FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.

MR. T. S. DUNCOMBE, in pursuance of the Notice he had given, rose to ask leave to bring in a Bill to amend an Act of the fourth and fifth year of his late Majesty Will. IV., relating to friendly societies, in order to give protection to those very valuable institutions. The first Act that had been passed for the regulation of those societies was the 10th Geo. IV., cap. 56, which was amended by the 4th and 5th Will IV., cap. 40. The object of those Acts was declared to be to give greater security and power to extend the objects of friendly societies for any purposes which were not illegal. Now it would appear to every one not learned in the law, that those words were sufficiently comprehensive; but he was sorry to say, that very lately a doubt had arisen upon the subject, in consequence of a case which had been tried in the Court of Queen's Bench, in which Mr. Justice Wightman had pronounced judgment. That judgment had had the effect of paralysing the certificate given to those societies. The case had

66

6

houses were wrongly situated (and there he should beg to say, that he hoped all lighthouses would be placed under the management of the Government shortly) he did not mean to say; but he thought that a strict inquiry ought to be instituted.

arisen in consequence of a dispute between | In moving for those Reports, he had no the directors and one of the members wish to cast blame on any one; but where (named Scott) of the South Shields Invest- they saw out of 415 persons who left Liverment Friendly Loan Society. That so- pool on board that ship, that no fewer than ciety had duly submitted its rules to Mr. 369 were lost, it did appear that something Tidd Pratt, who had certified it in 1841. should be done to investigate the cause, to The directors, on the dispute arising with prevent a recurrence of such a calamity, Scott, summoned him duly before the ma- and to preserve the lives of people in fugistrates; but they refused to entertain ture. Whether there was a defect in the the case, which was finally and conse- ship, or whether the officers were to blame quently brought before the Court of Queen's-whether the charts on board were defecBench, when it was ruled by Mr. Justice tive or incorrect, or whether the lightWightman, that the society did not come under the provisions of the law. The learned Judge had said, "I am of opinion this society is not a friendly society, and that the words, for any purposes which are not illegal,' must be considered so as to bear some relation to the objects of the Act." Now, it would be probably found that two-thirds of the friendly societies in the kingdom might be disputed on the same grounds, and the object of his Amendment was simply to make more plain the meaning of the words, purpose which is not illegal." Those societies were most valuable, and it would be a very serious detriment to their utility if they were not supported in time. The Amendment which he was about to propose had received the approval of all the persons connected with loan societies to whom he had submitted it, and it had the approval also of Mr. Tidd Pratt. With respect to the opinion of Mr. Justice Wightman, he should say that the Solicitor General had given another opinion, to the effect that Mr. Tidd Pratt was right in certifying to that very society the rules of which were now doubted. The Solicitor General had given a similar opinion with regard to another friendly society; and when they saw such doubts upon the subject it was evidently highly necessary that they should be removed. He, therefore, asked permission of the House, and the right hon. Baronet, to bring in a Bill to amend the law relating to friendly societies.

66

MR. G. W. HOPE wished merely to state, without offering any opposition to the Motion, that the vessel alluded to was a remarkably well found ship. She had an experienced captain, and her owners were most respectable. It should also be remembered that out of above 50,000 persons carried out to the Australian Colonies, under a similar system, the unfortunate case under consideration was the very first loss that had been sustained. Returns ordered.

FAMINE AND DISEASE IN IRELAND. MR. O'CONNELL rose to call the attention of the House to the state of famine

and disease in Ireland.

to

move

His intention was

"That this House will, on Monday next, re

solve itself into a Committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the State of Ireland, with a view to devise means to relieve the Distress of the Irish People; "

and it was a Motion to which he respectfully demanded the utmost attention of the House. The importance of the subject was of itself sufficient to demand attention; but he should have been spared the whole of his labour had it suited the purpose of the right hon. Baronet, in the course of his speech on the previous night, to state what were the intentions of the Government with regard to Ireland. That, he begged to remind hon. Members, was no party question; he certainly introduced the subject without any party motive or party object. He was moved by no partisan feeling; nor did he expect that he should be met by any any party opposition. He was sure that all parties would agree with him in feeling deep anxiety at the prospect of distress; and that thus the House would come fairly to the consideration of the subject, without

vest.

lion fewer human beings in Ireland between 1831 and 1841 than there had been between 1821 and 1831. One of the topics in connexion with the state of slavery in the West Indies, which made the strongest impression from the lips of Sir Fowell Buxton, was the circumstance that the black population had decreased; but his case was not so striking as that of Ireland. The next public document to which he begged leave to refer, was the Report of the Commissioners of Poor Law Inquiry in 1835; they had been appointed by the House to investigate the state of destitution in Ireland, and they distinctly stated that 2,300,000 of the agricultural population were in a constant state approaching to starvation. For several weeks in the year they lived on the charity of their neighbours. The last Population Returns of 1841 showed that, out of the whole

bias or prepossession. It was certain that | between 1821 and 1831, but confined themthere was a fearful prospect of a most cala- selves to the emigration between 1831 and mitous season before the people of Ireland. 1841: there was no reason at all to imaThe extent of that calamity had been dis-gine that the emigration was less between puted, and there had been a time when 1821 and 1831, than it had been between there was a prospect of some portion of it 1831 and 1841. This fact, therefore, being possibly averted; but he believed stared him full in the face. that in ten that hope had now quite vanished. The years the population went back half a milcalamity was pressing, was imminent-lion; there was an increase of half a milmore pressing, more imminent, and more fearful than that House was aware of. In order to understand it, it was right that the House should be made aware of the state of Ireland before the calamity had impended. That calamity, they should observe, was not one brought on by any fault of the Irish people. It was not a consequence of the sterility of the Irish soil. The country had enjoyed an abundant harThat calamity was a dispensation of Providence, and they should bow to the will of an all-dispensing Power, whilst they fulfilled the duties of charitable Christians, and endeavoured to mitigate the evils that might arise. But to enable them to relieve the distress, it would be necessary for the House to understand the previous state of Ireland; and he was sorry to have to state in the commencement that, from the public documents, it appeared that, for several years past, the population of Ireland, in-rural population of Ireland, 46 per cent. stead of increasing, according to the rules lived in a single room; the entire human of nature, and as in other countries, had family and the pigs occupied the same been failing and wasting away. But the apartment together. The next fact was, condition of the people, especially of the that of the civil population—that is, of agricultural population, had been long the inhabitants of towns-36 per cent. known to be miserably wretched. The lived in a single room, and that two or agricultural population had been long de- three families sometimes occupied the same scribed as ground down by famine and room. Perhaps the most important dodistress. All accounts agreed in describ-cument of all was the Report of Lord ing them as in a state of actual starvation. Devon's Commission; it had been directed Now, he did not propose to call upon the to that noble Lord and four others, and House to believe any mere assertions of his. He had no intention of asking them to believe anything he did not prove by documents. He meant to show, from documents of the most unquestionable character, the increasing misery of the Irish nation. The first document would be an abstract of the Population Returns for 1821, 1831, and 1841, by which the following facts were placed beyond a doubt. Between 1821 and 1831, the population of Ireland increased nearly a million, viz., 965,570 souls; but between 1831 and 1841 the increase had only been about half that number, or 437,980 souls. Attempts had been made to account for this decrease

perhaps a better Commission was never formed by the hands of any Government. It was impossible to believe that they were deceived themselves, or that they meant to deceive others, and the following were the terms they used, warranted by the evidence they had taken, and their own observations:—

"That the agricultural labourers of Ireland suffer the greatest privations and hardships; that they depend upon precarious and casual employment for subsistence; that they are badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for their labour; that it would be impossible to describe adequately the sufferings and privations which the cottiers and labourers and their families in most parts of the country endure; that in many by the increase of emigration; but the ar-beverage water; that their cabins are seldom a districts their only food is the potato, their only gument was most unsatisfactory. Those protection against the weather; that a bed or who used it gave no returns of emigration blanket is a rare luxury; and that nearly in all,

An

their pig and their manure heap constitute their | sioners called upon the Government and only property; that a large proportion of the en- the Parliament to give their best attention tire population comes within the designation of agricultural labourers, and endure sufferings great- to their condition, with some confidence er than the people of any other country in Europe that the call would be responded to. other matter of commendation on the part of the Commissioners, was the habits of temperance of the Irish peasantry :

have to sustain."

Hon. Members would recollect that these
were not the assertions of demagogues,
or even of persons interested in reporting
exaggerated scenes of misery; they were
the distinct and emphatic statements of
men above all suspicion, and beyond the
belief that they could have been imposed
upon. The rural population in the last
census was calculated at seven millions,
and five millions of these were in the con-
dition described in the Report of the Earl
of Devon's Commission. It was a Report
made forty-five years after the Union with
England-after the Union with the richest
and most industrious country on the face
of the earth; and what did the Commis-
sioners say but that the agricultural popu-
lation of Ireland was badly fed, badly
clothed, badly housed-that their food was
potatoes, their drink water, and that they
endured greater privations than the pea-
santry of any other country of Europe.
He would appeal to hon. Gentlemen who
listened to him, whether this was not
a frightful state of society. They must
remember that the Irish did not govern
themselves, that there was no Irish Par-
liament, and that after a government by
England of forty-five years duration, this
was the result. He would not enter into
all the topics this part of the question pre-
sented: he would only put it distinctly to
those who heard him, that they were re-
sponsible for the present condition of Ireland.
If England could not govern her, she
ought to abdicate; but if she continued to
attempt it, she was bound to rescue the
people of Ireland from their present misery.
This Report, too, was not made in a year
of calamity, a year of famine, but in 1844,
when the harvest was abundant, and com-
paratively little distress was known in Ire-
land: it was made at a period of compara-
tive comfort, if he might use the expres-
sion, of comparative freedom from calamity.
It might be said that it was the fault of
the Irish people; but Lord Devon's Re-
port did not say so. The Commissioners
had reported two points: the first was,
that "the patient endurance which the
labourers exhibit is deserving of high com-
mendation, entitling them to the best at-
tention of Government and Parliament."
The Irish people were therefore not to
blame for their misery; and the Commis-

"Up to this period (they said) any improvement that may have taken place is attributable

almost entirely to the habits of temperance in which they have so generally persevered, and not, we grieve to say, to any increased demand for their labour.”

In addressing himself, therefore, to the present distressed state of the inhabitants, he carried with him the hope that he had impressed upon the House the real claims of the sufferers. What had they to fall back upon at this moment? Potatoes were their only food-their only drink water; and they had neither bed nor blanket to cover them from the cold. It was singular enough that they were threatened now with this calamity; it was not to be attributed to the population-to any refusal to labour and cultivate the soil. He had two Parliamentary documents before him to show how unfounded was any charge of that kind. The first was this

"An account of the quantities of wheat, barley, oats, wheat flour, and oatmeal imported into Great Britain from Ireland, in the years 1842, 1843, 1844, and 1845, distinguishing the

each

year:

Oatmeal.

quantities in

That Return gave this result; that 2,145,772 | in the potato crop; of 130 Poor Law Unions, not quarters of grain were imported from Ire- one is exempt; of 2,058 electoral divisions, above land into England, and 2,481,564 cwts. of and we have no certainty, until the receipt of the 1,400 are certainly reported as having suffered; flour and meal; showing that there was an more minute returns, now in progress of comabundant crop in Ireland last year; that pletion, that the remaining 600 have altogether while her people were starving she produced escaped." a large quantity of grain and meal for the consumption of England. The second Parliamentary document he had to refer to, was

"An account of all cattle, sheep, and swine, imported into Great Britain from Ireland, from the 10th day of October, 1845, to the 5th day of January, 1846. Oxen, bulls, and cows, 32,883; calves, 583; sheep and lambs, 32,576; swine, 104,141."

These two documents proved an anomalous state of society to exist in Ireland; for while the country produced such abundance, the inhabitants were starving. So blessed was she by Providence; so cursed by man! Others might account for it as they could; but the fact was indisputable, that the best state of society there, was the worst in other parts of the globe. Having shown what Ireland was, even in the best times, he would now advert to the extent and formidable nature of the calamity by which she was now visited. The documents he should first employ for this purpose, were such as had been furnished by Government; and with some of them hon. Gentlemen must be familiar: to them the reading might seem tedious; but it was his duty to lay the case of Ireland, in the fullest manner, before the House; and on this account he trusted he should be excused if he offered a few known details. The subsequent passage was contained in the Report of Messrs. Lindley and Playfair, dated November 15, 1845:—

That Commission had corresponded with nearly all the local authorities in Ireland; and the following was the conclusion at which it had arrived, after having written 362 letters to obtain correct information:

Provinces.

Ulster

Munster......

Leinster......

Connaught...

...

...

"During our stay in Ireland, we carefully examined such official Papers as were transmitted to us from the Castle; we consulted persons acquainted with the facts of the disease; we visited the A more authentic document could not be district lying between Dublin and Drogheda; and inspected various potato fields and stores in the produced; and the accuracy of its details counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath, Westmeath, and might, therefore, be fully relied upon. Sir part of Kildare. Judging from the evidence thus Lucius O'Brien, at first, had been difficult collected, and, from what we have seen of the pro- to be persuaded of the extent of the disease gress of the disease in England, we can come to in the potatoes; but he had subsequently no other conclusion than that one-half of the po-waited on the Lord Lieutenant, and had tato crop of Ireland is either destroyed or remains in a state unfit for the food of man. We, moreover, feel it our duty to apprize you, that we fear

this to be a low estimate."

admitted that he had been mistaken, and that it prevailed to the excess that had been stated. He need not remind the House of the documents read by the right

The next extract he would read was from the Report of the Commissioners of In-hon. Baronet in his speech last night. Hon. quiry at Dublin Castle; and the House would observe that it was a remarkable paragraph:

"It appears from undoubted authority, that of 32 counties in Ireland, not one has escaped failure

Members would be aware how fully, deeply, and entirely, they corroborated the representation he had given upon the subject, without any point of mitigation: misery, poverty, famine, and disease, were the fea