CHAP. further reported, that no less than 2,385,000 persons in XXXVI. Ireland are in distress, and require relief, at least thirty 1836. weeks in the year; that themselves, their wives, and children, are absolutely compelled, however reluctant, to beg; and that mendicancy is the sole resource of the aged and impotent classes of the poor generally, whereby encouragement is given to idleness, imposture, and crime. All this obtained in a country where the landed rental was £13,000,000 a-year, being 250 per cent more than that of Scotland! Such was the state of a country, as brought out by their own commissioner, for which Government and its Liberal patriots had hitherto resisted all port; Parl. motions for a poor-rate, and for which they thought the 465; Ann. appropriate remedies were, to divert £100,000 a-year from the Church to education purposes, and to give every starving householder paying £5 a municipal vote!1 1 Mr Ni choll's Re Deb. xxxvi. Reg. 1836, 308. 48. English Tithe Bill, No sooner was this report printed, than Mr Scrope, M.P. for Stroud, brought forward a motion founded on and for re- it, for immediately coming to a decision on the point of a of births, poor-law in Ireland, with a view to remedying the evils. deaths, and indicated. Government, however, having declared that gistration marriages. they had the subject under consideration, and would be prepared to bring forward a measure next session, the labour, the occupation of a piece of ground is to the peasant the only means of subsistence. Land to them is a necessary of life. A man cannot obtain a livelihood as a day-labourer; he must get a plot of ground on which to raise potatoes, or starve. Mendicancy is almost universal, and has therefore ceased to be disgraceful. It is not disreputable to appear wretchedly clothed, or without the decencies of life. Drunkenness is much more common among the Irish than in England. Notwithstanding the evident poverty of the people, the use of whisky and tobacco is excessive, and is said to be increasing. Much of the disorders and violence which prevail may be traced to this source. There is a depression of feeling, morally and personally, among the peasantry; they have no pride in, or desire to better their condition. Their desultory habits are very remarkable. They postpone any business, even the most necessary to the safety of their little crop, to a fair or a market. Their own work is soon done, or they think may be soon done; hence arises a total disregard of the value of time. At present, the burden of the poor falls entirely upon the poor; the higher classes generally, and the absentees entirely, escape it altogether. The poor at present are the sole providers for their own necessities each out of his little holding. Hence the agrarian outrages to prevent their being deprived of them; and hence the kind of famine which annually occurs in Ireland, between the going out of the old crop and the coming in of the new.”—Mr NICHOLL's Report, Nov. 23, 1836; Ann. Reg. 1836, pp. 63, 66. CHAP. XXXVI. 1836. matter was wisely left in their hands. In the mean time, the House of Commons passed several measures of unquestionable utility, and which, not being party questions, were agreed to by the Lords, and have been found by experience to be attended by the most beneficial results. The first of them was a bill for facilitating the commutation of tithes in England, a most important and praiseworthy object, and which goes far to remove those heartburnings inevitable, where tithe is liable to be drawn in kind in a community much divided in religious persuasion. The machinery by which this was to be effected, was borrowed from Sir R. Peel's bill on the same subject in the preceding year, and it passed without opposition. The second was a bill permitting the celebration of marriages by Dissenters, also taken from Sir R. Peel's bill of the preceding year, and which had met with their entire approbation. This change was highly proper; but the result has proved that, like many other grievances loudly complained of by particular sections of the community, it was practically felt by a very inconsiderable portion of them, for the marriages under the new form authorised by the act have never exceeded a few hundreds a-year. The third was a bill for the establishment of a general system for the registration of births, deaths, and marriages; a most important object, fraught, as the event has proved, with the most valuable results, and which has gone far to relieve the imputation under which Great Britain has so long laboured, of being behind the Continental nations in statistical information. Still more important to individuals, and the protection of innocence in the administration of justice, was a bill which at length, by the indefatigable exertions of Mr Ewart, passed both houses, allowing prisoners, in cases of felony in England, the benefit of counsel to address the jury-though the 1 Ann. Reg. English system of giving the prosecutor the last word, if 1835, iii. evidence was led by the prisoner, was still adhered to.1 166. This just and humane change, like many of the other greatest improvements of English legislation during the 152,165, CHAP. last half-century, was borrowed from the immemorial XXXVI. practice of Scotland. 49. ral Distress of currency tion. 1836. The extreme depression of the agricultural interest, Agricultu- owing to the unparalleled low prices of the preceding Committee, year, compelled Government to give way on the subject; and refusal and Lord John Russell, on the 8th February, moved for investiga- and obtained a committee to inquire into the subject, on the very reasonable ground that, "whenever any great branch of national industry was materially depressed, it was the duty of Parliament to give a favourable consideration to the complaints of those engaged in it, even though there was no reason to think that the distress complained of could be relieved by parliamentary interference." A motion of Mr Attwood, however, for an instruction to the committee to inquire into the currency laws as affecting the interests of agriculture, was so unfavourably received by the house that it was withdrawn without a division. A motion brought forward by Lord Chandos, on the 27th April, that, in any reduction of taxation which might be practicable, the interests of agriculture should be specially attended to, was lost by a majority of 36, the numbers being 208 to 172. Sir R. Peel and Sir J. Graham both spoke against it, though it was admitted on all sides that the agricultural interest was alone in deep depression, while other interests in the community were in great prosperity, and that out of £8,000,000 taxes remitted during the last five years, £7,500,000 had gone to relieve the manufacturers or general consumers, and only £500,000 bore directly on the agricultural interest. Already it was evident that the balance of the landed and commercial interests had been entirely changed by the Reform Bill; and to the observant eye, these finance measures were fraught with the shadow of mighty changes at no distant period.1 1 Ann. Reg. 219-231. The general prosperity of the commercial and manufacturing classes, notwithstanding the distress of the agricultural, however, enabled the Chancellor of the Exchequer XXXVI. 1836. 50. to exhibit a more favourable account of the finances in CHAP. his budget than had been anticipated in the preceding year. He stated the total income of the nation at £46,980,000, while its expenditure was £45,205,807, The Budget. leaving a surplus of £1,774,193; which, however, would be reduced to £662,000 from the circumstance of £1,111,633 being absorbed by the interest on the West India loan, now become a permanent charge on the nation. The estimates included £434,000 for 5000 seamen additional voted last year; but there was a reduction of £154,000 on the charges for the army. The taxes taken off were very trifling, being chiefly on paper; and newspaper stamps were reduced from 4d. to 1d., which, upon a division, was carried by a majority of 241 to 208 against an amendment, that the surplus of the national income should be applied to a reduction of the duty on soap. If the division last mentioned indicated the ascendancy of the commercial interest over the landed in the House of Commons, it was no less significant of the fact, that the newspaper influence was becoming superior to both. As to the National Debt, for which Parliament had pledged itself in 1821 to keep up a real sinking fund of £5,000,000, it was of common consent ignored, and scarce anything was ever heard 250.' on the subject again in Parliament.1 1 Parl. Deb. Ann. Reg. xxxi, 1230; 1836, 234, 51. weakness of The grant of five thousand men for the navy, though strenuously objected to by Mr Joseph Hume and the Deplorable Radicals in Parliament, was amply vindicated by the the navy state of the British naval force, as compared with that of and army. the neighbouring nations. It was stated on 4th March, in moving the naval estimates, by Mr Charles Wood on the part of Government: "From the best information Government could obtain, the French will have twelve sail of the line at sea during the ensuing summer. In 1834 the Russians had five sail of the line cruising in the Black Sea, and eighteen sail of the line, besides frigates, in the Baltic. Last summer two divisions, of nine sail of the line each, appeared together at a review XXXVI. 1836. CHAP. at Cronstadt; and after landing troops for a review at Kalisch, eleven sail of the line and seven frigates, besides smaller vessels, carrying crews amounting to more than 10,000 men, were cruising in the Baltic. During this same period there never were in our Channel ports more than two frigates and a sloop, with crews amounting perhaps to 1000 men, disposable for sea at any one time, and that only for a day or two. At the same time the whole line-of-battle ships this nation had afloat in every part of the world did not exceed ten." Mr Hume contended that "the marine force was too numerous. So much was said about Russia, that gentlemen are afraid of a bugbear of their own creation." Sir R. Peel, however, supported the proposed addition of 5000 men, and it was carried without a division. The land forces voted for the year were 81,319 men, excluding India, of whom more than half were absorbed in the colonies. At this time France had 360,000 regular soldiers in arms, besides three times that number of national guards. Mr Hume, however, moved a reduction of this force by 5000 men. "England," said he, "is a civil, not a military country; and I wish to see an end put to that vicious system which has arisen out of our late wars, the maintenance of a preposterously large military force during peace. No real friend of the Government wished them to keep such a force. The Tories might. They were consistent men, attached by system to large establishments and great expense; but no well-wisher to the Government would support them to enlarge the present unnecessary force, or maintain it 1 Parl. Deb, without diminution. I think that not merely 5000 men, xxxi. 1231, but 15,000 men, may be saved: and as to Ireland, the 214-219; putting down the Orange lodges will render the presence of the military unnecessary." The reduction was only outvoted by a majority of 126 to 43.1 and xxxii. Ann. Reg. 1836, 251. While such were the naval and military establishments of the country, when such formidable forces by sea and land were on foot in the neighbouring kingdoms, it could not be said that it was in ignorance of the state of the |