The Sun.
London, England, 1833-12-12 00:00:00

ASSIZE INTELLIGENCE.

HOME CIRCUIT.-21f4zDaross, Dile. 11.
ATROCIOUS OUTRAQE.—WiIIiam IVC//s, aged 24,0
was indicted for having assaulted (in company with
John Woodcock, not in custody) John Chandler, at
Luddenham, and stealing from his person a silvt
watch.

The Jury found
.him Guilty, and the Learned
Judge intimated he would be transported for life.
Thomas Turner, aged eighteen, was capitally
convicted of a felonious assault upon a girl named
Emma Carrotr, aged only eleven years.

The Jury recommended the prisoner to mercy on
the ground of his youth ; upon ►which the Learned
Judge deferred passing sentence, and a new Jury
was empannelled to try another prisoner chargcd.
with a similar offence.
William Allen, a labourer, was then tried and
convicted of a similar offence upon the person of
Ruth Rolfe Austin, the wife of Jeremiah Austin, at
Lydd.
The Learned JUDGE in a most impressive man-
tier passed sentence of death upon the prisoner, rtid
in such terms as to give no expectation that his
life
would not be forfeited.
This afternoon, about three o'clock, the wit--
nes-es against John Bodle attended before the
Grand Jury and preferred a bill of indictment.
There are twenty-six witnessee:egainst the prisoner,
and twenty-five in his favour. The trial is to take
place on Friday morning.

MURDER NEAR NORTIIWICII, AND SUR-

TO THE AGRICULTURISTS OF THE

WEST OF ENGLAND,

Gentlemen,—The letter which I lately addressed to
you, relative to the unjust and unequal terms on which
you are now competing with the Irish grower in your
own markets, has, I am p'eased to find, attracted very
general attention. Were it a matter of less intense im-
portance, I should be satisfied with having au far suc-
ceeded, and leave to others the task of defending my views,
and of sifting the truth from the quantity of chaffy falla•
cies that some commentators have mixed up with the
question. But it is of such ♦ast moment that public opt-
pion should not be misled on this point, that, however
reluctant to put myself again so prominently forward, I
will not abstain from answering the most plausible objec-
tions that I have seen urged against the arguments of my
former letter.

The objectors divide themselves into two classes—the
Xr4h and the English.
1. The organs of those Irish landholders who look upon
a poor law (most erroneously, as I conceive) to be tanta-
mount to a confiscation of part of their rental, exclaim
against what they are pleased to call the " doltishness" of
supposing that the exemption of Irish land from poor
rate enables them to extract a larger rent from their estates,
or supply the English markets on much better terms.
Upon this point I think I may safely appeal to you whe-
ther, if you were wholly relieved from poor rate, and
could hire labour at 6d. a-day, you could not afford to sell
your produce at a cheaper rate, and pay a higher rent to
the landowner.

Some Irish writers, however, assert that Irish land is
in no (it gree favoured by the Legislature, for that it is
burdened by heavy Grand Jury and Police Rates. Very
true. But they seem to he ignorant that similar rates are
levied on you for the same purposes, under the name of
Highway and County Rates; both parties are equally bur-
dened so far ; but this still leaves the 5,000,0001. per
annum which you pay in Poor Rate wholly uncompensated
by any counterpoise whatever on their side.
Next, I am told it is rank ignorance to suppose that the
farmers who grow any of the corn, cattle, and pigs for
exportation to Englal-01, are the little renters of ten acre
lots, who live ;11 turf cabins on potatoes and butter.
milk. If We are to believe some Irish writers, such
inB".,-,s are rare exceptions; and the farmers generally
of. Ireland are thriving capitalists, rapidly improving in
every way, growing turnips, mangel-wurzel, and other
refinements, in the best style of Norfolk husbandry, and
making nothing of giving 200 guineas for a breeding
bull.• I will not depend on my own observations for an
answer to this highly coloured picture of Irish farming,
bough I may mention, that in a late tour of 300 miles
through the south and west of Ireland, I could not count
half a dozen barns, nor observe a single specimen of
what deserves to be called a range of farm buildings.
There may be, and in the county of Wicklow especially I
am told there are, model farms established here and there
by a spirited and benevolent proprietor, and some im-
proving tenants occupying considerable holdings ; but
unless all the evidence produced before Parliament and
the public of late years is an imposition, these are the
exceptions, scarcely worth taking into account in a ge-
neral view of the state of farming in Ireland. The fol-
lowing is the evidence of Mr. Sandars, a large Liverpool
corn-merchant, well acquainted, and in constant commu-
nication with every part of Ireland, as given before the
Agricultural Committee of last session :
" 4358. What are the towns in Iteland whim the
speculators go and buy the corn to export to England ?_
Everywhere. I cannot single out one. It is generally
done. _

"1105. Have you drawn large supplies of grain from
all pars of Ireland ?—Yes, every part.
" 1172. What do you conceive to have caused the
great increase of grain imported from Ireland ?-1 con-
ceive the cause to be that the Irish farmer can produce
corn much cheaper than the English farmer. When I
look to the fertility of the soil, and the miserable state in
which those who till it live, I can have little doubt that
Ireland can produce corn as cheaply as either France or
Holland. _ .

" 4198. Is the land on which the corn is raised in
large or small farms?-1 think in small farms; small
pieces of land.
" 4199. Is it raised on lands in such small portions
that the tenant does not eat any part of it ?—He neither
eats the oatmeal he produces, nor the flour he produces,
nor the cattle he produces ; he gets only potatoes and
buttermilk. The pig even pays the rent. A very large
proportion of the persons connected with the land seldom
or never taste animal food. I know that all the produce
of the soil goes to pay the rent, with the exception of
the potatoes and buttermilk on which they live." (4227.)
Mr. A. Clendining, an extensive land agent and valuer
in the west of Ireland, asserts, in his evidence before the
same Committee, " that in the entire province of Con-
naught there are scarcely any arable farms above ten
acres. The great majority of holdings are much less"
(7579). He says too, " the great majority of the occu-
pying tenants of Ireland eat nothing but potatoes and but-
termilk throughout the year." (7620).
Thomas Linsay, Esq., speaking of the west of Ireland,
says, " The labourers or small farmers—for they are one
and the same—have, generally speaking, nine-tenths of
them at least, little farms, varying from three acres to seven
or ten acres, among themselves and family." (7121.)
Do the small farmers eat any of their pigs?—They
always sell the whole of their pigs except the offal."
Mr. W. Armstrong, speaking of the north eastern parts
of Ireland, with which he is well acquainted as a large
land surveyor, says—" The great majority of the farms
are from five to ten acres." (9079.)
" 9129. Are there not very few farms of more than
ten acres ?.---Very few."
These extracts (and they might be multiplied) will
prove that I did not exaggerate in the picture I drew of
the kind of rival you are vainly struggling to compete
with, and who will shortly drag you—the respectable te-
nantry of England—down to his level, if no steps are
taken for elevating his condition towards yours. But give
the small farmer of Ireland the vantage ground of a poor
law ; let the law provide for him some resource, however
mean, against starvation, and you will see him make a
stand against the exactions of his landlord, and insist on
terms which will leave him some larger share of the pro-
duce of his industry than the pittance described above—
terms which will admit of his consuming a portion at least
of his corn, butter, and bacon, which he raises, instead of
selling it all for exportation to England, on his landlord's
account. At present the Irish farmer has no power to
make a beneficial contract. He has no choice; he must
accept his landlord's terms, however exorbitant, or starve.
The law refuses him any alternative. t
11. The objections raised by English writers have
chiefly consisted in a denial that prices are influenced in
Ireland by the wretched condition of the grower and the
lowness of the wages of labour, or that the English poor-
rate enters into the cost of cultivating English land.
The first negative is extraordinary. Does not the price
of corn and bacon in Ireland depend on the quantity
offered for sale? And if the producers were placed in
circumstances which enabled them to consume more of
what they grow, would not less be offered for sale, and
consequently a higher price obtained? Suppose all the
farmers and labourers of England reduced to a potatoe
diet, would not the price of wheat and bacon be apt to
fall in consequence ?
It may be said that the prices of the English corn market
are determined by the quantities of foreign corn admitted
for home consumption under the existing corn laws.
Granting this, it remains clear that the only important
question—that, namely, whether these prices, however de-
termined, are remunerative or not to the English farmer—
will depend wholly o he amount of his t ut.goir g..
the English corn grower, paying besides rent and taxes (and
even whether any rent can be paid or not), a high poor-
rate and a rate of wages which the poor laws keep up to a
high standard, must be mined by the same range of prices
which is sufficient to repay the cost of growing corn in
Ireland, where there is no poor rate, and where wages
are at one-third of the English rate. Under these cir-
cumstances, and the increased facilities given to Irish im-
portation by steam navigation, all the poorer soils of Eng-
land are fast going out of cultivation (the farmers on them
being first ruined, and the landlords losing all chance of
a rent), because their produce will not pay the costs of cul-
tivation ; and the similar soils of Ireland are as fast being
brought into cultivation, because their produce will pay
the comparatively small expenditure, anti a high rent into
the bargain. Thus it is that Irish landlords are thriving
on the ruin of English landlord, anti cultivators ; and
since the advantage powerased by the former is owing solely
to their exemption from a legal burden exclusively imposed
on the soil of this island, the latter have good reason to
complain of so unfair an anomaly in the law. iLd the

* See the letter of Mr. Weld, of the county of Wicklow, in
the Times of the 'nth of November.
t I ha%'e been abused in Ireland for describing the Irish
farmei* " Worse off than a Russian serf." I maintain that
the latter is incomparabl,rbetter treated by the law of his
ktmntry than the fortplA an his condition proportionately
imore comfortable. The It n landowner is by law obliged
to allow his serf land own maintain his family, for which
the only return made is thr ys' labour in the week. Ilow
happy would the Connaught an be with such a claim The
Russian serf is often very willthy in cattle, stock, houses, fur.
nature, and *yen jewels worn by his wife and daughters.

\

~ ~ {

Irish landowners legislated exclusively for both kingdoms,
they could scarcely have imposed harder terms.
But, again, it is said that poor rate is paid out of rent,
and does not affect the tenant. If this were so, if the
anomaly injured the English landlord only, it would not
he the less unjust. But this is a mistake. The poor rate
is levied on the tenant, and though he eventually may get
his rent reduced in proportion to its increase, it is only
after having suffered considerably from it himself in the
first instance. Let me ask those of you who are tenants
whether you would not feel the benefit of a reduction in
the poor rate ? Let me ask whst has ruined the tenantry
of Cholesbury, in Bucks, as well as the landowners, and
caused every acre of land in that parish to be thrown out
of cultivation ? What but the increase of the poor
rate, till it swallowed up both the farmer's profit and
the landlord's rent ? If the millions of Irish who have
been driven over to settle in this country of late years,
by the absolute denial to them of the means of exist-
ence in their own, and who have filled all the situ-
ations of the great towns of Britain, which would other-
wise have been available to the surplus labourers of
our agricultural districts—if these had remained at
home (as most of them at least would have done in case a
poor law had guaranteed them a maintenance there),
Choleshury would have felt no redundancy of population,
nor the other parishes of Bucks, Berks, Kent, Sussex,
&c. The hands that were not wanted in their parishes
would have got employment in London, Manchester,
Bristol, &c., as paviors, hodinen, and weavers, and the
farmers of the South of England would still be driving a
remunerative trade, and the landlords receiving an ade-
quate rent, even at the present prices. As it is, Choles-
bury has become a waste; and since the process which
has reduced it to that state has a strong aptitude for spread-
ing with accelerated rapidity, the landlords and farmers
of other districts would do well to look about them,
before the plague reaches and devours them in turn. The
tendency of the present state of things is to give the entire
supply of our provision market to the Irish grower, and
of our labour market to the Irish immigrant, leav-
ing the land of England to be parcelled out by law among
its native paupers. We are marching at no slow pace
towards this happy consummation.
The extension of the English poor law to Ireland would
greatly relieve the rates of this country. The supposed
redundancy of labour here, which alone gives an oppres-
sive character to the poor rate, is wholly owing to the
immense transfusion of Irish labour. Check this (and it
is nonsense to say it would not he checked, if not stopped
entirely, by a poor law ; even now there is no immigra-
tion from the east of Ireland, where the poor are a degree
better off than in the west, in spite of its greater proximity)
—check this process, by which our labour market is kept
saturated by Irish poverty, and we shall find ample
employment for all our native labourers, now so heavy a
burden upon the poor rate. If, then, the prices of pro-
duce did not rise in our markets, their cost of production
would be lowered to the English grower, which would be
as beneficial to him as a rise of price. He will be
enabled to increase his produce without raising its price—
to cultivate more largely, and retain the supply of his own
markets, now glutted by the comparatively untaxed Irish
landowner. These are some of the arguments in favour
of an Irish poor law, which I hope I may address to you,
the agriculturists of England, without incurring the im-
putation of craftiness myself, or listening that of selfish-
ness upon you. We are all struck most strongly by those
points of a question which bear upon our own interests, and
therefore I have dwelt particularly, in the present instance,
on those which specially affect your welfare. But it were
easy to show that all classes of the community have a com-
mon interest in this great question. As tax payers, for exam-
ple, we are all interested in reducing the enormous expense
of coercing Ireland (that is, of gagging and tying down that
country, to enable its landlords to extort an exorbitant rent
from a starving peasantry. This reduction can never be
effected until justice is done to the body of the
people of Ireland—until the law afford them some security
for existence, and guarantee them the means of living by
honest and orderly industry. We are all interested in pre-
venting the repeal of the Union, or even its continued agi-
tation ; but that cry can only be appeased by a measure
which shall bind the affections of the Irish people to the
Imperial Parliament by the strong tie of gratitude—which
shall take away the true cause of all dissatisfaction, mi-
sery, and idleness—which shall exhibit the law as a thing
of love and justice, not of terror only and oppression.
Would that an interval of calm allowed the Irish peasantry
and their friends and instructors, the pastors of Ireland, to
consider and discuss the question among themselves. In-
stead of petitioning for useless or unattainable objects,
they might then demand, in irresistible union, from the
United Parliament of 1834, that act of justice which no
College-green Parliament ever hinted at, but which the
British Legislature accorded to the British peasantry so
early as 1603.
Even the Irish landlords, if they would listen to reason
(and there are not wanting Irish writers who will prove
this to them), might be convinced that it is fur their in-
terest, beyond that of all other classes in either island,
that a due measure of protection be extended by the law
to their wretched countrymen—that employment be
everywhere secured for them by methodical arrangements
—and the vast resources which their country possesses

(hitherto undeveloped) in the primary elements of all
wealth, land and labour, be systematically set in motion by
an Act of the Legisliture, commanding the appropriatio❑
of the island, and the employment and sustentation of its
inhabitants. Call it a poor law, labour rate, or any other
name you will ; but this should be its object.
1 am, Gentlemen, your very obedient servant,
Castle Combe, Dec. 8. G. POULETT SCROPE.

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