29 DECEMBER 1849, Page 7

Lord Cloncurry has taken the opportunity made by the necessity

for contradicting an erroneous statement of his opinion upon agricultural protection, to address a lengthened communication to the Sheriff of Kildare, containing his opinion on that subject and the other political questions now 000upying public attention; arguing in the main for Repeal, and against Protection.

He advocates the reconstruction of the Irish Parliament, with an enlarged franchise and small electoral districts; its emancipation by Repeal, the kingdom remaining connected with the Sovereign of the empire through a responsible Irish Minister, and, especially, by sweeping away that nidus of corruption and meanness the Lord-Lieutenancy. I have known some two dozen occupants of that office, and among them all there were not six possessed of common sense or common honesty; there were scarcely two who did not leave Ireland more ignorant of her condition and wants than when they first set foot on her shore: a paradox which I can only explain by the supposition that there is something debasing in the nature of that pinch- beck royalty, a atupifying influence in the limited atmosphere of the mock court. The eavesdroppers, and secret letter-writers, and hired slanderers and runners, who most do congregate in the Castle, work, of course, in their vocation; but the mar- vel is, that the Viceregal mind should assimilate itself to theirs, and that even a man like Lord Clarendon, who years ago possessed a personal knowledge of Ire- land which Spanish habits could scarcely have blotted from his memory, could not become the sun of that smallest of microcosms without merging his statecraft in the petty arts of faction; and, while at the head of fifty thousand soldiers, seeking to govern by the aid of five hundred Orangemen in buckram." Upon the assumption that "Ireland's industry demands support" he takes definitive issue. " This I deny. Her industry and her agriculture suffer in- deed a want, but it is the want to be let alone,"—freedom from absurd laws to

i restrict the importation of food, from a poor-law tax of nearly two millions ster- ling, from excise-laws that restrain the free use of the land, with property-Laws that restrain its free sale. A free trade in the soil, and an abolition of feudal customs, would render it impossible to snatch from the lips of the cultivator his proper share of the crop. " Under such circumstances, were a sudden destruc- tion of the food of the peasant to occur, an English Secretary would not (as one did three years ago) reply to my proposition to enforce the Irish statute em- powering the Lord-Lieutenant and Council to stop distillation and the export of grain, that if such a thing were done the absentee owners of Irish lands would put out his party in a couple of weeks."

The Dublin correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, writing on Thursday, reports the progress of the Encumbered Estates Commission— "The number of petitions lodged up to the present time is 243, being a very considerable increase within the last week or two. Upwards of 100 absolute orders for the sales of estates have been pronounced, and the Commissioners are proceed- ing to adjudicate upon others with the despatch consistent with the peculiar cir- cumstances of the parties interested as inheritors or creditors. It is likely that early in the spring the actual sales will commence; but it is manifest that the Commissioners are determined to act with great care and circumspection in the disposal of estates, in order to prevent any glut in the market and to secure the best prices that can possibly be obtained."

The Dublin Newsletter announces that the Presidentship of the Galway College has become vacant by the death of the Very Reverend Dean Kir- wan.

The Freeman's Journal states that the Very Reverend Dr. Cullen, Pre- sident Of the Irish College in Rome, has been appointed successor to the late Archbishop Crolly as Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland.

The Great Southern and Western Railway Company have so reduced the tariff of charges for the carriage of meat, poultry, vegetables, &c., that any oue residing in Dublin may obtain these necessary articles of food from the country at the provincial prices.