Star.
London, England, 1831-07-18 00:00:00

N°. 13,838.

ON IRISH GRIEVANCE&
By JOHN LeWLZeet ESQ.
The humbug reports of Poor Committees, or
Committees on the State of the Irish Poor, with
Mr. Rice at their head, are already laughed at, or
trampled on by every man of common sense in
Ireland. The expedients of road-making, bridge-
building, dispensary and gaol-building, and houses
of industry, and the clearing of bogs and morasses,
and the cultivation of mountains, and the borrow-
ing of half a million of money to prosecute those
glorious purposes, will, no doubt, obtain the ap-
plause of Messrs. Griffith and Rilhtly, engineers,
et hoe genus mime ; but does Mr. Stanley, or the en-
lightened men around him, imagine that such miser-
able palliatives will ever heal a wound created by the
abstraction of six millions annually from Ireland,
and the still greater evil—the absenteeism of the
Nobility and Gentry, who would circulate that
capital—who would protect the industry, cherish
the genius, and maintain the honour of Ireland ?
We are told the Poor Laws will confer infinite
blessings on our country.
The notable roport of the committee on the state
of the poor of Ireland, comes to this honest and
wise conclusion, that our country is rapidly pro-
gressing to an enviable prosperity. In the ovinion
of Mr. Pierce Mahony and Mr. Joseph Denis
Mullen, who were examined by Mr. Rice and the
committee, the Irish are better fed and clad, and
are much improved in every species of comfort for
the last thirty years. The Right Rev. Dr. Doyle
has set aside this folly with the pen of a master.
His letter to Mr. Rice demonstrates the gross im-
position practised by the committee on the state of
the Irish poor. What is the opinion of that honest
and able observer of the misfortunes of his coun-
try ?—" In my opinion, the whole doctrine regard-
ing the transition of society is misapplied in the
ease of Ireland ; she is in a state of transition, but
a transition not from agriculture to trade or manu-
factures, such as was the transition of England,
but she is passing, and rapidly, from wretchedness
to ruin." And again, writes Dr. Doyle—" The
condition of nineteen twentieths of the Irish people
is not improved, but deteriorated." And again.—
" The improvement of Ireland consists in improved
revenue, in improved rent rolls, in increase of
tithes and church-rates; but, in the profits of the
farmers, in the wealth or comfort of the middling
classes, I totally deny that any real improvement
has taken place." Would not every honest, sin-
cere man in Ireland bear his attestation to the
truth and justice of the picture thus drawn by Dr.
Doyle ?—So much for Mr. Rice, and his com-
mittee, and his evidence.
Wilmot Horton proposes emigration, or the
banishment of our superabundant population—an
insulting and an impotent proportion ; cupping the
political as well as the physical body, increases the
quantity of the population as well as the blood, and
increases the evils it was contemplated to remove.
Dean Swift, among the thousand admirable ideas
which came from the mind of that wonderful man,
has the following, which 1 will conclude this letter
by giving to Earl Grey, Lord Althorp, and my
readers. It was written more than a century back,
and the same damned policy which was then the
subject of Swift's inimitable satire, seems to be
the leading policy of the leading Vhigs of the
present hour. "It is," says Swift, "an undis-
puted maxim in government, that people are the
riches of a nation, which is so universally granted,
that it will be hardly pardonable to bring it in
doubt ; and I will grant it to be so far true, even
in this Island, that if we had the African custom
or privilege of selling our useles bodies foylaves
to foreigners, it would be the most useful branch
of our trade, by ridding us of a most insupportable
burthen, and bringing us money in the stead ;
but in our present situation, at least five children
in six who are born, lie a dead weight on us for
want of employment ; and a very skilful computer
assured me that above one-half of the souls in this
kingdom supported themselves by begging and
thievery, whereof two-thirds would be able to get
their bread by honest industry in any other country
on earth. Trade and manufactures are the only
excitement to labour—where those fail, the poor
native must either beg, steal, or starve, or bo forced
to quit his country. This bath made me often
wish, for some years past, that. instead of divans.;
raging our people from seeking foreign soil, that
they would rather pay for transporting all our
unnecessary mortals, whether Papists or Pro-
testants, to America, as drawbacks are some-
times allowed for exporting commodities where a
nation is overstocked. I confess myself to be
touched with a very sensible pleasure when I bear
of a mortality in any country, parish, or village,
where the wretches are forced to pay for a filthy
cabin, and two ridges of potatoes, treble the worth,
brought up to steal or beg, for want of work, to
whom death would be the best thing to be wished
on account both of themselves and the public."
In 1727, Dean Swift thus described the state
of the Irish peasantry. In what does it differ
from the present state of the County of Clare,
where ten and twelve pounds for the con-acre of
potatoes are paid by the peasant to his beauties&
landlord ? And Mr. Blackburne and Judge Jebb
think the gallows and the gibbet are the grand
restoratives of Irish tranquillity. The Marquis
of Anglesey, in his individual capacity, is a brave
and generous soldier ; but, as the Governor of
Ireland, it is essential he would communicate to
the landlords and magistracy the conviction of
his own impotency, unless justice be done to the
feelings of the peasant.
When the above was written, the packet art•
nounced a new concession to Ireland, by the pre-
sent Irish Secretary, called the Irish Arms Bill,
which proposes that any man in whose house un-
registered arms are found, if the district in which
his house stands be proclaimed, shall be transported
for 7 years. This, no doubt, is a measure well calcu-