The Sun.
London, England, 1845-04-22 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 1845.

The House of Lords met at Five o'clock.
A great number of petitions were presented agairst
the Maynooth Bill.
The Compensation for Deaths Bill was read a secord
time, and their Lordships adjourned.

The House of Commons met at Four o'clock.

New writs were' moved' for Derbyshire, in the room
of Sir W. W. WYNNE ; and for Peebleshire, in the
room of Mr. FoßnEs MACKENZIE, who had accepted
office under her MAJESTY'S Government; and for Leo•
mCnster, in the room of Mr. GREENAWAY.

Several private Bills were forwarded a stage.

Mr. T. DUNCOMBE then moved to rescind the eleventh
section of standing order, No. 87, which requires Col E..
mittees on Railway Bills to make a special report of the
reasons which induce the Committees to adopt or reject
the recommendation of the Board of Trade.

Sir G. CLERK defended the conduct of the Railway
Department of the Board of Trade.
Mr. LABOUCHERE thought the standing order had
been misunderstocd by the Hon. Member for Finsbury.
A long discussion followed, in the course of which
Mr. BERNAL m')ved as an amendment that an address be
presented to her MAJESTY, that she be pleased that all
documents and statements relating to railway Bills be
laid before the House.

Mr. DuNcomuE subsequently withdrew his motion,
and the amendment was agreed to without a division.
The order of the day for going into Committee on
the Maynooth grant was postponed till Wednesday; and
the other orders of the day having been disposed of, the
House adjourned at Twelve o'clock.

Looking, as we are inclined to do, on the much-vexed
question of the Maynooth endowment as virtually at an
end—with all its angry elements of political and re-
ligious discord allayed, at least, thou4h not extin.
guished—we are anxious to persuade all parties who have
participated in its recent agitation to gather from it other
fruits than the mere ashes of polemical controversy. It
is incumbent upon them to remember that a country
like Ireland was never destined by PROVIDENCE to be a
mere battle-field, in which two races of men were to con-
tend, through centuries, for the political and religious
supremacy of the one over the other. If the Legislative
Union of 1800 had not settled all precedent questions of
conquest or occupation; the dominion of force or the
rights of hereditary succession; it would yet have be:n
impossible to roll back the tide of events to that distant
period—six hundred years ago—at which an English
force, by the united sanction of the Pope and invitation
of a native Prince, established their first footing in that
fine country. From the close of the twelfth to the be-
ginning of the nineteenth century an infinite series of
international and intersicial connexions, interests, esta-
blishments, settlements, has been successively created.
To this interchange and intermixture of civil and do-
mestic institutions there have been superadded, in the
same protracted interval, all the artificial means of go-
vernment and polity, by which, in every age, the incor-
poration of notions, originally distinct and independent,
has been effected. Since the period of the Legislative
Union this fusion of the English and Irish races and
governments has been so complete and universal, and so
much developed throughout the whole system, that it is
now in vain to challenge, as proper to either country
exclusively, this or that element of the imperial consti.
tution. And we contend that this is so, notwithstanding
the still visible traces of former violence, mismanage-
ment, neglect, and inequality in the process. We should
be the last parties to dispute that Ireland has been
grievously misgoverned, and cruelly oppressed, since her
incorporation as an integer of the British empire. But
it must be conceded, on the other hand, that there have
been many, and very recent, periods in the history of
that connexion, in which both the English and the Im-
perial Parliaments have manifested an earnest and gene-
rous design to fulfil, honestly and boldly, the duties of
protection, in the first instance, and of equal union in
the second. To admit that this wise and enlightened
policy has, by no means, been the rule observed in the
administration which England has exercised over Ire-
land, but rather the exceFt'on, re-appearing at uncertain
and too-widely separated periods, proves nothing against
the fact of her virtual incorporation. All the atrocities
charged upon the governments of English Vice-
roys and Commissioners, under the Plantagenets
the Tudors, and the Stuarts—under the iron
discipline of CnomweeL and the military rapacity o f
King WlLLlAM—cannot efface the fact of the advances
made by her in civilisation and commerce prior to the
accession cf the House of Hanover. How largely Eng-
lish capital invigorated and expanded the agriculture,
the manufactures, and trade of Ireland under the
reigns of the four GEORGES (notwithstanding the disas-
trous outbreaks of the years 1798 and 1803) are mat-
ters of history which cantle t be disputed. The con-
cession of the Roman Catholic claims in 1829, and the
general policy of conciliation pursued towards Ireland,
and the paternal regard manifested for the Irish in the
personal deportment of the Sovereign, under WILLI:vet
the FOURTH and VICTORIA, have done much to erase the
most distressinee recollections of earlier epochs of mis-
government. Until the " repeal" cry was raised, no
men in either country seriously entertained any views
of political improvement that would apply, exclusively,
to the one without affecting the other. The interests
of the poorer classes in Ireland were identified with the
benefical relations which subsisted between the growers
and the consumers of agricultural produce ; the sup-
pliers and the employers of every species of industrial
labour. The higher classes found a corn non road to
eminence, success, and distinction in those professions,
and in all those branches of the public service in which
civil disqualifications on account of religious opinions—
(common, be it observed, to the English and Scotch, as
well as the Irish)—did not interpose specific obstacles to
their advancement. To the relief of these disqualifica-
tions we would fain hope that the grant to Maynooth
may be received as an acceptable compliment. And this
brings us to the salutary fruit which, we trust, now will
be gathered from the rugged soil of hotly-contested
principles.
What is wanting to the pacification of Ireland, and
the extinction of those impracticable projects, and mis-
chievous aspirations which, under various designations
and pretences, have convulsed her social and political
exi:tence, and organised and fostered nothing but a de-
structive excitement ? The unquiet phantoms of " re-
peal" and "federalism," must be laid. But the con-
senting desires and feelings of a whole people
are needed for this exorcism. Let those who
best know how to awaken those feelings, and to
appeal to those desires, concur in re-establishing the
reign of tranquillity and order, by showing to the English
capitalist that he may invest his money among them
without the risk of political commotion and severance-
Distinguished as Ireland is, above almost all the nations
of the globe, by the rare combination of advantages of
geographical position and fertility of soil—by noble
rivers, a well- indented coast, and capacious harbours,—
she boasts one excellence, in the moral constitution of
her people, which is yet more honourable and :Avail-
tageous to her. Their prompt enterprise and unwearied
industry, wherever occupation offers, makes the poor
Irishman the model of a cheerful, honest, and hard-
working labourer. Now, if the Irish gentry could only
prevail upon themselves to await the evolution of that
gradual but full measure of equal "justice to Ireland,"
which may now be anticipated from the course of
the Premier's legislation for that country, and which an-
ticipations, we will say, have from time to time been so
signally verified ; they would find, in the projection
and construction of new lines of railway, in the exten-
siontsb hoa inmonfro,trul
aevinerdms
eot intl
hlt
eiornf roach te
theirsyb' set de,rmi
rivers
etordfs i;tnbl
iaonn
tdrhs
oae
eavnri
enlargement
aearsgt i
000 r
onf2
ethe
t
of old, and the building of new harbours and docks, for
which their coasts offer unequalled facilities ; and in the
more active and extensive prosecution of mining uneofder-
ltasaktintgwsel(rteherich returns
years
leaves no
olowngheicrhathme
aetx:Peerrfioern dottobtthoer
for depreciation) ;—they could find in all these a
channels into which the superabundant capital of e
4
land (now lavishly hazarded on the most insecugre:
foreign investments) might be induced, under the
guarantee of future permanent tranquillity, to flow freely.
The difference of this capital would secure to the re-
dundant, but Now pauperised, population of Ireland a
steady demand for all that surplus labour, whose hope-
less condition and accumulating amount have
been, hitherto, the main causes of the misery
and degradation of su large a totumunity—
caps' fur etuploywept, bitITVIOg involuntary