The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-09-23 00:00:00

How, it will be asked, has Sir Robert Peel effected
this ? We answer, by mistaking Ireland's read
wants, and listening to, and indulging, her imaginary
wants. He has legislated in the belief that the
Church of Rome, in Ireland, is Ireland herself—
that the voice of her priestly and lay agitators is the
voice of her people. Instead of measures of solid
improvement—measures by which industry would
be fostered and loyalty protected—Sir Robert Peel
has devoted' himself to the aggrandizement of her
Popish church and Popish clergy. Ireland asked
for agricultural improvement, for resident landlords,
for commerce, and, above all, for peace and leisure
to pursue those habits of individual enterprise
which can alone make nations great and prosperous;
and Sir Robert Peel has given her—Colleges ! She
asked for bread ; and she receives only more masses
and better educated priests. She asked for the ces-
sation of the turbulent agitation in which she has
been so long wickedly involved by designing and
rebellious men ; and she has been doomed to see
fresh incentives held up to such agitation, whilst
loyalty and order are everywhere discouraged. To
what one measure can the advocates of Sir Robert
Peel's policy point, as calculated to meet the real
wants of Ireland—to repair her wretchedness and
poverty ? There is no such measure—nothing
which can practically operate to raise the social con-
dition of the people, much which must tend to
lower it ; nothing to produce social peace, but
much to invite disension and disorder.
When Sir Robert Peel first entered office, we had
in Ireland a body of loyal and intelligent men, upon
whom England could safely rely in every emergency
with which she could be threatened. Agitation
might bluster; rebellion might rave; but Protestant
Ulster was our own. The loyal yeomanry of the
north were our defence. Are they so now ? If
they are still faithful to the British connexion, at
least it cannot he said that their treatment at the
hands of Sir Robert Peel's government has con-
tributed to keep them so. Insult upon insult has
been heaped upon them. Their religious feelings
have been wantonly outraged, and their very loyalty
has been made a bar to the countenance of govern-
ment. Nor are the men who thus throw from them
affection and loyalty, upon which they could rely,
magnanimous enough, in their offensive policy, to
command the respect of those upon whom they
trample. They commenced a proscription of the
Orange magistrwes of Ulster. They superseded
two or three; but when they were called upon to fly
at high game, they recoiled at the sound of their
own thunder. They made a miserable, tricky escape
from their first precedent. Lord Roden, the Earl
of Enniskillen, the Marquis of Downshire—where
are the writs of supersedias which ought, for con-
sistency's sake, to remove these noblemen from the
high offices they hold ? They lie snugly ensconced
in the castle bureau, not a hand being found to
issue them. Mr. Watson and Mr. Archdalt were
small game, which a government official might with
some degree of safety practise upon ; but Lieutenants
of counties and Peers, it requires more nerve than
the Irish government appears to possess to interfere
with. Chicken hazard is their forte,—not the great

game

The true—and they are gigantic—evils, with
which we have to deal in our treatment of Ireland,
are precisely these, which Sir Robert Peel dare not
approach. We refer to her system of Tenancy.
A bold man would have taken in hand the task of
redressing the wrongs inflicted upon the Colliers—
we cannot call them the Farmers—of Ireland.
However we may be above the vulgar prejudice,
which sets down an Irish landlord as something less
than human, and more demonical, we cannot, with
the evidence of the Devon Commission before us,
refuse to admit his gross neglect of the comforts
and well being of those, whose prosperity ought to
be his care, as conducive to his own. Let our
readers peruse the following description of these
wretched beings, as given by the " Times Corn-
mission,"—a gentleman of whom we are pi wad to
have some knowledge. Here is his account of a
district near Donegal : _ _

From this town I proceeded to Glenties, a village which
is the property of the Marquis of Conyngham, whose
chief managing agent is Mr. Benbow, M.P. for Dudley.
The whole of the country for many miles in the direction
of Dungloe, and beyond that town—in fact, almost the
whole barony of Boylagh, belongs to this nobleman,
together with the island of Annan, or Arranmore, on the
west coast. Once in the coursa of his life—two years
ago—the Marquis of Conyngham visited this estate for a
few days. His chief agent, Mr. Benow, usually comes
once a-year, and the sub-agents visit the tenants every
half-year to collect their rents. At short periods of a
few years the farms are visited to see what increased rent
they will bear, and this is the extent of the acquaintance
of the Marquis of Conyngham with his tenants. This
nobleman, himself, bears the character of a kind-hearted,
generous man—fond of yachting and amusement, and
having an excessive distaste for every kind of business or
trouble. From one end of his large estate here to
the other nothing is to be found but poverty.
misery, wretched cultivation. and infinite subdivision of
land. There are no gentry, no middle class,—all are
poor—wretchedly poor. Every shilling the tenants can
raise from their half-cultivated land is paid in rent, whilst
the people subsist for the most part on potatoes and water.
They are untaught,—thev know not how to improve,—
they have no examples before them of a better state of
things,—they are left to themselves. As they increase
in numbers, as not a shilling of the rent is ever spent
among them in the shape of capital, in giving them any
kind of employment, they are driven to the land for sup-
port, till they infinitely subdivide it, and their poverty
and wretchedness necessarily increase as their means les-
sen. Every rude effort that they make to increase the
amount of the produee is followed immediately by raising
their rents in proportion—as it were, to punish them for
improving. They are, naturally enough, as discontented
and full of complaints as they are wretched in their con-
dition.

Is this a state of things which can be cured by
such measures as Sir Robert Peel has devised for
Ireland ? Will more colleges, or more priests, give
these poor wretches milk, or butter, to their pota-
toes ? Alas, no l The government has been legis-
lating for the agitator—for the disaffected—not for
the starving man. Ireland has a disease which is
eating into her vitals—draining her heart's blood.
Sir Robert Peel is hoping to cure it by giving a few
professors kid gloves, and her youthful aspirants to
canonicals a trifle more Latin.

We have been not a little amused by some re-
marks in a Saturday's Journal, upon the subject of
the election for next year's Mayor. Our contem-
porary assumes that amongst the candidates for
that office is Mr. Richard Harbord. We know,
however, for a fact, that the gentleman in question,
well qualified as he is for the civic chair, is not an
aspirant at all ; and further he is at the present
moment disposed to give his support, and the
benefit of his influence, to another party. The most
absurd portion, however, of our contemporary's re-
marks is contained in a diatribe against Mr. liar-
bord's connexion with the Orange order, to which
he ought to be proud to belong. The Journal
says the order in question is an illegal order.
Where is it proved to be so ? We ask for such
proof. We are sure that he will not find it in
the resolution which he quotes, as having been
passed by the Orangemen of Enniskillen, and we
give him the benefit of his proof, by giving the
paragraph here :
Resolved—" That inasmuch as the existing law renders
the Orange Institution, as originally constituted, illegal—
we do hereby appoint a Committee for the purpose of con-
sidering under what appellation the society shall be desig-
nated, and upon what legal principles such a union can
be formed, and for the drawing up rules and regulations
for the conduct of such union, and that the said committee