The Sun.
London, England, 1834-08-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The order for the second reading of the Irish Tithe
Bill in.the House of Lords stands for this evening,
and the determination of the Tory 'Peers is looked
forward to with extreme solicitude. There are three
courses open to the Lords—meaning the Tories, be-
cause none doubt that they have the power if they
have the will and temerity to outvote Ministers. They
may pass the Bill in its present improved state—they
may refuse the recent amendments introduced into the
original Bill by a majority of the Commons--or their
" Lordships," in their infinite wisdom, may reject it
altogether. We believe that the merits of the measure
will be the smallest consideration with these wilful
legislators. We may state, on undoubted authority—
their own—that yesterday their " final" resolution,
after much deliberation and difference of opinion, was
to " throw out" the Bill altogether. We confess,
nevertheless, that we cannot believe that they will
screw up their courage to the " sticking place."
What possible motive can the Tory Peers have for
such a course of reckless policy ? Many of them are
Irish landowners of extensive and valuable possessions.
They well know that the Bill is received with accla-
mation in Ireland—that the Clergy are anxiously de-
siring its success—that no petitions from any class
have been presented against it. They must know the
interminable warfare of the Catholic laity of Ireland
against the present offensive system of tithe. The
evils of the predial agitation of the question have ex-
tended far beyond the mere subject matter of conten-
tion. The Irish Peers are sensibly alive to the preva-
lence of a growing spirit of disaffection to the pressure
of their grinding rents. Will they then destructively
oppose a measure which would finally, and, on the
whole, equitably, extinguish the evils of the tithe sys-
tem of their unhappy and persecuted country? As the
self-elected and exclusive champions of the Church
Establishment of Ireland, are they prepared to. reduce
the whole body of Protestant Irish Clergy to beggary
and destitution ? Will they risk, by the rejection of
the Irish Tithe Bill, the revival of a national agita-
tion which can only end with the entire destruction of
the Irish Church ? Will they reject a measure
beneficial to the people of Ireland—the salvation of the
Clergy--and particularly gainful to the landed proprie-
tors ? It has been absurdly contended that the Bill
is defective, because of the bonus given to the land-
lords. We much doubt the extent and reality of that
bonus. The tenantry, relieved from the payment of
tithe, will not have to bear any considerable share of
the tax by a relative addition to their rents. Forty per
cent. is extinguished. That portion of the extinction,
fairly calculated as the cost of collection, is no loss to
the Church ; and though the State will have to make
good the difference between 60 per cent. and the cost
of collection, yet the State will be quickly reimbursed
from the surplus funds of the Church temporalities.
The force of these objections we cannot discern. Suc-
cessfully to carry any measure of such vital and sweep-
ing importance, various conflicting interests must be
necessarily propitiated. No remedy of existing evils
could be, real or lasting which did not relieve the pau-
per Catholic tenantry from tithe. If the imposition
is therefore necessarily transferred from the tenantry
to the landowners, the latter have a clear right to
some equivalent or ,gain commensurate with the bur-
den of a specific laud tax. But it is reiterated, " Why
should the landlords pocket any portion of the State
property ?" We reply, for the reasons above stated.
Can it be denied that the State possesses through its
Legislature the right of alienating any portion of its
possessions ? The justification must be the righteous-
ness
of the object. And what object can be more
righteous than alienation for the national purpose of
securing social order and contentment ? A cheaper
purchase never can be made by this country than the
exchange of 40 per cent. of Irish tithes for the ex-
tinction of predial evils which are rapidly becoming
subversive of the entire rights of property. The ob-
jection proceeding from Tory Peers who have mort-
gaged the landed property of the whole kingdom in
a national debt of one thousand millions—created
too in an unsuccessful attempt to uphold the cause
of Popery and legitimacy—is absurd and even
ludicrous. If the Peers then reject such a Bill—
passed to them by large majorities of the Commons—
what must be their real motives of objection ? Their
conduct could not have any relation to the merits of
the question. We can only seek their motives in the
spirit of faction. The Duke of Wellington is re-
ported, with many of the more sensible Tory Peers, to
have strongly urged assent to the Bill, although it is
understood that he has since reluctantly consented to
put himself at the head of his motley troops. We
must, therefore, attribute the opposition to " some
busy Factionists of the meaner sort." Will his Grace,
then, submit to the despicable councils of the rump of
the Orange party ? Is he brought thus low to de-
dare a truce with that fanatical party as a reconcilia-
tion for the odious concession of Catholic emancipa-
tion ? We deeply grieve that the Duke of Welling-
ton, after the peace, transferred his mental activity
from the field to the senate. Low, indeed, has he
fallen, in the last session, to prefer the Tory roar of
an Oxford Convocation to the prosperity of his
native island. If, however, the Tory Lords
are thus insanely determined to bring their
" Order " into contempt and universal discredit,
they must pursue their own course. It is now
become evident that the King, the Commons,
and the People cannot much longer submit to an Un-
reformed House of Lords. Necessity will work a
cure. Our able Correspondent, " A Whig and Re-
former," proposes a remedy. We are not prepared to
approve his proposition, though any change would be
better ; but the Lords may be assured that their legis-
lative conduct in the four last Sessions of Parliament
has begotten a new public question—their own re-
formation. If, by destroying the Irish Tithe Bill,
they, calculate on. the chance of constructing a Tory
Ministry, they are miserably deceived. The cant and
hypocrisy of their pretended zeal for the Church is,
however, amply portrayed. They cannot expect that
the Commons, under such circumstances, will rob the
public purse to pay the Irish Clergy in the interregnum
of a renewal of Irish agitation. Perhaps they vainly
imagine that his Majesty would send for the Duke of
Wellington in his dilemma. A probable circumstance
—that the King should seek the council of a Peer to

extricate and guide him from the evil of that Peer's
- -

machination I- Strait waistcoats alone would be suit

able to all persons concerned in such a cabal.:
Morning Chronicle.

The decision of the House of Lords upon the Irish
Tithe Bill is this day to be pronounced, and we en-
tertain a very confident expectation that their Lord-
ships will reject this iniquitous and jacobinical mea-
sure. Whatever may be thought of the nature of the
property in tithe, whether it be deemed public pro-
perty or private property, whether it belongs to the
State or to the Church, it is abundantly clear, at least,
that it is property, and that in disposing of it, or of
any portion of it, all that Parliament can do, by pos-
sibility, is to divest one class of the community of
rights for the purpose of transferring those rights to
another class or classes. The naked proposition con-
tained in the Irish Tithe Bill is that two-fifths of a
large mass of property which now belongs either to the
clergy of the Church in Ireland, or to the community
at large, shall be transferred to the proprietors of land
in Ireland. This proposition is equally monstrous whe-
ther tithe be regarded as the property of the Church or as
the property of the State. If, as we believe, it is the
rightful property of the Church, why should the Church
be robbed to enrich the landlords of Ireland ? If, as
others pretend, it is the property of the State, why should
all the rest of the community be plundered to aggran-
dize the proprietors of the soil in Ireland ? What in
either case is the merit of the one party or the delin-
quency of the other, that the former should be the ob-
ject of legislative bounty, and the latter the victim of
political spoliation ? If the tithe is to be seized by
the State upon the assumption -that it is the property
of the State, why should the undivided advantage of
this seizure be bestowed upon the landlords of Ireland ?
Why in these days of economy should not the public at
large be admitted to the spoil which is properly their
own ? The reason can only be found in the disposi-
tion of Ministers to gratify the envy, hatred, and ma-
lice of the Papists of Ireland towards the Protestant
Church. This measure is not founded upon any prin-
ciple of public policy. It is merely an act of gra- ,
tugous homage rendered by the British Parliament to

that class of the people of Ireland who are eager for
the prostration of the Protestant Church because it is
the Protestant Church. The injustice of this mea-
sure becomes more evident the more it is considered.
It takes away from the Clergy two-fifths of their law-
ful property to bestow it upon parties who not only
have no claim to it, but in whose favour no claim has
ever been preferred. But, not content with this fla-
grant iniquity, it abolishes all the compositions by
which under the sanction of antecedent Acts of Par-
liament the amount of that property has been deter-
mined, thus forcing upon the Clergy of Ireland a new
and needless struggle with inveterate and elated anta-
gonists for that portion of their property of which it
professes to leave them in the possession. Nor does
the iniquity of the measure end even here. By the
apathy or the feebleness of the Executive Government,
the tithe-payers of Ireland have been permitted to fall
greatly into arrear. And from this arrear they
are to be exonerated, as a reward for
their systematic resistance to the law, the
Consolidated Fund of Great Britain being charged
with the amount. In other words, the Irish
tithe, which our liberal and economical rulers have
caused to fall into arrear, is to be paid out of the pro-
ceeds of taxation levied upon the submissive and obe-
dient people of Great Britain. This, it must be
admitted, is a specimen of legislation which is admi-
rably calculated to diffuse respect for the Legislature,
and promote obedience to the laws. But it is said the
Irish people will not pay tithe, and therefore it is
good to give up two-fifths of that revenue and to take
the rest in another form and under another name.
This is the apology for the measure. Our wise Legis-
lators think there is no harm in giving direct en-
couragement and reward to rebellion, if they can at
the same time perpetrate a paltry cheat upon the rebels.
The contemptible cheat will inevitably fail, but the
reward and encouragement will certainly produce their
natural effect. If the Irish people, as they are called,
will not pay tithe to the Protestant Clergy, by whom
is the three-fifths of that revenue which an enlightened
and Reformed House of Commons professes to leave
for the maintenance of the Protestant Clergy to be
henceforth paid'? Are the Irish people so dull as to
prmit it to be smuggled out of their pockets ? And
now that the House of Commons has explicitly recog-
nized their right to determine what they will pay and
what they will not, must not the Irish people be a very
extraordinary people indeed if they continue much
longer in the disposition to pay rent to their landlords
or taxes to the Crown ? Let the Tithe Bill once pass
into a law, and the Roman Catholics of Ireland must
be the worst reasoners in the world if they do not feel
that thenceforth they are completely absolved from all
such inconvenient obligation.—Morning Post.
The defeat of the Bishop of Exeter's motion to
save a Christian Legislature from the disgrace, and a
Christian land from the calamity, of the immoral and
unmanly clauses of the Poor Law Amendment Bill,
touching the maintenance of illegitimate children, is
more honourable to that distinguished Prelate than
their triumph can be to his Malthusian opponents.
The admirable speech with which he introduced his
motion—a speech full of natural eloquence, the elo-
quence of truth and of feeling—a speech not less re-
markable for the clearness and force of its reasoning—
for the beauty and pathos of its Christian sentiment—
for the charm of its manly morality—such a speech will
outlive the occasion that called it forth, and if we did
not firmly believe that the sentiments which it en-
forces, and the morals which it inculcates, will flourish
in England, when the Malthusian Bill shall only
exist in the recollection of its monstrous but short-
lived violence to nature, reason, decency, and jus-
tice, we should distrust the moral government of
the world. Let the Bill receive the stamp of law
whenever it may, it can never get over the scathing
effects of this speech, which so admirably laid
bare its master-deformity to the public eye. Like
a wounded snake, although it retains all its venom,
it will have lost half its vigour. Its progress will
be a constant writhing of inflicted weakness, and
the heel of public opinion will yet crush it in the dust.
Truly did the venerable Prelate say—" this Bill has
not—it never can have the sanction of the British
people. I defy any one to bring it forward under
such a sanction—the thing is impossible. The
British people have not been yet taught to regard
woman merely as the minister to the vilest passions.
No ; they regard her as a being—in her weakness to
be cherished—in her distresses to be assisted, and in
her wants and destitution to be sustained and pro-
tected. They never will—l know they never will—be
parties to the cruelty and oppression of this Bill "
This is the tone of animating--of impassioned truth,
with which it becomes the orator of Christianity to
meet, to grapple with, and overthrow the cold and
heartless sophisms of that un-English sect, whose
" philosophic" ambition it is to exterminate the na-
tural charities and manly virtues of the human heart.
But, indefatigable as have been the exertions of these
pseudo-philosophers for some years past to dissemi-
nate the sordid and demoralising doctrines of their
school—that school known by the designation of
the "preventive-check school," they had not pre-
pared the public mind for the introduction into the
Legislature of such a measure as the Malthusian Poor
Law Bill—the " boon to the female population "
with its Central Board, its arbitrary power, and its
more than Turkish contempt for the claims of betrayed
and suffering woman upon the protection of her profli-
gate seducer, who may now hug his golden god in
security, while he spurns his imploring victim and
their common offspring with his foot ! Well might
the Bishop of Exeter exclaim—" My Lords, will not
the effects of this Bill be to disgust the people of Eng-
land ? and that disgust produced by a single measure
will, it is natural to suppose, extend to the source whence
that measure originated. Every instance of a Legis-
lature forming a law in despite of the feelings of the
people is' but telling them to cast off their respect
for the law as well as for the Legislature by which
it was enacted." Abundant proof has been given
that the Whig Ministers force this Bill through the
Legislature to gratify the Malthusian oppressors of
the poor, and extend their own patronage in despite
of the feelings of the people. The sentiments of
honest indignation, as well as the reasoning remon-
strances which have been uttered at numerous parochial
and other meetings, and embodied in various petitions
against the unconstitutional character and tyrannical
principle of the Bill, more especially against its " un-
manly clauses," supported as those clauses are, by foul
calumnies upon the character of the females of Eng-
land, have been treated with disregard and contempt.
But, though the Lords are independent of public opi-
nion in a great degree, the representatives of the. peo-
ple, who have signalised themselves by supporting a
measure which would have disgraced the reign of the
Stuarts for its tyranny, and dishonours a Christian
people by its monstrous innovation upon the morality
of Christians, shall hear of it again. When the Re-
formed House of Commons, in its servile obsequious-
ness to the Ministers of the Crown, set itself against
public opinion on this Bill, we thought the House of
Lords had the finest opportunity that could be created
for it of proving its usefulness to the British public as
an Institution, able and willing to counteract the ser-
vility of the people's Representatives, when they for-
got their duty to their constituents and their country ;
but the Lords threw away that opportunity, the like
of which will never be afforded them again. As to
the Tory party, in allowing themselves to be made
the infatuated instruments to extend the dominion
of Malthusian principles and the sphere of Whig
patronage, they have acted like men doomed to
political destruction, whom no earthly power can save.
While they have acted in a spirit of cruel and sordid
policy towards the poor of England—while they have
acted an unmanly part towards the helpless females of
their native land, they have, in one point of view,
displayed unbounded generosity. Their political
t o
i
op-
ponents had dug a pitfall beneath their own
which a touch would have precipitated them, feet,bu the
Tories have " generously" saved them from that fate
by jumping in themselves. They have diverted the
public odium from the Whigs, and revived all the bit-
ter recollection of their own incorrigible errors. They
have shown that both parties only differ as the upper
and the nether millstone between which the principles
of a free Constitution—the claims of the poor--the
protection of female helplessness, and the charities
that are the greatest grace and ornament of a civilised