The Sun.
London, England, 1835-10-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF. THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Tin.tes and Standard have been lately filled
with extracts from the evidence taken before the Se-
lect Committee on Bribery, on the subject of the in-
terferfmce of the Catholic priests at elections in Ire-
land. Do not Protestant priests take an active part
5n elections ? In England the Protestant clergy have
too often been fouud in the ranks of the enemies of the
people. Particular circumstances have in Ireland
forced the Catholic clergy to•take a more active part
311 elections, than of their own accord they would have
been disposed to do. One of the Catholic clergymen,
against whom the Times and Standard have the most
complained, is the Reverend James Maher, adminis-
trator of the parish of Carlow. That gentleman was
examined at great length before the Committee,
arid his evidence places, in a striking light, the causes
which of necessity compel the priests to interfere
in elections. The Conservative landlords in Ireland
openly threaten their tenantry with ruin, if they do not
vote according to their wishes ; and they are not slow
to put their threats in execution. The uncontradictr:d
statements of the Rev. James Maher on that subject
are truly appalling :
" During the elections, have you observed the lnAlords
attending at the different booths where the polling takes
place, and endeavouring to intimidate the,lr tenants ?—I
have observed the landlords in the Cour.'..-house during the
polling, and very frequently in the I.3ooths ; indeed I have
heard one of them threatening .nis tenants, and swearing
that he would extirpate t.,IIeITI and their families, in a con-
versation with mysalf. A gentleman in open Court, aland-
lord of the countyt believe a petition has been presented
or is about to 1;e presented, on the subject, to the House of
Commons), whose tenantry voted against his wishes, in a
conversr..tion with me, in the hall of the Court-house, and
in the hearing of oVler persons, stated, that So help 11.11
God l' extending his arm—here I interrupted him-, Saying,
You will repent of any rash vows you make row'—he ap-
peared a little excited. After the interruption he again re-
peated, that So help me, God, I will extirpate themselves
and their families ; if it were in 20 years to come, I will
have revenge of them.'"
" Can you mention the name the landlord ?—Mr.
Alexander ; he is now in Londo;,, and can be examined ?"
Mr. Alexander, however? was not examined. The
priest had chapter and verse for all he stated. But let
us trace the condi'..ct of this landlord a little further :—.
" Of Mr. Alexander's tenants, twenty voted in favour of
the liberal candidate at the election in January IP..st. These
twenty, owing but half a year's rent, have been since serv-
ed with writs from the Court of Ding's Bench, as soon as
the debt became due, and in many instances the sum was
as small as .5/. or 6/. They were served with writs, and
put to the expense of 2/. 1.55. in each ease ; but afterwards
Mr. Alexander remitted a portion of the expenses, I think
it was 11. in each case. Ibidin my hand four of these
latitats, or writs, of the Superior Courts, for the recovery
of very small sums. In many instances they are under 101.
Irish—a sum recoverable in Ireland by civil bill process,
at an expense of a very few shillings ; but it pleased Mr.
Alexander to recover his rent at an expense to his tenantry
of 30/. or 40/. * * * The tenants did not
suffer the law proceedings to go beyond the service of the
writ ; they paid the rent immediately ; they raised the
money by loan from their friends, and thus got out of the
hands of their landlord."

It appears that one of the men had left property'in
Mr. Alexander's hands to cover his rent ; but in order
to injure this man, we are told,
" Some little time before the rent became due, he re-
ceived orders to withdraw his money ; he stated that he
would leave it there as usual, to cover his rent, which would
become due in a few days ; but he was obliged to with-
draw it, and in a few days afterwards he was served with a
latitat for the payment of the said rent."
This Mr. Alexander actually dismissed from his em-
ployment the sons of electors who had been in, his
service, some of them eight, some twelve, years, be-
cause they gave support to their. fathers, That the
men had not misconducted themselves -.is proved by the
certificates from Mr. Alexander himself, produced by
Mr. Maher. It is stated that lie is the owner of a
large estate, and the Secretary of the Conservative
Club of the County of Carlow. The detail of acts of
cruelty of other landlo-ras given is most heart-rending.
It appears that the vengeance of the landlords is not
confined to the Yoter,—all who are in any way related
to him pay the penalty of a vote given contrary to their
wishes. Widows and children are unmercifully turned
out to die, by these monsters who disgrace the name oi
Protestant, which is given to them in courtesy, as well
as that of gentleman, to which they have as little title.
The blood boils at reading any account of the conduct
of these ruthless men. The magistrates, it appears, are
all leagued together, so that the poor Irish, whose great
fault, as we have always sail, is that they are of too
yielding a nature, are driven in despair to - the
courses of which we hear so much in the Tory papers.
Redress against a soi-disant gentleman is out of the
question. Any one who doubts this, has only to con-
sult the huge folio of evidence taken by the House of
Commons, a few years back, on the manner in which
the clutiezi of Sheriff' are administered in Ireland. The
gentry are utterly lawless ; they are leagued against
justice ; and yet we expect the poor suffering peasants
to -hold the law in regard.
" Do you mean to say that a tenant of Colonel Bruen's
appealing to the laws of his country in the county of Carlow,
to the sheriff and the magistrates of the county, would not
get redress ?—I do mean to say it, and it is the general im-
pression of the people in the county of Carlow, even of the
most moderate of the people ; you never go into a Court
even for a day, but you will hear the most moderate people
returning, say, I am filled with disgust, and my heart is
pained exceedingly with the mockery of justice exhibited in
Court to-flay ;' and the more violent swear they will never
go again to seek redress there ; they will get it otherwise ;
that is unfortunately the feeling of the people leaving the
courts of justice. * * * * * I was sprAking of the
petty sessions, where the magistrates have it all in their own
hands ; I know that there is a general anxiety on the part
of the county to obtain stipendiary :magistrates, and I be-
lieve an application to that effeCt has been made to the
Lord Lieutenant and the Go';ernment at home ; and made
by the cess payers on who:n the burden of paying the sti-
pendiary magistrates is likely to fall."
Were the sturdy inhabitants of the north of Ireland,
or of the Lowlands of Scotland, to be treated in this
manner, they would soon bring their oppressors to
their senses. But there was a time, and that not dis-
tant, when the cry against the injustice of landlords
and judg;es was as loud in the Lowlands of Scotlaml,
as it now is in Ireland. Then the PresbyteriP...it Mi-
nister was what the Catholic priest now is---the guar-
dian and advocate of the people against the oppressing
Lairds. On this subject we could produce evidence
which might be supposed to apply to Ireland at pre-
sent. We must close for the present. We will add
only one further extract—

" Now, pass on to any other case that you think proper
to mention ?—Mr. H'ltYey came to the house of Lawrence
Nolan, of Ballink;.llen, on the 13th of :bine, 1635, and,
made use of various arguments' to induce him to mnis°
to vote at thn approaching election according to wishes,
and when Nolan persevered in refusing to enmply, Harvey
addressed him in these words :—` Ree'ollect what I now
tell you, that we (meaning the landlords) are sworn 'not to
give any land to Roman Catholk;s ; and in case we cannot
get Protestants enough, we 'Will give it to Roman Catholics
in such a way as that they cannot vote out of it.' And Mr.
Harvey declared that 'unless he voted as he wished, he would
insist on being paid a half year's rent the day after it
became due, ard Mr. Harvey has since carried his threat
into executie-n, by insisting on the rent being paid the very
day after it became due. Mr. Harvey also told him that
he had made a present of half a year's rent to Patrick
Holdeii, who is a freeholder and a tenant of Mr. Harvey,
and residing on the same town-land with Nolan, giving Nolan
to understand that Holden had been thus treated for hav-
ing voted according to the wishes of his landlord, and he
proceeded to say that if he (Nolan) would vote as his land-
lord requir.-A him to do, that he, Mr. Harvey, the landlord,
would n'at ask any rent of Nolan for three half years. No-
lan vc,ted at the last election for the Reform candidates,
and he adds that no persoh sought, by threat or intimida-
tion, to influence his vote at said election, save the threat
and intimidation of Mr. Harvey, his landlord.
" Read the affidav4?—‘ County of Carlow, to wit._
Lawrence Nolan, of Ballinkillen, freeholder of the said
county Carloy;, came before me, one of his Majesty's jus-
tices of the peace for the said county, and voluntarily mak-
eth oath on the Holy Evangelists, and saith that J. W.
Harvey„ Esq., of the county Wexford, and landlord of
Ballnkillen, came to his house on Saturday, the 13th of
June, 1835, and made use of various arguments to induce
him to promise to vote at the then apprOachvg election,
according, to his said Harvey's wishes ; and tht when the
deponent persevered in refusing to comply with his, Mr.
Harvey's wish, that Mr. Harvey then addressed him in
these words :---‘ Recollect what I now tell you, that we
(meaning the landlords) are sworn not to give any land to
Roman Catholics, and that in case we cannot -get Pro-
testants enough, we will not give it to Roman Catho-
lics in such a way as that they can vote out of it.'
And deponent further swearath that said Mr, Harvey

declared to him that in case he world not vote as be re-
d quired him to do, that he would insist upon being paid the
half-year's rent the d...y after it became due ; and deponent
sweareth that he, Mr. Harvey, has carried his threat into
execution, by insisting upon the rent being paid the very
day after it became due since ; deponent further sweareth,
that said Mr. Harvey declared to him on the day befeev
mentioned, that he, Mr. Harvey, had made a present of a
half a year's rent to Patrick Holden (who is a freeholder,
and tenant of Mr. Harvey's, and residing in the same tora-
land with deponent) ; giving deponent to undentand that
Holden had been thus treated for having voted nevardit*
to the wishes of his landlord ; and deponent further
sweareth, that said Mr. Harvey stated to him ,ir
he would vote as he required him to
Mr. Harvey, would not ask any `,.110, that he,
I:"..:ut depentht ?or
three half years ; and de'vonent !Taller sweareth
that be voted at the last two elections in this
county for the Reform candidates ;
in June, for Mr. Vigors
and Mr. Raphael ; and
;:n January, for Mr. Cahill and Mr.
O'Connell, without 'oeing induced to do so by any threat or
intimidation. br promise of reward, but from his own free
will and. conviction, thinking that by so voting he acted
ino7e in accordance with his feeling, with his judgment, with.
his conscientious obligation, and for the interest of the
public, than if he voted for the candidates who were opposed
to them ; and deponent further sweareth, that no priest
sought, by threat or intimidation, to influence his vote at
the election ; and that the only threat or intimidation 'ever
made use of towards him for ,such purposes, was that used
by Mr.SHarvey, his landlord aforesaid."
" What is the date of that affidavit ?—The 22d of July,

1835

I hold now in my hand the letter of the said landlord.
addressed to the tenant, in which violent threats arc held
out to tit 3 tenant unless he votes as his landlord wishes.

" Read the letter ?—This is to the gentieman who made
the affidavit : " My dear Sir, I was sorry when I ar.:',„d
here at not finding you at home, as some 01;.:uttes' con-
versation would explain more to you thn 1 have at pre-
sent time to put upon paper. I skuld not have interfered
with your voting for the man at your own choice, but for
the undue influence that is now so shamefully exercised
over you by your .pastors, whose highly improper conduct
in temporal matters has brought this country into such a
distracted. state. Ido now pledge myself, as a soldier,
that unless you vote with me for Colonel Bruen and Mr.
Kavanagh, that I shall immediately distrain for my rent,
and shall continue to do so in future the day after it be-
comes due, if it should not be paid ; and moreover, that I
will not renew with you when your lease shall have ex-
pired. These are, lam ready and sorry to lay, violent
threats ; but when I consider the means your pastors have
taken to obtain their ends, I do not think they are more so
than the emergency of the case requires. Make me your
fr;end or your enemy. I need hardly tell you that your
own good sense will point out to you which of the two
you ought to be.

" I am your obliged
—3forning Chronicle. " JAMES W. HARVEY."

The Times of yesterday contained a report of a
meeting held in Limerick, for the purpose 'of consider-
ing the necessity of a poor law for Ireland. Whatever
sympathy we might be otherwise disposed to feel with
the object of such a meeting, and even with the parties
to it, although Mr. Daniel O'Connell was one of
them, has been mingled at once with some spirit of
amusement at the recollection of the dogged resistance
made for so many years by this mock pacificator of
Ireland to every proposition of a compulsory-provision
for the poor, and of curiosity In discover in what new,
form, under what pretence, and by what device, the
half Punch, half Proteus of the Irish stage, would
come forward to remobate all his own ancient maxims,
and to recomtlend, or seem to recommena, the sug-
gestions c:t common sense and humanity, on behalf
of tose miserable creatures whom it has hitherto
'seen the business of his life to rob, mislead, and hum-
bug. This indeed is not the first occasion on which
he has lately assumed the garb of an advocate for
poor laws ; but he has contrived to put it on and off
so often, that by this time it may well be worn put.
There is a fatality about the lives and characters of
some men which stamps every word the most plausible,
and every action however beneficial in its promised
consequences, with distrusk and obloquy. A dark
ground will sometimes show itself through the most
glaring surface. Mr. Daniel O'Connell now tells the
peopleQof L;:merick that they must have a provision for
the poor. But even this project, so full of apparent
kin,,P;iness, he takes care to poison by a strong infusion
of bitter and malignant feeling. The Agitator lets it
be thoroughly understood that his Poor Law is less
to benefit the poor than to harass and torment the men
of property. Hatred is O'Connell's principle, even in
his bounty. He has not, in this instance, detailed with
any minuteness, or, indeed, given us to perceive with
much clearness, what is to be the nature of his provi-
sion for the poor of Ireland. He intimated merely that.
the tax for the poor should fall exclusively on the ab-
sentee landlords, and chiefly on those who " cleared",
their estates. Now, as we are as little disposed
as Mr. O'Connell to favour absentee landlords,
who oppress the poor,—but there is such a
thing as necessity for general laws,—and When
the Learned Gentleman exclaims against being
calumniated as an invader of the rights of property,
let him answer the question, whether free locomotion
is not an indefeasible right of property, and whether
his threat of a tax or penalty on the exercise of such
a right does not amount to a partial confiscation of
that property ? At the same time there appears in
another column of our paper, some ground for sus-
pecting that the learned Agitator may be saved the
trouble el putting his plan of poor law into action.
Wh.ever reads the speech or sermon of Father Kehoe
from the altar at Leighlin-bridge, will find that one of
the most certain and proximate results of the Whig
policy now in course of execution, is to be the trans-
fer of all landed property from the present possessors,
to those (whoever they may be) whose Popish ances-
tors formerly enjoyed it. When therefore the paupers,
according to this prospectus of the Rev. Father, be-
come proprietors of the whole soil, Mr. Daniel
O'Connell may be, in a small degree, perplexed where
to find ether materials or motives for his clap-trap pro-
vision for the poor.—Times.
In the speech of the Attorney.Cleneral to_ his con-
stituents at Edinburgh occurs the following passage
He (the Duke of Wellington) reduced this. country
by what I must call his misgovernment, previous to
his resigning the helm of affairs, to a state of wretched-
ness. There was then nothing throughout the country
but discontent and anarchy, and in many parts misery
and suffering. In the southern parts of the island
incendiary fires were blazing in every quarter, mild in
many counties in England there was actually open
insurrection against the Government. This was the
effect of tulsgovernment ; and this is the situation to
which. The country would ere long be reduced if Tory
were again to be restored." The above is
only one count of the indictment which the Attorney-
General has preferred at Edinburgh against _ the
Duke of Wellington's Government. It is a cool thing
for one who, like his masters, holds his office by the
sufferance of the great political incendiary, to express
a horror of incendiarism. It is as if one who as-
sists to throw about fire-brands should solemnly
protest, that nothing alarmed him so much as
the idea of a conflagration l But perhaps it was not
of politital incendiarism that the King's Attorney-Ge-
neral meant to' express his detestation. He may pos-
sibly think the latter an innocent pastime, or even
laudable, more especially as practised by the Irish
Jack Cade for the benefit of the Whig-Radical Mi-
nistry, and the preservation of their places and salaries.
If so, we ask his pardon ,for the mistake. He is, no
doubt, consistent in thinking that the poor wretch who,
maddened by hunger and -desperation, sets fire to a
haystack should be hanged, and that political honours,
vice-regal banquets, and Ministerial gratitude and ad-
miration, should be conferred upon. the pampered
" Missionary" of sedition, who unceasingly flings his
firebrands among the populace, and uses his utmost ef-
forts to set three kingdoms in a flame. No doubt
this is all very consistent ; and, according to the logic
of the Attorney-General, political incendiarisin may be
a very good thing, if it be only practised for the benefit
of his own party. For their triumphs of last 'Session,
disgraceful as they were, the Whig- Radical Ministers are
indebted to the bitter and implacable enemy of th.e Pro
testant Constitution in Church and State—w'no calls
for the destruction of the establishment of the.-Tefonned
faith—for the subversion of the House of Lords
ostentatiously avows that his uly.:erior ob-
ject is the repeal of the Union—in other ,:vvords, the
dismemberment of the empire. Why then sCiould the
Whig-Radical Attorney-General denounce thC politi-
cal incendiary ? It must consequently be the
incen-
diarism which destroys a haysta4, not that w, 'ich