The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-25 00:00:00

IRISH BANKS OF ISSUE!

It appears by the return of the Irish Banks of Issue,
which appeared in the Morning Chronicle of Monday,
that the total average circulation of the Bank of Ireland
for the period embraced in the return has been lessened
by 55,975/. as compared with that for the previous four
weeks; and the average amount of gold and silver held
by the Bank shows a decrease of 13,111/. from the last
return.

The Provincial Mills's circulation has been lessened
by 21,221/. ; and the bullion has been increased by
21,2891.

Belfast Banking Company—Average circulation, in-
creased by 23,882/. ; bullion increased by 35,0301.
Northern Bank—Average circulation, increased by
4,6251. ; bullion increased by 3,4831.
Ulster Bank—Average circulation, increased by
29,7711. ; bullion increased 30,8011.

National Bank—Average circulation, increased by
15,9521. ; bullion increased by 9,4281.
Carrick•on-Suir National Bank—Average circulation,
lessened by 1,310/. ; bullion increased by 843/.
Clonmel National Bank—Average circulation, in•
creased by 7,0481.) bullion lessened by 3,2341.

VICE REGALCOURT.—His Excellency the Lord.
Lieutenant entertained the following party at dinner
yesterday evening, at the Vice Regal Lodge :—The
Ladies Ponsonby, Mr. and Lady Maria Ponsonby, Hon.
General Ponsonby, Mr. H. Ponsonby ; Mr., Mrs., and
Miss Fortescue ; Sir William Somervill, Col. Browne,
Mr. Hervie, Mr. Hayden, Lord Dankellin, aid-;le-camp
in Waiting.
REDUCTION OF THE TEA DUTIES.—The Belfast
Chamber of Commerce has resolved, by an unanimous
vote, upon memoralising her Majesty's Government for a
reduction of duties upon tea.
DESTRUCTION OF SHANNONVA LE MILLS.—A report
is current in town that these mills, the property of the
Messrs. Allen, were destroyed by fire last night. If true,
this unfortunate event is at the present crisis, and in the
present melancholy position of the poor of that district,
a national calamity. The benevolent owners of these
concerns were actively engaged in doing everything to
alleviate the distress of those around them, and were,
when the fire took place, about to bring round a cargo
of barley for the supply of the wants of the poor in that
district. We have mrparticulars of the occurrence, but
we give the sti.tement as we have had it. It is said
8,000 barrels of wheat were consumed.—Cork Examiroi:r.
DISTILLATION F itO3I GRAIN.—At a general meeting
of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, held on Saturday.
after a lengthened conversation regarding the means of
supply and amount of demand for food in these kirg-
doras, it was considered that our present state and pros-
pects imperatively call for the precaution of every
economy in its use ; and it was unanimously resolved
that a memorial be forwarded without delay to the Trea-
sury, fram the Chamber of Commerce of Belfast, pray-
ing, under existing circumstances, for a temporary pro-
hibition of the use of grain in distilleries and breweries.
An address to the Mayor, asking him to call a town
meeting for an early day, to consider the subject, has ob-
tained numerous and influential names, and been most
generally signed.

DISTRESS IN IRELAND.
The following are the most prominent passages of a
letter addressed to Lord John Russell by Dr. M'llah :
" St. Jarlath's, Tuarn, Dec. 15, 1846.
t" Dignus imprio . . si non imperasset.'—TAcrrrs.
"'Had he not the misfortune to rule, he would have
been deemed deserving of empire.'
" My Lord,—This sententious contrast between the
hopes of the aspiring Cm'ar, and the disappointment in-
flicted by the reigning emperor, is but too applicable to
those statesmen whose talents, so hopeful in opposition,
seem to be blighted on their attainment of political
power. Within the brief interval of twelve months,
two remarkable letters have appeared, bearing your
Lordship's signature. The one boldly promulgated
the sound doctrine of free trade, and expressed a
generous sympathy with the destitution of the Irish people,
which was but light compared to the famine with which
they are now afflicted. The other was so chilling as
to have filled those with despair whom it would have
been wisdom to console—among whom hunger now rages
with such terrible activity, that it is consigning to the
grave its daily victims. The one was the studied essay
of a popular candidate for the distinctions of office, the
other was the cold and conventional language which was
borrowed from the political ritual of preceding prime
ministers. It was on buoyant hopes inspired by the lan-
guage of the first your lordship was borne to your pre-
sent responsible position; and should you persevere in a
line of policy towards a suffering nation accordant with
the cold-hearted sentiments contained in your second
letter, it requires no extraordinary prescience to predict
that it will assuredly prove the precursor of your political
fall.

"By one of those awful calamities with which Provi-
dence sometimes visits states and nations, five millions of
people, forming an integral portion of a flourishing and
mighty empire, and entirely deprived of food, arc con-
signed to all the horrors of famine. The Prime Minister is
naturally and rightfully appealed to to relieve the suffering
part with an equitable application of the wealth of the
entire body, and he replies to them to look to them-
selves, and to rely on their own resources. Self-reliance
is a fine theme when sufficient for any crisis ; but to tell
a people to supply themselves with food, when both food
and means ofj procuring it are gone, appears like the
requisition to the Hebrews to make bricks without ma-
terials. And does your Lordship, too, advocate, by this
singular letter, the nullity of the Imperial union ? For
forty-six years the people of Ireland have been feeding.
those of England with the choicest produce of their agri-
culture and pasture—and while they thus exported their
wheat and their beef in profusion, their own food became
gradually deteriorated in each successive year, until the
mass of the peasantry was exclusively thrown on the
potato. New improvements in agriculture were projected,
scientific reforms in the rearing and feeding of cattle
were discussed and adopted ; but to the mass of the
people the practical fruit of these improvements was a
fresh interdict of the use of flesh, meat. or of flour, and a
further extension of the dominion of a less nutritive kind
of that same vegetable, to the exclusive use of which
they were inexorably doomed !
"No matter ; a cry of Irish prosperity was raised by
those who were enabled to subject the growers of corn te
the uniform consumption of an inferior quality of fond ;
and the same cry was re-echoed from the shores of Eng-
land, gladdened-with the abundance with which its in-
habitants were supplied, careless of the misery of which
that abundance was productive in Ireland, and losing
sight altogether of the dietary destitution, which, during
the spring and summer months, its people were uniformly
fated to endure. The English Legislature was not un-
grateful to the Irish landlords for those exporting ser-
vices, so beneficial to the English population, and in re-
turn for the increased quantity of the nobler food, which
alone they would consent to make use of, it furnished
them with facilities of seizure of crops and ejectment of
tenantry never known before the union ; so that if any
of the peasantry should become too fastidious for the use
of potatoes, or aspire to the interdicted food of flesh,
meat, or flour, destined to swell the rent-rolls of the one,
and feed the petted population of the other, they were sure
to be summarily driven from their tenements for not
raising further food for export, and reproached with
utter ignorance of the very elements of agriculture. On
the expulsion of the tenantry to the skirtings of the
moor, cattle shows became all the rage in Ireland, and
meetings were held to witness and applaud the success-
ful zeal with which Irish graziers could supply with still
larger quantities of beef, and pork, and mutton, the in-
creasing demands of the English people. The animals
were exhibited—not such an exhibition, however, as
when the animals passed in review before him who was
constituted by their common Creator the lord of the
earth as well as of all its animal productions. In these
exhibitions, this order appeared reversed, and whilst the
neglected condition of the poor peasantry showed the
estimation in which they were held, the unnatural di-
mensions of those pampered brutes would indicate that
they were looked on as the beings which shared to the
greatest extent the kindred sympathies of their owners.
Such, with a few benevolent exceptions, was the spirit
that guided those cattle exhibitions.
" In a great national chastisement, all must in some
degree be involved ; and though many of the poor are
made victims, perhaps from the want of due resignation,
and to teach them that there can be still deeper misery
than that which they endured, the entire destruction of
the potato crop reads an awful lesson of the cruelty of
which that aliment has been made an instrument. It
was intended by the Almighty as a valuable adjunct of
human sustenance to his creatures—it has been abused
by man as an instrument of rapacious wealth, of dire
oppression, and of national degradation. Its destruction
sho SFS what some seemed ignorant of—that the interests
of all are identified ; that one class cannot permanently
flourish, and another be abandoned to decay; and that the
people cannot be pushed to the verge of starvation with-
out landlords and rulers sharing in all the perils of
their position. The perishing potato is the most formi •
dable agitator the oppressors of the people had ever vet
to wrestle with. But, though the transition to the full
harvest will be severe, it will become, in the hands of
Providence that caused the decay, the fructifying seed
of our national regeberation.
" Such is now the frightful state of this country,
brought on, as it were, by a systematic collusion be-
tween the Irish landlords and the English Legislature,
and to which Ireland never would have been reduced
had she the protection of a native Parliament. The
famine has not, it is true, directly sprung from the
Union. But severe as it is, it would not be so fatal if
Ireland had not been rendered too feeble to cope
with the calamity by the emaciating process to which
it had been previously subjected. As it is then an in-
contestible truth that it is to the Union our present un-
prepared and destitute condition is to be traced, we
have a strict right, without any imputation of injustice
or mendicancy, to large grants, proportional to
the crisis, from the Imperial Exchequer. Whilst
we supplied you with our abundant produce, we
were as dear and as cherished a portion of the empire
as Yorkshire, or any other shire in England. Nothing