called Liberal, but who were not then known to have exemplified the term by liberating themselves from the obligations within which, in politics as well as in morals, honest men feel restricted. Circumstances caused us to remember the principles of this gentleman, and the heat with which, notwithstanding his Sybarite refinement, he sometimes asserted them; and, when we were informed that he had taken up his residence in Ireland and addressed himself to the duties of a landed proprietor, we felt some desire to know whether arguments, which we had vainly addressed to him in gayer times, would be remembered when he had ampler opportunities to test them. In former years our arguments were met by the vehement contradictions of adversaries. Now, the contending statements could both be tried by the standard of actual fact. We recently learned the result. The fashionable Liberal of the Clubs has matured into the rational Liberal-a Conservative country gentleman; and, in testimony of the approbation with which he regards our once unacceptable truths, he has forwarded to us a collection of valuable documents (permitting us to use them freely), through which we have no difficulty in tracing the processes and stages by which he was reclaimed to sane views of justice and policy, from the delusions of over liberal and too confiding youth. One of these documents, that with which we propose to make the reader acquainted, is a comparative view of the activities of that terrible personification which is called the Irish people, and of the abstraction which, before it had become "identified with the popular party," was visible, and invested with something of authority, in what is styled the Irish government. The selections of our correspondent are taken from the public prints, but they are taken cautiously, and are authenticated by convincing evidence. They are also taken fairly, without partiality or exaggeration. We lay, in substance, the history of a single year, or rather part of a year, before the reader. It shall be that of the year past, or of eleven months of it. So much may serve as a specimen. Within that space of time, or, to be more exact, within ten months and twenty-four days (up to November 24), our correspondent bas observed The reader is not to suppose that these statements contain returns from which the number of offences in Ireland can be learned. A single county could, perhaps, present a larger and than that which our correspondent has more appalling catalogue of crime furnished. He has, indeed, guarded us effectually against the idea, that we are to look upon his notices as containing an enumeration of offences, by accompanying them with a return from Tipperary. In that one county, it appears, that, at the spring and the summer assizes for 1838, The number of Coroner's Inquests returned, (for which the county paid), Such a return would, of itself, teach us to infer, that the statements of our correspondent, gathered from reports of crime in every part of Ireland, contain not an enumeration of capital offences, but a selection from them. It is a fearful thing to be thus reminded, that the details of 242 attempts (of which 102, at least, were successful) to murder, occurring within a space of less than eleven months, are to be regarded as no more than specimens of the offences perpetrated in Ireland. Yet so it is. Enormous as this amount of crime ought to be considered, it is perhaps not a tenth, we believe certainly not a fifth part of the offences of which it is a selected specimen. cause. The principle of selection adopted by our correspondent, appears to us, if we have rightly divined it, eminent ly sound and good. It has assisted us much in ascertaining the acts which are held as capital offences, by what has been termed the "de facto government of Ireland." The details with which we have been favoured, are of cases in which the cause of the murderous assault had been discovered, or was surmised. They rarely have reference to crimes of which private malice or revenge was the instigating The murderous assaults of which our correspondent has given us the details were punishments, it would seem, visited by a community for a breach of its laws. These laws are not plainly and authoritatively promulgated, but, although failing in this important requisite, and, in consequence, appearing often somewhat capricious in their operation, they are, nevertheless, vigilantly administered, and may be learned by all who take pains to study them, as the laws of nature herself are studied, in their effects, in the dreadful execution of their penal sentences. In this necessary study, our valued correspondent is evidently a proficient. His papers establish the truth, that the following, as well as other seemingly innocent acts, are held to be capital offences in Ireland, by a body powerful enough to punish for them. 1. Enforcement, or being instrumental in the enforcement, of rights of property. 2. Unpopular exercise of the elective franchise. 3. Prosecuting or giving evidence against one accused of what is termed an insurrectionary offence. 4. Delivering, as a juror, an obnoxious verdict on a capital charge. 5. Protestantism-with or without the aggravation of having embraced the heresy as a convert. 6. Refusal to enter into certain secret societies, or even ignorance of their signs and pass-words. We shall, painful as the task must be to writer and reader, select and arrange under each of these heads, some details illustrative of the principle expressed in it. 1. ENFORCEMENT, &c., OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. The evidences of the existence and authority of this law are so numerous, that our difficulty would be to select from them; and they are so notorious, that, were it not indispensable to other parts of our subject, we should not have thought it necessary even to make selections. It appears that every individual at all concerned in the enforcement of the obnoxious rights is a party in the crime, and liable to the severest penalty. The tenant who enters into possession of the farm from which a predecessor has been evicted-the bailiff who has served notice of ejectment, or who has given the intruder possession-the agent who has superintended the processes -the landlord who has directed or authorised them-all have rendered themselves liable to the penalties of insurrectionary law ;-nay, the indi vidual who may be so bold as to continue a friendly intercourse with a delinquent placed under ban, must be upon his guard-the excommunication is strict. LANDLORDS. County Waterford. Mr Keeffe of Mountain Castle, in the county of Waterford, had committed a breach of the agrarian laws, and was condemned for the offence. His age (he was eighty-two years old) could not move compassion; and an attempt, which proved abortive, was made to assassinate him. "Our informant states," we give the report as extracted from the Waterford Mail," that, a short time since, Mr Keeffe purchased a large estate in the county, and that, on the leases falling into his hands, the occupying tenants would not pay more for the land than what they had previously paid, which, we have been informed, was only 5s. per acre. Mr Keeffe, who was a wealthy man, and of course purchased the property as any other man might, expected an advanced rent. The tenants objected to any advance, and some were ejected. On Sunday last, on Mr Keeffe's way to chapel, about five miles from Dungarvan, as he was riding, he was accosted in the middle of the road by a person in a blue coat, who had a blunderbuss concealed, with, What do you mean to do with the man in jail?'-alluding to the former assassin-on which Mr Keeffe attempted to dismount, saying, at the time, 'spare my life and his shall be spared.' The fellow instantly levelled his blunderbuss, which he discharged, killing the horse, and lodging part of the contents in Mr Keeffe's body, who, we understand, died the same night. This occurred on the main road, in the sight of several persons within the distance of one hundred and fifty yards, and the fellow was allowed to depart, without the smallest interference to arrest him, into a neighbouring wood." County Tipperary.-The following extracts, from a provincial paper and the Gazette, will tell their own story: "The Excellent Population again.-On Sunday last, as Mr John Scully was riding in from his place at Dualla, to attend mass at the chapel, he was attacked by some men in arms, with their faces blackened, who handed him a written document, to the contents of which they ordered him to swear. Mr Scully courageously refused. They then told him to dismount, and go upon his knees, till they would shoot him; whereon he replied he would not, but would die as he was, adding, that if they spared him, he would acquit himself honourably with regard to the business in question. They replied they would give him a trial, and departed. Mr Scully is a Roman Catholic, and one of the ma gistrates recently appointed by Lord Mul grave, notwithstanding which, he was thus treated by the noble pisantry." (From the Dublin Gazette.) "Dublin Castle, June 19, 1838.--John Scully, Esq., of Dualla, in the county of Tipperary, was stopped within a mile and a half of Cashel, at eleven o'clock A.M., on the 17th instant, by two men, having their faces partly blackened, and one of them armed with a pistol, which he placed to Mr Scully's breast, and threatened him if he would turn a Widow Cody from her land.-One hundred pounds." Queen's County."—It is enough to name the late lamented Earl of Norbury, a nobleman and a landlord whose high and benevolent qualities even bigotry and political opposition confess. Generosity and forbearance, and the great benefits flowing from the residence of a wealthy and munificent proprietor, could not avail to protect him. Within his own demesne, in open day, the generous and unsuspecting nobleman was assassinated. This, we believe, is the first instance, since the butchery of Lord Kilwarden in 1803, when rebellion was openly avowed, in which a nobleman has been murdered, The agrarian system has been well directed. Its ministers have walked warily. Their first punishments were visited upon the poor and helplesson those whom necessity forced to break their laws-on tenants who must perish if they gave up the residence which the "people" required them to surrender-and on bailiffs, and those other humbler scrvants of a landed proprietor, whose only means of living were derived from employments by which they were sometimes transgressors against the “agrarian” law. This was a species of tactique in which the gentry could not imitate them. They would not punish tenantry, or servants, or dependants who kept the secrets of the conspiracy, or who contributed to the funds by which agitators were hired and insurrection was extended. They used to say, "We cannot visit, on these poor defenceless creatures, penal consequences of misdeeds to which they are comqelled." The cruelty of the insurgents was, for its purpose, wiser. It gradually weakened the dependence of the poor upon the richloosened the attachment which should subsist between them-sowed the seeds of mutual distrust-embarrassed the operations of law-and, in time, brought the whole rural population under the authority of the system to which it ministered. As the power of the confederacy increased, its victims were selected from higher stations. Within the last year the number of gentlemen who have been murdered, or assaulted, or threatened, is so considerable, as to indicate a very alarming degree of confidence in the directors of the movement. The Dublin Evening Mail gives publicity to a report that Lord Carew, a well-known Liberal, received threatening notices, in consequence of which he left the country. The Government offered a reward for the writer of a threatening notice, or, as the document might be interpreted, a friendly warning to Lord Bloomfield. Other noblemen and gentlemen have been similarly admonished; and, as a In this one instance we depart from the lists furnished by our correspondent. In 'all others we limit ourselves within the events of last year. comment upon these dreadful missives, and a notice that the power and purposes of the confederacy of assassination have reached their height, murder commences its operations upon the most exalted class of society, by the execution of Lord Norbury, for the "crime," or, rather, false suspicion of the "crime" of landlordism. We extract from the Dublin Even ing Mail a representation given of this enormity by an organ of the popular party, and will have a word of comment to offer upon it. We add, also, a note from the correspondent of the Dublin Evening Mail : "The public are yet ignorant of the peculiar features of daring and audacity which characterised this dreadful murder. The high road was within sixty yards of the spot on which the assassin stood. It was an open space-at least there was no thick plantation, or a particle of under cover. The trees are fir-without lower branches, and growing far apart from each other; so that any one passing the road, necessarily commanded a view of the position of all the parties, before and after the shot was fired. It should be borne in mind that the day was a holiday, and that therefore it was to be calculated that many might be going to and fro on the road. But there was a second road, at the other side of the field in which Lord Norbury was shot, called the Abbey Road. There was on this road a funeral passing at the very moment that the fatal deed was being perpetrated. It appears that at this funeral from forty to fifty persons were in attendance, every one of whom must have heard the shot, and most probably seen the assassin escape; for it is physically impossible that he could have gotten up out of the dyke and against the hedge to wards the other road. Indeed, the trace proves distinctly that he went along the field, and in view of every person attending this funeral; and yet ignorance of the whole transaction is affected, and an appearance of innocence as to the cause, and regret at the event assumed, to an extent calculated to mislead the most acute and diligent." "When the body had been laid in the vault, the Rev. Mr Rafferty, parish priest of Tullamoore, addressed the assembled meeting at considerable length, and with much propriety. I understand he delivered a similar address at his chapel on Sunday last. Amongst other observations, in re ference to Lord Norbury, he said "I have known this illustrious nobleman in private and in public-his life has been spent in acts of charity, kindness, and liberality, and every one here must feel and mourn his loss, as he would that of his father, benefactor, protector, and best friend. No one act of his life was calcu lated to give offence, and in managing his estate every act of his was necessary and just; nay, he would not say one unkind word, much less do any unkind act towards any one. "We extract the following palliation— indeed it amounts to a justification of the Friday evening. murder of Lord Norbury from the Pilot of observation upon the article, but leave it to We shall not offer a single of public opinion must award it. meet that fate to which the honest portion "The first notice was (as our readers will recollect) headed Lord NORBURY wounded,' and ended with ascribing jealousy' as the cause of the attack. The second notice is under the head "MURDER OF LORD NORBURY.-Unfortunately, murder we must now call it→ Lord Norbury is dead. He died at twelve o'clock yesterday, wounded by five swan drops, one of which touched the lungs and proved fatal. The circumstances, the motives, are still involved in considerable mystery. Various reports were in circulation on Wednesday; we gave them as reports, attaching to each just the proportion of weight they received from the public, and no one that day knew any thing else. Little more than reports, except as to the manner of the murder, is known as yet. It is known that his Lordship was walking with his Scotch steward through a shrubbery, when a man just raised his head and shoulder above a bush, and fired the fatal shot. This fact is ascertained. "The rest is rumour; but one rumour gradually displaces all others: it is, that the murder arose out of the landlord crime of extermination. It is said that Lord Norbury had got infected with the horrible exterminating mania, and had got 250 notices to quit served on his tenants. We do not vouch for the statement; but, if true, heavens! what a scene of crime, cruelty, calamity, and human suffering is presented by the ejection-houseless, homeless, and foodless-of 250 families to starvation and death. We shall not dwell on it. We do not notice it to excuse, but to account, for such a horrid crime. It is not that we abhor the single murder less, but that, if possible, we deprecate the system of wholesale murder more. The allegations against Lord Norbury, in this execrable passage, the correspondent of the Evening Mail pronounces utterly false. When the lamented nobleman, some years since, came into possession of his property, he found it absolutely necessary for the peace of the country to disposses some persons of notoriously bad character. From that time, on an estate of a rental of from L.12,000 to L.14,000 per annum, more than one or two removals have not taken place in any year, and at present there is not more than one, or at the most two, ejectment cases pending. So much for a negative of the expressed falsehoods in the Pilot-now for the not less abominable suppression of truth. Every individual in the neighbourhood willing to labour had employment in the works on Lord Norbury's house and demesne, the disbursements to the workmen and labourers amounting to the sum of two hundred pounds per week. This expenditure, as was naturally to be anticipated, now ceases. A thousand human beings are probably deprived, at this inclement season, of their ordinary means of subsistence -means supplied to them from the resources of the noble victim. Yet, at such a price, the power of bringing destitution upon so great numbers, is the conspiracy willing to execute sentence of death; and its minister of vengeance is free to effect his purpose within hearing, and probably in the sight, of many, whom his crime deprives of the means of life, and who dare not, or will not, defeat his attempt, or deliver him up to justice. On the intention with which the extract from the "popular journal" was written we offer no remark. We do not accuse the writer of recommending the assassination of every gentleman whom rumour accuses of purposing to exercise the right of removing a bad tenant, but we have no hesitation in affirming that the manner in which he speaks of Lord Norbury's murder is calculated to have a most injurious effect upon the minds of the people. If the editor of the Pilot, or Mr O'Connell, his intimate friend and adviser, for whose offences he is said to have vicariously suffered the penalty of a long imprisonment, knew any thing of the proceedings of treason in 1797, it would not, perhaps, have failed to suggest itself to them, that the mandates to assassinate, in the rebellion of those years, were expressed in a form not very unlike that which they have inadvertently adopted for the manifestoes of modern agrarianism. Neither the Union Star nor the papers likely to be read by the Precursors of the present day (we mean, of course, the stamped newspapers), directly affirm that assassination is in itself a good. It is described as only the lesser of two evils. The modern papers will not, in all probability, proscribe by name the nuisances to be abated, at least they will not do so in every instance; but if they teach the people that what they term "the landlord's crime" is a worse evil and a fouler sin than the retaliation which they represent as the tenant's natural though sinful remedy and revenge, they offer all the encouragement to crime which is compatible with a care to exempt themselves from being convicted of conspiracy to murder, and more mischief is done by leaving suspicion upon all the landlords of Ireland, and permitting circumstances to mark out, from time to time, the requisite victims-than if, by naming certain individuals who were to be taken off, they were to abridge their own occupation, and cause a persuasion to spread abroad that the landlords, not named in the lists of Precursionary proscription, were to be regarded popular and unattainted. In the old time matters were ma naged thus Appendix (No. 27), Secret Committee of Ireland.-Union Star. The Union Star appeared at irregular periods, was printed on one side of the paper, to fit it for being pasted on walls, and frequently second cditions were published of the same numbers. It chiefly consisted of names and abusive characters of persons supposed to have been informers against united Irishman, or active opposers of their designs: and to such lists were generally added the most furious exhortations to the populace to rise and take vengeance on their oppressors. Each number commences with the following words :-" As the Union Star is an official paper, the managers promise the public that no characters shall be hazarded but such as are denounced by authority, as being the partners and creatures of Pitt, and his sanguinary journeyman, Luttrel. The Star offers to public justice the following detestable traitors, as spies and perjured informers. Perhaps some arm more lucky than the rest may reach his heart and free the world |