appointments equally political. If
they had a fackson, and a Lefroy, and a Smith, they had also
an O'Loughlin, a Perrin, a Ball, a Brady, a Woffe, and a
Compton—every one of them politicians. It resulted from the
necessity of the ease. All the political bar of Ireland was
tinged with politics, and such would be the case till a third
party arose and introduced a different state of things. As long
as there were two great parties at the bar, 9 out of 10 of the
barristers would be politicians. He thought it his duty to to ake
these observations. One word as to the social state of
Ireland, which was divided into seven millions of Catholics, and
one million of Pi otestants. He contended that the Catholics
had no right to complain of the alienation of the religious pro-
perty in Ireland, as the property was granted for Christian
uses, and Parliament had a perfect right to appropriate it to
those purposes, and to the State religion. The master grievance
of Ireland was, that these seven millions received no emolu-
ment for their own religion. That was a great difficulty, he
admitted—so difficult as to amount to an impossibility. The
people, he censidered, should not be subjected to the burden
of paying for their own religious instruction. It might be
said that the clergy would not take an endowment. His life
on it they would take it.—(Laughter.) 'they might not take
it the first quarter, but they would the next. He denied
that Catholics were challenged' on juries for their reli-
gion, They were challenged for other objections, which
would have equally applied had they been Protestants.
If a question should arise as to the eligibility of a juror, it
would be one not at all connected with religion. But taking a
full review of the whole statement of the Noble Lord, he
( Lord Brougham) did not believe that this was a question
which could be dealt with by legislative enactment, but by the
determination of the Government not to palter to or bargain
with agitators, be they priests or laymen. He
quite agreed
with Isis Noble Friend that the processes of law in Ireland
should be made more facile and less expensive ; but then it
should not be forgotten that the law in England was ten times
more expensive. He felt great pain is being obliged to make
many observations that he had made ; but he did think this
House should not lend itself to the malpractices of certain par-
ties ; and if they did, he did think they would be lending them-
selves to those agitators in Ireland to whom he believed was
attributable much of the agrarian outrages that had been
committed. He had read speeches made at public meetings
by priests and others, who spoke of property having its duties
as well as its rights, and he believed that the landlords of Ire-
land had observed that maxim.—( Hear, hear.) But he could
not agree with his Noble Friend that the Irish landlordsshould
not exercise that right as they thought proper.
Earl FITZWILLIAINI did think that the House was much
indebted to his Noble Friend for having brought forward this
motion, inasmuch as it would have the effect of bringing the
state of Ireland before this House and this country, because
Ireland was a country not understood by Englishmen, and also
because she was a sort of mirror in which Englishmen did not
like to look, for it did not reflect anything creditable to the
Government of England. His Noble Friend had spoken of
the difficulty of dealing with the monster grievance of Ireland,
the Irish Church ; and the Noble Duke opposite had said it
would be impossible to do so ; but that the latter phrase would
be a sort of disinheritance of this House of its power of legis-
lating for Ireland, or of removing the grievance by legislative
enactment. He had heard a great dual said about the pay-
ment of the Catholic clergy ; but if he were a Roman Catholic
ho would never consent to such a regulation. If the 'House
did not deal with this question justly and impartially, 'depend
upon it they would have to deal with questions of still greater
difficulty in reference to the rights of property in that
country. This was a matter in which he was deeply
interested as a proprietor of land in Ireland. There
was a time when certain villains in Ireland made
propositions to the Lord Chancellor of the day,
though these fellows held their estates by a very insecure
tenure ; yet such a state of things was brought that these men
became firm legal holders of those estates. He knew that
what was said here went abroad lay means which he did not
approve of ; but he spoke to their Lordships, and be told them