IRELAND. [From the Examiner, November 3.]

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 412, 27 March 1850, Page 3

IRELAND. [From the Examiner, November 3.]

Wt bad orrlv space -enough last week to admit of the bare mention of the nature of the speech delivered by Mr. Bright at the Manchester meeting yesterday week.', We therefore quote, now, some of the most striking s points of his eloquent address. Mr. Bright begun by observing that the condition of Ireland closely affected the object* of the meeting, seeing that 40.0U0 trOOpi ■were kept there and paid for out of the taxes, to keep that country in subjection. It was necessary to inquire the reason of this. They were there because the people of Ireland are hostile to the instructions of the United Kingdom and to the power and government of the Imperial Legislature, and thii on account of the miseries they endured, which were not to be ascribed to the recent famine, but to the legislature and parlia meat of the United Kingdom. Mr. B-ight then adverted to the state of Ireland in 1844, as it was eet forth in the report of the commiision appointed by Sir R. Peel. This report described the condition of the people generally at utterly prostrate and hopeless, the labouring classes being badly housed, before the famine. "What," said Mr. Bright, "ii the condition of Ireland now ?" Every one of these particulars is aggravated to a fearful extent, except one. So large a proportion of people may not be living in hovels unfit for human habitation, for a portion of (hose who were thus living are not now on the face of this earth at all, and the hovels they inhabited have been levelled to the ground, or ttand in ruins to attest the poverty and suffering of the people, and in many cases it must be admitted the cruelty and injustice of the proprietary classes. (Cheers) Now we have heard of the famine in Ireland, but living here we have known nothing of it. The word famine does not convey at all to the mind what famine is. Famine has stricken down hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children ; the pestilence has come to glean that which famine has left unreaped. There are those who will attest that in some districts in Ireland one-third of the population, and even more than one-third, have fallen victims to famine during the last three or four years. Then we have the extensive emigration— hundreds of thousands of Irish have escaped to foreign countries ; and I have heard it itated, by men well entitled to give an opinion, that were it possible now to offer to Irishmen the means of going to another hemisphere, one-half of ihe population of tbat devoted land would fly from the country of their birtb, and settle in another land, there for ever to feel hostile to the institutions of the country which dented them subsiitance where they were born. (Great You hive heard of union workhouses in

Ireland ; I have seen and visited a large number of them. They are the largest houses as you pass through the country, and th y are crowded, and have been for two or three years past, with vast numbers of these miierable wretched. On the 15th June, in 1849, there were 237,000 of the popnlation of Ireland in the union workhouses. There werr 62|500 boys and 66,300 girls under eighteen years of age ; and at the same time there were 758,030 people receiving, not casual, but almost permanent, during many months, a most inadequate subsistauce in the ihape of out-door relief. (Hear, hear.) Now 1 have spoken of those cottages or hovels whoie inmates are no longer there. In passing through some half-dozen counties — Cork (especially in the western parts of it), Kerry, Limerick, Clare, Galway, and Mayo— you see hundred* (I m«y perhaps be within the mark if I say thousands) of the ruined cottages of the labouring peasantry and small renters of Ireland, You see sometimes, perhaps, twenty housei without a roof upon them. Mr. Bright then xpoke of the numerous evictions, of the outrages which are of such frequent occurrence. There wat (be said) at this moment a state of war in Ireland between landlord and tenant. He believed however, that he could point out tbe cause of this state of things and its remedy. He should be told, first, that there is something so radically wrong in the Irish race that nothing could be made of them, and, secondly, that there it gomething in the Catholic religion which makes it impossible for the people to be prosperous with it. He could refute both these assertions by asking, why Irishmen, who could make no progress in their native country, mcceeded so well in American, and by pointing to the people of Belgium nnd Lora- ' bardy, whose religion was Catholic. He would dismiss theae slanders at once. The true c»uie of the present condition of Ireland was to be found in the crimes and blunders of legislation. There was in Ireland that worst of all monopolies, the monopoly of land. And in addition to all the ordinary evils of of monopolies, the Irish land monopolists were bankrupt—reckless and powerless of anything like good. Mr. Bright then took a rapid survey of ihe system of confiscation of land from the time ok Elizabeth to that of William the Third, undertaken for the purpose of putting down the Catholic religion, from which system vast estates came into the hands of proprietors which are still retained by their descendants. He dwelt next upon the penal laws which had pressed so heavily on tbe Catholic community, and on certain facts illustrative of the state of land ia Ireland at the present moment, stating that such a thing as what we know a» the purchase of a small piece of land was almost unknown (here, the soil being monopolised by a few of tbe great proprietors who themselves, owing to incumbrances and mortgages, were in a state of utter helplessness. A proprietor may have £5,000 a year in each of several counties of Ireland, but if he have judgments against him, he cannot sell a tingle acre in any one of those counties, for the whole incumbrances against him attach to each particular acre, and also to all landi he may afterwards possess so long as the judgments remain unsatisfied or unpaid. These men, therefoie, are bound hand and foot ; the whole island it under a network of restriction in regard to land, the great raw material of the people's industry. And the consequence is, that though the people of Ireland live on the land, they have no interest in tbe land ; they are not the possessors of the soil of their country ; ' they are sojourners there and pilgrims. And it would «eem that neither the Irish landlords nor the Imperial Legislature have cared till lately a single straw what faecomsi of this vast and suffering people. (Hear and cheers.) ♦ ♦ * * I think there is no wisdom in continuing to pursue this system. My proposition is this, so far as regards the boil ; every law of every kind which has had for its object the propping up of Urge properties, every law which has had for its object, not the economical advantages of the people, but the sustenance of feudalism, and of a territorial aristocracy, — all those laws should be withdrawn and repealed, so that the soil should be made ai free as a chattel, as free to buy and sell as a horse in a stable or furniture in a housr j (Loud cheers.) I would have applied to the landed i proprietors the laws of bankruptcy which are applied ' to traders, and if a man did not pay his debti or give sufficient security that they should be paid by a certain time, that, if his creditors wished it, his estates would be banded over to the official assignee ; and tint what he hai in his possession should be equally, and farly, and honestly divided amongst those who he awes money. "What would be the result? Precisely as with regard to all other discriptions of porperty, that land would become the property of those wbo could use it for their own and people's good, and instead of these vast estates, many of them remaining locked up in the hands of mortgagees, the land would now be found in every degree and sire of estate— from the man who held his freehold acre of land, to the man who held his 10,000 or 20,000 acres ; and men would hold laud in proportion to their means to cultivate it and turn it to advantage. (Cheers,) The insecurity of tenure next engaged Mr. Brght'i attention, and he spoke of it as almost universal in Ireland, and illustrated his statement by very striking details. The first act government ought to pats with regard to Ireland was one giving security and compensation to tenants for the visible and tangible improvements they might make upoa their property. Mr. Bright than spoke of tbe Incumbercd Estates Commission, and gave it as his opinion that the Commisiion appointed were the best that could have been selected for the purpose ; and after again adverting in eloquent and forcible terms to the condition of the people, concluded as follows: I feel that this state of Ireland is a disgrace to the Government of the country (cheers), and I call upon you, whoever assumes the Government, to use your influence to effect such a change in its laws as shall place the people of Ireland upon a fair field, so that the industrious man shall be possessed securely of the fruits of hit industry. Then lam perfectly satisfied that outrage will give way to peace, and this constant war of landlord and tenant, such as now prevails in this country. (Cheers.)