The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-08 00:00:00

IRELAND.

No wonder doctors differ when the science they
profess is wrapped in such obscurity. But, it is a
wonder when the facts regarding a country con-
taining five millions of inhabitants, and lying
within a few hundred miles of London, should be
disputed by good authorities. His Eminence Car-
dinal Cullen, in a political pastoral read last Sun-
day, thus writes of Ireland Our poor country
has been reduced to a state of the greatest misery
and destitution. Our towns and cities are filled
with poor men, women, and children, half-starved,
without shoes or stockings, or proper clothing to
preserve them from the snows and frosts of winter.
More squalid poverty of this kind is to be seen in
Dublin alone, than in all the great cities of France,
Austria, or Spain. The country has lost more
than 3,000,000 of inhabitants, who have been
obliged to brave the dangers of the wide Atlantic
in order to SAVC themselves and families from
starvation. About 400,000 cottages of the poor
have been levelled to the ground lest they should
ever again afford shelter to their former inmates.
Many villages have been completely destroyed,
and several towns, once busy and prosperous, are
now almost abandoned and falling into ruin." This
is the opinion of the highest ecclesastical authority
recognized by the great body of the people. On
Tuesday the Pall Mall Gazette published " A few
Facts about Ireland," which went directly to con-
tradict the Cardinal's statement. One statistical
fact only, and that more apparent than real, bears
out his allegation, " the total acreage under crops
of all kinds, though larger than in 1847, has
dropped since 1860 from 5,970,000 to 5,460,000 in
1867, or about 8i per cent. All other figures, with
scarcely an exception, point in an exactly opposite
direction. First of all, if less land is cultivated,
the cultivation would seem to be better, and the
yield to be larger, for the total value of " enume-
rated crops," which averaged £25,000,000 in 1860
and 1861, reached £28,300,000 in 1865 and 1866.
The annual average value of all crops in the last
three years has exceeded £30,000,000. Next, agri-
culture appears to have been directed to the channel
for which Ireland is best adapted, and which will
always there yield the largest returns. The live
stock of farmers and cottiers is increasing steadily
both in number and in value. The number of cattle
has risen from 2,600,000 in 1847, and from 3,470,000
in 1861, to 3,700,000 in 1867 ; sheep, from 2,186,000
in 1847, and 3,556,000 in 1861, to 4,826,000 in
1867. Pigs and poultry have also doubled their
numbers. The total value of live stock,
which in 1851 was £28,000,000, has increased as
follows :-1861, £33,400,000; 1864, £38,270,000 ;
1865, £41,278,000 ; 1866, £45,440,000." And
prices have risen even more than produce. The
statistics for manufactures are not favourable in

full, but those accessible point to a similar result.
The chief is linen, of which the exports reached
£6,292,000 in 1862, £8,081,000 in 1863, and
£10,227,000 in 1861. Railways, too, offer a fair
measure of the general prosperity of a country ; their
traffic represents business done, and to a great de.
gree labour employed and paid. The aggregate re-
ceipts of Irish railways have risen from half a mil-
lion in 1851, and nearly a million and a half in 1861, to
nearly a million and three quarters in 1865, and the
increase is regular and continuous. To meet any ob-
jection on the score that such, figures include only
certain classes, wages are adverted to, which have
risen from 50 to 80 per cent. since the famine, and
are still rising. The people are better housed, the
dwellings are classed under four heads : the lowest
comprising wretched mud cabins with only one
rood', the third also built of mud of a better de-
scription, and with more rooms. The following is
the table :

NUMBER OF FAMILIES IN EACII CLASS.
1841. 1851. 1861.
First Class...., 31,333
Second Class... 241,664
Third Class
Fourth Class... 625,356

1,472,739 1,204,319 1,128,300
Crime, again, is diminishing steadily. The pro-
portion of convictions at assizes and quarter ses-
sions to the population before 1850 used to be
about 1 in 500 ; the last three years it has been
lin 2,000. The committals—perhaps a surer indi-
cation of the offences actually committed—have
gradually dropped from 6,666 in 1862 to 4,326
in 1866. Pauperism certainly is a test of the con-
dition of a people. Well, the total number re-
lieved in Ireland has not only fallen off two-thirds
since 1851, but even in the last four years, which
we are told have been years of so much distress,
has steadily decreased, as follows :-1863, 317,624;
1864, 295,835 ; 1865, 288,996 ; 1866, 270,173.
Finally, emigration, which some point to as the
effect, the proof, and the measure of Irish destitu-
tion, has decreased, and is decreasing regularly
(the return for 1867 is calculated on the ascertained
numbers in the first seven months of the year) :-
1863, 117,229 ; 1864, 114,169 ; 1865, 101,497 ;
1866, 99,467 ; 1867, 72,200." The Dublin corre-
spondent of the Times states, in reply to his Emi-
nence, that a case of death from starvation has
not occurred since the famine year, and such a
calamity would now be hardly possible. Our
readers may remember that not many weeks ago
the case of a family, one member of which was
lying dead of starvation in a London lodging-house,
the others being at their last gasp, was reported in
the metropolis of the empire, and was too common
an occurrence to excite much attention. Even in
the great country of land and food for all, a case
lately came to light in the Empire City, in which
the widow of a well-known actor had taken poison
herself and administered it to her family, to escape
the horrors of starvation. Of Dublin the correspon-
dent writes :—" To those who resided in it and
watched its steady growth, the wile extension of
its area, the enormous expansion of its trade, the
revival of old industries and the opening of new
sources of employment, the transformation of its
leading streets from dilapidation and unsightli-
ness to architectural elegance and splendour, the
vast number of handsome residences that have
sprung up, the increase of rents, and the mani-
fest signs of increased luxury and comforts

which are to be seen—all these circumstances ex-
hibit a striking and most gratifying contrast."
The Cardinal condemns Fenianism, which he con-
skiers to be as bad as Freemasonry ! What will the
great brotherhood, whose first member was Adam,
say to this ? It is clear his Eminence knows no
more of Masonry than the Pope could tell him.
Of the Fenians he says :—" To fill the cup of our
evils to overflowing, some misguided men, deceived
by wicked and designing knaves, are endeavouring
to excite our people to resistance to the laws and to
contempt for authority, to alienate them from the
practices of religion, and to initiate them in Fenian
secret societies, where they are at the mercy of spies
and informers, subjected to the same spiritual pen-
alties as Freemasons, and cut of as rotten branches
from the Church. Considering this sad state of things,
afflicting as it is to the heart of every one who loves
his country, I exhort you, as I have frequently done
before, to be on your guard against all those who
would drive you into deeds of violence or resistance
to authority. They are most dangerous enemies, and
were you to listen to their advice you would bring
ruin on yourselves and your families, and expose
your immortal souls to eternal perdition." He ex-
horts them to use all lawful and constitutional means

" to obtain redress of the many grievances which
they suffer, and to secure to the Catholics of Ire-
land, so long persecuted, perfect equality with every
other class of her Majesty's subjects." He advises
them to elect members of Parliament able and wil-
ling to defend their rights, " to apply to the Legis-
lature for the disendowment of the Protestant Esta-
blishment and for freedom of education, and peti-
tion for a law to regulate the relations between
landlord and tenant, so that the fruits of their capi-
tal and labour may be secured to the agricultural
classes." The Cardinal makes mere assertions,—
the Pall Mall Gazette gives figures. If the journal
be wrong and the Cardinal right it ought to be
easily shown, and we believe the mass of unpreju-
diced people will attach more weight to the Gazette's
figures than to the Prelate's hackneyed declaration.

FRENCH 7AX.ITION THREE HUNDRED
YEARS AGO.

Taxes were imposed upon no regular plan, and
whatever arrangement was made, it was liable to be
broken through by the " good pleasure" of the
king. This was especially the case in the reign of
Francis 1., whose subjects, when groaning under
oppressive charges of Mines, taillons, aides, subsides,
imp-its, and gabelle, looked back and longed for the
good old times of Louis XII. Francis squandered
his income in the most reckless manner ; everybody
plundered the national exchequer, especially his
favourites and mistresses. So great were the ex-
penses of the marriage (the notes saljes) of his niece
Joan of Albret with the Duke of Cleves in 1541,
that to make up the deficiency he not only extended
the gabelle, or salt tax, to several of the southern
provinces, but doubled it in those where it already
existed, expecting that the returns would be doubled
also. In this he was disappointed, and new sources
of revenue had to be invented. The coinage was
debased, raising the value of the silver mark from
£165 to £lB5 ; a multitude of offices was created,
all to be had for money ; judgeships were made
venal, lotteries were established, additional de:chiles
imposed on the clergy ; the churches were robbed
of their ornaments of gold, silver, and precious
gems; loans were raised by means of rentes or stock
offered for sale at the Hotel de Ville of Paris, and
the citizens were expected to become purchasers.
Eight score thousand crowns were thus borrowed
an denier donze ; that is to say, 8 1-3 d per cent.
The superintendents of finance were bound to pro-
cure money, even if they had to borrow it on their
own security ; and, when all other means failed,
and a large sum was wanted instantly for some royal
caprice or some new mistress, a financier was hanged
and his property confiscated. Such measures neces-
sarily discontented everybody and profited none
but a few persons at Court ; yet by some means or
other Francis I. contrived to leave four millions of
livres in the treasury, which Henry 11., aided by
Diana of Poitiers, soon squandered. The r.ew
King took one important step towards financial
accountability, by dividing the kingdom into 17
generalites, each of which was farmed at a very high
rate. Under his two successors, the Government
speculated in French vanity by making titles of
nobility purch isable. Pasquier thought this an
" inexhaustible" source of supply, but it does not
appear to have brought any large return to the
treasury. The " deficit" became periodical, and to
fill up the gulf the taxes (especially the gabelle)
were augmented, financiers were prosecuted and
heavily mulcted, many useless offices were created
on purpose to be sold, and new loans were contracted.
Among other devices—all of them very startling to
a modern chancellor of the exchequer—was a pro-
posal to appoint 13,000 sergens, or baillies. Pas-
quier hopes this will not be done, for "it would
eclipse the memory of the 11,000 devils spoken of in
the time of our grandfathers." The taxation fell
very heavily on the tiers etat, and particularly upon
the agricultural classes. The townspeople, the
bourgeoisie, were to some degree protected by char-
ters and privileges, and had an organisation of their
own by which the taxes were levied. They were
exempt fram foreign garrisons, elected their own
officers (with the exception of the provost of the
merchants), enrolled a citizen guard, and had the
right to barricade the streets and shut their gates,
even against the King. No charters or securities
guaranteed the peasant from injustice. Michieli,
writing in 1561, describes the oppression in some
provinces (especially iu Normandy and Picardy) as
so excessive that the peasantry were forced to aban-

don the country. The burdens were the more severe
and invidious that, while the seigneurs mercilessly
exacted their rents, dues, corvees, customs, &c., they
contributed nothing to the State beyond what they
gave of their freewill as a gift. Clergy, nobility,
soldiers, members of the King's household and of
the High Courts of Parliament, schoolmasters,
officers of finance, free cities (villes de franchise),
like Paris, and noble cities (villes nobles), like Troyes,
were all exempt; not that they did not contribute
to the revenue, but only so much as they chose to
assess themselves. In the reign of Francis I. the
French clergy, with the consent of the Pope, agreed
to pay a decinze, or 1-10th of their revenue, which
in the next reign was doubled. At Poissy, in 1561,
they entered into an arrangement to pay 160,000
livres annually, on condition of their future exemp-
tion from all other taxes. Considering that they
possessed about one-third of the landed and house
property of France, this was but a small contribu-
tion to the necessities of the Crown. The yearly
rental of the whole kingdom has been estimated, on
what are indeed very vague data, to have amounted
to fifteen millions of crowns, of which six belonged
to the clergy and one and a half to the King. The
exports of corn, wine, salt, and wood were valued
at twelve millions of francs, more than Spain re-
ceived from her mines of Mexico and Peru.—
White's " Massacre of St. Bartholomew."

STATISTICS OF RECONSTRUCTION.—The following
table of registered and actual voters in the Southern Con-
vention elections furnishes data for interesting eompari-

SOLIS :-

Registration, Voteenti
ooln;
1C806n7. presidential - Aggregate
1867 v
State. White. Black. For. Against. vote, 1860.
Virginia 116,982 104,772 107,34-2 61,887 115,257
N. Carolina 103,060 71,657 90,000 40,000 96,230
S. Carolina 47,010 80,286 69,006 2,081
Georgia 95,303 93,458 102,283 4,127 116,367
Florida 11,148 15,434 14,230 253 14,347
Alabama
Louisiana 45,199 84,431 75,083 4,006 50,510
Texas
Mississippi 48,926 88,925 67,739 6,277 69,090
Arkansas 31,047 21,207 27,576 13,558 51,053

Total... 631,791 697,950 575,202 130,862 668,866
It appears that of the 1,329,741 voters of both colours re-
gistered only 705,064 voted. Those neglecting to vote
numbered 621,677, or but 7,114 less than the white regis-
tration. As the negroes generally voted, the white vote
must have been very light in every State. ,The registered
white vote was but 37,075 less than the aggregate presi-
dent'al vote in 1860, and as 50,000 at least were refused
registration, and a still larger number failed to apply for it,
the white voters of the South have held their own wonder-
fully, in spite of the losses of the war. It will be noticed
that the whites have registered majorities in Virginia,
North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Arkansas. In the
other five States the negroes aro dominant.—Springfield
Republican.

The amount paid for Russian America is about
21 cents for each acre contained in the ceded territory.