IRELAND.

According to the Dublin correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, a mea- sure to establish a new county franchise in Ireland will be introduced early in the next session, and also to lessen the period for holding elections in counties.

"In the cities and boroughs a change has already been made, limiting the poll- ing to a single day ; but the old system still exists in the counties. . . . The lowest county qualification, at present, is a beneficial interest of 101. per annum in the holding; and this has been interpreted to mean a clear interest of 1.01. over

and above rent, rates, and charges, which a solvent tenant would be ready to pay. . . If a general election were to occur tomorrow, there are several counties, especially in the South and West, in which the constituency (limited enough for poor-rates) would be found so exhausted by famine, emigration, and the clearance system, that an election under such circumstances would be little better than a mockery. Generally throughout the country the constituencies in counties have been rapidly decaying away, from the causes I have mentioned; and even where parties remain on the register, they have in many instances lost their qualification by ceasing to occupy the land out of which they registered. In half the counties there is, in fact, no constituency deserving the name, to return representatives, if Parliament were dissolved tomorrow. In some of the Irish towns the case is bad enough. I know, for instance, one landlord in a city in the South who has fifteen houses unoccupied, and he is unable to procure solvent tenants willing to undertake a lease even at a considerably reduced rent."

The Carlow Sentinel reports a meeting of the Carlow Board of Guard- ians, at which the peculation& of local landowners were mentioned as notori- ous. Fifty athletic labourers applied to the Union for relief', stating that they were willing and anxious to work, but had been discharged from drainage works which were stopped, and must starve or have relief. Mr. Joseph Fishbourne (Inspector of Drainage) stated that there were consi- derable works in progress. He believed the river Burrin drainage was tempor- arily suspended owing to the floods. Mr. Clayton Browne had at that moment one hundred and fifty men employed in drainage and was expending every shilling of the sum obtained as a loan under the Land Improvement Act. Mr. Tighe had upwards of fifty men employed in that district. Mr. Henry Banbury of Russels- town had, he believed, obtained a loan a year since, and no portion of the instal- ment was expended on any work. The Earl of Besborough had also received ad- vances for the same district (Grangeforth), and had carried on the works; but it appeared they had been stopped—for what reason he could not state. Mr. Cooper—" It is not necessary now to refer to particulars, but I hear that many Irish gentlemen who received loans for the improvement of their properties by the employment of the labouring classes have put the money into their pockets for the present."

Mr. Joseph Fishbourne—" Some of them have put it into the Funds." (Laugh- ter.) The Board, after some further discussion, came to the following resolu- tion— " That the clerk be directed to write to those noblemen and gentlemen through- out the union who have received loans from the Board of Works under the Land Improvement Act, stating that a great number of able-bodied men are now out of employment, and liable to become chargeable to the rates of their respective elec- toral divisions, and requesting them to commence their works without delay."

At a meeting of the Royal Dublin Society, held last week, Mr. Hill read a paper on reclamation of bog-land in the county of Cork, belonging to Mr. Colthurst. Mr. Hancock observed, that the position of Mr. Colt- hurst was peculiar, and was no rule for example. If Ireland had the same laws to facilitate the advance of manufactures that Scotland has, he was sure that similar results would have followed. The Earl of Devon praised Mr. Colthurst's plan, and would be glad to see it prevalent; but he took some exceptions— There were several places in the country where the improvement of land al- ready under the plough would be far more remunerative and beneficial than the reclamation of fresh land from bogs. He agreed with Mr. Houghton (who had spoken before Mr. Hancock) in thinking that they were too apt to look to Go- vernment for help. The suggestion that Government should itself carry out Mr. Colthurst'a plans had not been overlooked when the Legislature framed an act based on the Land Commission; but the persons engaged in that Commission considered it more desirable that any money advanced should be to assist the improvement of land already reclaimed. With regard to the law as it stands at present, land might be got under good title and made productive by industry. All that was wanting was confidence. The real difficulties arose not so much Irons want of legislative interference, as from want of private industry, energy, and confidence in their own resources.

The Irish Poor-law and its defects are the subject of increasing dis- cussion. Through the columns of the Morning Chronicle, "An Anglo- Irishman" tells some facts showing that "the same law which in many unions induces habits of foresight and measures to improve the condition of the people and of the land, in other unions induces the very opposite con- sequences. He imputes the discrepancy to different circumstances, and mainly to these- " 1. The different degrees in which the population subsisted on the potato. 2. [Still more, as the writer contends] The difference between the various boards of Guardians, as to their habits ot business; the degree in which they are in- fluenced by the gentry and other educated persons, or by the priests; and more particularly, the sense, determination, and public spirit of the ex-officio Guardians. 3. [And most of all] Radical defects in the Poor-law itself."

The Anglo-Irishman argues for narrowing the area of taxation; to which argument his two stories serve as illustrations-

" A proprietor of my acquaintance in a Western county is connected with Eng land more than with Ireland. He knew the value of a small parish. He as- cordingly urged the Poor-law Commissioners, when arranging the unions through- out Ireland, to form his property into an electoral division by itself. It is large in extent, considerable in population in proportion to the arable land, and very value- less. It had been neglected for nearly a century, and, in fact, was as badly cir- cumstanced as almost any property in Ireland. The poor-rate was over 2s 8a. in the pound, while the other divisions paid 6d or is. The tenants soon thought the landlord had made a mistake in not trying to join his property to a richer dis- trict. The potato blight arrived ; and stern necessity taught the proprietor and his tenants that without a common effort, and that of no ordinary kind, their COM- mon property would be swallowed up. They begged from no one, they borrowed from the Government not a farthing ; but, as soon as the country was freed from the abominations of the Board of Works, they determined, that, as the law com- pelled them to feed the poor, (and that very properly) so, for their own sakes and that of the poor themselves, the food should be given in exchange for labour. They made roads, and repaired roads, and that at so cheap a rate as effectually to Fe- vent the frauds practised in other places; and, with the gracious though unasked assistance of the Society of Friends, they amply fed the able-bodied poor, not as paupers, but as independent labourers. Nor did their exertions cease with the fatal years 1846 and 1847. The necessity of the employment or emigration of the poor came home to every man. From the comparative smallness of the area Of taxation, every taxed man knew that he should reap the fruit of his exertions, or pay the penalty of his apathy, in these grand sources of Ireland's regeneration. And while, throughout Ireland, the poor-rates have in most places doubled and quadrupled, in that district they have diminished just one-half in the course of the last two years, and the district is improved in value to more than the amount

of the rate. _ _

"In the neighbouring union lives a proprietor devoted to the improvement of the condition of the people. He expends nearly his whole income in employing them in labour of the most productive kind. His property is in all respects but one far more favourably circumstanced than that I have pat referred to. While the former proprietor I have mentioned tea spent hundreds in the last three

years, this gentleman has spent thousands in employment of the poor. But the more he does, the less the necessity of giving employment or providing the means of emigration comes home to his neighbours, proprietors or farmers, in the same electoral division. They are coatent while they see their paupers working on his lands. A few shillings of rate are nothing, while they get so much out of their neighbours; and the result of it all is this, that he now announces, that he can fight the battle no longer—that he can still employ all his own poor, and many of his neighbours' poor, but that he cannot do this and pay almost as high a poor-rate as if he did nothing; and that if the law be not amended, he must leave the coun- try, to which be has been a blessing, and consign the hundreds hitherto employed by him to the degradation of the workhouse or the demoralisation of out-door re- lief. Such is the simple result of' a property scattered over a wide area of taxa- tion; a system which, for a short time, assists the bad and careless landlord at the expense of the liberal and enlightened, paralyzes the efforts of all classes to stem the tide of pauperism, and finally overwhelms all in universal ruin." Through the same channel, Mr. Poulett Scrope contends against the narrowing of the area of taxation to a township area; showing that it will not, as its advocates maintain, encourage the good landlord to provide for the poor, but will help to produce the opposite result-

" An estate-area of taxation I Why, it is known that wherever in England a parish is the property of one individual, (a close parish,. as it is called,) in spite of

or rather in consequence of our law of settlement, it is cleared as a matter of course, so far as is possible, of all resident population. The very labourers who are necessary to till the soil are often forced to reside in other parishes, though at a distance from their work; by which a manifest injustice is inflicted on the rate- payers of the adjoining 'open' parishes. Far from saddling the 'poor-rate on the right party, an estate-area of charge has practically, as we see here, exactly the

opposite effect, of enabling proprietors to shift their just share of the burden upon their neighbours' shoulders; thus creating the very evil which we want to cure in Ireland."

Mr. Scrope suggests a different plan of attaining the desired control over the ill-conducted landlord-

" Let us suppose the area of charge left as it stands under the existing law' a separate rate being struck (as is generally considered desirable) for the relief of

the able-bodied poor of the electoral division. Let every townland—or, if it be

preferred, every estate, or even every farm—be exempted from this rate, which

can show that it has provided i employment and maintenance to its full proportion of the stock of able-bodied labourers n the division. If not, tax it to the 'la- bour-rate' in the degree which it has failed to do this. The details of the plan might be easily arranged, if' the principle be admitted. The experience of those English parishes which adopted this system in a variety of modifications, under the act passed expressly for the purpose of sanctioning it—the 2d and 3d Will. IV. c. 96—would be of great service in determining the best form to snit the cir- cumstances of Ireland. That experience, on the whole, demonstrated the prin-

ciple involved in the scheme, although unfitted for town divisions, and inexpedient as a permanent system of poor-law, to be peculiarly fitted to effect in a rural dis- trict, such as the greater number Of electoral divisions in Ireland, and in a period of industrial paralysis from the pressure of unproductive pauperism,—the precise operation which is at this moment imperatively necessary for the salvation of that country, namely, to take the whole body of the idle paupers from the roads, gra- vel-pits, quarries, and workhouses and cause them to be set to work productively on the improved cultivation of the land. Any one who will refer to the original reports printed by the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the Poor-laws, in 1834, upon this subject, will see that wherever the system was introduced in a tolerably fair shape, under such circumstances, that was the invariable result. Even the Commissioners themselves, while condemning it, with justice, as a per- manent system, say, There appears to be no doubt that its adoption has in many instances produced an immediate Improvement in the condition and cha- racter of the labourers within its operation. [Report, 1834; page 216.] Its effect in the reduction of the poor-rate was immediate and unquestionable."

The Northern Counties of Ireland are disturbed by outrages of an agrarian character. Incendiary fires are frequent in the county Down. Simultaneous attempts to fire the rick-yards of six large farmers in that county were made on the night of Saturday last; and a large part of the property was destroyed. An attempt was made last week to blow up the house of Mr. Cecil Wray, at Ardnamona; or at least to blow up rooms which inmates frequented. Two barrels of gunpowder were exploded under the window-sill of a room: everything near the explosion was shattered, but the inmates bad retired to bed in the upper rooms, and so escaped. In consequence of this state of things, the Government, on Wed- nesday, iesued.a proclamation placing a part of the county Down under the operation of the Prevention of Crime in Ireland Act, from Monday the 8th instant.

Mr. John O'Connell renews his efforts to resuscitate the Repeal agita- tion with a New-year's gift to the people of Ireland, in the shape of a London letter to the papers, measuring a yard and upwards of small type. A few phrases will indicate the nature of this composition.

• He accounts for the repression of the late insurrection by declaring there were no insurgents—" It was not the soldiery, it was not the police that era-bed at once the miserable attempt of July last; it was the good sense of the people of Ireland themselves." As, however, he believes "there is no man like the Irish- man—no man so true, no man so good, no man so capable of great and noble ac- tions, no man so deserving of being free,"—he is ready to make a fresh sacrifice of himself: "I will die or do my part to make such a man a freeman in his own land !" He calls on all alike to join in the "glorious struggle"; propitiating the Protest- ants by vilifying "the wretched and filthy flood of so called Radicalism," which, as he congratulates them, was voluntarily stemmed by themselves last summer. "We have but to will it, and our beloved country shall arise even from this degrada- tion." At all events, he will try—"I will call together here [in London] those Repeal Wardens who have remained true to the old principles of our movement ; and, without giving offence to those who unhappily separated from us, we shall reorganize the London Committee of Repeal Wardens, as a model and example to others to prepare the way for the speedy reestablishment, in all its usefulness, and upon its old, ever inviolate, and ever glorious principles, of the association founded by Daniel O'Connell—the Loyal National Repeal Association of Ireland." After " closing " his letter with allusions to the " prating Clarendon, and his re- puted adviser," the "Anti-Irish, Tory-Whig, Mr. Wilson," he revives again to "add one reflection more," in about a hundred additional lines. Finally, he ex- claims to his countrymen—" In the name of our bleeding and prostrate country," of our religion," "and in the sacred and most adorable name of God," "1 adjure you, good, moral, religions, pure and high-souled people of Ireland, to join in one great peaceful effort more; and we shall assuredly and speedily accomplish the restoration of our own Parliament, and see our beloved country once more resume ;her rightful and glorious place among the nations of the earth."