The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-14 00:00:00

Crockford's, the lavish splendour of its decorations,
the exquisite piquancy of its repasts, id the con-
tinual circulation. of its wine-cups, were in a great
measure subordinate to the delights of hazard and of
similar games of chance. Still it could not, in
the common acoeptation of the word, be called " a hell ;"
it did not come within the limits of what is punishable
by the law ; it could not literally be said to harbour
"certain idle and evil-disposed persons," who con-
gregated therein for the enjoyment of illegal amuse-
ments; it was not, as the Lord Chief Baron of the Ex-
chequer himself maintained on the 3d ultimo, a com-
mon gaming-house " under the meaning of the Act.,
In this establishment Lord MAIDSTONE is enrolled a
member in 1840 ; he is enrolled of course
with a will prepense ; he voluntarily becomes an
habitual frequenter of the club-rooms ; he gambles
with an extraordinary recklessness, and is in con-
sequence a loser to an enormous amount. So much
for his Lordship's recreative connexion with
Crockford's. It is with his business con-
nexion with that palace of idleness and
debauchery that the Court of Exchequer had to deal,
and it is to that same business connexion we are in-
duced to make this particular allusion. Besides
availing himself of the. apartments of the club in
Pall-mall, Lord MAIDSTONE dines there re-
peatedly, drinks freely at the public tables,
and, beyond, has divers repasts and sundry dozens
of wine forwarded from Crockford's to a convenient
house in Bolton-street. For all these viands and
wines, for his entrance fee (101.), and his yearly sub-
scription (101.), since 1840, Lord MAIDSTONE had
given no payment. On the decease of Mr. CROCKFORD,
and the winding up of his affairs, his widow and executrix
proceeds against the defendant for the recovery of
961., said to have been so incurred. The jury, after
the investigation of evidence and the hearing of
counsel, return a verdict for the full amount, but, at
the suggestion of the Lord Chief Baron, that verdict
is modified to the reduced amount of 541. 14s. 6d.
Those are the simple particulars of this most
discreditable affair—the incurment of the debt—the
refusal of the liquidation—the demand—the verdict—
and the penalty.
We should have allowed these transactions to have
made their own impression upon the public mind,
satisfied that that impression would be salutary, but
that a letter has been just published by Lord
MAIDSTONE which requires the reprehension of
every honest and conscientious journalist. We
do not remember to have ever perused a more sorry
exhibition of vanity, of spleen, of levity, and of quib-
bling than this extraordinary document affords. It
is filled with coarse vituperations upon the press, upon
the attorneys, upon the barristers, upon the jurors,
upon the departed Mr. CROCKFORD, upon his widow,
and upon the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer
himself. It is beaded by a frivolous quotation from
the last Irish story of Mr. LEVER, and pithily closes
with—" the case is BARDELL V. PICKWICK over again!"
In his splenetic allusions to the counsel for the plaintiff,
he at one moment calls him " a proficient in the Buz-
fuz school," and at another asks whether it be probable
" that any one would prefer becoming the target for
Mr. HUMPHREY'S slander any more than he would
select Duke IluscruaEst to dine with ? " Lord
MAIDSTONE may delude himself into the idea of
being a capital witling, but, at any rate, he is a mise-
rable logician. After the consequences of the dinners
consumed by the Noble Lord in Crockford's and
from Crockford's, we rather fancy that even the
starveling Duke HUMPHREY would be somewhat
shy of inviting him to dinner. But the gist of
this marvellous epistle is—what does the reader
imagine ?—why, that the plea of refusing to pay upon
the ground that the club was a gambling house, was
a trick of the lawyers ; and that, after all,
the sum claimed had been paid already !
What, then, Lord MAIDSTONE suppresses the
truth until the sentence is passed, and in lieu
thereof traduceslhe plaintiff and her departed hus-
band by proxy ! A trick of the lawyers, forsooth !
Surely, that is a graceless way of sneaking out of the
reach of a creditor. Lord MAIDSTONE has made
matters worse by the publication of his ill-concocted
and ill-tempered letter. He has stepped out of the
Ifrying-pan, and walked incontinently into the fire.

The present deplorable condition of the peasantry
in Ireland arises, first, from the failure of the potato

crop, the total loss of their usual and ordinary de

scription of food, and, secondly, from the want of
employment and an adequate rate of remuneration
for their labour, so as to enable them to purchase a
sufficiency of food to replace that which has been lost
to them. The principle is now universally admitted,
" that the property of Ireland must be responsible for
the poverty of Ireland ; that every estate must sup-
port its own poor ; and that every man shall be secured
in the means of living by the exercise of his honest
industry." There is no evading.tliequestion ; to that
length the Legislature must go. There may be some
difference as to the manner of carrying out the pro-
position, as to the details and manner of bring-
ing it into operation, but none as to its
absolute necessity. No man can be suffered
to perish in a Christian country for lack of
food, of the common necessaries of life. With
Everyl one of these yimputable to want,
h
pain and deep regret we are compelled to acknow-
le:llvgee
recently t hat se vtearkael deaths,
place.
fair
la-
mentablen
cases appeals trumpet-tongued to our :;ym-
pathies, and loudly demands that steps should be
adopted by which the possibility of similar occurrences
should be prevented. The landowners have hitherto
fear that the entire
Theyopur ol
db a
be
el e
thereby consumed,
shrunk from the enactment of any laewostonofthpersouvbidjeincgt.
and that they themselves would be reduced to a state
little better than that of the paupers for whom they
pfTorhroedsyou caleraerogf et
tehraer iirfin eudm
estates abterth.
we
would be compelled to provide. We are satisfied that
in a very short time the absurdity and ground.
lessness of these fears would be fully demonstrated,
and that they themselves would, in fact, be the
greatest gainers by the change—that it would add to
the value of their property, and give an increased
security to its possession.
We shall admit that the population of Ireland is
daily increasing, while the quantity of land from
which they must be supported is stationary—the
breadth of the soil, the number of acres, cannot be
extended : means must, therefore, be devised to im-
prove the productiveness of that soil, to secure
profitable employment for the people. They must
be sustained, either in idleness, a burden on the
charity of the country, unproductively consuming
the resources of the kingdom; or they must be use-
fully occupied, by which they will increase the
national wealth. When this necessity is fully
recognised, when it is ascertained that the
responsibility can no longer be evaded,
means will readily be discovered of turn-
ing that vast quantity of labour to beneficial pur-
poses, and it will be found that there is plenty of
room—an ample field for its profitable employment.
We are not singular in this opinion, those most com-
petent to form a sound judgment have repeatedly
made similar statements. The, Committee cn Public
Works, in the second report which they published in
1835, combat the idea that the social disease of Ire-
land is occasioned by an excess of population. They
say—

" It may be doubted whether the country does
contain a sufficient quantity of labour to develop its
resources, and while the empire is loaded with taxa-
tion to defray the charges Lof its wars, it appears
most politic to use its internal resources for the pur-
pose of improving the condition of the population, by
which the revenue of the Exchequer must be in-
creased, rather than encourage emigration, by which
the revenue would suffer a diminution, or than leave
the labouring classes in their present state, by which
poverty, crime, and the changes of Government must
be inevitably extended."

ALxsori, too, in his work on population, proves by
statistical tables, compiled from official returns, that
even if one-half the land in the United Kingdoms
were reserved for the purpose of luxury, and that
the residue were freed from the restrictions by which
it is fettered, and its capabilities fully de-
veloped, that sufficient food could be obtained from
the soil to support six times the amount of the pre-
sent population. If these statements be true, there
is little to fear from a surplus population for ages to
come.

The present position of Ireland exhibits a super-
abundance of unemployed labourers, more than six
millions of acres of land wholly uncultivated, and