The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-22 00:00:00

lowing somewhat doubtful tale appears in the
Cork Examiner :

RESISTANCE TO POOR-RATES-ONE MAN KILLED AND

THREE WOUNDED.

Through Mr. Hurley, driver of the Skibbereen
coach, we learn the particulars of a melancholy trans-
action, accompanied with loss of life, which took
place at Skibbereen :
It appears that a party of police, under the command
of Captain Gore Jones, R.M., proceeded about three
miles from the town to afford protection to the col-
lectors of rates for that district ; but having met with
some resistance from the people, who were labouring
under great excitement, they returned to town to aug-
ment their force, which having done, they proceeded I
once more to the scene of action. e people were
now pressing on them, and one of them unfortunately
threw a stone at the police, when they immediately(
turned round and fired on them, when one man,
whose name we were not able to learn, was shot dead,
and three others wounded. We give the above hur-
ried particulars as they have been just communicated
to us.

The Irish have never been very remarkable
for alacrity in submitting to the fleecing process
of the rate and the tax gatherer. We are not much
surprised at their aversion to these functionaries.
As all power, rights, and privileges, came to be
commuted for money, tax-gatherers of various
kinds became the principal instruments for exer-
cising the power of the ruling classes over the
Irish. The whole system of government was
founded on oppression, which gradually took, in
the process of commutation, the aspect of sordid
extortion. The Irish have battled successfully
against Church cess and tithes; they have some-
times successfully withheld rent, and may there-
fore be considered as accustomed and privileged
to resist any new rates they may dislike. These
features in the history of Ireland, and in the
Irish character, should have been taken into con-
sideration when the Legislature passed a Poor-
law for that country, and before it listened to
the promptings of humanity, it should have con-
sideredwhether, in attempting to carry them into
execution, more mischief than good might not
ensue. If it took so much care, it appears that
the proneness of the Irish to resist taxation was
overlooked ; and hence a law, kindly intended,
seems very likely to associate charity with homi-
cide, and make a feasible municipal regulation
an object of general hatred.
That a law have a humane object is not suffi-
cient to recommend it to adoption. It ought to
be agreeable to a people, and to comport with
their habits and manners. The Poor-law for
Ireland sinned against the last principle. The
Irish had never been accustomed to feed the poor
by parish rates, and they hated rates, cesses, and
taxes. It is now a question, therefore, whether
the I:tw can be carried into execution, or whether
it must be altered, amended, or repealed, to the
discredit and disgrace of the Legislature.
All those who make or propose laws seem to
us to suppose that the operation of a law is li-
mited to the particular object to which, it is di-
rected ; when every law, in truth, affects a great
many interests beyond its intent and meaning.
The Poor-law for Ireland is a case in point.
Those who made it thought only of providing for
the relief of the poor; but it is now plain that it
affects the habits, manners, and morals of the
bulk of the rate-payers. It tends to exasperate
them, to make them savage, as it were , to make
them hate the law and those who administer its
and to produce the very evils which the Legisla-
ture wished to prevent—disorder, riot, and
bloodshed.

So, in making the Corn-laws their authors
thought only of increasing rent and increasing
agricultural produce; but those laws, though
called Corn-laws, and therefore supposed to be
limited in their effects to corn, really and truly
influence most injuriously all the mutual relations
of the different classes of our own country, and
the relations of England with all the trading
countries of the globe. They disturb amazingly
the regular diffusion and supply of the precious
metals throughout the trading world, and so af-
fect everywhere prices and property. They make
employers and capitalists the agents for collect-
ing the landlords' tax; and so theyset strife, divi-
sion, and hatred, betwixt members of the com-
munity, who are as necessary to one another's
mutual success and mutual happiness, as are the
separate parts of a steam-engine to its perfect
motion. But we must have written a great
many articles in vain, and a great many
speeches at the rooms of the Anti-Corn-law
League and other places will have been made
in vain, if our readers are not well aware
of the fact that these laws, though nomi-
nally confined to corn, extend their pernicious
effects through every class of the community, and
to many other communities.

All laws, whatever may be their name, and
however limited their supposed operation, affect
the whole community, and hence when factory
girls, bakers' apprentices, meddlers with colliers,
cork-cutters, paper-stainers, &c., &c., procure
enactments for the regulation of some special
trade, they, without dreaming, poor innocents, of
the vast extent of their meddling, make laws for
the whole empire, the full and complete effects
of which no man can calculate. All our op-
ponents recognise this very important principle
when we ask to have trade set free. " You can
not tell (they reply) what will be the effects of
abolishing a restrictive law ? You know not how
much land you will put out of cultivation, how
much you will lower rent, how completely you
will paralyse the home trade, or to what extent
you will deprive the labourer of employment,
and discourage society ?" True, we do not know
these points exactly, but the misfortune is, that,
no such misgiving, no such modesty, ever comes
over those who propose to make new laws, as
the crowded statute-book and the present ham-
pered state of the country testify.