he could act only through others; and there were none of whose agency he could avail himself with so much advantage on the whole, as of that of the magistrates of the districts.

Mr. Brougham objected more especially to the bill for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act, on the ground, that, on the very case made by ministers, it was a remedy in no degree adapted to the mischief. They admitted, he said, that neither political nor religious animosities were mixed up in the present disturbances. If then, a power were given to imprison without bringing the individuals immediately to trial, it was a measure altogether inapplicable to the alleged evil; for the suspension act was of no avail, except in cases of political or religious dissensions, when violent agitators were stalking abroad, whom it was desirable that the government should have the power of removing from the centre of their operations. This objection was a mere cavil. It supposed that rebellion ceased to be rebellion, if it did not spring from

religious opinions, or from wild political theories. The suspension act is efficacious, wherever there is a concerted system of operations for opposing the constituted authorities; no matter from what motive the concert may spring. Such a system always implies the secret agency of numbers of persons, against whom it might be impossible to prove any overt act ; to destroy the system, that agency must be arrested or interrupted; and this cannot be done except by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. This suspension, therefore, was peculiarly applicable to the state of Ireland; where schemes of treason existed on so large a scale, that bodies of five or six hundred men were occasionally arrayed against the regular military force.

Leave was given, without a division, to bring in the Insurrection act. But on the motion for leave to bring in the bill for suspending the Habeas Corpus act, the House divided: The Ayes were 195, the Noes, 68.*

It was then moved, that the In

Abercromby, hon. J. Barrett, S. B. M. Beaumont, T. W. Benyon, B. Bernal, R. Birch, J. Bright, H. Brougham, H. Burdett, sir F. Bury, lord Calvert, N. Calvert, C. Carter, J. Clifton, lord.. Creevey, T. Crompton, S. Davies, col. Denman, T.

James, W. Johnson, col. Lambton, J. G. Lennard, T. B. Lushington, Dr. Maberly, J. Maberly, col. Mackintosh, sir J. Marjoribanks, S. Moore, P. Nugent, lord Newport, sir J. Orde, W. Ossulston, lord Palmer, col. Price, R. Ricardo, D. Robarts, A. W.

Hume, J.

surrection act should be read a first time; for the motion there were 202; against it 44. Upon this, a motion was made for the purpose of delay, that the bill should be printed; it was rejected by 149 Noes, to 22 Ayes. The bill was then read a second time.

Mr. Spring Rice intimated, that he should take the sense of the House upon the question of the bill going into a committee. Lord Londonderry was anxious that the bill might go through its several stages that night, so that it might be transmitted to Ireland before the end of the week; but Mr. Denman having declared that he would avail himself of the forms of the House to stop its progress, his lordship was obliged to desist from pressing it. The Habeas Corpus bill was then passed through the same stages.

On the following day the bills were read a third time, and passed. The debate turned more on the personal claim of the lord lieutenant to confidence, than on the merits or demerits of the measures. It took this turn in consequence of an intimation from sir John Newport, that he withdrew his opposition to the proposed measures, solely on the ground, that lord Wellesley had recommended them.

Mr. Spring Rice took the sense of the House upon two clauses, which he proposed to introduce into the Insurrection act; one authorizing the king's counsel, the serjeant, or the assistant barrister

at the special sessions, to take bail for offences under the act; the other authorizing the appointment of justices in counties of cities and of towns. Mr. Denman also moved to omit the clause which protected the persons carrying the act into effect. these amendments were rejected.

All

The bills were discussed at great length in the House of Lords, on the 9th of February, the same topics being urged against them as in the House of Commons, though with more moderation. Lord Holland, who took the principal share in the discussion, insisted chiefly on the want of proof, that measures of such severity were called for; contending, that the disturbances appeared and disappeared exactly as a sufficient military force was removed from a district, or brought into it, and thence inferring that troops were the only thing wanted to restore and ensure tranquillity. This argument was very satisfactorily answered by the duke of Wellington. There were, he said, two descriptions of outrages to be repressed. There were rebels arrayed openly in the field; these could be met only, and could be met effectually, by troops. There were also the nightly aggressions of lawless banditti, who, taking advantage of the hours of darkness, assailed the houses of peaceable inhabitants, menaced them with murder (and those menaces were too often followed by corresponding deeds), and plun

dered them of their arms and property. Outrages of this latter kind could not be put down by the mere employment of troops, as was proved by the fact, that houses in the immediate vicinity of barracks, where troops were stationed, had been attacked and plundered. We might double the amount of the army now in Ireland; and yet such a law, as that which was proposed, would be equally necessary for the only certain method of putting an end to the disorders was, to prevent people from quitting their houses between sun-set and sun-rise, and to punish them if they were found absent from their homes during the night.

No division took place on the bills themselves; but, in the committee, lord King proposed an amendment, of which he had given notice in the early part of the debate, limiting their operation to three months instead of six, by substituting in them " the 15th of May" for the "1st of August." In support of the amendment it was urged, that it would give parliament an opportunity of reconsidering the subject with more advantage, than if the measure were not to be again brought be fore them, till near the end of the session; and though it might probably be necessary to renew the bills, yet, in the mean time, more distinct information might be obtained, and means might be found of modifying some of the most objectionable clauses. On the other side, it was said, that if the bills were to be enacted for only three months, half the good to be expected from them would be lost they would never be brought fairly into operation, because the minds of men would be contem

plating their expiry, before their effects began to be felt. Lord Lansdowne supported the amendment. On a division, it was rejected by a majority of 44; the Contents being 15, and the NonContents 59.

Both the bills were then passed, and on the 11th of February received the royal assent.

Two other measures were brought forward and were carried through parliament, by the 11th of March, subservient to the same purpose with the Insurrection act. The one was an act to indemnify all persons, who, since the 1st of November preceding, had with a view to the preservation of the public peace, but without legal authority, seized or detained arms or gunpowder. The other endeavoured to render it difficult for the disorderly to obtain offensive weapons by imposing severe restrictions on the importation of arms, gunpowder, and ammunition into Ireland, on the manufacturing or possession of these articles in it, and also on the removal of them from one place in it to another. No person was to make, or import, or sell, fire-arms or gunpowder, without a license from the lord-lieutenant or his secretary: nor was any person, not licensed as a dealer in the article, to have in his possession more than two pounds weight of gunpowder, without an especial license. dealers in gunpowder could not sell more than two pounds weight, unless the purchaser produced his license; and upon it, so produced, they were required to indorse the quantity sold to him, and the time when the sale took place. A license was also requisite for the removal of fire-arms or gunpowder from one place to another: and no

The

person, not authorized by law to keep and carry arms, was to be allowed to have the smallest quantity of gunpowder in his possession. These were the principal provisions of the act, to enforce which, heavy penalties were annexed to the violation of them, and many subordinate regulations were introduced. The act was to be in force for seven years. It was certainly a most severe measure of preventive police-more at variance with the principles of liberty, perhaps, than even the Insurrection act, and, from innumerable difficulties that must occur in the way of the effectual application of it, not likely to contribute much towards the extirpation of the peculiar evils which afflicted Ireland. It passed, however, through both Houses without observation.

The Irish government availed itself with vigour, yet with moderation, of the additional powers with which the legislature had armed it; and proclamations were from time to time issued, placing under the cover of the Insurrection act, the districts, in which violent outrages were apprehended or had been perpetrated. The local authorities and the military continued to exert themselves with vigour; and the effect was, that the insurgents no longer dared to assemble in such large bodies as in the month of January, nor did they venture to oppose so daring and systematic a resistance to the police and the troops. Still the country remained in a very insecure state; and the evil, if it no longer raged in any one spot with the violence which it had exhibited in the county of Cork, seemed even to be extending its sphere of operation. Outrages were com,

mitted in Waterford, Wexford, and Carlow, which would have excited general notice, and spread general alarm in any well-regulated country, but which seemed, and indeed with good reason, to be mere trifles, when compared with the nightly conflagrations, robberies, and assassinations, of which Limerick,* Cork, and Tipperary still continued to be the scene. The county of Donegal in the North was in a state not much better. The cause assigned for the bad spirit existing there was the prevalence of the practice of illicit distillation, of which no fewer than seventy-three persons were convicted at the Spring assizes for that county.

Our limits do not permit us to enter into details of the outrages. We have already gone into them minutely But enough to show their nature. we give the following extract from a Limerick newspaper, as a specimen of the intelligence, with which (and with nothing else) the Irish Journals were filled day after day. After mentioning various outrages which had been committed in the month of February, the Limerick Newes subjoins a few straggling facts. "On the night of the 8th, two sheep were killed, and 36 carried off from the lands or Castletown Conyers -a species of military contribution. On the 6th, 150 men in arms, cut down and drew away on cars, impressed from the farmers for that purpose, 350 young forest-trees from Bal

quile. On the 20th, the house of

Mr. Standish was attacked; on the 19th, a tenant of lord Clare was fired at while ploughing, and his horse shot. On the 20th, Patrick Harrold, with a sum of money in his pocket, was waylaid by men with blackened faces put down on his knees to be shot, and saved by the accidental approach of a horseman. It were endless to enume

rate all that we read. Near Clonmell, two notices are posted up. Ou the 23rd, Dennis Browne was shot through the heart in defending the house of his master, Mr. Cox, at Ballynoe."

Though the perpetration of crime was not suppressed, many of the guilty had been seized; and a special commission put the laws speedily in force against the unfortunate wretches. At Limerick and Cork, more especially, the calendar of crime was enormous. At the latter place, it presented on the day of opening the commission (the 16th of February) 366 offenders. Thirtyfive of these received sentence of death; and some of them were ordered for immediate, others for speedy execution. With respect to the remainder, baron Mac Clelland, the officiating judge, intimated, that the infliction of the vengeance of the law would, in the mean time be suspended, and that their ultimate fate would depend on the future conduct of the peasantry.

If the district were restored to tranquillity, and the surrender of arms in it became general, mercy would be extended to them; but if no sure signs of returning peace appeared, their doom was inevitable.

The assizes followed at a short interval, when similar scenes were again repeated. Many were convicted, and not a few were acquitted. It is a melancholy observation, which we are obliged to add, that the witnesses for the prosecutions exhibited in some instances a most dangerous promptitude to swear so as to convict, which leaves on the mind of the reader of the proceedings no very favourable opinion of their credibility, and excites in him the painful (though perhaps mistaken) apprehension, that the innocent may have often suffered with the guilty. At Cork, a shop-keeper of the name of Heffernan, received sentence of death, having

been convicted of selling gunpowder to the insurgents.

:

After the application of all these various and sharp remedies, we are still obliged to return to the same chorus :-the burthen of our narrative still is-that the 'evil was not cured-that it was even in a slight degree only that it was allayed. The advancing season of the year naturally threw a great and insurmountable obstacle in the way of the excesses of the disorderly for their operations were not such as could be completed in a very short time: they had to assemble from a distance; they had generally to proceed in company over a considerable space: they had to perpetrate their enormities; and they had then to disperse and seek concealment. All this was to be done; and it could be done safely, only under the cover of night. As winter, therefore, departed, and the days lengthened, and the nights shortened with the coming on of Spring, the opportunity of committing outrages was diminished; and it was consequently to be expected, that a greater degree of tranquillity would prevail. This expectation was not disappointed: yet the excesses, that continued to be perpetrated, were both numerous and atrocious. Throughout March, and during the earlier part of April, scarcely a newspaper appeared, which did not record some attacks upon houses, some wilful conflagrations, or some unprovoked assassinations.* The com

*We give, as a specimen, the following account from Kilkenny of the 11th of April: Kilkenny, let it be remembered, was not one of the principal

centres or scenes of disturbances:

"Kilkenny, April 11.-The barony of Knocktopher continues in a state of