The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-03 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING„ MARCH 3, 1868

A FEW FACTS ABOUT IRELAND.

In writing on this subject recently, we re-
ferred to certain tables of figures published by

the Pall Mall Gazette, showing an increase,
since 1841, in the number of first and second-
class houses built in the sister island ; and,

whilst admitting the correctness of these
figures, demonstrated that the conclusion our
contemporary drew from this increase—namely,
the growing prosperity of Ireland—was not
at all justified by the fact which, as we showed,
is to be traced to other causes.

We shall now examine other figures ad-
duced by the Pall Mall, showing that the
number of third-class houses—that is, those
occupied by the more substantial farmers—
increased by the number of 14,054 between the
years 1841 and 1851. But so far from this fact
establishing the present prosperity of Ireland,
it proves the very reverse. Let ns divide that
memorable decade into two parts, and examine
each half of it. During the first five years,
from 1841 to 1846, the population of Ireland
was greater than at any period of which we
have record—being then between eight and
nine millions; and, in 1845, the commission
presided over by the Earl of Devon pronounced
them to be the worst fed, clothed, and housed,
of any people in Europe. Yet, during these
years, the Irish agriculturists, although so
numerous and so poor, increased the third-
class houses for themselves—foe all men know
that they did not get houses built within the
last five years of that decade, during which
period the entire kingdom was afflicted and
ravaged by famine, fever, and their concomi-
tants. Let us now contrast the ten years from
1841 to 1851, during which Ireland suffered so
much, with the ten years from 1851 to 1861,
during which latter decade Irish landlords and
some superficial politicians would wish it to be
believed that Ireland has become prosperous,
and ask if this be true. Nothing shows im-
provement in the material condition of a people
more than the fact of large numbers among
them surrounding themselves with domestic
comforts—and have we this evidence of in-
creasing wealth in Ireland within these late
years ? Far from it, indeed ; for, within the
ten years of which we have the last official
returns, the third-class houses, which increased
by upwards of fourteen thousand in the pre-
ceding decade, have decreased by 34,944 during
the latter period. How, then, can it be alleged,
with any semblance of truth, that the prosperity
of Irish agriculturists has increased by the thin-
ning of the Irish population ? We have now
shown the reverse to be the fact, and proved
that the substantial or comfortable farmers in
that country have declined commensurately,
with the sweeping away of its general popu-
lation.
Nothing can be more silly and even crimi-
nal than for public writers to attempt to mys-
tify, the British public as to the true condition
of Ireland. It is easy to throw together a num-
ber of figures in a confused manner, and then
to assert that they prove the general prosperity
of a kingdom ; but it requires time and space
to expose the inconclusiveness of such figures,
and to clearly show that they do not afford
any foundation for the bold allegations rested
on them. This is the jaunting-car mode of
disposing of the case of Ireland, with which
we imagined we had done for ever, when
wisdom directed that Sir Robert Peel should
be relieved of his official duties in Ireland.
In 1861, and afterwards, he persisted in alleg-
ing, as a fact, that Ireland was increasing in
prosperity, while tens of thousands of its people
were pining for want of food, and the cattle
dying throughout a great portion of the king-
dom for the want of fodder. His official mis-
representations were, unfortunately, believed
in England at the time, and, owing to the pub-
lic having been thus misled by the Chief Sec-
retary for Ireland, the wail of Irish distress was
unheeded by us; but, wafted over the Atlantic,
it struck on the attentive ears of American
citizens. They quickly subscribed and for-
warded large sums of money to the Mansion
House Committee then formed in Dublin, and
also sent other sums to bishops and priests in
the most distressed localities, in order to miti-
gate the sufferings of the people which it was
our duty to have at once relieved, instead of
allowing her Majesty's subjects to be kept alive
by those who were comparative strangurm to
them. In '6l, '62, and '63 the Government
did not listen to the complaints of Ireland,
but let America act the part of the Good
Samaritan ; and already we are reaping the
bitter fruits of our callous neglect in the shape
of " Fenianism," poured in upon us by the
Americans, who are received with partial
favour by the poorer portion of our Irish fellow-
subjects, who experienced their solid kindness
when we, acting on the advice of Sir Robert
Peel, neglected our duty and our interests, by
closing our ears and hands against them. The
Irish bishops and priests then told the Whig
Government of the grievous sufferings of their
flocks ; bnt the Government of that day re-
fused to believe their testimony ; and some
of our press stooped to calumny, by reply-
ing that the Catholic bishops and priests
of Ireland only sought to get money for their
flocks in order that their flocks might have
some of it to give to themselves ! Had the
Government then discharged its obvious duty
by providing reproductive employment for the
Irish poor, we should have laid them under
an obligation, without any ultimate loss to
England, and thereby establishing a claim upon
the gratitude of a generous and sensitive
people, could now appeal, as friends, to their
loyalty
against the aims of ill-designing Ameri-
cans, who glory in doing us mischief by disturb-
ing our domestic peace.
The other figures cited by the Pall Mall
Gazette, as evidence of Ireland's prosperity, are
equally unreliable for that purpose as those
whose fallacy we have already exposed. For
all enlightened men, not only in these coun-
tries, but throughout the civilized world, know
that in the year 1847 the Irish famine was
at its height--that for three years after 1860
a great part of Ireland was on the verge of
famine—that in 1867 there was no famine in
Ireland—and yet our contemporaryhas allowed
himself to be imposed on by figures which show
that Ireland was better off in 1867 than she
was in the years of her wide-spread misery
and maddening hunger ! We admit it ; but
this proves nothing for the purposes of his
argument. •
Our contemporary quotes figures to show
that the live stock in Ireland has considerably
increased of late years. This, surely, was a
work of supererogation on his part, for all
people of ordinary sense know that as famine
and its effects disappeared from any land, the
people of the country, as a matter of course,
begin to replace the stock which the want of
provisions obliged them to part with in the
time of their wretched distress. He shows
that the largest increase has taken place in
sheep, pigs,
and poultry, which should neces-
sarily follow on the disappearance of famine,
and so soon as the people had an increase of
milk and potatoes. But in his zeal to prove
the prosperity of the sister kingdom, he has
allowed himself to fall into error respecting the
measure of this increase ; for, when comparing
the value of live stock in 1865 with what it
was in 1861 (which was a year verging on
famine), he sets down the live stock of the
latter year at £41,278,000, whereas the Re-
gistrar-General, whom we regard as the best
authority on the subject, sets it down at
only £32,772,609, being £8,505,391 less than
our contemporary puts down to the credit of
Irish prosperity. In his report for 1865, the
Registrar-General, instead of asserting the de-
cided prosperity of that year, sighs for the
arrival of the day when the value of live stock
in Ireland will equal what it had been many
years before ; for he says :—" We .may con-
fidently hope that with a recurrence of such
favourable seasons as the present, the value
of live stock will soon reach the large amount
it had attained in 1859 (£35,868,259) prior
to the half-famine,' by which, and the ex-
cessive rains of the three following years, the
number of stock and the agricultural prosperity
Qf Ireland in general were so injuriously

affected." It will be readily admitted by all
impartial men that, in order to prove the pre-
sent prosperity of Ireland, our contemporaries
ought not to contrast the amount of live stock
in 1865 with what it was at a period of " half-
famine ;" and it will also be admitted that
facts and figures ought not to be mis-stated.
What we have said of our contemporary's
figures for 1865, equally applies to those quoted
by the Pall Mall respecting the value of live
stock in Ireland in the year 1864. For our
contemporary sets down the amount at
£38,270,000, whereas the Irish Registrar-
General, who is the real authority on the
subject, states that it amounted only to
£30,728,910. Here is an error of about eight
millions of pounds sterling made each year, in
attempting to prove the paradox of a country
increasing in its aggregate wealth whilst de-
creasing in population ; but, as we observed
in a previous article on this subject, " it would
require very clear figures and solid proofs
to convince enlightened and impartial" men
of this.

We shall not go through any more of the
figures produced by our contemporaries, as we
have already demonstrated that they are not
to be relied on as proving Irish prosperity,
and that they do not disturb in the least the
position of his Eminence Cardinal Cullen, who
speaks of the miserable condition of the Irish
at present from evidence supplied by his own
eyes, with which he daily beholds that " squalid
poverty" unknown in the Catholic kingdoms
of Europe. We appeal to our fellow-country-
men not to allow this state of things to con-
tinue—not to allow Ireland to be pointed at
by France, America, or even Russia, as being
for ever dressed in rags while occupying her
position at the right side of wealthy England,
who has undertaken the guardianship of her
sister for the last sixty-eight years. Above
all, we ask the present Government not to
fall into the like error as their predecessors in
office did. In depicting the " squalid poverty"
of Treland, Cardinal Cullen speaks the mind
of the Catholic bishops, priests, and people of
that country. Let him not be now answered
in the language of arrogance and insult as
he was in 1861, when Sir ,Robert Peel, that
most unfortunate of Secretaries for Ireland
told him, through the medium of an Orange
meeting at Belfast, that he did " not care
three rows of pins for a Catholic Bishop."
England is paying dearly at present for the
neglect with which she then treated the remon-
strances and appeals of the Irish people and
their clergy, and let us not again fall into the
like error by despising the warning voice that
has lately reached us from the same quarter.—
Westminster Gazette.

the Ihearty reception and warm hospitality they meet
on visiting America. Here is a contradiction they can-
tot understand. They are welcomed with genuine
k indness ; they hear the old country spoken of with
lo we and. esteem; everywhere they are in the society
of. inen.:and women who know the nooks and corners
of England far better than they do themselves ; who
have wandered through her monasteries, and
stray, ed over her battle-fields, who have travelled
I to th. 3 haunts and graves of her celebrated poets, and
akete hed the ruins of her renowned castles. " Why,"
they exclaim, amazed, " we thought you hated us ;
C'utt -we were your hereditary enemies, and that
ya -were always planning our annihilation." They
th ea see the two lives in America, the political life,
an d the social life,—all that is bad in the former,
all that is good in the latter; the former parading
die like in words that spread everywhere ; the
lat ter extending an hospitality, of which indivi-
dm els only are the recipients. Therefore, while
the one is widely known, the other is scarcely
heard of. All this is as unwise as it is
curie .us. Americans complain of the animus in
Engl and during the Civil War, and assert that
the south was greatly strengthened by the open
sympathy expressed. They believe that the war
which injured them so deeply woull never have
assul fled its gigantic proportions had it not been for
the hostility of England towards them. Doubtless
in th is there is much truth, but to what was that
hostility due? Why, to the ceaseless abuse which
had fixed in the English mind the idea that the
American was his born enemy. Here, again, we
arrive at a curious fact. The American asserts that
England always had his sympathies alike when
struggling on the heights before Sebastopol, or toil-
ing in her.almost hopeless contest beneath the walls
of Delhi. "We sympathised with you—we es-
teemed and loved you," he asserts to the English-
man's surprise, " but yet, in our great trouble, in
our national agony, we found in you nothing but a
bitter :foe." This the Englishman regards as a
mere figure of speech, an assertion without a sha-
dow of truth ; yet, it is literally true. And why ?
Because the Englishman pins his faith upon the
political expression of opinion which reaches him
from America, while the American is discussing the
social feelings of his family circle. If ever
the devil was engaged in making mischief—a
senseless, idotic mischief—it has been between

these kindred leaders in the cause of freedom.
We are happy to say there are influences at work
to counteract the evil. Travel and knowledge are
opening the eyes to this unspeakable folly. the

United States is destined soon to be crossed by the

greatest highway of nations, and Englishmen, as
they become acquainted with the country and its
institutions, will learn the true value of stump
speeches and political harangues, as well as the real
affection for the old land that underlies the frothy
bluster, which must be, blown away, before it is
seen.

AMERICAN MARKE7S.

(From Beldiny, Keith, and Co.'s Circular.)
LONDON, Feb. 28.

The market for the United Status Bonds has been so
flat, owing to the want of any settled policy on the part
of the Fnancial Committee in Congress and the political
movements, that the best report of it would be to say
"nothing doing." Investors will not buy, and holders
as yet do not press, so the business is in statu quo for
the moment. In Erie Railway Shares there has been
quite a large business as per our table. We purchase these
or any other American Railway or State Bonds for 1 per
cent. delivery here, free of all expense.
UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD.—First Mortgage Bonds, in-
terest and principal payable in gold, are now to be had at
par in currency in Ihe United States, with interest, since
January 1; also the Central Pacific on same terms. We
recommend these bonds as a perfectly safe investment,
paying some 81 per cent. on amount invested, and some
.£3O increase in 30 years, but in other shares the markets
have been quiet. In want of anything of interest here we
quote the following as to the "situation" financially
from Thomson's Bank-note Reporter, which shows not only
that many are tinkering at a solution, but that it has come
to that pass that it is made ludicrous; after which we hope
soon to see a wise, progressive policy, in which the whole
country can unite, believing they will ere long see it is
for the country's good ; in fact, its only salvation for
years, that men and party issues give way to principles of
justice in the matter of finances.

MARKETS.
(By Telegraph to the Journal of Commerce.)

CHICAGO: Feb.l4.—Flour unchanged. Wheat inactive ;
No. 2 advanced L to lic and firm at $2 to $2 01.; No 1
$2 05 to 52 06. Corn dull at 801 to 80c for Na 2, and 84c
ror No 1. Oats declined lac, closing steady at 561, to 7e.
Rye dull and unsettled at $1 50 to $1 531; barley dull at
$2 03 to $2 05 for No 2 ; sample lots $1 70 to $2 22. Pro-
visions quiet ; standard mess $22 ; straight brands held
$22 50; prime mess quiet at $lB. Short rib middles
steady at 101 to 10ic. Dry salt shoulders steady at 81c,
loose, cash, and 81c, buyers March. Sweet pickled hams
quiet at 13c. Lard quiet at 14c. Dressed hogs moderately
active; light advanced 10 to 20e; sales at $8 75 to $9 ;
heavy 89 50 to $9 75. Live hogs active and excited at an
advance of 15 to 25c, ranging from $6 371 to 58 30. Beef
cattle quiet at $7 25 to $7 50 for fair to good shipping
steers. Receipts to-day-4,550 bbls flour ; 20,000 bush
wheat ; 47,000 ditto corn ; 16,000 oats; 2,600 dressed
hogs; 3,800 live hogs. Shipments-4,200 bbls flour;
18,000 bush core; 3,000 dressed hogs; 3,000 live hogs.
ST. Louis, Feb. 14.—Tobacco —more offering and easier,
but not quotably lower. Cotton—Only one lot in the
market, which is held above the views of buyers. Flour
very dull, with only a small business at unchanged prices.
Wheat—a very small business and unchanged prices ;
choice spring $2 15; prime to choice red winter at $2 50
to $2 60. Corn advancing ; sales at 83c to 85c ; one lot of
fancy white at 00c; ear at 76c to 78c. Rye dull and un-
changed. Provisions firm and in good demand. Sales of
mess pork at $22 50, now held at $22 75 to $23. Bulk
rib sides 101 c loose. Bacon—clear sides, 121 c to 13c. ;
shoulders, 10c. Lard dull; sales of inferior kettle at 131 c.
Receipts to-day-1,000 bbls flour ; 400 sacks wheat ; 2,800
do corn, 1,200 bush oats.

LoufsvlLLE, Feb. 14.—Tobacco firm at $5 25 to $l5 20
for logs to medium leaf ; $32 for manufacturing leaf.
Flour—Superfine $8 to $8 23; fancy $l2 50. Corn de-
clining; shelled in bulk 71c. Oats 66 to 67c. Wheat $2
50 to $2 55. Lard 14c. Moss pork $23. Bacon—shoul-
der 3 101 to 1011 c; clear sidos 111 to 111 c. Bulk shoulders
99c ; clear sides 121 c. Cotton 18 to Inc. Whisky no-
minal.

MEMPHIS, Feb. 14.—Cotton quiet ; receipts of the week
14,825 bales ; exports, 9,290 do.; stock 25,343 bales. Su-
perfine flour $9 to $9 50. Pork $24 25 to $2l 50. Bulk
shoulders 10c; clear sides 13c. Lard 14 to 15c. Corn 83
to 85c. Oats 93 to 95c.

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 14.-Cotton easier; sales, 2,700
bales ; middling, 194 c. ; receipts, 6,437 bales ; no exports
reported ; sales of the week, 34,500 bales ; receipts, 33,181
do.; exports, coastwise, 2,553 bale.s ; foreign, 9,720 bales ;
stock, 121,814 bales. Sugar and molt‘sses active and un-
changed. Flour easy and unchanged. Corn unchanged.
Oats unchanged. Bacon scarce; shoulders 1110 ; clear
sides 141 c ; mess pork, $25 25 to $25 50. Lard scarce,
tierce 15c ; keg, 164 e. Sterling exchange, 152 to 154 ;
New York sight exchange 1 per cent discount. Gold,
1391 to 140.
MOBILE, Feb. 14.-Cotton-sales 200 bales ; market
closed fiat and nominal at 181 to 190. Receipts 2,070 bales,
sales of the week 11,900 bales ; receipts 12,466 bales; re-
ceipts of the season to date 279,764 bales ; receipts same
time last year 183,509. Exports-foreign 3,262 bales ;
coastwise, 3,587 bales. Stock, 78,830 bales.
AUGUSTA, GA, Feb. 14.-The cotton market is active
but easier; sales 1,140 bales ; receipts 700 bales; mid-
dlings quoted at 18/ to ale-
SAVANNAH, GA., Feb. 14.-Cotton dull and nominal ;
sales, 1,507 bales; receipts 3,271 do.; middlings 194 to
to 191 c.
CHARLESTON, S.C., Feb. 14.- Cotton declined ; sales 600
bales; middlings 191 to 20c ; receipts, 1,020 bales.
WILMINGTON, N.C., Fob. 14.-Spirits of turpentine firm.
at 59c. Resins active ; strained $2 20 to $2 25. No.
2, $2 30 ; No. 1, $3 25. Cotton firm ; middling 184 c.
Tar firm, at $2 35.
BALTIMORE, Feb. 14.- Cotton dull and nominal at 201 c.
for middlings. Flour more active ; sales, low grades city
mills shipping extra at $lO 75 to $ll. Wheat quiet
and steady ; prime to choice Pennsylvania at $2 50 to
$2 60. Corn firm; prime white and yellow $1 20. Oats
active at 78c to 80c. Rye firm at $1 65. Seeds dull:
Pennsylvania clover seed $8 121 to $8 50 Western, $8
871 to $9. Provisions quiet and steady.
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 14.-Cotton steady; middling up-
land 204 c to 21c ; middling Orleans 22e. Petroleum in
better demand ; crude 151,-; ; refined in bond 22c. Clover-
seed, $8 to $8 50 ; flaxseed, $2 75 to $2 80. Flour steady
and quiet. Sales 1,000 bbls. ; extra family $lO 50 to $ll
50; Pennsylvania and Ohio do., $lO 75 to $l2 25. Wheat
-little demand ; red, $2 50 ; amber, $2 55. Rye-Sales
1,000 bush. ; State at $1 65. Corn in fair demand ; sales
4,000 bush. ; new yellow at $1 23. Oats steady at 75c to
78c. Provisions looking up ; sales mess pork at $23 50 ;
hams in pickle, 141 c ; shoulders iu salt, 10 to 104 e. ; lard,
15c.