The Sun.
London, England, 1833-01-22 00:00:00

root of all,—as twining round and -towering
over all,—as fastening and preying upon every
inhabitant of every cottage—on almost every
estate in every county of each province through-
out an island of 12,000,000 of superficial acres,
and nearly 8,000,000 of souls. The bulk of a
people with few or no manufactures, and little
foreign commerce, must derive their subsistence
directly from the land, either as labourers upon
it or as occupiers ; but there never, within
memory, has been Irish capital applicable to
the payment of agricultural labourers, suffi-
cient for the maintenance of the hands de-
manding employment. Had the whole of the
landed proprietor's of that country since the
Union been generally resident on their estates, a
greater portion of useful and ornamental works
would no doubt have been undertaken for pur-
poses of obvious profit, accommodation, or
pleasure. This, to a certain extent, might have
palliated the mischief of an unfavourable growth
in the disproportion between the employed and
unemployed poor of Ireland, but we more than
doubt whether any such change would have ef-
fectually checked it. Several causes may have
conspired towards the rapid multiplication of
paupers in Ireland. The first, most general,
and most powerful, has been the worse than
semi-barbarous state of the lower orders in all
that concerns the enjoyment of, and desire for,
the ordinary comforts of civilized life. Sensible
of no such wants, and brought up in the misery
of living from hand to mouth, the Irish peasant
has, with few exceptions, married in extreme
youth, and become burdened with a numerous
family before he had laid by any provision
for the supply of decent necessaries within
doors, or for the profitable stocking and cul-
tivation of even the smallest patch of field
or garden without. Such habits, descending
from father to son, have made wretchedness
and destitution the heritage of the race, so that
barbarism
,and excessive numbers have been re-
ciprocally cause and consequence. The want
of a middle order, to operate by example on
those below them, has helped still further to re-
tain the peasantry in their prostrate condition.
When, by some lucky and peculiar accident, a
labourer has succeeded in emerging from utter
poverty, and approaching to comparative inde-
pendence, he has not had before his eyes any
better model for an adjustment of his habits to
his increased resources than the "gentleman "
to whose level he durst not dreain of soaring ;
so that his modes of life, his indulgencies, em-
ployments, and whole demeanour in prosperity,
differ not at all in nature or character from
those of his humblest fortune. In point of so-
cial decency, therefore, the farmer and labourer
are on the same footing ; in manners there is
-Still less of regular gradation than in wealth.
This, it is manitest, must work injuriously upon
the whole body of the poor, by reflecting from
above as well as from each other the unal-
tered image of their own rudeness. The
next definite source of a redundancy of poor
in Ireland is the mode in which the ra-
pacious habits of the landlords act upon
the barbarism of the people. Where employ-
ment can with the utmost difficulty be had, and
that but partially, at wages incapable of support-
ing life, the direct produce of the soil must be
the labourer's main subsistence. Hence, land.
is food, and house, and clothing to the peasant.
He must have a bit of ground at any price, the
alternative being positive starvation for his family.
Since all are in the same predicament, they bid
against each other ; they bid as rent what it is
physically impossible to draw from the soil for
the use of the landlord, after furnishing the most
scanty and wretched provision for their own
wants. The rule of the country is, or was, that
the highest offer should be accepted. What
then, can follow from the payment of such rents
but prolonged and hopeless misery for the te-
nant ? What from their non-payment but ejec-
tion, and still more pinching misery ? The ab-
sence of capital would have led naturally to a
great subdivision of farms among the Irish, but
this tendency has been strengthened by an Act
of Parliament which unquestionably had no
such indirect mischief in contemplation. The
Act of 1793, by which 40s. freeholds were opened
to the poorest class of Roman Catholics, has
ever since, down to the year 1829, been made
an engine for accumulating a pauper population
upon every estate throughout the island. Free-
holders were in place of feudal vassals; their
numbers constituted the political power of the
squirearchy. They were mustered at elections
as demonstrations of force, and as measures of
the claim possessed by each landowner to a
share in the spoils of the community. Hardly
a rood, therefore, of bog or mountain on which
a mud cabin could he raised was left without
its qualified faggot voter. Each hut required a
female to boil the potatoes ; every female, with
scarcely an exception was a breeder. Thus, for
nearly a generation and a half, the materials of
aggravated wretchedness had been industriously
collected by the squires for objects purely velfish.
Then came the law which abolished 40s. free-
holds, and the motives, as well for contriving
their creation, as for tolerating the continuance
of the attendant pauperism, were altogether an-
nihilated. The fruits of this measure have been
unspeakably cruel. So soon as gentlemen found
that a swarm of mendicant occupiers could no
longer be converted to political ends, they dis-
covered likewise the extreme indiscretion of
retaining such nuisances upon their property.
What was to be done? The new lights of
political economy which had hitherto been ob-
scured behind the curtain of the 40s. qualification,
began to burn in full splendour on one side,
while on the other was nothing but the dim, pale,
tremulous lamp of pity for the destitute and
famished poor. The part of the landlords was
soon taken—the blush of humanity gave way be-
fore the frown of science. It was necessary to
extend production, and to cheapen it; for such
a purpose it was further necessary to have none
but solvent tenants, with moderately large farms,
on the land : the next necessity in the series
was for the expulsion of the whole mass of small
tenants—the men of one, two, three, four, and
five acres, that the estates might not be over-
peopled, nor pauperism so frequent and disgust-
ing. Well, the thing was done : scores, hun-
dreds, thousands of poor families have been
ejected from their dwellings without hesitation
or mercy—from dwellings without other furni-
ture, to be sure, than the potatoe-pot, without
any bedding but straw or rushes. Still they had
warm thatched roofs over them, and so far al-
forded shelter from the wind and rain. The
myriads thus unhoused had no refuge but the
road-side ; multitudes, therefore, perished ; but
more lived for vengeance. A Noble Lord's
estate in the Queen's County was cleated
successfully" of the pauper population ; but
in that clearance originated the insurrec-
tionary proceedings, and midnight murders,
of the Queen's County. The estate of a
gentleman bearing military rank, and situated

in the county of Kilkenny, was cleared in one
day of 600 pauper tenants. The estate was dis-
burdened, and the county soon afterwards (hut
'rot before) disturbed, while the gentleman who
ordered the wholesale expulsion, has never dared
to show his face in the county down to the pre-
sent hour. So much for the state of the poor
of Ireland, and for the relation between land-
lord and tenant, which is its main characteristic.
The wretched creatures ousted from their lowly
habitations, have huddled together in the out-
skirts of Irish towns and villages, containing at
this time, we believe, the most pitiable mass of
human suffering upon the face of the earth, and
being, for the same reason, the receptacles the
most pregnant with violence, outrage, and de-
struction of life and property. In this picture
we have studiously refrained from every art of
colouring, and every approach to exaggeration.
There is, we are sure, no Irish gentleman who
cannot, and no poor man who will not, confirm
every word that we have stated. The general
population of the country are not half em-
ployed, and of the employed more than half are
on wages utterly insufficient to maintain them ;
yet we turn up our eyes and wonder that such men
are disaffected to the State and eager tools of in-
cendiaries or traitors, if traitors or incendiaries
could be truly alleged to exist in Ireland !
The first remedy for this is a poor law. Read
Dr. Doyle's pamphlet upon the subject,—read
the evidence of some intelligent and respectable
priests, and after that let any man who lists
produce one sound argument against a system
of Irish poor laws. A poor law wou)d render
it no longer a matter of indifference to the gen-
tlemen whether the multitudes were or were not
bowed down by hunger. Under a poor law the
gentlemen would gain nothing by barbarity—he
must support the indigence he causes. There-
fore it is that most Irish landlords, we say not
all, are averse to a poor law for Ireland ; but the
poor man, under such a law, would be no longer
desperate and anxious for all violent change ;
therefore, it may be that some distinguished
agitators are averse to Irish poor laws. The
priests, whose real interest is known to be the
welfare of the peasantry and the peace of the
country, are desirous of a measure which would
force the gentry to consult the well-being of their
neighbours, and would induce the labourer to
acknowledge that he derived some protection
from the law. Until that be done it is childish
to blame the turbulent spirit of the people, and,
indeed, is almost wicked to punish it.— Times.
The great meeting which was held in the
city yesterday is reported at such length in this
day's Advertiser, as to render it utterly useless
to point the attention of any one to it ; but the
subjects treated at it are of such universal in-
terest, and vital importance to the whole com-
munity, that a few words in the shape of'
comment may not, perhaps, be altogether with-
out their value. These subjects were the
propriety of repealing the assessed taxes;---of
rendering Parliaments triennial, instead of sep-
tennial—and of adopting vote by ballot, instead
of the systenr of open voting which is now
practised. With regard to a repeal of the
assessed taxes, no proposition could be
more absurd than one to repeal them in
toto. The revenue, on . the one hand, could,
not, we are confident, in the present state of the
country,—with justice to the fundholder and
justice to the expenditure which is required for
the great public establishments of the empire,—
: bear such a loss as that which would arise from
the repeal of all the assessed taxes, without the
substitution of others in their stead, which would
be collected with greater difficulty, and might
bear more severely on the middle and working
classes of society ; while, on the other, there
are some of them—such as the taxes on horses,
carriages, servants, &c.—which fall exclusively
on those who are either able to pay them, or
ought to be able to pay them, and which it would,
in consequence, be impolitic to repeal. That
portion of them, also, denominated the inha-
bited house duty, is only objectionable on ac-
count of the inequality of the assessment..
It is easily collected, it is easily estimated,
it brings in a considerable amount of reve-
nue, and, what is more, it is not in any respect'
prejudicial to the interests of trade. We con-
fess, therefore, that we have no wish to see this
tax abolished, if' its abolition incur the neces-
sity of another being substituted in its stead ;
for what better could be substituted ?—but we
do confess our anxiety to see the window tax
repealed in toto, as most oppressive, most bur-
densome, unequally assessed, most prejudicial
to trade, and, above all, calculated to deprive
the people of the choicest gifts of heaven—the
most important necessaries to health and en-
joyment—air and light. This tax ought and
must be abolished, whatever other tax may be
substituted in its stead. It is not only an op-
pression, but an injury—not only a tax upon the
purse, but a tax upon the trade and health of the
community. We believe, however, that we may
state with confidence that it has already been
determined by the Government, if not to repeal
it in toto, at least to modify it in such a manner
as to render it less obnoxious than it now is.
With regard to septennial Parliaments, who is
there, we may fairly ask, who can in reason fairly
hold up his hand in favour of them ? Are they for
the good of the State, for the well-being of the
community, or according to the original constitu-
tion of these realms ? Do they favour the interests
of the elector, or the honesty of the representative ?
Are they English in any other point of view than as
an usurpation, by the aristocracy, of the rights of
the people ? What would the people of Eng-
land think of the present Reformed House of
Commons, were it to vote, on its meeting, that
it should sit for fourteen, or twenty-one, or
any other assignable number of years, instead
of seven, without being re-elected ? Would
not such a vote be treason to the people—a
most abandoned usurpation of their rights ?
Yet it was by such a vote that a corrupt House
of Commons declared that its tenure of legisla-
tion should be septennial, instead of triennial ;
and it is the result of this vote that a certain
portion of the press, and a certain portion
of the members of a Reformed Parliament,
would defend and stand by as a thing not to be
meddled with at present ! Baseness and hypo-
crisy, and corruption, could go no farther.
Again, with regard to the ballot, has there ever
been one solid objection adduced against it, or
rather, are not all the objections urged against
it, actually arguments in its favour ? It is un-
English, says one ; but the assertion is not
founded in fact. It will not conceal the vote of
the elector, says another; but that remains to be
tried. It will make all men liars and perjurers,
says a third ; but if so, who would think of soli-
citing a vote from, or of offering a bribe to, a
liar or a perjurer? It will destroy, adds a
fourth, the bold, and manly, and straight- forward
spirit of the people of. England ; but why has it
not destroyed the spirit of the people of the United
States—whydid it not prevent ',he people of France