The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-30 00:00:00

LETTER OF MR. T. ATTWOOD.

(Communicated to the Morning Post.)

In the spring of the year 1833 I had the pleasure
of meeting Mr. O'Connell at the Thatched House Ta-
vern, in St. James's-street. I had then had, as I still
have, but little assistance from public men of any
party; but I had then a sincere gratification in hear-
ing Mr. O'Connell declare to a meeting of about fifty
Members of Parliament and others that, " upan his
honour and his conscience, he did believe that three-
fourths of the miseries of his unhappy coun-
try were occasioned entirely by that accursed
Bill, viz., Peel's Bill of 1819 !!' " Mr. O'Connell
at the same time illustrated this great truth
in a way most impressive, but almost
peculiar to himself, by stating, " that, if the American
woods had never been allowed to be cut down with-
out every man being compelled to use a golden axe,
the American woods would have remained in their
primeval state to this day !!" In following up this
beautiful illustration, I remarked myself that, in my
humble judgment, in the present state of society, to
cnupel all the transactions of life to be effected in a
golden medium of exchange was very much like
compelling every labourer to use a golden plough and
a golden spade in the cultivation of the earth, and
putting every child to death that had the misfortune
to be born without a golden spoon in its mouth.
I then proceeded to point out the principal mea-
sures which were really necessary for the relief of
Ireland. First, I said, you must rectify the currency
in Ireland, as you must in England. That great
measure will, at once, make the currency balance the
rents, debts, and obligations which it has to discharge,
and the labour which it has to employ. It will place
labour in the same state of employment and of wages
as existed during the ten years average, ending the
late war, or even in a much better state. It will place
productive industry generally in the same state. It
will thus relieve full one-half, or, perhaps, two-thirds of
the existing misery of Ireland. Secondly, you must
pass a law to limit and restrain the power of land-
lords in ejecting tenants of land in Ireland. In Jer-
sey and Guernsey, no landlord can eject a tenant,
without the tenant's consent, so long as the tenant
pays a fixed stipulated corn-rent, converted into
money at the market price of the day. In this way
all improvements become the property of the
tenant, as they ought to be ; and if the landlord
wishes to obtain possession of the land, he must make
his bargain with the tenant, and pay him a just and
reasonable consideration. Thus the law protects
the tenant in the enjoyment of the fruits of his own
industry, which cannot be either tvvistel or forced out
of his hands. The landlord is not injured; for, by
the improvements of the tenant, he gets every day a
better security for the value of his land, in which the
tenant becomes interested, and, in those happy and
well-governed islands, is generally a part pro-
prietor, a tenant, and a labourer at the same time.
Establish a system of this kind in Ireland, or
some other system of a similar nature—give pro-
tection to the tenant for his improvements on the
land—and you will quickly produce a wonderful
change is that unhappy country. You will have no
occasion for agricultural societies. Nature herself
will produce agricultural improvements, which no
art can give. The Irish landlord will get his own,
and the tenant will get his own, but the property of
the tenant in his land will quickly become as great as
that of the landlord; the labourer will be fully em-
ployed and well paid ; both agriculture and manufac-
turers will flourish, and Ireland will soon blossom like
a garden.
But, thirdly, you must drain the Irish bogs. You
must not regard the low pride and the miserable pre-
judices of the Irish landlords, who will tell you of their
entails and of the territorial dignity which their familes
derive from extensive although almost worthless posses-
sions. You must pay them the full and just value
of these possessions; or you must pay that value twice
over, and take them into your own hands. Mr. Nimmo,
the Government engineer, reported to r4rliamant 20
years ago, that there are five millions of bog-land in
Ireland, three millions of which are capable of being
drained, upon a large scale, at the expense of only
one pound sterling per acre i and would then be worth
at least twenty pounds per acre !! He reported fur-
ther, that these three millions of acres were not worth
one pound sterling per acre in their p.resent state !
You will thus gain a property worth sixty millions
sterling at an expense of only six or eight, or perhaps,
ten millions sterling. You must of course drain these
three millions of acres of land, and plane them
in a state of cultivation; and then you should sell
them to Irish labourers, in lots of perhaps five, or ten,
or fifty acres each, upon fire or ten years' credit, as
they sell land in Canada and in the United States ;
and you will thus draw hundreds of thousands
of Irish labourers from the overstocked markets of
Irish industry, and convert them at once into 40 many
prosperous, independent, and contented proprietors
and cultivators of the soil.

THE MARBLE BLOCK FOR THE SCOTT STATUE.—
On Saturday the huge block of marble commissioned
by our eminent sculptor, Mr. Steell, for his statue of
Sir Walter Scott, to be placed in ;the beautiful monu-
ment now on the eve of completion, arrived in Leith
harbour from Italy. This enormous mass of Biancho-
Chiaro marble, as it is described, weighs upwards of 20
tons, having been cut from the celebrated quarries
of Carrara. It was expected, we understand, some time
ago, but, owing to its almost unprecedented size, great
difficulty was found at Leghorn for some time to pro-
cure a vessel for its conveyance to this country. An
accident, also, which nearly proved fatal to numbers,
occurred on the first attempt to place it on board
ship. While it was beinc, lowered into a vessel hired
for the occasion, the shears gave way with a tre-
mendous crash, and the block went through the vessel,
fourteen persons being employed about it at the time.
The noise, however, caused by the breaking of the ma-
chine fortunately warned them of their danger, and all
escaped with the exception of an old man, who was rather
seriously hurt. The vessel being thus rendered unser-
viceable, the use of the Government pontoon was
then applied for, and, after some negotiation, obtained,
and by this conveyance the marble was brought to Leg-
horn. The block was shipped at Leghorn, on board the
Gem, of Leith, Captain llannah, who kindly allowed
several of the planks to he cut away, in order to en-
large tho hatchway, and admit the " monster" piece
•
1.1 low We nriderstiind it will be removed to Edin-
burghP in the course of the week. It is right to
add that no inconsiderable portion of the heavy work,
necessary in " rough hewing," or shaping the block be-
fore it is fit for the sculptor, was done from measure-
ments furnished by the artist before its removal from
the quarry, and accordingly Mr. Steell will now be
enabled to proceed with his interesting labours without
further interruption.—Edinburgh paper.