The Sun.
London, England, 1851-04-09 00:00:00

EVENING, APRIL 9, 1851.

have any weight in that House. His Hon. Friend, who
was at times somewhat fanciful in his vituperation of
the Government, had on one occasion attacked the
Ministry because a Bill which he (Sir W. Somerville)
had in:roduced had contained, as hit lion. Friend
suppose (1, some clauses which had been already
inserted in a Bill of his Hon. Friend's. He could
assure his Honourable Friend that not a single
clause of this Bill had been used. His Hon. Friend had
referred also to the emigration which had been going on,
as a proof of the great misery at present existing in
Ireland. He (Sir W. Somerville) was afraid it was not
a very healthy system; but it was only a session or two
ago, as they would all recollect, when they had motion
after motion in that House, not for the purpose of check-
ing, but of encouraging emigration.—(Loud cheers from
the Protectionists.) The Hon. Gentleman had also al-
luded to the amount of crime. There again he was at
issue with the Hon. Baronet, for, by the constabulary
returns on the table of the House he could notice a de-
crease. He was not going to 'compare the year 1845
with 1851; the Hon Baronet, if he pleased, might do so,
and lly the result before the House. He would compare
the years 1849 and 1850. The number of outrages
stated up to the end of January, 1849, were 1,820; Febru-
ary, 1,017; March, 990; while in 1850 the numbers were,
in January, 1,686; February, 1,124; and March, 960.
( Hear.) Having. then, referred to all that had been
said by his lion. Friend the Member for Waterford, he
would next briefly advert to what the Honourable
Baronet the Member for Clare (Sir L. O'Brien)
had said. That Honourable Gentleman had found
fault with the poor-law ;because he thought the
power of the Commisssioners interfered too much with
the local boards. He did not think the Hon. Member
would get many in that House to agree with him on that
point. With respect to the allusion made to the Kilrush
union, and the statements made by the Rev. Mr. Os-
borne in reference to it, he would only say on that occa-
sion that the Poor-law Commissioners had called for full
information on the subject of that Rev. Gentleman's let-
ters, and when they shall have made their report, he
would lay it on the table of the House. The remarks of
that Rev. Gentleman on other unions had not been disre-
garded by the Poor-law Commissioners, and when the
answers to their inquiries from the various inspectors to
whom they had applied were duly made, ho would lay
them all before the House.—(Hear, hear.) There was
one remark of his Hon. Friend to which he had not al-
luded. He had said that the affairs of Ireland were not
cared for here. Now he had just taken the trouble of
reading a list of the different commissions which had
been appointed to inquire into matters relating to Irish
affairs, and he found that since 1840 they had amounted
in number to 13. He had also looked at the number of
Committees of both Houses of Parliament which had
sat from 1840 to 1851, whose inquiries embraced every
subject connected with the social and political condi-
tion of Ireland, and had found them no less than 63.
(Hear.) But there was nothing tangible in the proposal
of his lion. Friend; there was no intimation of what in-
quiry that Committee was to enter upon, supposing it
formed and sitting. He hoped the House would nega-
tive the proposal of the Hon. Gentleman, which was
only calculated to raise false hopes which never could be
realised. He opposed the motion simply because he
thought it would not do any good, but rather the re-
verse, and not from any indisposition to do anything to
benefit his country in every possible way; and, in con-
clusion, he trusted the House would not sanction the
proposition before it, because it was only calculated to
mislead, and create expectations which could not be sa-
tisfied.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. REYNOLDS said the Hon. Baronet had stated
that there was nothing tangible in the speech of the Hon.
Baronet the Member for Waterford; he could say he
had listened to the Right Hon. Baronet the Secretary for
Ireland with much attention, and had the very same
fault to find with him.—(Hear.) The Right Hon.
Baronet had told them about thirteen committees bad
been appointed to inquire into the state of Ireland.
Sir W. SOMERVILLE—I said 63.
Mr. REYNOLDS thanked the Right Hon. Baronet
for having multiplied the number by thirteen.—(Much
laughter.) He saw he was wrong in his multiplication
—(Laughter)—but had the Right Hon. Baronet in-
formed them what good these sixty-three Committees
and their inquiries had done for Ireland? It was always
the mode of shelving a grievance on Ireland to appoint
a Parliamentary Committee to inquire into it, and no-
thing more was heard of it. He would vote for the mo-
tion of the Hon. Boronet the Member for Waterford;
but he wished to guard himself against being bound by
the Hon. Baronet's speech.—(Hear.) If that speech
were good for anything, it was good for this—that we
were to repeal the poor-laws, go back to the system of
protection, and increase the power of the landlords. Now
he was not prepared to do any one of these things. In-
deed, be would perhaps have given a silent vote upon
that occasion, but for something which had fallen from
the Hon. Baronet the Member for Clare (Sir L. O'Brien)
in allusion to a most honoured. and estimable Protestant
clergyman—he meant the Rev. Mr. Osborne. The Hon.
Baronet bad said his statements ought to be received
with caution; now that was as much almost as doubting
his veracity. Mr. Osborne had undertaken to prove all
his statements relative to the Kilrush union; but his
challenge had never been accepted. The Hon. Baronet
had endeavoured to vidicate Colonel Vandeleur,
who, no doubt, might be a very estimable private
character; but there were statements made before a
Committee of that House which would go to bear out
the charges made against him. The Hon. Member here
referred to the report of the Committee of inquiry into
the state of the Kilrush union, and read a considerable
portion of the evidence. One witness had stated that in
that district 1,950 families had been sent adrift, whose
houses had been levelled, 408 families were there who
were turned out of their homes, and 341 families ad-
mitted again as care-taken). There were in all 2,359
families unhoused, representing no less than about
12,000 persons. Colonel Vandeleur was chairman of
the Kilrush union, and some of those evictions were
stated to have taken place on his property. Three-
fourths of the mortality, great as it was in Kilrush union,
arose from the want of food. It was said that prospe-
rity was reviving in Ireland. Was that so? Did the
condition of their gentry show reviving prosperity?
The Encumbered Estates Act answered the ques-
tion. Had they manufactures ? Had they com-
merce ? No. The country was in the most im-
poverished state, and the inhabitants were flying from
it in thousands. What had that House or the Govern-
ment done to remedy such a state of things? Why,
literally nothing. He should be glad to know, then,
what objection the Government had to inquiring on the
subject as proposed by the motion. If no other result
were derived from such an inquiry than to ascertain
the causes of the fearful mortality in the Kilrush and
Ennistymon union, it would be of the greatest utility.
He would say no more on the matter, as the motion, of
which he had a notice on the paper, would afford him
another opportunity of referring to it.
Mr. M. J. O'CONNELL said it was most unfair to
attribute the distress which prevailed at present in Ire-
land either to the free-trade system introduced in 1846,
or to the poor-law established in 1847. Any return
upon their steps on either of those questions would be
ruinous to the most necessitous portion of the population
of Ireland—the working classes. The distress existed
long prior to either of those measures, as was shown by
the report of the Devon Commission in 1845. He re-
gretted, however, that the Right Hon. Secretary for
Ireland had opposed the motion. Admitting, as he did,
the great prevalence of distress, he (Mr. O'Connell)
thought the best remedy would be to reform the stand-
ing orders of the House, which impeded the progress
of Bills for promoting private enterprise. But for the
obstructions thus offered:capital would flow into Ireland
to stimulate and develop its industrial resources.
Mr. S. CRAWFORD traced the existing distress in
Ireland to the disordered state of the relations between
landlord and tenant—(Oh, ohl)—and ho should move to
add to the end of the resolution the following words:—
" More especially to consider the best means of amend-
ing the laws relating to the relations of landlord and
tenant."
Sir W. BARRON had no objection to the addition.
Lord J. RUSSELL—Sir, the House would not have
any clear remedy before it if it went into Committee of
the whole House on the motion submitted to them. The
Hon. Baronet proposes that we should go into Committee
of the whole House to consider the state of Ireland ; and
he refers more particularly to the famine, to the laws ad-
mitting the import of foreign corn, and to the poor-law
of Ireland; and it appears to hiss that if we were to re-
store protection, and repeal the poor-law of Ireland, we
should be in a fair way to remedy some of the distresses
of Ireland. Ai Hon. Gentleman gets up and supports
the motion, and is remedy is not to repeal the poor-Jaw,
but rather to give it greater laxity—to give a more
liberal system of relief—in fine, to extend the poor-law
further than it now goes. lam afraid, then, that we
shall hardly arrive at any direct conclusion by going
into Committee. Then with regard to protection,
the Hon. Member for the city of Dublin is entirely
opposed to the views of the Hon. Member for
Waterford ; and that, of course, is a question
which, if gone into at all, must not be with
respect to Ireland only, but the whole kingdom. The
Honourable Gentleman who has just sat down proposed
a further subject of inquiry—namely, the state of the
relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland-0;a
.
most important subject of inquiry, certainly, and
upon which it might be most desirable that weeashhnoaulldd
legislate. But lamat a loss to conceive howh waah
jent
in
come to any satisfactory conclusion upon t
we went into Committee on the motion
a Committee of the whole House. I am af.hraeid Honour-
if
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able Gentleman we should only find tho‘i!tf
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tFhraitendhathedidSe.cnroettaryropforreselnrte, a
Ireland
the Honourable Member for the city of Dublin
would seem to imagine, that the p
Ire-
land was a state of prosperity. sat starting from
the point of 1845, from which my Right Honourable
Friend started, it certainly appears that at that time
Ireland, although she did not suffer the same calamities
she has since had to endure, was placed in this unhappy
position. She contained a population far greater than
that for which she could find employment; the wages
throughout the country were wretchedly low; the abodes
of the peasantry were miserable beyond those of any
other people in Europe; and their food was not pro-
cured by wages, but they were compelled to subsist al-
most exclusively on the potatoes which they raised from
the soil. When there came upon a country so situated
the dreadful calamity of a famine, and of a famine not
of one year but of a succession of years, it was inevit-
able that those painful scenes we have beheld should
have occurred, that we should have beheld many per-
sons driven from their homes unable to pay the rent they
had previously paid during the flourishing state of the
potato crop; others emigrating to distant shores in the
hope of procuring there a subsistence they could not
procure at home; while the property of the country was
compelled to a certain extent to support its poverty, and

great numbers of persons crowded to the workhouses as
a last resort in a state of weakness and disease which led
to a very great mortelity. These are the consequences
that we have seen—the consequences, not of any law of
Parliament, or of any act of the Goverment, but the
consequences of the state of society which existed in
1845, and of the dreadful famine which followed that
year. Why those consequences were as certain as that
when an earthquake happens in a country you will find
buildings thrown down, as that when you have a dread-
ful pestilence in a country you will find there a dreadful
mortality, or as that after a dreadful hurricane you will
find trees torn up by the roots. These are not conse-
quences for which the Government and the Legislature
can immediately provide; they are the consequences
which have followed the calamities I have mentioned.
We now find, according to the statement of my Right
Hon. Friend, that although Ireland cannot be said to he
in anything like a state of prosperity, yet there are
symptoms in that country of a less aggravated distress
than that which prevailed in former years. We have
seen that, although out-door relief was never refused
when absolutely necessary, that relief has been di-
minished to such an extent that during the last three
months of the last year the whole cost of the outdoor
relief in Ireland did not amount to more than
1,000/. ; and since that time it has amounted
at the utmost to 2501. a week. That at least
is a symptom that there are not so many persons re-
quiring relief as there had been in former years.
Theo with regard to crime, we find that the number of
crimes and outrages returned to the constabulary in Ire-
land has diminished. There are various other circum-
stances which tend to show that the country is some-
what less distressed than in former years. That is the
state of Ireland at present. It may require a remedy
from the Government and the Legislature; but we are
hardly likely to find that remedy by going into the pro-
posed Committee of the whole House. My Hon. Friend
the Member for Kerry says that a relaxation of some of
our laws with respect to the application of capital would
be found of great use in particular cases, and he men-
tioned his reasons for entertaining that belief. But if
that case requires the attention of the House, let it be
brought before the House as a separate question. Again,
if the state of the relations between landlords and
tenants requires the consideration of Parliament, let the
Government or some Hon. Member bring that subject
under our notice. But we should hardly in a Committee
of the whole House be able to decide upon any one of
those questions; and neither should we have before us
any plan for dealing with them. I, therefore, trust that
the House will not adopt the proposal of the Hon. Baronet
the Member for Waterford.—(Cries of " Divide.")
Mr. F. FRENCH, who was very indistinctly heard
amidst the noise in the House, and the impatient cries
for a division, was understood to say that the evils of the
famine in Ireland had been greatly aggravated by the
poor-law.
Sir IL W. BARRON replied. He distinctly and em-
phatically denied that ho had stated that he wished to
have the poor-law in Ireland repealed. Ho had objected
to the out-door relief system, and to nothing else. In
the next place, he denied that he had said they should
return to the old system of protection. He bad
merely stated the real condition of Ireland, and had
left the House to draw its own inferences from that
statement.

The House then divided, when there appeared—
For the motion . . ... 129
Against it... 138
Majority against the motion ... --9
The announcement of these numbers was hailed
with considerable cheering from the Irish Members and
the Members on the opposition side of the House.
Mr. FREWEN moved for a Select Committee to in-
quire into and report to this House on the advantages
to be derived by the establishment of a mail train betwen
Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk, and Leicester and Rugby,
to meet the mail trains at Rugby, going to and return-
ing from Liverpool and Holyhead.
Mr. C. LEWIS said that the question to which the
Hon. Gentleman's motion referred possessed no na-
tional interest, and did not concern any of the great lines
of communication, as, for example, the transmission of
the French mails between Dover and London, and the
Irish mails between London and Holyhead. He pro-
mised that the subject should be fully considered by the
Government and the Postmaster-General, with reference
to the public revenue and the local interests concerned;
but it was hardly a question which required the appoint-
ment of a Committee of Inquiry.
Mr. FREWEN, upon the assurance of the Right Hon.
Gentleman that the subject should receive the serious
consideration of the Post-office authorities, would not
press his motion to a division. He might be permitted
to observe, however, that the Right Hon. Gentleman
was mistaken in supposing that it was not an important
national question, inasmuch as all the letters connected
with the shipping interest on the coast of Norfolk in-
tended to go to any of the northern ports—such as
Hull and Newcastle on the eastern, and Uverpool on the
western coast—had now to be sent by way of London.
The motion was then, by leave, withdrawn.
On the motion of Mr. SCULLY, were ordered—

Copies of all correspondence, since the Ist day of
December last, between the Clogheen board of guar-
dians, the Poor-law Commissioners in Ireland, the Poor-
law board in England, and the Lambeth board of guar-
dians, relative to the alleged illegal removal of a pauper
named Margaret M'Carthy and ber two children from
the Lambeth to the Clogheen workhouse last November.
A return of any bill or bills of costs lodged in the
proper office for taxation in the Court of Chancery, Ire-
land, in any cause in which George Matthews was a re-
lator, or one of the relators, and A. J. Macrory, Esq.,
the solicitor for the relators, since 1830.

Also, a return of the names of the 39 principal mari-
time and internal markets of Ireland from whicn Mr.
Griffith constructed the average scale of prices ap-
pended to his letter to the Lord-Lieutenant on the 23d
day of December last; with the prices of the different
articles of agricultural produce mentioned in the said
scale in the several markets, on the Ist day of every
month during the years 1348 and 1849.
MURDER (IF:A BRITISH OFFICER NEAR ADEN.
Colonel K. TYNTE wished to inquire of the Secre-
tary of the Board of Control if any official intelligence
had arrived relative to the murder of a British officer
near Aden, and if so, what steps the Government in-
tended taking in consequence of the outrage?
Mr. WILSON concluded the Gallant Colonel referred

to the report of the murder of Captain Milne& No
accounts had been received beyond those in the public
prints, but in all probability would be by the next In-
dian mails.
The Small Tenements Railway Bill was read a second
time, on the motion of Mr. J. A. SMITH.
Lord ASHLEY brought up his Bill to encourage the
construction of lodging-houses for the working classes,
which was read a first time.
The remaining orders of the day having been disposed
of, the House adjourned at Half-past Twelve o'clock.

TO THE SECRETARY OP THE BRADFORD
REFORM ASSOCIATION.
(IVEZY MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY.)
Sin,—On Monday the 7th, was the rather pompously
announced onslaught on the Ministerial proposal on the
Income-tax. It finally solved itself into very little. An
anxiety to protest against alluding to any connexion
the question might have with Free Trade, called to me-
mory the popular tradition, of the man at the bar who
told the judge ho desired to let the matter drop;
while the imperfect manner in which the proposal
was adhered to by the party that made it, tempted to
recollection of the lady who, " Saying I will ne'er
consent, consented." In spite of an affected shyness in
the use of terms, the " interests of British industry,"
meaning the suppression of your industry to divide the
proceeds among somebody else, came out upon us in ex-
press words. And what I had thought to be the for-
lorn and abandoned mystery, of " adding taxation to
price," figured prominently in the speech of one of the
ablest and newest recruits of the Anti-commercial party.
What has come over the spirit of the Free Traders and
their dream, is more than can be expected of me to tell; but
in all this contest between the two antagonistic principles
of raising a tax from the wealth of the rich or the bread.
of the poor, the accredited organs of Free kept Trade
aloof from the debate. Surely this is not the way in
which human affairs are managed. If the FreeTr_ aders
are not beaten at the next general election, it will. bein
spite of human means taken to ensure it. Nothing can
make me conceal from myself or anybody the conviction,
that the three sessions of Parliament which have gone
by, were the seed-time in which should have been se-
cured the permanent triumph of the Free Trade cause;
—that no folly or fallacy on the part of the Protec-
Protec-
tionists should have been permitted to pass,without
receiving the same prompt and fearless castigation it
would have had in the Free-Trade Hall ;—that
there ought to have been established a system
of watch and watch, by which a certain number of the
men who have taken the Free Trade enlisting-money by
being sent to Parliament, should have been continually
on duty; bound to reply wherever the enemy would pre-
sent himself. Instead of which, with the exception of
the members of the Government, who are the only men
by whom any good thing hangs, the course of the Pro-
tectionists has been one scene of parliamentary triumph,
with hardly an opposition except on rare occasions a
flashy speech, meant to be seen in a newspaper, and not
directed with either point or vigour to the movements of
the opponent.
Why those who served you so well when the contest
was in Temperance Halls and meeting-heuses, should
servo you so feebly when they have got into the Com-
mons House of Parliament, is what history must look at,
and possibly will solve.
On Tuesday Lord Ashley moved a Bill to encourage
construction of lodging-houses for the working•classes,
which was agreed to without a division. I was sorry to
hear him instance Bradford as one of the places in want
of aid. If wo can only prevent the stopping our trade
in foreign corn, the thing will mend.
I am, Sir, yours very sincerely,
AN OLD REFORMER.
London, April 9. 1851.

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men, a lad, and two horses, at a charge of say 15s. the day,
of ten hours, 10,000 bricks, surprisingly.
.compressed, sharp
and square, may be per feasted. Pram tiles of
.every form,
and pipes and parts of pipes of any complexity, may be
thrown off with equal facility. Messrs. R andell and Saun-
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in the Exposition.
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rac ous
Lordship's letter, dated " Villa Messina, Leghorn, Feb.
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