The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-15 00:00:00

WOOL Ma.p.HET:

About 1,200 packages of wool have arrived in the port
of London in the past week, chiefly from our colonies.
No public sales have been yet declared, still the demand
by private contract is steady, and prices in some instances
have an upward tendency.
TALLOW.

There is no new feature in this market worth notice;
the delivery in the past week having been small, a
further decline has taken place in prices. Town Tallow
is rather more sought after, and the price is firm, at
41s 6d to 42s net cash.

HER MAJESTY.—The loyal interest attached to our
Queen, whether reigning in her Court, or meeting her
Parliament, or travelling among her people, or seeking
the solace of such domestic privacy as Royalty may taste,
will be increased if we hint that it is more than probable
these domestic ties will be multiplied. If we are not
misinformed, and we are pretty certain we are not, the
family circle next year at Claremont will be more nume-
rous.—Coiirt Journal.

AFFRAY WITH POACHERS AT WORSBOROUGH.—
Very early on Sunday morning, some shots were heard
in a small fir wood adjoining to Worsborough Ball, the
residence of W. B. Martin, Esq. That gentleman and
his servants, with the gainekeeper,,were aroused and
made towards the spot ; but previous to the whole force
collecting, two of the watchers came in collision with a
gang of poachers, and were severely handled by them :
their guns were broke ,• a fine dog that seized one of the
poachers was shot ;
_and one of the watchers, named no-

billion, was wounded, having received several heavy
blows, which inflicted a dreadful gash on his head. Be-
fore Mr. Martin and his servants arrived, the poachers
had made their escape into an adjoining wool—Leeds
Mercury.
CRIME IN WORCESTERSHIRE....—From the com-
mencement of the year 1843 up to the present time, a
period of but twelve mouths, there have been not less
than 700 prisoners whose names appeared for trial on
the calendars of Worcester county assizes and sessions !
Of these 700 pritioners only 4 had received a superior
education, and but 29 could read and write well ; while
396 could read and write imperfectly, and no less than
241 had been totally denied both these invaluable privi-
leges. Concerning the attainments of the remaining 30
we have no means of knouing.— Worcester Journal.
STATE OF TRADE.—The demand continues fair
for the time of the year, but the new prices of cottons
and yarns are not yet realised by the manufacturer.
Wools still indicate a tendency to advance, and yarns,
we are informed, are rather higher. The workmen are
fully employed, although we understand to a great ex-
tent on speculation for the opening of the spring trade in
March or April.—Leicestershire Mercury.
Lady Disbrowe, accompanied by a splendid suite,
arrived in London early yesterday by the General Steam
Navigation Company's Mail-Packet Ocean, Capt. John
Stranock, from Rotterdam, after a fine passage.
The Duke of Bordeaux, accompanied by a brilliant
suite, left London on Saturday morning by tho General
Steam Navigation Company's Steam Ship, Earl ofLiver-
pool, Capt. H. Lomez, for Ostend.
ISLE OF WIGIIT.—IMPORTATION OF M.P.s.—On
Tuesday last, 54 young vagabonds, the officourings of
the county, were received at Parkhurst prison from the
Millbank Penitentiary ; they were all marked with the
initials M.P.—Hampshire Independent.
We have been informed that Major Eldred Pot-
tinger, C. 8., the heroic defender of Herat, is the bearer
of the additional treaty from China, by which Sir llenry
Pottiuger has so wisely secured our future intercourse
with China, from the intrigues and cabals of a host of
Ambassadors and Envoys from European States, and
the " Repudiated States."—Naval and Military Gazette.

THE RETORT RISIBLE.—When Judge Peters was
Speaker in the House of Assembly, one of the Members
in crossing the floor, tripped on the carpet, and fell down.
The House burst into laughter, while the judge, with the
utmost gravity, cried, " Order, order, gentlemen; a Mem-
ber is on the floor."

STATE OF IRELAND.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SlR,—PolitiCi are a means to an end, or they are
nothing. Repeal may be carried or fall to the ground,
but *hat is to become of the Irish.people ? Irish-
man as I am, I have no desire to sever our commu-
nity with England. If, strictly speaking, we are not
one in race, we are as nearly so as the different por-
tions of the British and Irish communities themselves;
our language is the same, and our interests are iden
tical. With England and her progress, are associated
the best interests of mankind ; no, I would not eat
into her resources, or paralyse her arm, but join AN ith
with her in realising her best interests and our own.
I am against repeal, because I esteem it impracti-
cable, and, if practicable, undesirable. Did I sup-
pose that Ireland should linger on in perennial misery ;
(lid I suppose that the injustice of the past should be
the inheritance of the future, I should become a re-
pealer with the best of them; I should resort to every
fair and equitable means to extort by force that
which should be conceded as a right. But I entertain
no such conviction. I am intimately persuaded that
justice—yes, justice in full—shall be conceded to
Ireland,
I am opposed to repeal, because I esteem it a
move in a false direction, ill-calculated to insure re-
dress of the grievances under which we labour. Ilow
will the repeal rent, were it swollen to hundreds, in
place of tens of thousands, carry it ? Will England—
would any empire—consent to a virtual di/member-
ment ? Were the Irish people united, could they
realise repeal in face of English opposition ? Would
they become tributaries to any continental Power in
order to effect this purpose ? Would the bought
amity of France or America better replace the un-
bought protection of England; and, were it even
secured, are they certain to succeed ? But the Irish
are not united ; as for Protestants and Dissenters, they
are totally opposed. Are the.repealers willing, single-
handed, to engage the might of England; are they
prepared to wage a civil war with their countrymen ?
Surely there are ether and better remedies in store?
In Ireland there is a surplus of hands beyond the
demand ; the population is never fully employed,
while the pressure from without causes labour to be
performed on terms altogether incompatible with a
decent subsistence. The perishable potatoe is the only
food which can be habitually reckoned on ; and when,
as often happens, thP supply is bad or deficient,
and when the winter store deteriorates as spring
comes round, the wants of the people are miserably
aggravated. The deficiency in other articles of prime
necessity is almost equally great. The attire is at
once wretched, sordid, miserable. As regards the
men, clothes, which have served the coarse necessities
of half-a- dozen individuals ; as respects women and
children, a flimsy cotton print, with a sad deficiency
of woollen and linen under-garments. In the country
a mud cabin, perhaps windowless, in clnneyless ; in
town, a garret, a cellar, or a nook in some wretched
court, constitutes the protection against our often wet
and dreary winters. And even of these, the wretched
occupants continue to sublet a portion to casual way-
farers more outcast than themselves.
It may be conceived what dens of disease such
habitations prove; accordingly, sickness and death,
with fever and all its sweltering horrors, are never
absent. In 1780 and 1817, severally, eighty thou-
sand persons were carried off by fever, which, if we
reckon the mortality at one in thirty, gives for each
of those years an aggregate of two hundred and forty
thousand sick. What of the sufferers on such-occa-
sions ; what of friends and relatives whose time is
occupied and substance exhausted ; what heads of
families torn away ; what anguish—what despair ?
Of all the enemies of Ireland, commend me to the
absentee, to him who, with unscrupulous desertion of
all the duties connected with home and country,
spends abroad the pittance wrung from the 'vitals
of an impoverished peasantry. I know it has been
asserted that absenteeism entails no pecuniary disad-
vantage ; but I shall merely ask whether the four or five
millions annually abstracted from a community like
that in Ireland, constitute no loss; or whether this
sum, if circulated by the unwearying hand of human
industry, would not be calculated to ensure comfort
and competence to myriads ? How, I would inquire,
is production to be carried on without money ca-
pital ; or, how, without it, are the endlessly diversified
capabilities of soil and climate to receive suitable ex-
pansion ? No, the absentee is among the worst enemies
of Ireland.

It occurs to me when I think of mouldering halls,
and the sileot park where the mansion-house stood,
but stands no more, with what new titles we might in-
vest the absent owners. Here then, were the abode of
Duke Hardheart, that the Earl of Rattledice's ; here the
Castle of: Lady Smallbrains, that the whilome seat of
the Countess of Dissipation. I have stood on the
strand where rows of roofless cabins attested the
former presence of human life and industry. Look
at that blackened NI all ! Where are they whom it
once sheltered ? where the hard-working peasant, the
anxious busy mother, the maiden whose carolling
was heard so early in the morn, and the children
whose little feet went to and fro—where, absentee,
where ?—borne to the sordid • town, the hospital.
Who is that with haggard countenance—now he
gasps, anon he picks the bed-clothes with his hands !
The nurse plies the grateful wine in vain, the physi-
cian shakes his head and passes on ; for why, the
peasant's course is ended, his life is done ; nor can
the tears of that spent and faithful woman, nor the
sad inquiring face of the last and youngest, avail to
stay the parting agony. Hark ! it is the dead rattle' •
now—no once again ; now indeed, it is over for ever
more; the peasant has sped to a land where the L Ord
thereof will not tear down his dwelling, or expel him
and his from the light of his protection ! Mother
and child are gone ; the child has lain down
amid the straw, he asks why his father is away. But
where is the blythe daughter the while ? There, pale,
trembling, by that flickering lamp; the rains pours,
perchance it blows, no matter; she must earn the
wages of corruption, or go home to her garret and
die. But the son, the sturdy son, who was to work
and strive and make all things square, where is he ?
Look across the ocean—to far America; there, hard
by the canal, in the swamp, are rows of graves. In
one of these, with others of his race, victims to disease
and neglect in a foreign land, lies the young Irish-
man ; his hand is cold, he'll work no more !
Who does not know that our few manufactories
are insufficient to supply the swarming population ;
that our minerals are not dug; that our fisheries are
neglected ; the tenure of the soil precarious; that
i
rents are high, while produce, too generally, s low;
that land, even on these terms, is let and sub-let,
so as no longer to afford a decent subsistence; and that
the peasant is ground down, what by the outlay for
his humble necessaries, a heavy.rent-charge, grand-
jury levies, tolls, taxes, poor-rates, and the support,
at once onerous and unavoidable, of Protestant,
Catholic, Presbyterian, and other establishments ?
The land is overstocked with labourers, the towns
with artisans ; 'while every trade, profession, calling,
swarms with needy candidates for employment.
There are few or no public works, no Government
dock-yards, and, with excellent harbours, no foreign
packet station. In other respects, we have canals on
which one sees nothing but turf-boats ; a matchless
custom-house where there is no trade, and a cyclo-
pean harbour which only serves to shelter fishermen.
The centralization principle, carried too far, has drawn
away the emoluments connected with most of the
public offices; money does not circulate; and if any
one experience unusual losses in his calling, he finds
the utmost difficulty in retrieving them. In a word,
the people do not receive adequate employment at
home, and are too generally destitute of the means to
seek it abroad.

Before any searching remedies for Irish grievances
can be adopted, there must be a proper understanding
with the parties to be relieved. The tusk must be
entered into with vigour, and a firm determination to
probe the canker to the bottom, and eradicate it.
If Ministers for the day, if Hon. Members set out
with repugnance and disgust, view the affair as a
nuisance to be abated and abandoned, how do they
expect they will accomplish their undertaking, or
conciliate those whom it most concerns ? The Irish,
too, must relinquish their prejudices, their ostentation,
their pride, their desire to spend before they earn,
their distorted conceptions, and their expectations,
often sadly at variance with the every-day realities
of life. I would adjure the political agitator, ere he
evoke the vengeance of heaven and earth on English
misrule, to correct his own faults. Man, have you
never been your own enemy ? have you never slept
the hours you should have been waking; never passed
in rude debauchery the time that should have been
spent with your anxious partner, in instructing your
children, and in making provision for the period of
age and sickness which is sure to come, and which
often, alas too often, finds 3 ou wholly unprepared ?
Among other follies of which we have been guilty,
is the recent attempt to found a barrier on the dis-
tinction of race, as if Saxons were better or worse
than Celts ; Celts than Saxons. But the fact assumed
is quite otherwise; the aborigines of these islands
were all Celts ! Are not Irish, Gaelic, Welsh, Cor-
nish, dialects of one and the same language, once
spoken over Great Britain and Ireland by a race that
has left indelible traces ,Jf its existence in the remains
of its language, and the still adherent name 3 of places?
In England the after irruption of Romans, Saxons,
and Norsemen settled in France, gave rise to a diver-
sified population, just as the invasion and, settlement
of Ireland by Danes, Normans, Saxons, and We'sh
led to a similar result here. It is unlikely that there
is a single Irishman, whatever it may be in the high-
lands of Scotland or Wales, who can boast unmingled
Celtic descent; and were it even otherwise, the gain
would be very small. The Deity, who knows better
than us all, has designed his children, Celt, Saxon,
and Norman, alike to mingle together; and wherever
a consummation so desirable fails to be realised, de-
terioration and decay are the only results.
Freer ingress as regards the productions of other
countries, freer egress as regards our own, would, I
conceive, realise a high degree of prpsperity both for