he would add that there were documents | known. These questions were inseparably in the possession of both Houses, drawn bound up with any conclusion to which the up by competent authority, which would House might come; and he hoped the whole show that the passing of an Irish poor law subject would speedily come under discuswould increase the immigration of which sion. As to the petition presented by the the petitioners so unjustly complained. He noble and learned Lord, it was unquestionwould take this opportunity of asking a ably true that the people of Liverpool were question of his noble Friend opposite (the suffering from the immigration of Irish Marquess of Lansdowne). He had received paupers; but in their petition they made letters from the manufacturing districts the important admission that the Poor Rethat morning, complaining very grievously lief Bill for Ireland would not assist them. of the pressure arising from the existing state of the money market. A great number of orders were in hand from America; but in consequence of the present state of things they could not be executed, and they attributed much of these effects to the Act of 1844. He did not want to ascertain the specific intentions of the Government on this subject; but he wished to know whether they had any intention of bringing in a measure to mitigate or relax the Act of 1844 ?

The MARQUESS of LANSDOWNE assured his noble Friend that the pressure existing in the manufacturing districts had been under the most anxious consideration of Her Majesty's Government; but he was not prepared to say that they intended to introduce a measure of the nature referred to by his noble and learned Friend.

LORD ASHBURTON was understood to represent that through the extraordinary pressure in the money market men of the highest credit had yesterday been obliged to consent to give 12 and 13 per cent for discounts.

LORD MONTEAGLE was rather astonished that public attention had not been earlier directed to the existing pressure; but consideration must be given to more points than one in any discussion upon it. The question to be considered, no doubt, was the propriety of some alteration in the last Bank Act; but another question was the mode in which that Act had been carried out, and the effects produced by the mode of carrying it out. Without expressing any opinion now, he would observe that a measure might be right in itself, but be disorganized by its practical administration. Other questions also must be taken into consideration. Among them were the peculiar state of our trade and commerce, for without the diminution of any demand for any other article of produce, there was an unexampled demand for a larger amount of cereal produce for the consumption of this country than was ever

The EARL of WICKLOW agreed with the noble Lord that the Irish poor law would increase Irish immigration. With regard to the petition presented by his noble and learned Friend, it was necessary to remind the people of Liverpool, that though they suffered from Irish distress, they forgot the enormous influx of wealth which that same distress had been the means of bringing into the town. If they would take the trouble of comparing the amount of relief levied upon them with the large sums they derived from the importation of foreign corn from every part of the world, they would find that perhaps there never had been a year in the annals of the town in which they had obtained profits so immensely great as in this year. He believed the people of Liverpool benefited more by their Irish commerce than by that of all the rest of the world together. If therefore they continued sending these petitions to his noble and learned Friend, it was but right they should be reminded of the immense advantages they had derived, not only from the general commerce of Ireland, but from the severe infliction which that country had sustained.

The MARQUESS of WESTMEATH had no doubt the town of Liverpool had great cause of complaint; but their grievances were not likely to be redressed by the present Bill. He felt himself bound to vote for the second reading of the Bill; but it was in the anticipation and with the certainty that, if it were passed, matters would be just where they were before.

After a few words of explanation from LORD BROUGHAM, the petition was ordered to lie on the Table.

POOR RELIEF (IRELAND) BILL.
The Order of the Day for the Second
Reading having been read,

The MARQUESs of LANSDOWNE said: My Lords, it has now become my duty, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, to propose to your Lordships the

second reading of a Bill for extending | although, in stating them, I may yet inrelief to the poor of Ireland; and in re- dulge the hope that there are some lights questing your Lordships to proceed with to relieve the picture, and that it is not this Bill through its different stages, I am without some consolatory topics that I am deeply sensible that I am inviting your compelled to bring before you in all its inLordships to follow me in a path which is tensity the magnitude of the evil, however beset with difficulties and with danger, and insufficient the measure I am about to prothat we are about to embark in a naviga- pose may prove in averting all its baneful tion in which, although it is clear to what consequences. Whatever variety of opinport we ought to steer, yet that our arrival ion may exist as to the means to alleat that port must be through rocks and viate the evil to be met, of this I am shoals, which it will require all the care of fully persuaded, that there prevails among your Lordships, and all the care which the your Lordships but one conviction as to best exertions of Government can bestow its extent and intensity, and but one upon the administration of this law, to steer desire that it should be adequately met clear of, so as to make it finally effective and remedied. But, my Lords, when I and secure. This law, I need not tell your propose this Bill to your Lordships, I do Lordships, is founded upon the existence not offer it as an adequate remedy for of a calamity with which your Lordships the distress that exists in Ireland; for a are become by this time but too well ac-permanent remedy I do not conceive it to quainted and on a state of disorder and be. The permanent remedy for that disdisorganization of society, following this tress must be looked for from other sources dispensation of Providence, which, great and from other means. The only ground as your Lordships were induced to think it upon which I have to ask your Lordships' when the subject was first brought under assent to this Bill is, that it is an imporyour considerotion, has, during the months tant, if not an indispensable palliative of an that have since passed, not diminished, but overwhelming malady; and it is a palliative increased in intensity—a state of disorder which I believe your Lordships will be comand disorganization which has fallen with pelled to adopt, because I have neither a degree of suddenness and intensity un- seen myself, nor, discussed as this subject paralleled in the history of nations upon a has been here and elsewhere by others, country unfortunately the least of all pre-have I heard it suggested, by what other pared to bear up against it-a country in palliative than this the existing disorder which, whilst there prevails disorder arising in Ireland can be removed. Before proout of a total deficiency of the means of ceeding to state to your Lordships what ordinary subsistence, there at the same the measure is, I will state to you what time exists a density of population without it is not. In the first place, I think it the usual resources, except in a very small material to state, after what I have heard degree, of manufactures; and without the in this House, after what I have heard usual resources, except also in a compa- elsewhere, and after what I have heard ratively limited degree of commerce:-I in this country, as well as from what repeat, my Lords, in that country there I know to be apprehended in Ireland, exists a density of population unparalleled that this Bill is utterly opposed to any geeven in those countries in which both ma-neral and permanent system of out-door nufactures and commerce flourish to the relief in Ireland. It is not therefore what utmost extent. So that, deprived of those resources which, in other countries, are the best auxiliaries, and mutually support and assist each other, and deprived of the power of drawing upon other resources at home-because it is upon the cheapest description of food that they have heretofore lived-the people of Ireland are called upon at once to find means of subsistence which in the country itself do not exist, and to make preparations for the future, to do which requires a capital which the country does not afford. I think it right to state all the difficulties of the case in their severest colours to your Lordships,

it has been described-a Bill tending to a confiscation of the property of Ireland. If the Bill had involved any such principle, I should be the last person to propose its adoption to your Lordships, because I feel convinced that whatever anticipation of preventing a recurrence of the existing calamity by the adoption of such a system, might, under misguided hopes and a blind confidence in the future, be suggested, any attempt to establish an indiscriminate right to out-door relief in Ireland must be attended with consequences fatal to that country, fatal to the property of that country, and, above all, fatal to the character

still maintain, that for the great evils now pressing upon Ireland, neither the Legislature nor the proprietors of Ireland are in any degree answerable. While I say that they are not answerable for the over

country, I know, indeed, that the proprietors might have prevented the occurrence of this contingency, if, in the exercise of their undoubted rights of property, they had, some years ago, discouraged the cultivation of the potato on their estates: but need I ask your Lordships, if they had attempted to adopt such a principle, would society have borne them out in applying it? Would not the very attempt-full of prudence, full of wisdom, and full of knowledge as it would have been-would not public indignation have stigmatized them throughout the country as tyrants, as innovators, and as destroyers of their species? and would they not have been held up, not only in Ireland, but even by some persons in the Parliament of England, who were not unwilling to embrace opportunities of attacking them, in the most odious colours? Therefore, I repeat, it was hardly to be expected from the landed proprietors of Ireland that they should have adopted that modethe only one which could have been effectual

of system. There is no noble Lord who hears me-and most of us are well acquainted by description, if not practically, with the state of Ireland—there is no noble Lord who hears me who cannot but have come to the conclusion that there is no re-whelming evil which now presses upon the medy for Ireland, that there is no safety for Ireland, but in a great, a radical, and a permanent change in the pursuits and habits and agricultural industry of the people of Ireland. To effect this, to promote this great change, to make it safe and innoeuous, instead of being mischievous and dangerous, ought to be the great object which your Lordships should keep constantly in view. What, my Lords, is the nature and extent of the danger? The customary sustenance of the people is practically gone; the potato may continue to be cultivated; it may be sown for some years to come: but no man would be justified in saying that upon the potato the population of Ireland can in future depend -yet upon the potato they have hitherto depended. But I say that now the safety of Ireland requires that there should be a change in the habits of the people; that change must be extensive; it must be general; whole districts must assume a new character-whole districts of the country that up to this moment have been never touched but by the spade, must submit to the pressure of the plough-whole bodies of the people who have lived under the assumed character of farmers, and under that character eked out a miserable existence, dependent on the accidents of nature, without resources, and without subsistence if those accidents of nature failed them, and yet who, nevertheless, have an attachment founded on hereditary habits for that particular condition of life-whole masses of these people must undergo the discipline of learning that that condition is practically gone-whole masses of the people must learn that it is only in a new condition that they can earn a more honourable and a less precarious subsistence. But these extensive changes must not be confined to the lower orders of the people; the proprietors of the land, also, must submit to a great change. The same habits in the proprietor that have led him hitherto to indulge and to protect his tenantry in this species of lazy and careless cultivation must cease, and give way to a more improved, and more enlightened, and more active course in the management of their properties. I say this, although I have maintained in this House, and do VOL. XCII. Third Series

of preventing the recurrence of the present calamity. It is, therefore, only by creating a sufficient number of stimuli to the landed proprietors and to the peasantry of Ireland that we can hope to effect that great change which shall have the effect of substituting one state of society for another in Ireland, and of raising up a degree of prosperity by their exertions, aided by the exertions of the people themselves. Who is there among your Lordships old enough or wise enough to foretell how long a time must elapse before the dislocation of all the elements of society which so great a change must disturb, can be composed and set to rest, and a reformed state of things substituted? I will venture to say that it would be as wild and absurd for any man to attempt to state the exact number of years necessary for this purpose, as it would be presumptuous in a geologist, however learned he might be, to state what was passing under the surface of the globe, and what time would be required to effect any of those great physical changes which, under the laws of Providence, were continually and gradually in progress. would be equally difficult to attempt to define by what period such changes as those to which I refer can be produced in

Ꭰ

It

from this country, with the same benevolent object; and this amount of succour and sustenance has, as I have been informed during the past week, had a material effect already in many districts in the south of Ireland; and it is a gratifying circumstance attending the supply, that it has been intrusted for distribution to the body of persons called Quakers, who are always distinguished for their benevolence and activity in the cause of charity. It is also a circumstance worthy of notice, that the first vessel sent from America with gratuitous relief for Ireland was named after the place where the first building was erected by the earliest settlers of English origin in that continent. But do your Lordships think that to such supplies as these, derived from the charity of this or other countries, the population ought to look for five years to come? My Lords, I say we must look to other means and other resources, and after carefully considering all the difficulties and all the remedies which have offered themselves, and none other have been suggested, though the most able and powerful minds have been directed to the subject; and after being so directed, and after ample opportunity has been given for forming an opinion, nothing has appeared better calculated to meet the difficulty than a qualified system of out-door relief, temporary in duration, and guarded, as it must be the wish of your Lordships to guard it, and as it is the desire of Her Majesty's Government, and of the other House of Parliament to guard it, from those abuses which

Ireland. I, therefore, appeal to your Lordships whether, during the time that this transition in the state of Ireland is going on, it is not necessary to provide for those perpetually recurring disorders which are to be expected during such a change? Supposing even that the peasantry should at once become more industrious, and that the farmers should be enabled at once to carry on great improvements and new kinds of agriculture-supposing all the elements of improvement to be set at work at once, there would still, in the preparation of society for a state altogether new, be from time to time thrown upon particular districts, and to a great extent, numbers of persons unable, without a certain degree of assistance, to support life. Where were such persons to find sustenance when those casual, but at the same time certain, disturbances took place? Some provision must be made for them, for the Government can never be insensible to the just claims of poverty. Your Lordships have seen the calamity of this year met by a degree of liberality which does honour to human nature-you have seen this calamity call forth a sympathy in Ireland and in this country, irrespective of the cause which had led to it, or of the character of the persons to whom it was extended. It has drawn forth relief from England with a liberal hand, without inquiry whether the recipient of the relief was of Irish or of English descent-whether he was Catholic or Protestant-whether he was of Saxon or of Celtic origin: it has gone forth without any of these considerations-of these vile and miserable distinctions, which II am ready to admit may be the concomihope are fast dying away, despite the wicked efforts made even now to perpetuate them in the midst of the sufferings of the people and of the trials to which they are exposed, instead of the opportunity being taken to exhibit the people of both countries, or rather of the same united country, as brethren in affection and suffering in interest. But that exhibition of sympathy, let me say and I rejoice to say it- has not been confined to Ireland and to England: it has crossed the Atlantic; and your Lordships have seen from that country where community of descent, and in some respect community of institutions, had kept alive reminiscences of Irish and of English feelings, a burst of generosity amounting, as I believe, to millions "Shall make provision for the due relief of all of dollars-has been witnessed, and has such destitute poor persons as are permanently resulted in the transmission of food to Ire-disabled from labour by reason of old age, infirland, simultaneously with the supplies sent

tants of such a system. I therefore submit to your Lordships a Bill, which is based upon this principle, and which I trust will meet with the concurrence of your Lordships. This out-door relief is not to be given as a right to all persons; but, under the responsibility of an establishment in Ireland, of the Poor Law Commissioners of Ireland, and of the Government of Ireland, to certain districts for a certain time. I proceed shortly to state what the provisions of the Bill are; I will not go through them, but will mention the clauses of the Bill which appear to me at all important. You will find that by the first of these clauses it is provided that the guardians of the poor of every union in Ireland—

titute poor persons as, being disabled by reason

mity, or bodily or mental defect, and of such des