Ir is unnecessary to remind our readers, that on more than one occasion we pointed out to the late so-called Conservative administration the dangers to which they were exposing the country, and the misfortunes which were sure to arise from the fatal policy which they had adopted for the government of Ireland. We told them on those occasions, that the lax manner in which the laws were administered, and the indecisive conduct of the Executive, would lead to the state of things which we then foresaw, and which all parties now deplore. We warned them, that tampering with the incipient evil, instead of boldly striking at its root, would advance its growth instead of diminishing its power; and that the welfare of all classes imperatively demanded at their hands the repression not only of crime itself, but of those causes to which the origin of crime was clearly traceable. Unhappily our advice was unheeded. The Peel government persevered in the same course which its Whig predecessors had pursued, mented the obstacles which impeded the due administration of the laws, and retarded the pacification of the country by the culpable lenity which marked their proceedings against those who perpetrated crime, as well as towards those, still more criminal, who countenanced and abetted its commission.

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The law which empowered the Crown to challenge improper jurors, rendered a dead letter by the Whigs in order to conciliate Mr O'Connell, was allowed so to remain by the Tories; and thus accomplices of the criminals in the dock became arbiters of their associates' fate in the jurybox; and it is unnecessary to say how much the impunity procured by this means tended to increase the audacity of the violators of the law, and to deter the mass of the people from having recourse to the tribunals of the country for justice and protection.

An association openly aiming at the dismemberment of the empire was

VOL. LXIII.-NO. CCCLXXXVII.

not only allowed to pursue its seditious course in peace, but its leader was flattered and courted in the senate, until, imboldened by the subserviency of his opponents, and pressed on by the impatience of his followers, he assumed such a menacing position, as compelled the interference of the constituted authorities. He was condemned, imprisoned, released, and permitted again to talk his treason and boast his triumph to an ignorant and excitable people, who witnessed his success without being able to appreciate the causes to which it was attributable. While the feelings of the people were being acted upon by the orators of Conciliation Hall, the English press accomplished the triumph of agrarian outrage by the course which, with few exceptions, was adopted by the leading organs of public opinion. The unfounded statements of the demagogues, both lay and clerical, were adopted with avidity, and commented on with surpassing ability. In every instance the falsehood of those premeditated lies was subsequently established, but that did not prevent the adoption of every future tale, even though emanating from the same polluted source. The strictures based on those untruths were assiduously copied into the Irish papers; and, palliating as they did the crimes of the peasantry, by the ridicule, contempt, and detestation which they excited against the owners of the land, they tended not only to provoke and encourage the peasantry to resistance of the law, but the effect produced by their simulated horrors on the public mind tied up the hands of the Executive, and rendered the acquiescence of Parliament, in such measures as might be necessary for the preservation of the public peace, a thing scarcely to be expected or hoped for, even had the administration the good sense or the manliness to determine on demanding them. The writers in the English press denounced the landlords, under all circumstances, and for all manner of causes. If one of them dispossessed some of his tenantry who held por

H

tions of the soil too small to afford them support, even though given for nothing, in order that the holdings of the others should be enlarged to such a size as would enable them to live in comfort, he was denounced as an exterminator, even though he largely remunerated, and then at his own expense sent the dispossessed to countries where land was abundant and labour remunerative, and to which the most affluent of their neighbours were every day voluntarily emigrating. If, deterred by the abuse of the press and the denunciations of the priest, he allowed them to continue in the same state of misery and destitution in which he found them, he was represented as heedless and unfeeling, and the poverty of his tenantry (which, though willing, he dared not remedy) was made an article of dittay against him. If he endeavoured to enforce his rents, he was a tyrant. If he allowed them (as did Mr Ormsby Gore,) from mistaken compassion, to run ten and twelve years in arrear, he was pronounced to be "culpably negligent." In fact, no matter what he did, he was wrong; and in their desire to convict the Irish proprietors, the press acted on the principle of the Cork juror-“ If he did not murder the man, my Lord, he stole my gray mare.'

To the many internal causes which tended to aggravate the evils of Ireland, another, and one arising from circumstances of an extraneous nature, was added. The British minister determined to abolish the corn laws-to shelter himself against the attacks of his betrayed followers, and to enlist public sympathy in his support. He fabricated an Irish famine a year before that scourge actually visited the land; and, to prove the sincerity of his convictions and the truth of his statements, he had recourse to the establishment of food depots at the public expense, and to the system of public works, which effectually demoralised the bulk of the population; and the pernicious consequences of these measures, although now fully admitted, are yet far from having arrived at that portentous magnitude which they are daily threatening to assume.

While those continued and unre

mitting attacks of the English press led the peasantry to look with distrust and hatred on the class above them, the system of gratuitous relief and remuneration without labour, which Sir Robert Peel was forced to adopt, in order to evince his own conviction as to the truth of his statements in the House of Commons, told with fearful effect on the morals of the people; for if it was no crime to destroy a tyrant, so it was considered no disgrace to beg instead of to earn; and men who a few months before would have blushed at the thoughts of receiving public relief, were seen daily seeking for their rations, although they had cows, horses, and sheep, and in many instances profitable employment, which they abandoned to obtain gratuitous support. With a feeble and apathetic government, and with a powerful and talented press advocating their cause, influencing public opinion in their favour, and attributing with success to the misconduct of others the misery and destitution fairly assignable to their own indolence and dishonesty, it is not much to be wondered at, that the Irish peasantry should have become still more reckless and inattentive than they were before. When the principal protection which the law provided for the due administration of justice was withdrawn, it is not surprising that they should have become still more turbulent and criminal; and with the fierce denunciations of the lay and clerical demagogues ringing in the ears of an excitable and ignorant people, we cannot marvel at the scenes of horror and the deeds of death now enacting in their degraded country. And yet even the appalling catalogue laid before Parliament, gives but a faint idea of the fearful state of society in Ireland. It is but a list of the "faits accomplis;" and cannot depict the condition of those unhappy men who "live in death," who know their doom has been sealed, whose execution is openly spoken of as a thing certain to occur, who have no protection but God's mercy to rely on, and who are so circumstanced, in many instances, as not to have the means of fleeing from a country which has become the charnel-house of their class. And who can paint the feelings

of the wives and families of those unfortunates? We ourselves know instances of their sufferings which would harrow the soul of any person possessed of the smallest portion of humanity.

But the other day, the wife of a clergyman, as amiable and charitable a man as lives, drove into a neighbouring town, and in the shop of a tradesman heard an expression of regret that certain gentlemen in the neighbourhood were so soon to be murdered, and amongst others, her own husband, whose charities and attention to the poor she vainly hoped would have secured his safety. Hurrying home, she found he had gone to attend one of his congregation, to whose sick bed he had been summoned. Distracted by her apprehensions, she went to an adjacent police station, and sent two of the men in the direction her husband had taken. He returned alive-her precaution had saved him, but when she learned from his lips that the call was but a snare to bring him within reach of his assassins, the shock overpowered a weak constitution; she fell in a fit, and died entreating with her last breath mercy for the father of her children from the assassins, by whom in her delirium she fancied him to be surrounded. She left a large and helpless family, whose only protection is a broken-hearted and a doomed man; and yet there are to be found in the Senate those who protect the system to which this amiable woman has fallen a victim, by refusing to support even the paltry measure introduced by the government for its suppres

sion.

We had hoped, when parliament was summoned at an unusual season to deliberate upon the state of Ireland, and when the condition of that country was so strongly alluded to in the speech from the throne, that effectual measures would have been resorted to for the suppression of crime, and for the protection of the lives and properties of the well-disposed portion of the Irish people. We did hope that the clear-sightedness and decision of Lord Clarendon had prevailed; that at last a man was found capable of threading his way through the maze of Irish difficulties, and of

enforcing his views on the apathetic feelings of her Majesty's advisers. But we have been disappointed, and either the present lord lieutenant is not so competent for the performance of the arduous duties attached to his office as we had supposed, or his exertions are paralysed and his counsels are rejected by the imbecile adminis tration to whose control he is subject.

The condition of Ireland is admitted by all parties to be such as no civilised country ever before presented; and what are the remedies propounded for its amelioration? Simply this, that two hundred additional police should be employed-that the carrying of arms, or their possession by a certain class of persons, in certain districts where crime has previously prevailed, should be a misdemeanour, and that the expenses of the proceedings to enforce those enactments should be levied on the inhabitants of the disturbed districts. But Sir George Grey, while he read his list of horrors, was most cautious lest he should offend the feelings of (what the member for Cork termed) "the most endearing and religious people on the face of the earth," by implicating more than four or five counties in the conspiracy which he denounced; and too tenacious of the constitutional privileges of the Irish assassins to propose their general disarmament, or the violation of the sanctity of their homes by the efficient remedy of nocturnal domiciliary visits. No: those visits are only to be paid by day, when the parties suspected of the violation of the law may have full notice of the approach of the constabulary, and, as a consequence, full time to remove the arms of which they may be possessed; and they are only to be made in search of arms, and not at all as a means of deterring "the endearing" people from leaving their homes at night, to perpetrate the murders which they now accomplish by day. Another clause is added, on the efficacy of which Sir George Grey seems to place great reliance, but which is of so ludicrous a nature that we scarcely know how to notice it seriously. "The justices and constables shall have the power to call on all persons between the ages of sixteen and

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sixty, residing or living in the district, to assist in the search for and pursuit of the persons charged with the commission of crime; and thus," triumphantly exclaims the Home Minister, "it will be the duty of every person to join in such pursuit, and do his utmost to assist in discovering and apprehending the offender; and any person refusing to assist in such pursuit and search, would be guilty of a misdemeanour, and would be liable to be imprisoned with or without hard labour for any term not exceeding two years.' There is an old adage that one man may take a horse to the water, but twenty can't make him drink ;" and so it will be found in reference to the operation of this most sapient enactment. The justice or the constable may call out the lieges, but can they induce or compel them to guide them to the haunt of the murderer? "Not a bit of it;" they will join most willingly in the pursuit, but it will certainly be to mislead the pursuers; and, as the police force is generally found sufficient to vindicate the law, if they can only arrive when the crime is being perpetrated, they will not summon any assistance except in those where the outrage has been committed previous to their arrival; and in such instances, the culprits will have had full time to escape, and the witnesses of the deed, ample opportunities of arranging their plans for his protection. We assure Sir George he will find that this clause, all-powerful as he hopes its operation to prove for the repression of crime, will remain a dead-letter on the statute-book; for no magistrate, who is acquainted with the feelings of the people, would be so silly as to expect efficient support or correct information from them; and no officer who understood his duty, would hamper himself with a mob of assistants, whose undoubted object it would be to deceive and thwart him in its discharge. A story is told, that, during Lord Anglesey's administration, when Whiteboy offences were prevalent in the South of Ireland, a Cabinet Council was summoned, at which the then Chancellor, (Sir Anthony Hart,) having been called upon to give his opinion as to the best remedy to be adopted for their

cases

repression, at once, with the feelings of an Englishman, declared,-"that he would order the sheriff to call out the posse comitatûs."" "By my sowl," interposed Chief Baron O'Grady, in his broad Munster brogue, "my Lord Chancellor, that's just what we want to avoid!-'the posse's' out already: may be you could give us some method of getting them to stay at home." And so it will be with "the posse of Sir George Grey, if ever called out; they will prove an encumbrance instead of an assistance to the officers of justice. But what a lamentable state of ignorance as to the state of Ireland does the proposal of those most absurd remedies indicate, on the part of our present rulers! Every one at all acquainted with the country, knows that the assassin is never selected from the inhabitants of the immediate neighbourhood where the crime is to be committed; and yet, by this enactment, only the persons resident in such districts are to be disarmed, or deprived of the right of openly carrying arms. And thus, by residing beyond or by stepping over the ditch which bounds the proscribed locality, the murderer may assert his right of bearing arms, and defy the police to deprive him of his gun; or, by altering his position so as to avoid the forbidden ground, he may coolly wait the advent of his victim without the slightest danger of molestation. "On the very day that Major Mahon was murdered," continues Sir George Grey, "two persons were seen lurking about, who it was strongly suspected were the murderers. There was, indeed, no moral doubt that they were the persons by whom the fatal act was committed. Now, if the police had been armed with the powers which were sought for by this bill, those persons might have been arrested; the fatal weapons would have been taken from them, and they would have been amenable to the law for a misdemeanour, in carrying arms contrary to the provisions of this act, or for having arms concealed for the purpose of carrying them to effect a murderous object." Now we deny the Right Honourable Baronet's conclusions. This enactment could not have prevented the assassination of Major Mahon, for his murderers had

only to choose a locality where it would not be in operation. Neither will it at all affect the commission of other meditated murders; for there is now organised (and we give the information to her Majesty's government, if they are not already in possession of it,) a new society,* who have regular hired assassins in their pay, for the purpose of pursuing, wherever they may be found, the denounced persons who have fled the country and escaped their vengeance. This may appear incredible; but it is well known and openly spoken of in the disturbed districts. One of those bravos, the other day, in Dublin, entered the office of a marked man, who is agent to an English gentleman, a large proprietor in a western county; he inquired for the person of whom he was in search, but who was fortunately absent. Suspicion having been excited by his contradictory replies to questions which were put to him touching his business, and from the well known fact that the gentleman he desired to see was denounced, he was given into custody, and on his person was found a case of loaded pistols. Now, there can be no doubt that this man meditated murder; yet he walked off with his arms, and we should be glad to learn how this enactment, even though it were on the statute book, could have interfered with his proceedings. Galway, from whence he came, might be proclaimed, but it is not possible that Dublin, where he purposed to commit the deed, should ever come under its operation. We admit that a general and stringent Arms act would have afforded, both in this and Major Mahon's case, probable protection, and possibly might have saved many other victims from a premature and bloody death. And whose fault is it that such is not in existence? Whose but that of the administration of which the Home Secretary is an influential member? To overthrow a hostile government, and obtain the reins of power for themselves, they sacrificed the peace of Ireland and the lives of multitudes

of most estimable persons; and now they unblushingly come to parliament to ask the enactment of a measure which they must well know will prove but a mockery and a delusion, as a substitute for the efficient law which their factious opposition blotted from the statute book. Have those men hearts to feel or consciences to be smitten?-if so, what must their sufferings be at the record of each successive murder, which adds another victim to those already sacrificed by their fatal and unprincipled policy.

While those provisions of the proposed law, to which we have already alluded, are utterly inefficient and valueless for the repression of crime, there is another clause in the bill which inflicts a positive and unmerited injustice. The proclaimed district is to pay the expense of the additional police force, necessary for its pacification. Now, the gentry and large farmers, who are the victims of the system sought to be repressed, and not its supporters, will be the persons upon whom this heavy charge must principally fall. The guilty have little or no land, and, consequently, will be exempt from the increased taxation; and thus the pockets of the peaceable and well-disposed will be picked, although their persons may not be protected. We do not understand why government, which is bound to protect the lives and properties of its subjects, should mulet those whose safety is their peculiar charge, because additional expense is rendered necessary to root out crime, generated and fostered by its own incompetency or neglect. But this is an administration of political economists, and the loyal and peaceable portion of the Irish nation need not expect ordinary security without the payment of an extraordinary price for it, upon the same principle that the struggling English trader could only obtain monetary assistance, at a rate of interest too usurious to leave the aid useful.

No wonder that Mr John O'Connell should express his "agreeable disappointment at the measures proposed," when, in common with the