breaking open the houses of those persons and robbing them of their property; inflicting torture upon those who become objects of their enmity; and, if necessary for the final completion of their designs, if any person be honest or bold enough to give any information against them, the business which began in lawless combination is consnmmated by murder."

It will be observed, too, that this combination, directed originally against the rights of property, had a tendency to run into wild excesses: "When the association travelled into this part of the country it assumed another shape, that of attacking the wages of weavers and other artificers, and latterly farmers. In different stages of its progress it professed different objects, and opposed all kinds of payments, whether of tithes, industry, labour, or farming."

The general state of Connaught and of some adjoining counties at this time was thus described on a subsequent occasion by Chief-Justice Bushe-"The entire province of Connaught, with the exception of one county, and two counties on the North-West Circuit (Longford and Cavan) were overrun by insurgents so formidable that the King's Judges upon a Special Commission could not move through the country except under a military escort; so formidable, that the sentence of the law could not be executed in one particular county town till a general officer had marched from a distant quarter, at the head of a strong force, to support the civil power."

It was not, however, until after the War that agrarianism assumed its vast proportions. By that time the population of Ireland pressed hardly upon the means of subsistence; every patch of available land was fought for by a peasantry living on a precarious root, without the protection of a poor-law; and, as the Peace was followed by a great fall of prices

and consequent distress, crime and disorder quickly multiplied. For several years whole districts in Ireland were disgraced by scenes of violent disturbance; a movement was made against rents; and the wild risings in parts of the country were marked by numberless savage offences. Harsh measures of repression were enacted in vain, and many Special Commissions were issued; the mischief apparently only increased; and from 1816 onwards some counties in Ireland were theatres of mere lawlessness, crime, and confusion. Mr. Charles Grant gave this account of the condition of things in 1822:-"In 1815 a great part of the county of Tipperary, considerable portions of the King's County and County of Westmeath, and the whole of that of Limerick, were placed under the Insurrection Act. The Counties of Limerick and Tipperary, however, continued in a dreadful state, and they remained under the Insurrection Act until that Act, after a temporary renewal in 1817, finally expired in 1818. In 1817 part of the county of Louth was subjected to the Insurrecton Act. In 1820 came the disturbance in the County of Galway; and in 1821 the actual deplorable outrages in that of Limerick."

The state of crime in Cork in the same year is thus described in the just published Memoir of the late Chief-Justice Lefroy :-"When the Special Commission, under the Insurrection Act, opened in Limerick and Cork in the month of February, 1822, the calendar of crime presented for trial was appalling. The number of offenders in Cork alone was 366, of whom 35 received sentence of death, and some of them were ordered for immediate execution, others for speedy execution. With respect to the remainder, Baron M'Clelland, the officiating judge, intimated that the extreme penalty of the law would be suspended, and that their ultimate punishment would

depend on the future conduct of the peasantry. If tranquillity was restored and the surrender of arms in the district became general, mercy would be extended to them; but if no sure signs of returning peace appeared, their doom was inevitable. Yet, in spite of this warning, the Spring Assizes, which followed at a short interval, only presented a further sample of the terrible extent to which crime prevailed, and the obstinacy with which outrages of the worst description continued to be openly perpetrated."

This frightful prevalence of disorder attracted the attention of the Imperial Parliament, and the evidence and reports of Several Committees searched out at least the causes of the evil. We quote from the observations of the late Judge Day:-"The recent disturbances in Ireland originated in the poverty of the people, which exposes them to the seduction of any felonious and turbulent leaders; the want of employment, the absence and non-residence of landlords, the want of education, which leaves them in a semi-barbarous state and incapable of judging for themselves. The severe and unconscionable rents too often exacted from the peasantry ought not to be forgotten. There was a system (now diminishing, thank God) of subinfeudation which prevailed through Ireland, and which, after a succession of sub-lettings, left scarcely anything to the miserable occupying peasantry."

The late Lord Chancellor Blackburne said: "The population of the parts of the country where insurrections were most prevalent is extremely dense. The property is greatly subdivided, and the condition of the lower orders of the people is more miserable than I can describe it."

But though the most active causes of crime in Ireland were sufficiently explained, the Government of that day had no expedients but

severe repression to cope with or allay disorder. The result of these measures and of the efforts of the vigilant police, then lately established, was, so to speak, to drive the disease inwards, and to make it, perhaps, even more dangerous. Agrarianism, which up to this time had exhibited itself in open combinations, ceased generally to be insurtectionary and wild, and assumed the form of a vast conspiracy, accomplishing its ends by assassination, and outrages planned and executed by the instruments of secret societies. Meanwhile, the changes which had followed the Peace had tended to the consolidation of farms, and the system began of those widespread evictions too often characterised by injustice and productive of frightful misery and ill-will. A social war raged in many parts of Ireland, the landlords straining their rights to the utmost, the peasantry and the starving millions of pauper wretchedness which covered the land, forming themselves into a huge Trades Union of Poverty in deadly feud with Property, and vindicating an unwritten law of blood by the decrees of hidden tribunals of murder. The fierce agitation of the Catholic Claims and the general movement against tithes, gave fresh stimulus to the mischief; and about 1832-33, Ireland was in a state which Sir Robert Peel described as a ghastly scene of violence and barbarism. Lord Wellesley wrote of these crimes in 1834:-"A complete system of legislation, with the most prompt, vigorous, and severe executive power-sworn, equipped, and armed for all purposes of savage punishment-is established in almost every district. . . The combination established surpasses the law in vigour, promptitude, and efficacy, and it is more safe to violate the law than to obey it.'

Chief-Justice Bushe had, in 1832, given this account of the generally tranquil Queen's County :-" It is scarcely two months since the gaol

of this county was delivered at an assizes which lasted almost three times the period usually allotted. During the greater part of that time two judges were engaged in separate courts in criminal trials; there were 24 convictions in cases connected with public disturbance, 47 persons were found guilty, five capital convictions were followed by a commutation of punishment, and 26 persons were sentenced to transportation; yet your prison is again thronged, not with that class of offenders, whose crimes grow out of the frailties of man in his individual character, but, almost without exception, with insurgents systematically confederated against the laws and institutions of their country. In that short interval more than 300 outrages have been committed, of every class from murder downwards."

This paroxysm gradually subsided, and while the Melbourne Government remained in power, especially after the enactment of the Poor Law, which in some measures relieved destitution, Ireland was in a state of comparative quiescence. Yet agrarian crimes were still very frequent, and the elements of evil, though less active, lay smouldering under the surface. In fact, as long as the population crowded on the land in masses of wretchedness, and "landlordism" was supreme and unchecked, there could be no hopes of a close to agrarian disorder. In 1844, a year of good harvests and prosperity, the agrarian offences committed in Ireland were more than a thousand in number, and of these many were frightfully atrocious. An official witness gave this account of Tipperary at that time to the Devon Commission:- "Such is the extent of the system of terrorism in that county, and so great the exactions to which farmers are exposed, in being laid under contributions to defend prisoners whose trials are approaching, or to minister to the revels of the Rockites, that any co

ercive enactment is palatable to the respectable portion of the rural community."

The fearful ordeal of the great famine for a time aggravated Irish disturbances, and brought them out in their worst intensity. Deprived of their precarious subsistence, the vast masses of Irish poverty were suddenly exposed to the extremities of want, and the whole framework of society in Ireland was subjected to a violent revolution. A great outburst of crime followed, and for a time the elements of disorder seemed to have mingled, and to overflow, in a wild deluge, the afflicted country. These outrages were in part social, but they were also agrarian and revolutionary; and they perhaps culminated in 1848, the year of Mr. Smith O'Brien's "rebellion." In that year the committals in Ireland reached the extraordinary number of 38,000, ninefold what they were in 1870, and the capital sentences were not less than 60, against 17 in 1851 and 14 in 1846. The state of Limerick was thus described by the late Lord Chancellor Blackburne as the Chief Judge of a Special Commission:"The calendar which I hold in my hand contains a frightful detail of every crime, every atrocity by which our nature can be disgraced. Besides evincing a general spirit of insubordination and the prevalence of crime to this frightful degree, it is perfectly plain from the nature of these crimes and the circumstances attending their perpetration that there prevails in this country an extensive combination, which, for the attainment of its guilty purpose, has perpetrated every crime that can be committed in violation of the laws of God and man."

Chief Justice Lefroy gave this account of the condition of Galway in 1849 :-"The number of prisoners is no less then 764, while the building is only calculated to accommodate 110. The number of prisoners for trial is 423, and from the

analysis that has been made of the calendar the cases appear to be 259 in number, of which you will have to dispose; of this number there are 15 persons committed on charges of murder or manslaughter."

For several years after 1850 agrarian disturbance and kindred crimes seemed almost to have disappeared in Ireland. The most active stimulants of the evil had been in a great degree removed; the large decrease of the population had lessened the struggle for subsistence and the vehement competition for land; a Poor Law protected and relieved poverty; the influences of education were widely diffused; wholesale evictions had nearly ceased; the landlords of the new generation were very different from their predecessors, and the advance of the nation in prosperity gave a bright promise of a happy future. We cannot be surprised that many observers should have thought that the peculiar forms of Irish disturbance were passing away, and that the country was about to enjoy a long season of complete tranquillity. Yet the elements of mischief, though comparatively feeble, were to gather again, and come to a head; and the Fenian rebellion" of 1867, and the quick burst of agrarian crime which accompanied the agitation for the Land Act, proved that the remains of the old evils were fermenting in portions of the community. These outbreaks, however, it should be observed, may be traced directly to special causes; they were hardly connected with the several circumstances which made Irish disturbances so formidable; and in themselves they were as nothing compared to the wide-spread disorders of former years. Measures of coercion have indeed been passed; but the crime of 1869-70 was not greater in amount of offences, though more of an agrarian character, than that of 1865-66; the area of outrage was very small; and the districts

ance.

affected have, in a few months, become perfectly free from disturbIn fact, the deep-seated material ills of Ireland having been removed and her real grievances having been reduced, it is impossible to suppose that her old disorders can be as grievous as they have been ; and any future manifestations of them will be the result rather of traditional sentiments, not to be quickly eradicated, than of any active predisposing causes.

At the Summer Assizes of last year Baron Fitzgerald said to the Grand Jury at Mullinger:-"He had but few observations to address to them, and those were of an encouraging import. The number of cases in which bills would be laid before them did not exceed six, with three or four others that stood over from the last assizes, and these constituted all the criminal business." The Judge added that, owing to the new Coercion Act, the calendar was not in any sense a real index of the crime of the country, and that even the police returns, which recorded "34 serious offences," might be to a great extent fallacious; but the committals under the statute referred to have been, we believe, extremely few, and Westmeath during all the winter has been tranquil and free from crime. This brief retrospect should induce us, in spite of every discouragement, to look hopefully to the future of Ireland. Notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, her peculiar disorders have greatly decreased; the effects of social changes and good legislation, although gradual, have been decisive. The more active causes of agrarian crime and similar troubles have disappeared; what was once a fierce and general impulse is now little more than a traditional feeling; and if traces of the evil past remain, they are like the lessening waves which survive the tempest.

THE next scene in the drama of roguery was at Strasburg, where immense successes awaited our hero.1 At first he stayed at an hotel, and made very little noise; but attaching himself to the Freemasons, and feeling his way cautiously, he soon became the more than nine-days' wonder of the place.

His doors were crowded like the gates of a hospital, his cures were marvellous, and from none would he receive fees. If a rich invalid wished for his attendance, he referred him to the regular practitioners; but when a poor man came. instantly the Count devoted himself to the task of restoring him to health. Was this all cool, premeditated, hypocritical deception, or was there at the bottom some spark of better feeling, latent even in the heart of such a rogue as this Balsamo? Most probably he salved his conscience with its many wounds by the performance of these deeds of charity. To whatever cause we attribute them, his cures were a source of astonishment there. Egyp tian Masonry prospered greatly at Strasburg. He was surrounded by

1

admiring disciples, who were proud of a single glance from the piercing eye of the Grand Cophta. Occasionally, he imitated the tactics of St. Germain, and recounted conversations which he had held with St. Louis, and others of the immortal dead.

To one he confessed, in a moment of confidence, that he was one of the guests of the marriage at Cana; and Dame Lorenza, here as at other places, also claimed old age.

Some of the more curious attempted to bribe the truth from the servants; but here, also, they are defeated, for they know nothing; but one of them, being much pressed, confessed that he himself has been 100 years in the service of the Count, who has always appeared the same age since the day he entered his service.

In this loyal servitor, we fancy we can recognise the faithful Larocca, of whom we had a glimpse at Naples. So, thrown back upon their own resources, some believed him to be the Wandering Jew, others, Antichrist-some give out that he had been tutor to an oriental