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that now. What became of this argument founded on agitation, when he proved, that when they did not agitate, multitudes of crimes were perpetrated; but that, when agitation prevailed, crime ceased? What was the reason of this? It was because the Irish were a shrewd, a calculating and observant people. Seven centuries of misgovernment and oppression had taught them to understand the signs of the times; and when they saw any prospect, however remote, of effecting a beneficial change for their country they seized on it with avidity, and it absorbed every other feeling and sentiment. But why did ministers call for additional force? Had they not already put down every tithe meeting? Had they not dispersed them at the point of the bayonet? Let every reasonable man examine the system which they wished to uphold, and say whether it was a just or fair one. In his parish, there were 12,300 and odd inhabitants, of whom seventy-five were Protestants. Now, was it not reasonable that the 12,225 Roman Catholics should resist a system which impoverished them, to benefit so miserable a minority? He again contended that increase of crime had followed and would follow increase of force. Yet such was the project of this liberal Government. He would say that there never was such a persecuting government; they had prosecuted the Press, the people, and even the priests. They had done nothing to restore the country to tranquillity. Had Ireland any real grievances, was the question which they had to decide. What cared he for their laugh, or their taunt, or their sneer? He boldly avowed, in spite of laugh, taunt and sneer, that while Ireland had grievances to complain of he would agitate to redress them. This was what Englishmen did to achieve reform; and he pursuing the same course, would agitate as long as he had the power, and found that there was a necessity for such a line of action. An unreformed Parliament had passed two Acts with respect to Ireland which an Algerine Government would not have sanctioned. A Reformed Parliament, it appeared, would be called on to pass another, to put an end to agitation. But he would tell them that it would be many and many a day before they could frame and carry an Act to effect that object. Almost all the measures adopted with reference to Ireland led, more or less, to the shedding of blood -the blood of an honest, a religious, a warm-hearted, a good

people. More murders were committed in that country than in any other place on the face of the earth. The people here knew little of Ireland. The Whiteboy, driven to wretchedness and desperation, thrown an unwilling outlaw on the commission of crime-even his crimes, the offspring of adverse circumstances, could not be advanced as an argument against the general good and virtuous feeling of the Irish people. When that people had so many grounds of complaint, had they not a right to agitate? In the first place, he complained of the magistracy of Ireland. He would suppose that, by conquest or otherwise, the French became masters of this country and established a religion different from that which accorded with the feelings of the people. The thing, he knew, was impossible, but he used the supposition in order to show more clearly the situation of Ireland. Suppose a magistracy was established here professing a religion different from that of the people at large-armed with arbitrary power-having authority to inflict fine and imprisonment, and against the members of which it was hopeless to seek redress-what feelings would such a state of things generate? In Ireland, since the union, so many forms had been introduced in the law (and they formed some of the blessings which flowed from that measure), that he defied any man, however injured, to maintain an action successfully against a magistrate. He need not weary himself and the House by showing that the magistracy of Ireland was on a bad footing. It was admitted by the noble Lord and his colleagues. They had all spoken of the necessity of a revision of the magistracy of Ireland. Even the right hon. Baronet, the member for Tamworth,1 had expressed himself in favour of a revision of the magistracy. When application was made to Lord Manners to restore a dismissed magistrate, he observed: "I have made you the best retribution in my power by again placing you in the Commission; but the last thing the King said to me when I became Chancellor, was, 'My Lord Manners, look particularly to the magistracy.' A sort of revision took place at that time, and a comical revision it was. A number of magistrates were struck off-all those who had died were struck off-some military officers, not in the country, were struck off-some Roman Catholics were struck off-and several improper persons were struck off. 1 Sir Robert Peel.

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But this did not last. Lord Manners knew nothing of the Irish magistracy, and there was a superior influence at the Castle, by which the old abuses were continued. There was no doubt, the fact could not be denied, that there were a great many improper persons in the Commission of the Peace in Ireland; the fact was recorded in the evidence of General Bourke before a committee of that House. At the time that the present Administration came into power he and others called for a revision of the magistracy in Ireland. The answer then given to them by the right hon. Secretary opposite was, that six months after the late King's death, the Commissions of all the magistrates in Ireland would have to be renewed, and that the Government would then take care that none but proper persons should be put into the Commission of the Peace in Ireland; that renewal of the Commissions of the magistracy had since taken place, and he should like to know what improper persons had been excluded from the Commission of the Peace there? He could, on the contrary, enumerate instances of several improper persons that had been left in it, and left in it, too, from party motives, and from partisan views and objects. The right hon. gentleman had taken especial care that to such persons the Commission of the Peace should be continued, while many most respectable, most worthy, and well-qualified individuals, were excluded from it in various parts of Ireland. Such was the mode in which the right hon. gentleman governed that unfortunate country. The right hon. gentleman, during his short career in Ireland, had achieved that which had never been accomplished before -he had contrived to make the whole people of Ireland unanimous, for all persons there concurred in considering him most unfit for the government of that country. When Ireland in former times revolted against oppression, Henry VIII swore lustily, that if Ireland would not be governed by the Earl of Kildare, the Earl of Kildare should ruin Ireland. Was that the principle now to be enforced? Was that the line of policy that was now to be pursued? Such, at all events, would be the effect of the Address that night submitted for their adoption. The power of the magistracy in Ireland, as regarded the lower classes there, was omnipotent, especially since the introduction of the Petty Sessions; and they exercised that power with the most complete impunity. In order to

attach responsibility to the exercise of power, you must isolate that power; but the magistrates at the Petty Sessions in Ireland, by acting together and in a bulk, rendered the exercise of their power entirely irresponsible. The publicity of their proceedings at Petty Sessions was salutary, but their combination rendered it impossible for the poor man to obtain redress for the injustice which he might suffer at their hands, and, with the aid of the Trespass Act, it was in their power to inflict grievous injustice upon the lower orders of Ireland. They heard a great deal of the crimes that were committed in Ireland, but such crimes were, in most instances, to be traced to the injustice effected upon the poor there through the means of such Acts of Parliament as that he had just referred tothey were the wild justice of revenge to which the poor were driven when all other modes of obtaining redress failed them. By means of the Trespass Act the magistrates were enabled to determine every right of the poor man-every right of his connected with his land and his property. By means of that Act the magistrates at Sessions could even try questions of title. He had known an instance of a man who had a good equitable case-and in a civil bill ejectment case an equitable was as good as a legal defence and yet the magistrates fined him £5 as a trespasser. Though the Statute said that they should not try rights, yet the effect of their decisions in such cases was actually to try them. He might be told that the poor man, in the instance he had mentioned, had his remedy; that he could get rid of the decision in question by bringing an action; but the expense of such a proceeding rendered that remedy totally unattainable to him. The very cost of a latitat was probably more money than a poor man ever had in his possession at one and the same time in the whole course of his life. In the way he had just stated, the determination of all the rights of the peasantry of Ireland was put into the power of the magistracy of that country. He did not mean to say that all the magistrates in Ireland were open to the accusations which he had thought it his duty to prefer against them as a body; he would not even accuse the majority of them of the malpractices of which he had spoken; but this he would say, that a large class of the magistrates of Ireland, and the most influential among them, too, were swayed by party zeal (the zeal of a party opposed to the mass of the people) and

influenced by factious motives in the discharge of their duties. Since the commencement of Lord Anglesey's Administration in Ireland there had been thirty-four stipendiary magistrates acting in that country; of these thirty-four, Lord Anglesey had nominated twenty-six, and in such a country as Ireland, the large majority of its inhabitants Catholic, especial care was taken that not a single Catholic should be amongst those twenty-six stipendiary magistrates. There were thirty-two sub-inspectors of police in Ireland; he did not know how many of them had been appointed by the present Administration; but this he did know, that there was not a single Catholic amongst them. There were five Inspectorsgeneral of Police, and there was not a Catholic amongst them. He would ask them, with such facts before them, could they be surprised at the present situation of Ireland? With such real grievances affecting the people of that country, where was the necessity of attributing its disturbed and discontented state to the efforts of agitators? Before the Parliament was reformed before the corrupt and borough-mongering House of Commons had been got rid of many rational and welldisposed men in Ireland, who were equally indignant as the rest of their countrymen at the wrongs and injustice inflicted on their country, refused to join in demanding a Repeal of the Union; saying that they ought to wait to see what the first Reformed Parliament would do for Ireland. Well, they waited to see what the first Reformed Parliament would do for Ireland, and what would be their feelings when the brutal and the bloody Speech which had been that day read, found its way to Ireland?

Lord John Russell rose to order. In consequence of the words which had been just used by the hon. and learned gentleman, he (Lord John Russell) rose to request that the hon. and learned gentleman's words should be taken down.

Mr. O'Connell said, that if he was out of order in the observations which he had been making, if he was irregular in the words which he had been employing, he would desist from using them. He was determined to give no one an opportunity of acting against him. He would take the noble Lord's hint. Strong language was, of course, not justifiable when such topics were under consideration. It ought to be

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in bondsman's key

With bated breath, and whispering humbleness,"

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