The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-16 00:00:00

TO DANIEL O'CONNELL, ESQ., MP.

DEAR SlR,—There is now before me a report o'
your speech against a legal provision being made for
the Irish poor, delivered by you at the Corn Ex•
change on Tuesday last. I have at present no hope
of effecting another change in your opinions on this
important subject ; and if I allude to those which
have taken place in your mind it is not by way of
taunt or reproach, but to remind you, and the public
also, that your judgment on this matter has not only
vacillated, and whatever vacillates is weak, but that
it has at different times, whilst the subject remained
unchanged, determined itself not in different
but in opposite ways. These changes, more-
over, according to your own avowal, have not
been the effect of heat, or passion, or of feeling of
any sort ; neither have they resulted from a want
of meditation : they have been the fruit of long
watchings and laborious reflection. I infer from
this, and I say it with all due respect, that whether
upon this subject you be right or wrong, you are not
an authority to be followed; for authority, to be
such, sit( uld be exempt from change. But if I de-
spair of your re-conversion to an earnest and eager ap-
proval of Poor Laws (for all this was imported in
public letter in which you lately honoured me); and
if I do not deem you an authority on this subject,
why, it may be asked, do I now address yeu ? Ido
so for tile two following reasons: first, to prevent,
as far as 1 can, that portion of the public, with whom
your opinions are paramount, from being led int-
error by you; and, secondly, to set free from defa-
mation that mode of relieving the Irish poor of
which I myself, with many honest and able men,
have been the consistent and unwearied advocates.

But before I proceed to the execution of this task,
a task of no easy accomplishment, Of/ account of the
paitiiilitiei—arrdlireposseasions linkei to yotir -wage,
I must settle with you a principle ot both logic and
morals. It is this : if a truth essentially connected
wit h the duty of man to God and to his neighbour
be established, by the strongest and clearest proof of
which any moral truth is susceptible, is it just in
reason, or lawful in practice to put that truth in
abeyance, to mortify it, to retard or annul its opera-
tion in the world, because the ignorance, or passions,
or interests of some men may be wounded by it,
or raise objections to it ; or, because, in its opera-
tion it may produce not only its own natural good
effects, but also become, as Christ himself and his
religion have become, an occasion of loss and scandal
to many? Your heart, and conscience, and judg-
ment would all recoil from thus keeping " truth
captive in injustice." Arid yet do, I pray you, tell
me, or rather tell the public, how you can, consis-
tently with logic or morals, combat the establishment
of a legal provision for the Irish poor, by arraying
against it the inconveniences, real or imaginary,
which you suppose, in your speeches, would result
from it, whilst you leave untouched and unanswered,
because they are unassailable and unanswerable,
the arguments every day and every where employed
by me and others,* to demonstrate the just, the
natural, the indefeasible rights of the poor to the
necessaries of life in the land which gave them birth?
Do, I pray you, answer this que,tion ?

All theory and declamation is vain before right
reason and before God, however it may seduce the
senate or the multitude, if it be not based on un-
changeable justice. 'When abstract propositions or
moral questions are doubtful, we may try the former
by an induction to some absurdity, and the latter by
showing that, if admitted it would subvert sound
morals; but when a truth is proved a priori, when
we can point out a clear and necessary connection)
between any given proposition, and some indubitable
principle from which it flows, its truth should be ad-
mitted, and all the real genuine consequences of it
freely ensbraeed.
Thus, if it be proved, and I contend it has been
proved that from the attsibuies of God, the nature
of man, and the admitted principles upon which all
society is founded,—if it be proved from these, that
the poor, in every civilized state, should he rescued
at the public expense from the pressure of extreme
want, it is an error against reason, it is a crime
against morality, and an impiety against God, to
leave them to perish, or to withhold from them the
necessaries of life. And to abet such withholding,
by arguments deduced from abuses which arise, not
from Poor Laws, but from the ignorance, or frailty,
or malice of men, is to abet crime, uphold error, and
offend God. This i 3 strong language, but it is the
only sword that can be drawn from its sheath in the
cause of the poor, against a world which has no God
but Mammon, or which, to use the cutting phrase
of the Apostle, is all placed or buried in malignity.
I now come to examine your speech, a speech not
of many words and little thought, as speeches gene-
rally are, but a speech of great ability, in which are
compressed and well-connected the common-place
objections against the English Poor Laws.
When the Virgin Mother of Christ, at Cana, in
Gallilee, asked her Son to change water into wine to
relieve the embarrassment of an excellent family,
our Lord replied in substance, " what are their af-
fairs to us ?" In advocating the cause of the poor,
whom this Lord has made the heirs of his kingdom,
I may well apply his thought, and say of the Eng-
lish Poor Laws, " what are their abuses to us ?"
Yes; and I can justly remonstrate with you and say,
for what reason, with what candour, with what re-
gard to an honest investigation of the question, can
you parade before us the supposed abuses of the
English Poor Laws, when discussing the principl,
of a legal provision for our poor ? In thus acting
you defame our views, you malign our purpose, yoit
misrepresent to the public our whole plan and sy,-
tem of relief for the Irish poor. This is what I de-

See Cobbett's a Poor Alan's Friend," an admirable
work ; and Alr. Sadler's speeches on this subject, in th•
House of Commons.

e, aof opposition from
y
is-a inode
honestlyshuuld recoil. lilt then you
who 44 hitherto, produced a planinciorleuocr‘av t- ilf,
nature
no nci..
o ue
of Poor Laws for Ireland, which guarded
.Against
the abuses your enumerate. -
tour avocations, it is true, are Many, and though
you may not have read-so 'much as you have
endowed with almost supers.lmMaitTpowers of appli-
cation,
thought upon this-subject. But leaving cut of view
the several plans for relieving our poor, devised a:ad
published by many eminent indiiidinals within 'the
last feiv years, all and' eat which did provide
guards against many abuses prevailing in England,
how did it happen that the Bill for the relief of 'he
Irish Poor, brought into the last Parliament by Wil-
liam Smith O'Brien; Esq., and that introduced by
the honourable and. patriotic Member for the county
Wicklow, to the present -Parliament, both printed by
order of the House or CommAns,escaped your notice?
I say nothing of. my own views upon Ors sub)-et as
given in evidence befere-a Committee of whiCh you
were it -member—views to Which you lar'ely'pro-
fessed yourself a convert,and which if they had any
merit, that merit consisted in their keeping altoge-
ther clear of the abuses-complained of in the Eaglish
system of Poor Laws. Mr. O'Brien's Bill kept clear
of those abuses, so: did: that'-of •Mr. Grattan. I
speak not of the merits of those B lls i►► any oiher
,respect, but they offered you a plari of reliei, frem
which the abuses-which terrify you, and I fear affect
your judgment, might be or were effectually ex-
cluded. Where then, is the candour, I will not
,say
where is the honesty of the argument, that no man
has hitherto produced to you any plan to whtch all
the common-place objections to the EugliSh•Poor
Laws are not applicable ?.
Your favourite objection—that which you have
most-frequently brought forward, or allude I to—as
the supposed connexion between Poet 'Laws and
the deprivation of female virtue. Here you touch
a string that vibrates in the heart of every Irishman
—perhaps in few of them more loudly than in ae.ne.
But I have once before invited you to point out to
me this necessary connexion which you suppose to
,xist between a system of relief for our poor, such
as I contemplate, and the impairing of the public
virtue of our females. You have never pointed out
this connexion. I believe you could not do it. I
have looked at it in all points of view, and could
trot discover it. Produce your argument, and I
um-
tiertake to refute it.

Another topic addressed by you to the inflate
justice of Irishmen, to turn that vu toe against the
poor, is " that some people arc always ready to ex-
ercise charity by putting their hands into their
neighbours' pockets." What is meant by this ? I
propose that the solvent inhabitants of every parish
elect, annually, it number of rate-payers, to be at
once the trustees of the poor and of the parish, with
power to compel the absentee, the miser, :Ind the
nard-hearted, to share the burden which now falls
exclusively on the benevolent and humane. And
you call this " putting the hand of a hypocrite Into
the pocket of his industrious neighbour, and ac-
quitting himself of the theft by pleading charity!'
Oh justice what folly—nay, what crimes are com-
mitted in thy name !
You object to the English Law of Settlement,
anti to all the litigation and hardships consequent
thereon ; and you parade this objection whilst you
could recollect, if your memery fail not, that all these
hardships and litigation would be avoided by substi-
tuting what I proposed as a necessary title to relief,
" an industrious residence of three years,"—a title
borrowed from the Justinian Code, and for ages past
in use in Scotland.

In like manner, you object to what in some parts
of England, but only in some parts, is deemed a
great abuse, to wit, " the partial payment of wages
out of the poor rare." Mr. Slaney, Member for
Shrewsbury, will inform you, if he has not done
,o, that this abuse, if such it be, has arisen in 12'041--
land within the last thirty years, and a clause of fifty
words in any Act for the relief of our poor, would
render the introduction of this abuse into Ireland
impossible.

It could find no place in a plan such as that sug-
gested by me, unless it was voluntarily adopted by
the rate-payers of a parish. And yet you threaten
'lreland with this imaginary scourge !
Again, you depict the horrors of a poor-house,
and the abandonment of prents by their children.
I thought you had relinquished this theme,
which ought to be left to your retainers, like that
other of " drying up the source of benevolence in
the Irish heart," if mendicancy, and vagrancy, and
all their concomitant frauds, and vices,' and crimes,
did not continue to feed the lamp of human charity
in the Christian soul.

What man, let me ask, in or out of Ireland, con-
templates the erection and support of parish work-
houses in this country ? You might as well tell
the public that poor laws would oblige them to
erect pagodas for the Indian gods.
But if there be no work-houses or poor-houses lh
a parish, and that no separation of children from
their parents, or of parents from their children can
thus be made, will the son or daughter-in-law be
less kind or courteous to the aged mother, because
the elders of her parish—the witnesses of her well-
spent years—may think proper annually to bestow
on her a suit of clothing, or afford her some slender
comfort in the decline of life.

Ah I to collect the public hatred and precipitate
it on an institution, if realized, which would nurse,
and aid, and comfort all the virtues of the poor,
and stand as a watchman to detect etal punish vice,
to act thus, whether willingly or unwillingly, is an
office which would to Heaven! you had never dis-
charged.
But then you fear that tile poor man, confiding in
the legal relief to be secured to him in his old age,
would be improvident in his youth, aio.i elpend in
the ale-house what he now, through fear of future
want, is careful to hoard. In England, where Poor
Laws exist, numberless societies of even the labour-
ing classes, formed for the support of their respec-
tive members in times of distress are also found. But
in Ireland, where the strong stimulus to hoarding or
associating, which you imagine grows out of the
present enviable state of our poor, no such society
exists. How barren of good then must nol your
provident principle appear, whereas it bears no
fruit. But irony apart. Do, I pray you, reflect a
little more on the state of our poor, and the causes
of their improvidence, and recklessness in youth and
manhood. Du nor impute to them virtues which
they have not. Neither are they to be condemned
for vices which are not their own, but which have
been engrafted on them. You would wish to see
them happy and industrious; and yet you defame by
unmerited imputations .ft system of relief which
would give them a country and a home—which
would place them under the protection of the law—
which would compel, by the strong motive of self-
interest, their task-masters to employ and feed them
—a system which in fact would raise them from a
state of slavery and consequent barbarity to a state
of civilization, and to the possession of some human
right.
You would, forsooth, relieve the sick by drugs,
and provide a surgeon, and an asyluto for the mart
whose limb was broken; but you would let the
widow perish, and the orphan starve, and the aged
to look only to Heaven, or live upon the unbroken
sympathies of the " Irish heart."
Why, Sir, in such a system I can discover neither
philosophy, nor religion, nor reason of any sort. By
what argument do you pretend to recommend it to
the common sense of men ? Upon what principle
of morals is it based ? What maxim of right reason
does it rest on ? What social or political truth is
brought into operation by it ? It is a day-drcam, or
an improvirato issuing from the tongue, and, having
in it but a chance thought. The men who, nor cell.
tildes, have abandoned the poor of Ireland to hun-
ger and despair were
it were possible, to extirpate the race, and setting
Ghose root was in bellow(' vvhich, • ..
drew its nourishment from
an atm sp byso. of
name
So Cobbett, end his is a host, /ma
o,
d, hisel laws a
vm(
t 1
with him, are consistent When they wefiltreittki-tie
• •

,

•-:4f

43i1 of Elizabeth without any modification to Ire-
land, and thus give to every man, whether able-
bodied or disabled, a right to support. These men
also re consistent.

In like manner I am myself, pardon the egotism;
lam consistent ; I recognise the law of nature
which entitles every member of society to be sup-
plied with the necessaries of life. I propose to
place in every parish this principle as a sacred de-
posit in the safe keeping of a Committee composed
of clergymen, the official guardians of the poor, and
of laymen, the owners and guardians of property,
with a joint power 'derived from the whole people,'
and to be renewed annually, to judge without appeal
in all cases of distress, and to minister relief at th
common expenses to every soul that thirsts and hun-
gers and can fiod no support.
Knowing the slender means of the industrious
portion of my countrymen, I propose to relieve them
ofornuch of their present burden, and place it on the
shoulders of the absent or ungrateful owners of the
soil; I propose to exclude from relief, except in
times of extraordinary digress, those who are able to
work, because I know the improvements which can
instantly be commenced in the soil arid navigation of
Ireland would give employment to all her indus-
trious people. And, finally, I propose to ert.able
parishes to assist emigration, because I wish my plan
of relief to be permanent, and that, though, for fifty
years to come, all our youth could be located use-
fully on lands to be reclaimed, yet a time will arrive
when a well regulated system of emigration would
be the most natural and salutary relief for our coming
superabundant population. There is consistency in
all this; and, if I be not deceived, there is also in it
a peculiar fitness for the state and cirtunistances of
this country. I have stated in my letter to Mr.
Spring Rice the arguments brought against me. I
stated them candidly and honestly, and I answered
them even to your satisfaction. I replied in that
little work to every objection advanced by yon in
your present speech, and yet you adduce those ob-
jections as if you never had heard of the replies to
them, of which you yourself approved. Sir, I think
even victory is too dearly bought, when to obtain it
men have recourse to stratagems not sanctioned by
the rules of warfare which nations recognize. 'Tis
so in argument. Disprove what we advance, but
do not misrepresent our views, or cloud the vulgar
visirn by irrelevant and oft-refuted objections.
li ou claim for the poor their legal and equitable
portion of church property, especially of tithes. In
this we are agreed, nor is any honest man opposed
to us ; but even this property of the aged and infirm,
of the widow, the stranger, and the orphan, you
would take from them to buy drugs and support in-
firmaries. I would, on the contrary, have it de-
posited with the Committee of each parish, to be
expended by them on the poor before any assess-
ment on the property of the parishioners could be
levied.

Be yourself the judge between my opinion and
your own.

You are unwilling that the question of Poor Laws
should be introduced, whilst that of Reform is un-
decided. The observation is scarcely just, consider-
ing the state of our poor, with a plague impending,
and the question of Church Property, intimately
connected with that of Poor Laws, already before
Parliament at the instance of the King : but, though
other persons should recommend us to " wait a
while," we ought not to hear that hated phrase
pronounced by you.
I have the honour to be, dear Sir, your most
obedient humble servant,
Carlon., Jan. 6, 1832.

J. DOYLE.

NOTTINGHAM SPECIAL COMMISSION.

NOTTINGHAM-FRIDAY.
BURNING OF NOTTINGHAM CASTLE.

Robert Cutts, aged 27, and Joseph Shaw, aged
35, were put to the bar, charged that they, with di-
vers others, did, on the 10th of October last, riot-
ously rssemble, and being so assembled, did set fire
to and destroy Nottingham Castle, the property of
the Most Noble Henry Pelham, Duke of Newcastle.
Mr. GURNEY, on the part of the Crown, stated
that it was not intended to offer any evidence
against the prisoner Shaw. He was therefore
acquitted on two indictments against him, and the
Court hay.ng admonished him never to mix himself
up in riots, ordered him to be discharged.
Robert Cutts was then given in charge alone.

Mr. GURNEY stated the case. On the afternoon
of the 10ih of October, after the Reform meeting
held at Nottingham had broken up, a large body of
the persons assembled went off together, and having
left !he town, went towards Sharpe's 3Lll with the
evident intention of doing some mischief, bot finding
that that place was under protection, they turned
towards Nottingham Castle, an ancient and splendid
edifice. When the mob got to the lodge gates, they
demanded admittanceossuring t he keeper that no harm
should happen to hint or to his family. He very pro-
perly refused them entrance, and the gates being ex-
ceedingly strong, they were unable to force an en-
trance that way, but a portion of the mob made an
attack upon the side wall, not far from the gatn,
which they soon threw down, and thus effected an
entrance to the Castle, the doors and windows of
which they soon destroyed ; and having got into the
building, they tore down the wainscotting and
heaped it up in several places. They then procur,d
a light from the lodge, and in a few moments the
whole building was in a blaze, having been set on
fire in three or four places at once. it was unneces•
sary for him to say to those whom he then addressed,
that the total destruction of the building was ef-
fected, with the exception of the bare walls. No
evidence which could lead to detection was obtained
until after a reward of 500/. was offered by Govern-
ment for the conviction of the offenders. The Duke
of Newcastle had offered no reward. Wilh respect
to the prisoner at the bar, he was present when the
Castle was set on fire. The only circumstances
they had to show to connect him with it was, that
he was seen coming in the direction from the Castle
when it was on fire, and his own subsequent boast-
ing that he himself had set it on fire in more than
one place.
Mr. Justice LITTLEDALE—Do you think, Mr.
Gurney, the facts you have stated will be sufficient
to convict the prisoner ?
Mr. GURNEY—My Lords, the Counsel for the
Crown have felt it their duty to bring the case be-
fore a Jnry, to satisfy, as far as they could, the ends
of justice.

'The Jury, after consulting• together for a moment,
returned a verdict of Not Guilty ; and the prisoner
was discharged, after an admonition from the Judge.
W e understand that ip this case, as in all the
other cases tried at this Commission, there was a
crowd of witnesses read to prove an alibi for the
prisoner. He bowed to the Court, and retired.