bounded credit and character of British merchants, the notion of their overtrading was a fallacy. In considering the conduct of the Bank of England, his lordship inveighed strongly against their "stock-jobbing" practices; they had produced fluctuations in the public securities of which they took advantage. But there must be a discretion left with that or some other body, conversant with the wants of the commercial community, to afford relief in seasons of stringency and pressure.

The Government,

in suspending the law of 1844, had admitted that there were times and circumstances which demanded its suspension, and it had been seen

that, the moment the Act was suspended, confidence was restored.

The Earl of Eglinton asked whether the Scotch banks would be included in the inquiry. The Marquis of Lansdowne stated that it would be within the discretion of the Committee to inquire into that subject; the whole monetary system of the country would come under their review.

After a few words from Lord Wharncliffe, expressive of his confidence in the soundness of the Act of 1844, the motion, amended according to Lord Stanley's suggestion, was agreed to nem. con.

attention of Parliament. The increase of homicides, of attempts upon life, and other crimes of violence, within a recent period prior to the assembling of Parliament, had been indeed appalling, and a sense of the insecurity of life and property in that unhappy country was vividly impressed on the public mind by the succession of outrages which had now become matters of almost daily occurrence in the more disturbed districts. Great confidence was felt by all persons interested in the preservation of order in the energy and discretion of the Lord-Lieutenant, the Earl of Clarendon ; but it was painfully evident that the ordinary powers of the law were inadequate to cope with that determined spirit of ferocity and lawlessness which had infected a large class of the population. It was, under these circumstances, a matter of no surprise that Her Majesty's Government, albeit when in opposition they had thwarted the measures of Sir R. Peel, proposed in a similar juncture for a similar object, found themselves compelled, under the responsibility of office, to resort to the same measures of coercion which necessity had imposed upon their predecessors. It devolved on Sir George Grey, as Secretary for the Home Department, to introduce a Bill for this purpose, which he did on the 29th of November, and entered at the same time into a full exposition of the social disorganization of the country, and a description of the nature of the law by which it was proposed to repress the prevailing crimes and outrages. Having given a brief recital of the measures which Parliament had taken during the last session to relieve the distress of

Ireland, and to arrest the progress of famine and disease in that country, he stated that he had hoped that those measures, and especially the New Poor-Law, would have drawn together the different classes of Irishmen in one common bond of unity, and would have taught them the value of mutual cooperation in promoting the peace, order, and prosperity of their common country. He was not yet prepared to abandon the hope that that expectation would yet be realized; for the case which he had to lay before the House that evening applied only to a part of Ireland; and he was happy to state, that in the greater portion of it crime had diminished, and life and property were as safe as in England. The general result of the tabular statistics of crime received from the Irish constabulary showed that the amount of crime generally throughout Ireland had decreased nearly one-third during the year ending last October as compared with the year ending the 1st of January last, although in some parts of the country offences had increased in rapid succession. For instance, the number of offences during the year 1846 was 2885, and up to the end of October 1847 did not exceed 1035. Such a fact showed that he was bringing in no general Bill of indictment against the people of Ireland, and that there was no truth in the accusation that Ireland was altogether a country of assassins. In some districts of Ireland, however, a secret conspiracy had been entered into by lawless individuals against the rights of property-a conspiracy which had spread such intense terror and dismay within the narrow compass over which it pre

vailed, that it became a duty incumbent on the Government to arrest the hand of the assassin, and to give that security to life and property which the loyal had a right to expect from its hands. He combated the objection, that in proposing a Bill of this nature he was resorting to the vulgar expedient of coercion, and was leaving the causes of the crime, which he wished to put down, unexamined and untouched. He maintained that this Bill was only a just measure of prevention, and was necessary to give due strength and effect to the law, and stated that, whilst Government was calling on the landed proprietors of Ireland to cooperate with the Executive, and on the Poor-Law Guardians to administer and superintend the relief of the poor, those parties had in turn a right to call on the Government to provide security for their lives during their efforts to carry into effect the commands of the Legislature. He then proceeded to lay before the House a statement as to the four classes of crimes which in the four last months had so materially increased in certain parts of Ireland. The number of homicides, which, in the six months ending October 1846, was 68, in the six months ending October 1847 was 96. The number of attempts on life by firing at the person, which was, in six months of 1846, 55, was, in the same six months of 1847, 126; the number of robberies of arms, which was, in six months of 1846, 207, in the same six months of 1847 was 530; and the number of firings of dwellings, which in six months of 1846 was 51, was, in the same six months of 1847, 116. Even this statement gave an inadequate idea of the

increase of those offences in districts which were now particularly infested by crime. The total number of offences of the four classes which he had just mentioned amounted in the last month to 195 in the whole of Ireland; but the counties of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary furnished 139 of them the amount of offences in those counties being 71 per cent. on the whole amount of offences in Ireland, and the population being only 13 per cent. on the whole population of Ireland. It was principally to those counties that his observations applied; but, as the tendency of crime was to spread, they must be applied in some degree also to the King's County, Roscommon, and part of Fermanagh. The crimes which he wished to repress were not directed against the landlord class alone, but against every class and description of landowners. Their ordinary object was the commission of wilful and deliberate assassination, not in dark or desolate places, but in broad daylight-of assassination, too, encouraged by the entire impunity with which it was perpetrated; for it was notorious that none but the police would lend a hand to arrest the flight or capture the person of the assassin. He referred with pride to the different spirit which pervaded the population of England in case of the perpetration of any act of violence, and reminded the House that on a recent occasion, when Dr. Bowring and his brother were robbed in South Wales by two Irishmen, after the true fashion of certain parts of Ireland, in open day with loaded firearms, the whole population of the district turned out, and lodged them in gaol before midnight. Oh, that

he could raise a similar spirit in Ireland! for then one object of his Bill-which was to encourage the population of Ireland to detect crime and to render the withholding of assistance in detecting it penal-would be already accomplished. He then proceeded to read to the House a long and frightful catalogue of murders which had been committed in the south of Ireland from the 16th of September down to the 23rd of November, dwelling with particular energy on those of Mr. Rowe, Mr. Lucas, Mr. Reid, Major Mahon, and Mr. Bayly. He then adverted to the numerous instances of violence which had occurred in the attempt to procure arms by robbery, and to the numerous threatening letters which had been sent to various landowners, menacing them with immediate death if they did not comply with certain terms contained in them. If threatening letters were sent to a number of individuals, and if one on the list were singled out and made a victim of, it was hoped that it would induce all the rest to waive those rights of property which a secret conspiracy in Ireland was formed to frustrate. sooner was Major Mahon shot than a letter was sent to the wife of another landed proprietor in the neighbourhood, informing her that, unless her husband gave a remittance of all arrears of rent to his tenants, two men would be sent to despatch him, as a resolution had been taken by the men of Connaught to put down all tyrannizing landlords, as they had already put down" the demon Mahon.' Having thus laid before the House an enumeration of the outrages committed chiefly in Tipperary and Limerick, but partly

No

also in the adjacent counties of Clare, Roscommon, and Fermanagh, and having called the attention of the House to the address of Mr. Howley to the grand jury of Tipperary, and to the memorial of the magistrates in Nenagh, as important documents in support of the appalling statements which he had very reluctantly offered to their notice, he expressed a hope that Parliament, whether it approved or not of the remedies which he now recommended it to adopt, would be convinced that there was a system of terror kept up in that unfortunate country, by which individuals were exposed to assassination and outrage, that must defeat all attempts to benefit Ireland, and must ultimately lead to the entire disorganization of society within it. He then proceeded to describe to the House the powers which the Government now possessed, and the manner in which they were applied. No charge had yet been brought against the Executive Government for neglecting the means of detecting and repressing crime; on the contrary, all parties admitted the vigour and efficiency with which the LordLieutenant of Ireland had administered, and was administering, the law. He had employed the military and police on all occasions in which it was necessary to overawe offenders, and to show them that they could gain no advantage by persisting in outrage. In all cases where he was not limited by law, the Lord-Lieutenant was determined to use that conjoint force in the maintenance of the law. In proof of this, he read a proclamation recently issued by his lordship, in which he made known his intention of increasing the constabulary, of stationing military detachments