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

After some observations in favour of the motion from
Mr. SLANEY and Mr. HUME,
Sir G. GREY assented willingly to the introduction of
the Bill, but cautioned the House against expecting
measures of this character to remove directly the
social evils upon which the Noble Lord had dwelt.
They were to be diminished rather by individual effort.
Mr. STANFORD, Mr. Fox, Lord C. HAMILTON, and
Mr. LABOUCHERE having severally addressed a few
observations to the House, leave was given to bring in
the Bill.
The Bill was subsequently brought in and read the
first time.
Sir H. W. BARRON then moved that the House do re-
solve itself into a Committee to consider the state of
Ireland, with a view to relieve the distress there existing.
The Hon. Baronet in the course of his speech severely
attacked the Irish Poor Law, to the existence of which
he seemed to attribute the greater portion of the prevail-
ing distress.
Sir LUCIUS O'BRIEN seconded the motion, which was
supported by Mr. REYNOLDS.
Sir W. SOMERVILLE opposed the motion, and in the
course of his speech announced his intention of laying
on the table of the House all the pepers relating to the
recent occurrences in the Kilrush Union.
Mr. Mettoas JOHN O'CONNELL supported the motion.
Mr. S. CRAWFORD attributed the distress of Ireland
to the unsatisfactory nature of the relations between
landlord and tenant.
Lord J. RUSSELL attributed the greater portion of
the distress in Ireland, which, however, he was happy
to say, was less aggravated than it bad been, to the
dreadful famine which had recently prevailed in that
I country....

Mr. FRENCH supported the motion, which, on a divi-
sion, was negatived by a majority of 9—the numbers
being, for the motion, 129; against it, 138.
Mr. FREWEN moved for a Select Committee to con-
sider the establishment of a mail-train between Great
Yarmouth and Leicester and Rugby, to meet the mail-
trains between Liverpool and Holyhead at Rugby.
Mr. C. LEWIS opposed the motion, which was with-
drawn. _

The Small Tenements Rating Act Amendment Bill
was read a second time.
The House adjourned at Half-past Twelve o'clock.

With an occasional eccentricity Lord ASHLEY pos-
sesses a very large amount of benevolence. His
noble speech of last evening compensates for all those
efforts in aid of the Sabbatarians which had unfortu-
nately estranged many of his most ardent admirers
from this generous and large-hearted patrician. He
has vindicated anew his right to that popularity
which of all others is the most desirable, that of the
true and practical philanthropist. Lord ASHLEY is
not one of your kid-gloved well-doers. He is not
contented with being a remote advocate of social im-
provement. His sympathy for those who are plunged
into habitual squalor and destitution is the sym-
pathy not of the Sadducee but of the Samaritan.
He is ready, and not only ready but eager, himself, to
pour in the oil and bind up the wound, to carry the
afflicted to a place of shelter, and to supply them
with the means of assuaging their distresses. While
men of a different character are susceptible enough to
weep over fictitious sorrows, be reserves the evidence
of his emotion for occasions when he can alleviate the
actual woes of the community and mitigate the an-
guish of poverty by the tenderest evidences of com-
miseration. Nothing but a sense of duty, prompted
by a staunch and elevated •beneficence, could have
enabled the Noble Lord to enumerate the
facts with which he yesterday startled the
Legislature into attention, and, we had almost
said, horrified into acquiescence. Than the
details contained in Lord ASHLEY'S speech of last
evening we cannot imagine to ourselves any thing more
sickening or more calculated to fill the mind with
dismay at a spectacle of such supreme wretchedness.
That men, and women, and children should be
plunged into a conditio❑ so abject, that fellow-
creatures should exist in such habitual degradation,
that scenes like those depicted by Lord ASHLEY
should be of nightly recurrence in all the larger
towns of the United Kingdom, and especially in the
more populous quarters of this very metropo-
lis, in the midst of all the pomp of
fashion, all the wealth of commerce, and
all the luxuries of an almost effeminated civiliza-
tion, would be truths too horrible for belief but
that they are placed altogether beyond the reach of
contradiction. The ghastly woes endured by the
humbler classes prove, on inquiry, to be of a nature
such as might have caused even the soul of DANTE
to shudder at afflictions the like of which for intensity
had never entered the most sombre recesses of his
imagination. Details of these afflictions were
furnished by the Noble Representative of
Bath in an abundance only too lamentably
conclusive. He related with impressive sim-
plicity the appearance presented by the cus-
tomary dwelling-places of the poor—those dens of
filth and misery, the mere description of which
is almo.t unendurably repulsive. Yet, in spite of
their loathsomeness, Lord ASHLEY has had courage
himself to penetrate these pits of disease and infamy,
and the yet greater courage to speak of them in the
presence of the assembled gentlemen of England on
the floor of the Commons House of Parliament.

Among the many dismal revelations made in Lord
ASULEY'S speech of last evening a few will be suffi•
cient to illustrate the necessity of introducing some
such Bill as the one demanded by that nobleman—a
Bill for encouraging the construction of lodging-
houses for the labouring population. " What," he
asked at the outset of these revelations, " must
be the condition of dwellings with 8, 10,
20, or 25 persons living in a single apartment ? "

What must he the condition of those persons them•
selves under the circumstances ? Remember that

these are very far indeed from being exceptional cases,
and that hundreds—alas ! thousands—of instances
may be adduced, where, in one room, more than 30
individuals are crowded together, sleeping upon rags
or straw, adults of both sexes, dogs, and children !
Imagine; the foulness of the atmosphere in those pest-
houses of London, those dens of all abomination !
Where can be the decency of people living after this
fashion ? Where that sweet and wholesome morality
in which contentment is alone attainable ? Sickness
must, as it were by necessity, be engendered by so much
filth and confinement, by such a lamentable absence
of light and ventilation. More than this must be the
consequences of the system—the sickness of the mind
as well as of the body, the debasement of the intellect
as well as the stunting of the physical powers, the
propagation of disease in the soul as well as in its
earthly casket, must by necessity follow from this
execrable manner of existence. Following Lord
ASHLEY in his melancholy pilgrimage, we encounter

scenes of misery such as are scarcely conceivable
among a nation of Caribbees much less of Christians.
The wand of CIRCE seems to have been waved over
the roofs of the metropolis. The people seem to
have been transformed from human beings into
swine, their homes into styes, abounding in every-
thing that is despicable and villanous. One while
we glance into a room where fifty. eight fellow-
creatures are huddled together, indiscriminately.
Adults, both male and female, numbering, altogether,

twenty-seven, with thirty-one children, and a few
dogs, are lying about on the straw. It is scarcely
possible to breathe. We hear one who has entered
the appartment saying, "I have felt the vermin
dropping on my hat like peas." We listen
to him speaking of it afterwards, and saying, " I
dare not sit, or I should be at once covered." We
can believe another who has said of these pits of
horror that " missionaries are seized with vomitting

or fainting upon entering them." Further and further
we follow Lord ASHLEY in his very terrible narrative
of the condition of the working•classes. Our heart
almost fails us as we proceed, but taking example by
that noble nature which has gone before us, and has
ventured to fathom these depths of wretchedness, we
go on undeterred by the other wise overpowering
influences of disgust. The truth, grim and
gigantic, glares upon us out of the
accumulation of facts, and we are not
in any manner amazed when we hear Mr. Fox ac-
knowledging that education is idle to deal with woes
life these—woes that demand for their decrease the
direct inter
po: iftairo nb
aocfkthe s
18 4 3Legislature.m. e
find in the Lancet
a Aletilt.t.Cad wY: as
by a sanitary advocate, since then
distinguished by his brilliant efforts to prevent the
continuance of extramural interment, in which letter
the argument of Lord ASHLEY was even then very
significantly anticipated. " 11'hen children of a
larger growth," says Mr. GEORGE ALFRED WALKER,
in the communication here referred to—
" When children of a larger growth shall be fully
awakened to the conviction that in many localities dis-
ease is manufactured by wholesale,' to be treated by
retail;' when
blessed with the means to do good and the leisure to
individuals or bodies of persons who,
execute, will, instead of crusading for the evangelisation
of transmarine heathen, attempt (and by the only sensible
and immediately practicable means) to Christianise our
own; when they will take as much care of the breed of

the human as they do of the higher order of domestic
animals; when men, women, and children who, in
thousands of instances. are worse lodged, worse fed, and
worse treated than the horses of the rich in their
stables, or the beasts of the Zoological Gardens in their
dens, are, for the first time, anxiously and efficiently
cared for; when the spurious, the rotten philanthropy
above hinted at, instead of pathetically lamenting the
moral depravity of the millions whom it has never seen,
will set itself seriously to work to improve the temporal
condition of our own unhappy, too frequently degraded
and brutalised poor; when it shall study poor human
nature in detail instead of in the mass; go into the so-
called houses and neighbourhoods in which so many of our
fellow-creatures vegetate, like fungi, not live, like men;
it will be the agent in producing enormous, incalculably
beneficial results,—results that would be felt in the mi-
nutest and most intricate ramifications of the great
human family."
Results of this beneficial character we anticipate from
the Bill for leave to bring in which Lord ASHLEY
asked only yesterday, and we rejoice to think not un-
successfully. The introduction of that measure we
shall look for eagerly, and shall watch its progress
through both Houses with a solicitude that can know
no diminution.

The only point decided by the division of Monday
evening is that the property and income-tax is not to
be relinquished as a source of revenue. Nothing has
yet been determined as to the duration of the impost
or its mode of assessment. These are points on
which the opinion of the House will unquestionably
be taken, and we trust that the results will be such
as the justice and expediency of the case demand.
The veteran JOSEPH HUME has already given notice
that he will in Committee propose that the duty be
granted for a single year only, in order that
a Committee of Inquiry may be appointed in the
meantime, with a view to the removal of the
complaints and objections now made against its ine-
quality and injustice. We long since strongly re-
commended such a limitation, even under the most
favourable circumstances. Nothing would tend more
to strengthen and consolidate the power of the po-
pular branch of the Legislature than such a course.
According to the constitutional theory the represen-
tatives of the people should have the entire control
over the public purse, and no taxes should be levied
without their assent and approbation. It is necessary
that this legitimate and constitutional power should
be relinquished in the indirect taxation of the coun-
try. In all matters coming under the Customs
or Excise, the nature and amount of the tax must
be known with perfect certainty, or the merchant
will be deterred from importing and the manufac-
turer from producing. It is on direct imposts only
that the Commons House of Parliament can retain

that salutary check over the Executive that is of
such vital importance to the welfare and prosperity
of the country, and which affords the most valuable
guarantee for the liberty of the subject. Nothing
would supply so powerful a motive to strict economy
as the knowledge that the amount of the income-tax
for the current year would depend on the vigilanee
of Hon. Gentlemen in checking every species of ex-
travagance and preventing any unnecessary outlay.
There would be a direct connexion between each vote
in Committee of Supply and the pockets of the
Members, that would speedily lead to important con-
sequences. We should not then see millions of
pounds sterling carelessly and recklessly voted in
thin Houses without consideration or forethought.
A death-blow would be given to corruption and
jobbery of every description ; and we should no
longer see the stoppages in transitu, against which so
many complaints have been preferred, sanctioned or
tolerated.

It is not necessary, however, that the tax should
be renewed even for a single year in its present op-
pressive and unequal form. It might, perhaps,
be difficult to introduce a perfectly equitable
system under which every person should
contribute exactly in proportion to his means
and resources ; but that affords no sufficient
reason why an attempt should not be made at ap-
proximation thereto. It is manifest that there is a
wide distinction between estates in perpetuity and
estates for life or other limited interests. A man
whose income will die with himself must lay by a
considerable portion of his income, or insure his life as
a provision for his wife and children while the man
who has full power over his property can spend the
amount, whatever it may be, certain that the same
fund will be available for his family after his decease.

It might be difficult to assess the value of every
life estate separately, but an average might be struck,
and if two-thirds of the sum now chargeable on such
property were assessed for the future, it would re-

. _
move the chief ground of complaint, and render sub-
stantial justice in the premises. We merely throw
this out a temporary suggestion, for we are satisfied
that modes might, and would, be suggested before a
Committee which would make a still more equitable
apportionment of the burden.
But as Mr. PEEL justly remarked, " if there was
a distinction between a life-income and a permanent
income, there was a still broader distinction between
either of those incomes and incomes which were held
on contingencies more precarious than life itself—
such contingencies as fortune, health, reputation, and
employment." It is indeed monstrous to class such
incomes, which cannot be depended on even for
a single year, with those which are certain
and permanent, which may improve, but which can
scarcely depreciate. The barrister or physician may
be unable to bear the toil and exertion necessary for
the exercise of his laborious profession!; there is a
wear and tear of intellect that must tell sooner or
later. Ile must take advantage of the favourable
season, to use the homely but expressive maxim, " to
make hay while the sun shines." It may be long

before his name becomes known, before his ability_and
talents are appreciated. During that period he

may have necessarily contracted debts and
liabilities, not for purposes of extravagance, but
to maintain his position and standing in society,
which, if once forfeited, would be fatal to his future
prospects. The fundholder would, under such cir-
cumstances, sell out a few hundreds or thousands, as
the case might be ; the landowner, might mortgage
his acres or houses—neither would be subject to the
tax. The former would have no liability whatsoever,
and the latter would be allowed to deduct the
amount paid by him as a charge payable out of his
property. But no such privilege is allowed to the
professional man. No allowance whatsoever would
be made by the collector, and he should pay the tax
upon money that had merely passed through his
hands, and which he could not venture to apply to
his own use. He must also look forward to the
time when his over-taxed powers may fail, or when
his popularity may cease. He must not only provide
for past debts, but for the helpless old age that is
creeping on. Practically he may not be justified in
applying the one-fourth part of his net earn-
ings to his annual expenditure, and yet he is
charged as if no change or alteration of cir
cumstances were possible —as if he were the
fortunate proprietor of a snug sum in the Three per
Cents., that would still be productive at all times and
seasons. Who is there that has not within his own ex-
perience known deserving individuals reduced from a
state of affluence, and the enjoyment of every comfort,
to misery and destitution? It was our painful duty
to notice even within the present week a melancholy
instance of the kind—to speak of Mr. Serxo, the
eminent tenor, who' once delighted the playgoers of
the metropolis and realised a handsome income by
his professional exertions, but who has for some
time been suffering under the most bitter privation!,
and that without any fault or error on his own part,
Who is there who can think of such cases even for a
single moment, and not perceive the gross injustice
of the system which Sir CHARLES WOOD is so anxious
to perpetuate ?
The case of the merchant, manufacturer, or trader,
is scarcely better than that of the barrister or physi-
cian. One year he may he tolerably successful ; his
business may be flourishing, his debtors punctual ;
the next he may barely maintain his position with-
out any material loss or profit; while the third
be may have to draw largely on capital
to supply the deficiency occasioned by bad
debts and the bankruptcy of correspondents.
It is a bitter mockery to demand from such a person,
who may be himself tottering on the verge of ruin,
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