The Sun.
London, England, 1833-02-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We have given a full report of the meeting on
Saturday at the City of London Tavern, for the pur-
pose of petitioning in favour of the Ten-hours
Factory Bill, about to be brought in by Lord Ash-
ley. It is quite a delusion to suppose that either
parents or children in the lower walks of life are
independent. The terms on which they agree to
labour are not made by them. Their numbers place
them entirely under the control of their employers.
In a manufacturing district, a man must submit to
the rules of a factory, or starve, or become a cri-
minal. In agricultural districts the poor are secured
from excessive labour by the impossibility of work-
ing by gaslight. If men could plough or sow with-
out the aid of the sun, we have no doubt they
would soon be compelled to overwork themselves,
as they now do in the manufacturing districts. Wel
are glad that the subject has at length been placed
before the nation in all its deformity. One of the
worst parts of the system is the destructor) which it
has gradually wrought of all the charities of our na-
ture in the case of parent and child. In a recent
publication of Dr. Chalmers, in answer to an article
in the Edinburgh Review, he traces the manner in
which parents were gradually seduced into the prac-
tice of sacrificing their children in the manufacturing
districts of Scotland. The time was when, in
Scotland, a parent would have submitted to any
sacrifice rather their injure his children. Custom
has now reconciled the parent to practices, com•
pared with which infanticide is venial. In Lancashire
matters are still worse. There the brutalized pa-
rents, on marrying, count on the additional means of
sensual indulgence, which the sacrifice of their chil-
dren will place at their disposal. The picture is
altogether a dreary one. But the meeting speak,
for itself...a-Morning Chronicle.
The impression made by Sir R. Peel's speech on
the address was, as it deserved to be, deep and
powerful. The Right Hon. Baronet exerted him-
s,irt- to disprove by that mode of demonstration
which, where it does apply, is of all others the
most unanswerable—namely, by arguments drawn
directly from arithmetical data, that, so far as can
be judged from past experience, Ireland would gain
nothing by a " repeal of the Union." Sir R. Peel
asked in which of her interests Ireland bad declined
since the Union, and by what facts it could be
shown that the United Parliament had sacrificed
her well-being to the caprices or wants of this more
powerful country. The line of interrogation was
judicious, and the recourse to it by. the late Home
Secre ary was seasonable, at a moment when the
political dominion of that pure and enlightened body
the old _Trish Parliament was cried up as being
fraught with unmingled blessings to the people, and
wi en the resolution to bring hack those halcyon
days had been made by our existing race of patriots
the test of right feeling in the constituency of Ireland,
and of honour and wisdom in her representatives.
A pamphlet on Irish statistics has been published by
Mr. Montgomery Martin, which throws no unam-
biguous light upon the subjects referred to in the
speech of Sir Robert Peel. The period from 1782,
when what is termed " free trade" had been esta-
blished, and when the Irish Parliament had obtained
the right of legislation uncontrolled by that of Eng.
land, has been often apostrophised by the " Re-
pealers" as the golden age of Erin. That same
period presented us with two or three remarkable
and edifying illustrations of what might be expected
from the wisdom and good government of a native
Irish Legislature. In 1789 the Irish Parliament
thought proper to swing clear of Great Britain ; it
appointed a Regent, without reference to the choice
(then doubtful) of this country. It gave the Regent
the full powers of sovereignty, while the British
Parliament refused them. Amongst those power,
were the right of creatinaeers ad libitum, and that of
granting pensions to whomsoever the official advisers
of the Regent might think proper. The consequence
must have been, that the restraints which operated
on this side of the water having no existence on the
other, Irish coronets and Irish pensions would
have rained like a thunder-shower upon the heads of
needy or ambitious Englishmen, the tools of the do-
minant faction here; and the people of Ireland would
soon have found how dearly they paid for " their
whistle." The next illustration of native law-mak-
ing, and its results, in Ireland, was the enfranchise-
ment of 40s. Catholic freeholders in the year 1793.
The abolition in 1829 of that class of constituents,
more numerous, we believe, than the whole body of
county voters row remaining in Ireland, has been
made by Mr. O'Connell a topic of alternate reproach
to the United Parliament, and bitter lamentation for
his country. We may presume, therefore, that one
of the earliest consequences of a " repeal of the
Union" would be the re-establishment of that re-
spectable class of freeholders in all their ancient
power. Now mark, that the 40a. freeholders formed
a most numerous constituency in Ireland, a popular
and virtuous and patriotic constituency, as described
in agitation and anti-union speeches ; and, more-
over, let us recollect that one among many osten-
sible objects of the repeal would be, the restoration
of the choice of an Irish Parliament to that same
exemplary body. Then, what sort of native House
of Commons, we pray, was that which actually
did owe its existence to the popular, the national
constituency of 40s. freeholders ? Was it not
one under which the country flourished ?
It was evidently one to the records of which
we may safely turn for samples of the spirit and
wisdom most likely to animate that post-repeal Pat-
'lament, the idol of such fervent aspirations on the
part of the patriots of 1833. Why, that Parlia-
ment sold itself by retail to the vice-regal Govern-
ments of Lords Westmoreland and Camden. It
discharged the duties of legislation so beautifully,—
it gained the affections of the people so entirely,—
it fostered and dandled the whole island into such
a paradise,—under it the political temperature be-
eau e so mild and balmy, the soil so fat and fruitful,
that no exotic from warmer latitudes failed to strike
root arid spread its branches over the favoured land.
Clubs and conspiracies of unknown fashions sprung
up and choked the humbler vegetation of the island,
—so successful was the culture of the " native Par-
liament," that in four or five years from the plant-
ing of the 40s. freeholders an abundant crop of
united Irishmen was raised and ripened, the crim-
son harvest of the rebellion of 1798 was gathered
in, and, to crown all, the " native Parliament,"
which had been hired by retail under the above
two Viceroys, now sold itself bodily, and the
kingdom wholesale, to Lord Castlereagh, and the
act cf Union was signed, sealed, and executed
by the 40s. native Parliament of Ireland ! What
security, then, would there be for the liish that their
Parliament would not sell them again ? Were it
worth the while of England, what would hinder her
to buy its Members? Were it worth her while,
what would binder her, with the aid of the Irish
Protestants, to re-conquer the irreconcileable Popish
party ? The whole thing would be recommenced
de novo, that is all. But, at the same time, it is far
mole deu.irable to show the people of Ireland, by an
address to their reason, how little real motive they
have for wishing to co-operate towards a repeal of
the Union, than to hold up any fearful, however
faithful, representation of the risks and sufferings to
which it would inevitably expose them. Mr. Martin
does this with great knowledge of his subject in the
pamphlet before alluded to. The variety of topics
and details throughout the work is such as to put
out of the question any attempt to touch upon them
generally; but the introduction forming a key to
the scope, purpose, and development of the author's
arguments, we have extracted some passages from
it, which may help to pare down a few of the repeal
exaggerations. We cannot do so without strenuously
recommending the pamphlet itself to the serious and
diligent attention of independent Members of Parlia-
ment.

" IRELAND.

" COMMERCIAL STATE OF IRELAND BEFORE THE UNION,

SHOWING A DECREASING TRADE FROM 1732 TO 1800.
- •

" The powerful efforts now in progress for effecting
what is speciously termed the ►4gi,lative independence of
Irel.nd, and her elevation from a province to a kingdom,
demand the gamest attention of every man who values the

from 17. 0 to 1794
From 1795 to 1799

Decrease

5,8fi0 I 339,988
5,249 '267,748

611 1 74210

he decrease of the two last
,yLars on the two first
years stands thus—

Ships. Tons.
" 17A1-91 2,3W 137,4 ii
" 1798-99 2,024 99,214

" Decrease in two years 286 38,255

" These statements dre yet further corroborated by exa•
mining the number and tonnage of vessels built in Ireland
during this period.
" Number of Vessels and Tonnage thereof, built in Ireland
for t, the Union, at two periods of
five

xn Years preceding