The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-16 00:00:00

dimensions. Travellers have attested this ; Lord
DEVON'S Commission has avouched it with the most

solemn and oppressive distinctness. The fact requires
no demonstration ; it is admitted by persons enter-
taining every variety of political and ecclesiastical
opinion. The wretchedness of the Irish peasantry is
so universally acknowledged that it is employed
now-a-days as the illustration of the most direful sped•
mess of individual destitution. Knowing, therefore,
the habitual and prevalent poverty of these unhappy
beings, we can entertain some adequate c9nception of
the utter and grinding want of which such a visitation
as that of the destruction of the potato crop must be
productive. We must recognise that not merely
must the labourer himself be deprived of the little
food, which had previously nourished himself and
those dependent upon him for their subsistence—but
that he necessarily loses the employment which had
originally brought him a few shillings per week,
namely, the digging of the potato-fields, the carting
of their produce, and other incidental labours. Be-
sides being thus denied his annual stock of vegetables
and his weekly pittance, the pig, ordinarily fattened
for the payment of his rent, becomes too costly an
appurtenance to his household ; and the Irishman is
thus plunged into immediate difficulties, with a pros-
pect of a still more irreparable embarrassment.
Such calculations of the miseries at present rife in

Ireland are corroborated by every successive picket.
The famished labourers are congregating together
upon the hills in a state of mind closely bordering on
desperation. The different boards of guardians are
giving evidence, by an unwonted alacrity in their
movements, that something of a preventative character
must be done, and that immediately, or otherwise the
patience of the sufferers will be altogether vanquished
by the pangs of hunger, and disturbances increase

the miseries of the various districts. Petitions are
already flocking in upon Lord BESBOROUGU, implor-
ing his Lordship to avail himself of the prerogatives
and powers committed to his discretion in behalf of

.he afflicted multitude. At Killarney a large meeting

was convened under the direction of the Earl of KEN:
MARE, at which meeting a considerable number of local
magistrates and gentlemen were present. So urgent
did the necessities of the population of the adjacent
barony of Magonihy appear, that those individuals
were hurriedly assembled together for the purpose of
inquiring what measures of alleviation were most
advisable. Not the least emphatic evidence of the
wide extension of the potato murrain and of the ab-
solute necessity thereby entailed upon the Legisla-
ture of an active endeavour to supply the deficiency,
is that simple, but significant resolution, passed in
a meeting of gentlemen and ratepayers in the town
of Kells, county of Meath. Here it is, and surely
it requires no comment or elaboration :

" Resolved—That the Act 10th Victoria, chap. 107,
having contemplated only an apprehended failure of a
portion of the potato crop of the present season in Ire-
land,' does not afford an adequate or suitable remedy
for the loss of the whole crop."
Such are the opinions of the more intelligent and
affluent inhabitants of Ireland with respect to the
exigencies of the present emergency. The next dan-
ger to be apprehended is that the starving peasants
should themselves be impressed with a similar con-
viction. Greater calamities would inevitably result
therefrom. The Irish sufferers would immediately
regard the Government and local authorities as equally
apathetic, and insubordination would be the imme-
diate consequence. This, we maintain, must be
seriously apprehended, unless some strenuous exer-
tions be made by the landlords. Often as we have
repeated this before, we shall never tire of insisting
upon those exigencies upon the acknowledgment of
which the happiness and the lives of so many thou-
sands are dependent.

Two remarkable occurrences have already demon-
strated that the Irish labourers are being trifled with
over-much, and that their meekness and forbearance,
under their existing accumulation of sorrows, areyield-
ing at last to the dictates of famine and indignation.
On Friday afternoon, according to the Cork Reporter,
several agricultural workmen entered their office as a
deputation from Ballyfeared, with an advertisement
declaring that the miseries experienced in the barony
of Kinnalea were so direful, and that the sufferers
were so entirely overlooked by those upon whom
their preservation from death devolved, that unless
provisions were contributed within a stipulated
period, "forcible means would be had recourse to to
procure it!" The other circumstances occurred at

the demonstration of about three hundred starving
labourers, held on Wednesday last, immediately
before the castle cf Eyrecourt, near Ballinasloe. The
manner of these three hundred peasants is wonder-

fully striking. They are starving, and yet they are
passive : they remonstrate with their landlord upon
their forlorn and destitute condition, and they tell

him that, notwithstanding their anxiety to pre

serve all reasonable order and sobriety, they

cannot and will not perish while they are surrounded
by plenty, and that it is madness to expect them to

act otherwise. These illustrations of the want of
employment and provisions in Ireland cannot be too
incessantly or too forcibly pressed upon public atten-

tion. The devastation has been rapid and general—
its correction should in like mariner be rapid and
general. The antidote should be as powerful as the
poison, or the pernicious effects of the latter cannot
be counteracted.

The Duke of BEAUFORT is determined to obtain
a share of that disgrace which has of late attached
to some other members of his order. lie ap-
pears desirous of emulating their Graces of NEW-
CASTLE and BUCKINGIIAM, the Marquis of EXETEF,
and other Noble Lords, who during the last session
of Parliament afforded the strongest evidence of the
violation of the constitutional doctrine, that Peers
should not interfere in the elections of the repre-
sentatives of the people. On Monday we re-published
an article from the Gloucester Journal, which states
that notices to quit have been served on several of
his Grace's tenants, who (although as yet they have
committed no offence) may possibly have the manli-
ness to think for themselves, and not submit to be
dictated to by the Duke, or his underlings, and to
be driven to the hustings like a flock of unreasoning
animals, to record their votes in favour of any
nominee, whom it may please their landlord to
honour with his approbation. The lash is to be kept
suspended over them ready to fall if they should pre-
sume to act according to the dictates of honour and
conscience. The freedom and purity of election is
to be exemplified in Monmouthshire, family ties are
to be disregarded, fraternal affection set at naught,
all the bonds of relationship to be severed and dis-
united at the fell dictates of party spirit and party
vengeance. The present case is even worse than any
of those of a similar character by which it was pre-
ceded. If the Duke of NEWCASTLE sacrificed a son,
the heir apparent to his title and possessions, and
arrayed himself in open hostility against the inhe-
ritor of his honours, he might at least plead that at
that time the great, the important measures of free
trade had not received the legislative sanc-
tion, that his act, objectionable as it was
in every respect, might yet be productive
of some benefit to the cause which he was
at all hazards prepared to support. It was not that
he loved his son less, but that he loved protection
more. Such a plea, however, cannot be set up on
behalf of the Duke of BEAUFORT. The cause of pro-
tection has departed. It is happily numbered amongst
the things that have been. There is no longer
a hope for the re-enactment of corn-laws to tax a
nation's food for the supposed benefit of a class. The
most sanguine monopolist can hardly hope for a re-
newal of the objectionable impost. The expulsion of
Lord GRANVILLE SOMERSET from the representation
of Monmouthshire therefore can only be regarded as
an act of cold-blooded vengeance, a punishment to be
inflicted, because his Lordship, a man of sense and
experience, a Cabinet Minister, entrusted with an
important position in the Government of the country,
and deeply responsible to the nation at large for
the manner in which he should discharge the
duties committed to his hands, yielded a reluctant
consent to measures which he felt were imperatively
demanded by the intelligence of the people, and any
continued opposition to which must be utterly use-
less and impracticable, and because he aided and
assisted his sagacious and disinterested leader in pass-
ing through the Legislature the necessary enact-
ments. It is hardly surprising that his Grace, when
once he had determined on such a course, should
hesitate about the means for carrying his wishes into
execution. The man who could presume to dictate
to a brother far more experienced than himself in