TABLE OF CONTENTS.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

The Irish Poor Law The Ministers and the Crisis*. The Jesuits and Lola Montes*. The Sacred Publicity of Religion .. Physical Cause o f the Death of

Christ Ecclesiastical Song. By r. . Formby,

Esq........................................... FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE

Parliamentary Reform in the French

Chambers .................................. REVIEWS :—

Life and Correspondence o f the

Right Hon. Henry Haddington, Viscount Sidmoutli—Lanzi’s History o f Painting in Italy—History of the Saracens—Westminster Review—Church o f England Review —Periodicals and Pamphlets

Page

200 209 210 210

211 211

MUSIC :—

Mass for Four Voices with an A c­

companiment for the Organ, Composed bv J. M. Capes*. CATHOLIC INTELLIGENCE

Subscriptions for the Relief o f Irish

Distress, and Letters from the Subscribers :—From Killarney—Galway—Ballaghaderrin —Nottingham —Eardington — Birmingham — Liverpool, &e., &c. L o n d o n :—■ Provincial:—

Patricroft—Barnard Castle —Donnington — Preston : The Dole — Sheffield : Norfolk Park—Durham: The Tomb o f Walter Skirlaw I reland :—

Death of Sir Francis D’Arcy—The Churches o f Dublin During Lent— Mr. O’Connell at Hastings, Folkestone, Boulogne, &c., &c.

Page

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

FOREIGN& COLONIAL INTELLIGENCE:

Rome—France—Spain—India : The

Page

Overland Mail—The Catholic Year in India—Lord Elphinstone—Java : Conversion o f the Sultan o f Bauka —Cape of Good Hope: African Sympathy—America—Philadelphia —New York—Malta—AustraliaSouth Australia—Grenada—Ceylon — Greece —■Egypt — Portugal — Austria, &c. NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS : IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT

Poor Law—Roman Catholic Relief

D l l — Jewish Disabilities— Poor Law Commission -Public Works in Ireland—Pauper Lunatic Asylums — Poor Removal Bill—Customs Duties—Army Service Bill—Irish Poor in Liverpool—Army Establishment P ensions—E mig ration—In-, surrection in Catalonia, & c... 218

DOMESTIC NEW S :—

C ourt and F ashionable L i f e :—.

The Queen’s Drawing-Room PERSONAL :—

Miss Herschell . . . . . . , , POLITICAL:— PUSEYISM :—

Binding Satan, &c............................... MISCELLANEOUS — LAW AND

POLICE — ACCIDENTS AND OFFENCES, &c. :— IRELAND POLITICAL: —

Loyal National Repeal Association-

Speech o f the Day-State o f the Country — Famine, Disease and Death, &c., &c. NAVAL AND MILITARY NEWS g a ze t t e s :— RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE :— MONEY MARKET AND CITY NEWS MARKETS ........................ A D V E R T IS EM E N T S ........................

Pa.se

219 319

221 222 223 224

Vol. VIII. No. 361.

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 1847.

P r i c e 6d,

T H E I R I S H PO O R L A W . Parliament has separated for the Easter recess, and the House o f Commons has got the Irish Poor Law through Committee. The landlords, headed by L ord Monteagle and the A r ch bishop o f D ublin— that is, by the spirit o f selfishness and the spirit o f pedantry— have also tried their hands at a premature debate on the same subject, with a view to collect together into an overwhelming mass in opposition to out-door relief, all the recommendations o f the various Committees, Commissioners, Witnesses, and B inebooks, whose multitudinous jangling for the space o f a quarter o f a century has resulted in the a c complishment o l nothing. B y an overwhelming majority this suggested attack was scouted eveu in the L o rd s ; but it remains to be seen what will he the success o f the more insidious tactics to be adopted with regard to particular clauses when the measure gets fairly before them. In the meantime, their friends and factionaries in the Lower 1rouse, abetted by the complacent courtesy o f the Government, seem to have left them very little to do in the way o f detail.

The anti-Irish landlord party have had the matter pretty much their own way in the course o f these discussions. P oor Mr. O ’Brien has p ro posed clause after clause only to have them negatived almost without a hearing. But the crafty enemies o f the poor aud o f religion have found greater favour and enjoyed more signal success.

Again, the landlords have carried their point that a tenant o f h a lf an acre o f land, cannot receive a mess o f pottage in the shape o f public relief unless it can be proved that he has parted with his possessions and reduced himself to a condition from which he can never rise again. The man who has lived for years on the produce o f his small farm but whom a bad harvest may have impoverished for a few ¡weeks in any one year, is not to he saved from instant famine unless ho consents to permanent ruin and entire confiscation. I f he has the good fortune to hold only a quarter o f an acre, he may keep it and live ; but fo r all tenants above that amount this measure supplies the landlord with an easy method o f ejectment, In the first place, the fact that the tenant has a nominal resource in the poor-rate, will render it easier for the landlord to screw his tenant in his rent without shame as without remorse. The tenant being ground to the uttermost by this potent beverage, then comes the unwillingness to apply fo r relief on the terms o f entering the workhouse. In many cases in England this very system has lowered wages by making labourers willing to accept any terms rather than enter the detested house. In Ireland the same cause w ill keep wages at the lowest possible point, and i f rents can be raised will at least tend to raise them, I f tin’ s unwillingness is overcome through the pangs o f hunger, the tears o f a starving wife, and the groans of' famished children, then comes the abandonment o f the little farm, the separation o f husband and wife, parents and children, and the permanent ruin o f the family, which is henceforward at the absolute mercy o f its enemy and victim ises

In measures fo r bettering the condition o f , the poor man, it is as strange to see tile ch ie f part played by those who have hitherto been his bitterest enemies, as it would be to see a leech used for filling the veins with blood, or oil to extinguish a conflagration, or thieves to prevent the increase o f robbery, or Thugs to put a stop to mm dei, oi unlettered barbarians fo r the improvement ol polity and the spread o f civilisation. However, so it is. The wisdom and tenderness o f the “ vultures with iron bowels,” as the mild and meek Bishop Berkeley described “ some o f the “ squires and landlords” in liis day, has been taken as a guide in organising the protection o f the poor. Saving the main point o f out-door relief— everything, or almost everything else is to be at their discretion. 1he absolute management o f the new law is to be in their power. I t is decided beforehand that they are to he the majority o f the Boards o f Guardians. Ex-officio th ey are to be h a lf the Board without election, and whatever interest their influence as landlords can give them, will lie so many members added to their faction out o f the other half. Thus, under a new form, the life, death, and religion o f those they have been so long spoiling and wasting, is once more to be put into their hands. The workhouse has been erected to render relief distasteful, but the aged and infirm poor are to lie fed out o f the workhouse; and until the workhouse is fu ll o f the able-bodied, for them there is no out-door relief to he so much as dreamt of. The filling o f the workhouse with the able-bodied being then a condition precedent, see how prudently the landlords have acted in getting into their own hands the management o f the workhouses. They are to he henceforward the lords oi the workhouses; and upon them devolves the legal duty o f keeping these charitable prisons unfilled. I f any acuteness o f mismanagement, any dexterity o f abuse, any sungent severity o f regulation, can be devised to render life within these gloom y walls uusweet, nothing that is practicable or conceiveable in this way will be omitted by a board o l Irish landlords devoting their entire energies to a task so exactly suited to them. W hen he hears that the man who has starved him into poverty is appointed to make his bed and prepare his gruel, the peasant will easily guess the nature o f the accomodation he is to re ceive. His landlord is to he his landlord in a double sense; a rent-extortioner in the firs* in stance, and then the peasant’s host and entertainer at the head inn o f the district. And surely never was wayfarer more vigilantly attended by his host than will these wayfarers ot poverty he waited on by their generous and liberal employers. I f it can be brought about by the' wit and industry o f man, the houses will never be fu ll- t h a t we mav be certain of, y

N or, in the course o f the debate in Committee, was the principle on which these enactments is based at all bidden or concealed. The mode in which the new system o f relief is t-o he worked is avowed with all the honesty o f naked effrontery. On Monday night, when M r. P. Scrope proposed a clause, giving Guardians the power to employ able-bodied paupers more extensively in reclaim ing aud cultivating the soil, Mr. Shaw opposed it in a short but pregnant speech, o f which the Times gives the follow ing report

Mr. Shaw objected to such a proposition. He objected to make public farmers of the Boa/d o f "Works, and lie should object to this plan also. Jt had been said that nothing was more important than, to supply the poor with advantageous employment; but the whole question turned ou what was advantageous employment. lie saw uo possible benefit in depressing tile independent labourer; and he contended that that would be the necessary effect o f the proposed change. I f you fed them well, clothed themwell, and housed them well, there would be no limit to the number o f paupers in workhouses.

It is then not merely understood, but avowed, that the ex officio Guardians arc so to manage the workhouses that their inmates are to be ill-i'eA, illclothed, //¿-housed, Until in any given Union a thousand able-bodied paupers— there, or there abouts— consent to be separated from their wives, ! children, or families, in order to enjoy the advan­

tages o f short commons, scanty garments, and bad lodging, there is to be no out-door relief. I t i s in tended, beforehand, that the pauper inmates o f workhouses shall not be treated like human beings — not even like brutes, whose labour is o f any va lu e ; but rather like o ld worn-out horses dragged o f f to the knacker’s-yard, and there allowed to live— on air— until ileath comes or is sent for. Oh, these Irish landlords! humane, ge nerous, charitable landlords ! W e cannot believe that their day is far distant; or that the curse oi God will be long in finding them out. I f the Archbishop of Dublin m aybe believed, that day is even now close at hand, and this measure with all its imperfections is to seal their doom by confiscation. W e cannot bring ourselves to believe that this is so, but i f it should he, what a joy fu l result !

T H E M IN IS T E R S A N D T H E CR IS IS . With the return of a milder season, and an enormous supply o f provisions from America, the extreme symptoms o f distress are becoming somewhat mitigated, though in the South and

; West the condition o f things is still awful in the extreme. 1here is still famine, fever “ rapidly on “ the increase” in many places, and though a large breadth o l land is sown with grain, whole districts to borrow an expression from D r. Whateley, “ are, “ ly ing as desolate as the deserts o f A rab ia ;” while hundreds, or rather thousands, o f decent farmers, with their small capitals and hoards o f potatoes which they have been saving against this emergency, are crowding to the sea-coast to bid farewell to the land o f their birth lor ever. Thus is Ireland losing the pith and substance o f (he people ; the very best class o f her population; the industrious, prudent, saving, thrifty, foreseeing peop le ; these and their capital are quitting a land which the wrath o f God has visited, and seeking a quieter home for their industry under a Government that is not ours. Meanwhile, the Treasury Minute is dismissing from the public works wholesale thousands o f wretches for whom R e l ie f Committees have made no provision, and who are left to starve as they bast may. I t is hoped that without money, without food, without seed, without bodily strength, they will go back to the land and till it without labour. Alas ! fo r the dearth o f statesmanship among us at such a time. I f the crisis under which we labour had done nothing else, it has at least placed that fact beyond the possibility o f doubt. In all this horrible emergency not one move has been taken, not one mensure proposed, not one effort made— on any side b y any party— indicating the possession, wc need not say of great genius, but even o f a high order o f talent. Occasional effrontery, and on the whole a good deal of nerve shown in asking for and voting away money; this there certainly has been. But then, in the application o i that money, what poverty o f resources, what penury o f understanding! Am ong the subordinate officials— mixed, we fear, too often with a pert and supercilious insolence that has been found quite intolerable— there has been found a good deal of stubborn and gallant obstinacy in working through the tasks set them from head-quarters; but o f ingenuity in shaping measures lor this measureless abyss o f evil, only one man deserves real eul°g y , and that man a Frenchman. M. Soyer has put forward an idea, and is really carrying his idea info execution. He has discovered the value ol turniptops and the importance o i utilising refuse vegetables; he wishes to employ this great thought fo r the benefit o f Ireland; and the M inisters, struck with this projector o f an idea which they could not have discovered but which they are able to appreciate, have illustrated their rule by giving scope and currency to the practical sagacity o f a French cook. A l l honour to M. Soyer and to every man who understands his own trade or art. Honour, too, to the Ministers who, having little wisdom, adopt whatever o f other people’s wisdom they have eyes for discerning. In this “ idea from the kitchen o f the R e lo n n Club, we see the measure o f the wisdom o f our present rulers. Everything else that they have done has been blind, blundering im becility ." They blundered in commencing the public works, in continuing them, in making them to cease; they blundered in the matter o f seed corn, in the matter o f tillage, in their blind profitless distribution o f millions without a thought o f a return ; their P oor Law Bill, in every point o f detail, is' complete as a heap o f blunders i f in no other respect; their million and a half for the improvement o f Irish estates is a gross b lunder; the Waste Land B ill when it comes will no doubt have the maker’s name upon i t ; and they have blundered most egregiously in not taking up the question of emigration. But some men’s blunders have a dash o f originality about them, and are kept from absolute putrefaction b y a spice o f inventive genius. A la s ! it is not so h ire. The blunders we have enumerated are all prose blunders sheer, unadulterated, common-place, level to the meanest capacity. Lord John Russell is not even greatly wrong, though he is widely wrong, and in a multitude o f directions and particulars. He has had no plan. He has shown no grasp o f m ind; and has framed to himself no systematic conception o f the task Providence had set him to accomplish. Having in his hands the greatest o c casion that has been offered to an Enlish statesman tor a couple o f centuries, he has made, and is making nothing of it. The results to flow from this crisis will not have Ms stamp upon them, lie has not moulded, he will not, he cannot, mould them. W ithout plan or method o f any kind, he lets the main current of events take its own course, shape out its own destiny, work outits own purpose; but with the exception o f a few temporary and imperfect alleviations o f present distress, he has done and proposes to do nothing which shall turn the present crisis to account. Famine, the sheer impossibility o f g low in g potatoes, voluntary emigration, involuntary non-culture, the charity or selfish inhumanity o f landlords; in a word, the nature o f things will perhaps in the end accomplish great changes; but the Ministers will have accomplished nothing; nothing, we mean, o f those many duties so calling upon them for fulfilment. The unthinking distribution o f money and provisions will o f course have saved l iv e s ; but beyond and behind this, what is to be seen ? Alas, nothing.

God gave them, gave England— whatever o f statesmanship there is in England— a great work to do on behalf o f the sister country ; to guide it out of one condition into another; to forward the new arrangements; to furnish counsel and direct i o n ; to use the authority o f the State fo r lielpin g o n many things fo r which this time affords an opportunity which a quieter and more tranquil period will hardly perm it; fo r rendering easy and advantageous what is inevitable— a new distribution o f tile population over the soil, and to get everybody set to his new work with the least possible amount o f delay, friction, and disturbance. This they have not d o n e ; they have not attempted; they have not even conceived. A few common-place remedies, imperfect in extent even i f perleet in kind, and throughout most bungling in their contrivance and adaptation to the circumstances o f the time— this is the whole o f their contribution to the result which the O c casion begged them to achieve. But they are evidently not o f the achieving b re ed ; nor do they stray far behind the public wisdom of the age. The extremity o f this calamity has not wrung from the publicists of our time, English, Scotch, or Irish— always excepting the R e form Cook, and he is F ren ch—anything that can be called a thought. L ord George Bentinck’s ra ilway project stands next probably to that o f Soyer; next, because there is no third. Meanwhile, what hope there is for the future the reader may ju d o « after perusing the follow ing letter, which is dated, not from South or West, but from the Diocese o f M ea th :—

Kildangan, Kennegad, March 24.

Dear Sir—In the article on “ The Next Harvest,” published in your paper of Saturday last, it is suggested to your ecclesiastical readers that they should furnish accurate accounts o f the present condition of agriculture in this country, in order that England should know exactly what are the prospects which open upon us with regard to the harvest of next year. I regret to have to inform you that there is now uo hope entertained that with this year will have ended the dreadful famine now desolating our afflicted country. That sucli is the teal state o f our condition can be shown by tile evidence of want and suffering which even this single parish supplies. It ranks amongst the most comfortable and independent of the rural parishes of this county. It belongs to landlords ¡the most upright, indulgent, ant: humane. The land is held in many instances under its value by a tenantry o f habits industrious, careful, and laborious. Yet with advantages so peculiar and so eminent, there are here no less than 200 heads o f families, holding from three to ten acres o f land, who have neither seed to sow nor food to sustain them dur ing this season, in which alone the soil can be tilled. Tills statement is not founded on mere conjecture; nor is it here made as the process o f hasty calculi1’“ ; Xcould give you the name of each head of his family, with the number o f acres he holds. And such being the condition o f this large tract of land, possessed by these 200 men in a parish otherwise so well circumstanced, judge of the prospects of the coming harvest which the rest of Ireland can afford. It is decreed for this woe worn couniry that anoiher year at least o f starvation and death she shall endure. The Government, gives us the mockery o f a Poor Law, and the delusion o f a Relief Bill; while they carefully withhold the only provision that could artest the progress of famine, disease, and death. They will neither provide seed nor cause it. to be provided, till the earth nor have it tilled. I am, dear Sir, your very obedient and respectful servant,

F. Lucas, Esq.

P. R eals', P.P., Castlejordan.