The Sun.
London, England, 1834-10-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Cobbeit's Register of this day is a strange mixture
of good description, and absurd reasoning. He has
seen a good deal of Ireland, and he gives a very striking
account of the wretchedness of the people to Charles
Marshall, labourer, Normandy Tithing ; but the con-
clusions he draws, both in the letter to Marshall, and
in another to Lord Radnor, are often most absurd.
We say often, because in these letters, as in all his
writings, his absurdity is always relieved by occasional
acuteness. The letter to Marshall is dated from
Waterford, 6th October, and contains the following
description of the Irish farmers
nere are some large farmers, and these have barns
and thrashing-machines ; but the greater number have from
five acres of land to forty perhaps. Our acre is about three
quarters of an Irish acre ; but I speak of our acre. Where
there are barns, they are of stone. The ground of all
this kingdom seems to be upon beds of stone, and great
part lime-stone : so that all buildings are of these, stone
and mortar ; and the fences, where there are any, are
of stone. The farmers in general have no barns. They
put their sheaves into little cocks, and seldom thatch
them ; and they do the same with the hay. They beat
out the corn (wheat, &c.) in their miserable houses, and
winnow it by the wind, on cloths, having 'no vans to do it
with. They then put it into bags holding about six of our
bushels, which are lifted on a car (a sort of bed of a cart
without head or tail or sides, which, when wanted to carry
potatoes or apples, are made of osiers), and carry it and
sell it to the corn-dealears, who send almost all of it to Eng-
land. The farmer and his family are all in half nakedness
or rags ; their lot is little better than the mere labourer's.
They raise wheat and barley and butter and pork in great
abundance ; but never do they taste any of either, except,
perchance, a small part of the meal of the oats. Potatoes
are their sole food. I wish the farmers of our parish could
see one that I saw in the fine county of Kilkenny. His
dress was a mere bundle of rags, tied round his body with a
baud of straw ; his legs and feet bare, no shirt, and his head
covered with a rag, such as you would rip out of the inside
of an old cart-saddle. The landlord generally lets his *Treat
estate to some one man, who lets it out in littles ; and this
one man takes all from the wretched farmer."

was reduced, there were no towns or fixed habitations.
The natives moved their wigwams from place to place
—so that Sir John Davies, on his second circuit, was
astonished to find none of the collections of huts in the
places where he had found them the year before. The
blunders of the English Government have prevented
the extension of better habits ; so that an immense
population, utterly unacquainted with the arts of life,
and satisfied with the very lowest animal existence, has
been suffered to grow up. The English people have
been weak enough to suffer the Aristocracy to waste their
resources in keeping Ireland barbarous. A dominant
caste and a sinecure Church have been the object of
the care of the Government ; the people have been
considered merely
i as instruments. The Govern-
ment, however, s now honest. Civilization is
making its inroads, and will in time complete the
conquest of the country. But we must not suffer
ourselves to be led away with the notion that the
bad habits, and the vices, the result of original
barbarism and subsequent misgovernment, can be re-
medied in a day. By way of illustrating the difficulty
there is in rooting out long-confirmed habits, we shall
notice a case lately communicated to us on the best
authority. We may übserve that combination enters
into every transaction of life in Ireland. There is,
indeed, scarcely any earthly object to which combina-
tion is not occasionally applied. And yet our English
readers would guess a long time before hitting on the
object of a combination which took place the other day
in Ireland, and which, we should imagine, must be no-
vel even in that country. Three armed men entered a
house at night, into which they had previously fired
shots, and swore the owner not to get married.
" What !" it will be asked, " is Malthus making
such way in Ireland that combinations to keep down
the population are entered into ?" Oh, no ; the com-
bination in this case is supposed to have been the work
of a man who had a reversionary interest in the pro-
perty of the person sworn. Strange mixture of law-
lessness and religion I—Morning Chronicle.

Among the most obvious and pressing considera-
tions which the late awful calamity gives rise to, is
the suggesting and providing some place for the re-
ception of both Houses of Parliament on their next
meeting ; which, though in the ordinary course of
things it may not be till February, on the other hand
is liable to be sudden and almost immediate. The
erection of new edifices will, at .any rate, occupy a
period of from one to two years ; and as they cannot,
in all probability, be so much as commenced till after
the ensuing winter, we may reasonably calculate that
temporary Houses of Parliament will be required for
at least two sessions. Numerous suggestions are al-
ready afloat, and are all more or less worthy of con-
sideration. The House of Lords, it is said, might
meet in 'Westminster Hall, if fitted up as it is
on the occasion of a state trial, and that Committee-
rooms, &c., might be formed by taking some of
the houses in Palace-yard for that purpose, while
the House of Commons might be provided for
in Whitehall chapel or Banqueting-house, with one
or more houses in Privy-gardens for the Speaker,
Committees, &c. But this plan is open to the objec-
tion of the two Houses assembling at inconvenient dis-
tances from each other. Others suggest that as the
new palace at Pimlico is now ready for the reception
of their Majesties, the old palace at St. James's is ca-
pable of affording temporary accommodation for both
Houses, which, if to be practicable, presents the most
desirable and least objectionable plan of any. It has
been said that two halls of the Inner and Middle
Temple are capable of affording the accommodation ;
but this we doubt--and also that Exeter-hall in the
Strand presents rooms large and numerous enough for
all the purposes of both Houses ; but with this build-
ing we are not sufficiently acquainted to offer any
nion. Upon the whole we must repeat that St. James's
Palace appears to present the readiest means of meet-
ing the difficulty, which at any rate must, for obvious
reasons, be met promptly, and, as we hope it may, as
effectually as circumstances will permit.—Morning
Herald.

After some absurd observations on the supposed
schemes of the " Scotch vagabonds" to reduce the
English to this very state, in which he informs the
farmers that " their wives will have no hats; bon-
nets, or caps ; but must have a wad of straw tied
upon their heads," he exclaims, " Mrs. West,
and Mrs. Faggotten, and Mrs. Heathorn would
look so nice, naked up to the knees, some rags
tied round the middle, no smock, and their heads
covered with a wad of straw I " He then adds,
" I have now been over about 180 miles in Ire-
land, in the several counties of Dublin, Wicklow,

Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny, and Waterford. I
have in former years, been in every county of
England, and across every county more than one
way. I have been through the finest part of
Scotland. I have lived in the finest parts of the
United States of America. And here lam to de-
clare to all the world that I never passed over any
fifty miles in my life, any fifty unbroken miles of
land so good on an average during the whole way,
as the average of these 180 miles." In going from
Kilkenny to Waterford, he passed through a fair for
cattle and fat hogs, at a place called Mullinavat.
There might be four thousand people, and there were
about seven acres covered with cattle, mostly fat, and
all over the street of the town there were—

" About three thousand beautiful fat hogs, lying all over
the road and the streets ; and our chaise was actually stop-
ped and blocked up by fat hogs ; and we were obliged to
stop till the civil and kind people could get them out of our
way ! There was a sight to be seen by me, who had never
seen thirty such hogs together in the course of my life
these hogs weighing from ten to thirty score each ! Ah,
but there arose out of this fine sight reflections that made
my blood boil ; that the far greater part of those who had
bred and fatted these hogs were never to taste one morsel
of them, no, not even the offal, and had lived worse than the
hogs, not daring to taste any part of the meal used in the
fatting of the hogs. The hogs are to be killed, dried, or
tubbed, and sent out of the country to be sold for money to
be paid to the landowners, who spend it in London, Bath,
Paris, Rome, or some other places of pleasure, while these
poor creatures are raising all this food from the land, and
are starving themselves."
We have often said that in Ireland all goes to the
landlord ; that the farmer and cottier, out of the whole
produce of the land, have only the potatoes for their
own subsistence. " And this," says Mr. Cobbett,
" is what we shall come to in England, unless we call
upon our Member, Mr. Leech, to protect us." We
trust we shall be protected from such a fate without the
aid of any such cunning leech. If the people of Eng-
land and the people of Ireland are to be reduced to
potatoes and water, what is to become of all the fat
cattle and fat hogs ? No man would raise fat cattle
and hogs without a market for them ; and if neither
the people of England nor the people of Ireland eat
beef and pork, what is to be done with it ? Are we
to export it to Russia, or the United States of North
America ? Mr. Cobbett thinks the potatoes are the
cause of the evil ; that if the people of England do
not make a stand against potatoes, we shall be victims
to them in our turns. In his indignatien against the
accursed root, he issues the following whimsical
anathema :

" I hope that all of you are well ; and that not a man of
you will ever again suffer a potato to grow in your gardens,
or be brought into your houses ; and if any one bring a
potato into my house, except to stuff' a fat goose, or a fat
sucking pig, Mr. Dean has my order to discharge that per-
son directly. You have peas and Inane of all sorts for
summer ; carrots, parsnips, beets, for winter ; white cab-
bages all the year through ; the best of bread, bacon, and
puddings always ; and if you still hanker after that accursed
root, without which Ireland could not have been brought
to its present state, and which has banished bread from the
labourer's house here ; if you still hanker after this ' coarse
food,' you shall go elsewhere to get it ; for you shall not
have it in the service (in house or out of house) of your
master and friend, William Cobbett."

It was hardly to be expected that the misery and
injustice which so sweeping a measure of destruction
as the miscalled Poor Law Amendment Act was sure
to create would be made manifest in a day or two, and
the public must, therefore, not be too greatly shocked
if in every number of every Journal published through-
out England and Wales, accounts are given for some
time to come of fresh grievances generated under the
operation of this unprecedented work of legislation. A
Correspondent, whose letter will be found in another
part of our Paper, asks with great naivete, whether lie
can obtain any relief if his poor rates are greatly in-
creased, in consequence of any orders that may be
issued by the triumvirate, and more partieularly if they
should determine upon building a new workhouse in the
district where he resides. Alas, we regret it is out of
our power to suggest any mode by which our correspon-
dent, and those who are in his situation, can hope to ob-
tain the smallest relief from the partial and unjust opera-
tion of this iniquitous measure ; for when the main
object of the promoters of such a work is to secure a
certain amount of patronage, they pay as little atten-
tion to private rights as to the public interests. The sec-
tions in the Act by which the Commissioners are em-
powered to build and enlarge, or alter, workhouses, are
the 23d, 24th, and 25th, by the first of which it is
enacted that it shall be lawful for the Commissioners,
with the consent of a majority of the guardians of any
union, or with the consent of a majority of the rate-
payers and owners of property entitled to vote, to order
and direct the overseers or guardians of any parish, or
union, not having a workhouse, or workhouses, to
build a workhouse or workhouses, and to pur-
chase or hire land for the purpose of building the
same, or to purchase or hire a building for the purpose
of converting it into a workhouse. And the overseers
and guardians to whom any such order shall be di-
rected are authorised and required to assess, raise,
and levy such sum or sums of money as may be
necessary for the purposes therein specified by such
powers, ways, and means as were at the time of the
passing of the Act vested in them. It is clear that
according to this section the Commissioners will have
very little trouble in obtaining any sanction they may
require for building and altering workhouses, for, ex-
clusive of the influence which they will in most cases
exercise over guardians and overseers through the
means of sundry little jobs and small baits of patronage
too numerous to mention, they will, as a matter of
course, secure the suffrages of those members of a union
who hope to be relieved by a copartnership with some
prosperous neighbour, and they can always take care
that these rotten portions of a union shall form its major
part. By the 24th section it is fortunately provided
that the sums to be raised for the above purposes,
and charged upon the poor rates, shall in no case ex-
ceed the average annual amount of the rates raised
in the parish or union where the workhouse is to'
be built. But even with this limitation the sum which
may be raised will in many cases be pretty large, and
the whole of it will, as our correspondent seems to ap-
prehend, fall upon the tenant, although the advan-
tages to be derived from such erections will be mainly
enjoyed by the landlord, whose estate is to be perma-
nently benefited by them. The 25th section empowers
the Commissioners to order the erection or hiring of
workhouses in any parish without any consent at all ;
but the sums to be so raised are not to exceed one-
tenth of the average annual amount of the rates, and
their powers of mischief are, therefore, in this instance,
materially circumscribed ; but still the same injustice
is wrought towards tenants, and we are bound to tell
our correspondent that his case, like many others which
required equitable consideration, is a casus omissus in
this matured and well-digested Poor Law Amendment
scheme.—Morning Post.

This is putting the cart before the horse. Men do
not take a coarse food from choice, but from necessity ;
and they always abandon a coarse food when they can
obtain a better. It is notorious that wheat has been
continually encroaching on the inferior grains all over
this island ; and that it is only since about 1760 that
wheat became generally the food of the labouring
classes. In the reign of Charles the Second,
oaten bread was given to the servants in noblemen's
houses in London ; and now, barley and oaten
bread are to be found only in a very few remote dis-
tricts. In Scotland as well as England, the con-
sumption of wheaten flour has greatly increased, and
is increasing. In the same manner the consumption
of animal food has greatly increased, and is increasing.
A nobleman or gentleman does not consume indivi-
dually much more than another man ; and, as the ob-
ject of all improvements in agriculture is to increase
animal and vegetable production, the increased produce
supposes an increased consumption by all classes. The
fat hogs and fat cattle of Ireland are consumed by
English labourers and manufacturers, as Mr. Cobbett
might have seen in Lancashire, and as he may see in
almost every village of Kent and Surrey, where the
labourer buys Irish bacon of the very best quality for
threepence per pound. There has been a great
increase of population in England within the last
century ; but the increase of animal and vegetable
food has increased in a far greater ratio. If in
Ireland the people do not benefit by this increase,
it is because, from the diseased state of that coun-
try, there are far more labourers than can be
employed, and that the wretched peasantry, from
being obliged to have a piece of land as the very con-
dition of existence, will consent to live on anything—
even on potatoes and water--and promise anything for
land. The introduction of Poor-laws would be ex-
tremely useful in diminishing the excessive competi-
tion for land, and putting a stop to the mendicancy
and vagrancy, and the daring irregularities which pre-
vent the employment of capital in agriculture and other
branches of industry. The labourer is a beggar in Ire-
land, because there is no adequate employment for him,
and he must, therefore, take anything that is offered to
him. More than one cause has producod these mise-
rable effects. The absurd vanity of the Irish, about
their ancient civilization (which had no connection with
arts or industry), makes them unwilling to allow that the
laws and usages prevailing among them, when the
English first attempted the conquest of the country,
were such as to exclude the possibility of all improve-
ment. There was not a building in the country but
churches, and a few Danish fortalices on parts of
the coast, when the English first invaded Ireland ; and
on the suppression of Tyrone's rebellion, when Ulster

We give elsewhere all the additional particulars
which we have been able to collect respecting the de-
struction of the two Houses of Parliament, by the fire
which broke out in them on Thursday night ; and if
our words upon the occasion are not those of the re-
gret and unmingled sorrow, almost with a few excep-
tions, universally expressed by our contemporaries, we
assure our readers that we do our feelings no violence
by the abstinence. We may, as the Albion of last
night observes, be " dull of understanding, and hard
of heart, not to be moved to pity " at a " calamity" to
the " afflicting horror of which no tongue or pen can
do justice ;"—but, in truth, although " the confla-
gration was dreadful," as our contemporary hath it,—
" the night fresh and breezy—sometimes stormy,

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1834.

but without rain—and the fearful energy of the fire
seemed to devour every thing that it touched, and no
one who did not behold the scene could imagine the
absolute irresistibleness with which the progress of the
fire impressed those who witnessed it," we must plead
guilty to the accusation of having remained, even to
the present moment, comparatively unmoved. To
what cause this equanimity of temper upon an occur-
rence which has excited more sorrow in our cotem-
poraries, and bedewed their pages, if not their cheeks,
with more tears than we have ever. known them to
shed upon any former occasion, is to be attributed—
whether to " dullness of understanding,"—to " hard-
ness of heart,"—or the subject not being of suffi-
cient magnitude to move us—or to our nerves having
been recently braced by a visit to the sea-side--=it is
not for us to determine. Suffice it to say, that the
cause has not been in us, and that the effect has not
followed ; and further, that it has been a matter of no
slight wonder to us, how those who never found a tear
for the subject of military torture—or the sorrows of
the African slave—or the miseries which are suffered,
to an extent of which few have any conception,
by a tax-ridden people—should exhibit such foun-
tains of affliction for the mere, and as there appears
to us every reason to believe, casual, destruction of a
mass of inanimate matter. If there had been any
thing truly valuable in the buildings which have been
destroyed—if they had been specimens of architecture
upon which future ages would have desired to look,
or from which they might have derived useful lessons
—if they had been a Westminster Hall, or a West-
minster Abbey—or if their contents had been so va-
luable as to be incapable of being replaced—why we
are frank to own that we too should deeply have la-
mented the devastation ; but neither was the case. All
that possessed value—we mean irrecoverable value—in
the two Houses of Parliament—has been saved ; while
with regard to the buildings themselves, we perfectly
agree with the Standard, that " their architectural pre-
tensions were of the very lowest—that the House of
Lords had been dressed up in the worst millinery of
George
the Fourth's taste; and that the House of Com-
mons was, by the consent of all, quite a monster of mean
ugliness." Besides, it is not matter of fact that a new
House of Commons, more commodious and more
adapted for the accommodation both of Members and
of the people, had been a subject of universal desire
for years past, and that the fire of Thursday and yes-
terday has only done that in one way which, in the
course of a year or two, an Act of Parliament wouli
have ordered to be accomplished in another, and less
expeditious, but more economical mode—and what is
there, then, to be lamented ? Why nothing more than
the consumption by fire of materials which might have
been sold for a purse of gold ! But the associations
ali, truly, the associations ! We had almost forgotten
that overflowing source of sorrow among our contempo-
raries ; but on recollection we are inclined to think that
they had better not draw too strongly upon it. Many
valorous and patriotic things have been said and done
in both Houses of Parliament—many scenes enacted
which fill the mind with glorious and grateful reeollec-
Cass—many men spoke and acted in them as men and
patriots ought to speak and act ;—but look—and we say
it not from party prejudice—to the many acts which
have emanated from these houses of a very different
character—to the many men of corrupt. habits, disso-
lute conduct, and tyrannical dispositions, who under
their roofs have wielded the destinies, not of this coun-
try only, but of Europe, and is not the account more
than balanced ? If it was in them, as the Courier
bath it, that " victorious generals were tendered the
thanks of the assembled nation," so also were the most
unprincipled Ministers that either this or any other
country ever saw—if in them " resounded those patriot
words, which hurried on the people indignantly to a
national contest, or directed their energies to improve
the national institutions," so also did those which it
would have been well for the utterers that they had
never spoken. The scathed walls, in fact, could, if
they could speak, tell of various " moving accidents ;"
but there is so little of that glorious uniformity to be
met in them, which our contemporaries would desire to
find, that they were much better left " alone in their
glory" by them, than prominently brought forward with
the risk of contradiction. Hic siste viator /—the
boundary is not to be crossed with impunity.—Morn-
ing Advertiser.

It would be trifling with public attention to indulge
in long comments on the disastrous accident of Thurs-
day night. Although we are not of the number of
those who regard ancient public buildings as composi-
tions merely of wood and stone, or their destruction as
the dry undoing of so much handywork once executed
by carpenters and masons, we feel unwilling to
to dwell upon the loss of the ruined edifices, as one which
after a short time can be much grieved over even by
the most sensitive or imaginative of our fellow-citizens,
whose feelings ought rather to be those of rejoicing at
the preservation of what have been for centuries en-
deared to numerous generations of Englishmen as
monuments of the antiquity and glory of their country,
viz., the stupendous Abbey of Westminster, and the
noble and spirit-stirrring Hall, than of regret for a mis-
fortune which does not awaken any very profound or
hallowed affection, and of which the amount in point
of definite and 'measurable quantity, whether as to in-
convenience or expense, can be more than remedied
after the lapse of a single twelvemonth. Two houses
of Parliament much less adapted to their purpose could
hardly have been imagined. They wanted air, and it
was difficult to ventilate them. They wanted space,
and to enlarge them was almost impossible. We trust
that since the opportunity, by whatever means, has ar-
rived, of constructing senate houses upon a deliberate
and harmonious plan, the cardinal objects will he well
considered, of space, form, facility of hearing, facility
of ventilation, facility of access, and amplitude of ac-
commodation for the public as well as for the members
themselves, and for those who have immediate business
with them. We wish that it might be found compatible
with the above useful ends to isolate the majestic Hall
itself from all the neighbouring edifices, save in so far
only as regarded a covered gallery of communication with
the debating rooms of Lords and Commons. Westminster
Hall might then be reserved and fitted up for occasions
of high and paramount state, such as the coronation of
the Sovereign, and the opening and closing of each
session of Parliament, when his Majesty might sum-
mon both Houses to attend him there, and to receive
his Royal communications ; with raised galleries at the
sides for a large admission of the King's subjects. We
can conceive no spectacle more magnificent, more im-
pressive, or more elevating than that of King, Lords,
Commons, and people of England, assembled under
such a roof, within such walls, and on such a national
solemnity. So much for the future. Looking to the
immediate wants of the State, it gives us pleasure to
announce that his Majesty—always liberal and consi-
derate towards the country—has offered the use of
Buckingham Palace (almost in a condition to
receive himself and his Royal Consort) for the
meeting of both Houses of Parliament, until a
more suitable and lasting provision can be made
for that necessary purpose. This is done in a
cordial and characteristic spirit by King William, and
we are sure will be so appreciated by his people ; but
with a view as well to the better comfort and conveni-
ence of his Majesty, we would humbly recommend,
in corroboration of the sentiments of a correspondent
in this day's Times, that as the old palace of St.
James's contains some apartments fit for the reception
of large numbers of persons, but does not offer suitable
house-room for the various departments of the Royal
Family, his Majesty should still apply to his own use
and accommodation the palace of Buckingham house,
and turn over the obsolete pile of St. James's to the
now unhoused Legislature. This hint will at least l;e
considered, we hope, by Sir John C. Hobhouse and the
Commissioners of Woods and Forests, before they hold
themselves committed irrevocably to any other scheme.
Should any objection exist against the application of
St. James's Palace to the use of Parliament, might not
ample accommodation be found in Somerset House ?
With some skill, and at no great expense, Westminster
Hall might, as we have already stated, be applied to
the use, of the two Houses. But be this as it may, it
is certain that without any great difficulty a temporary
place of Parliamentary meeting may be found, so that
there is not any necessity for any precipitate commence-
ment of a new pile of buildings. Time should be
taken, and the best consideration employed, in order to
ensure the erection of a noble Parliamentary edifice ,