The new system would be dearer by about 40,000l. a year; and if against that were set the various advantages which would accruethe saving in expense of several prosecutions the saving of time now given up to the watching for and to the prevention of crime, the money account would be nearly balanced; and all the moral and political benefits arising from the restoration of peace, obedience, and orderly habits, would be so much pure gain.

The most remarkable feature, however, in the history of this measure, is, that the chief opposition to it came from Mr. Charles Grant;

and the two circumstances of his being a strenuous partisan of the ministers, and of his having governed Ireland for three years with great prudence and popularity, gave extraordinary weight to what fell from him on the present occasion. The real tendency of the bill, he said, was to place the whole magistracy of Ireland at the mercy of the lord lieutenant; to subject that country to an armed police, a species of gensd'armerie, hitherto unknown to the laws or practice of a British

parliament. Now, in forming an opinion upon such a plan, three questions were to be considered. First, was there any evil at present in existence? Secondly, if any evil did exist, was the remedy proposed of a stronger nature than the disease required? And thirdly, had every other remedy been tried, and tried in vain, before the present was recommended for adoption? All concurred in admitting the existence of a great political evil in Ireland: that evil lay in the composition of the magistracy and the police. Undoubtedly, there were among the magistrates many who performed their duty in the most conscientious and effective manner; but there were others of them who had been raised to the bench, for which they were in no respect qualified, on account of their influence in local politics, of the assistance they were enabled to lend to certain great personages, and of the morbid sensibility which they had contrived to display on various occasions of public calamity. There were also amongst them men of ruined fortunes, who sought to repair the distressed state of their finances at the expense of the unfortunate persons who were placed under their control. A magistracy so constituted was not likely to agree well with itself; and hence it often happened, that one magistrate would bail a person for no other reason, than because another magistrate, with whom he was not upon terms of amity, had made out the committal. The constables of the different baronies were often as illqualified for their situations as the magistrates were for theirs; and they were generally parties to the local factions and animosities of the towns in which they resided. As

such misgovernment, Mr. Grant stated, that in a barony, where there were two magistrates not on the best terms with each other, the two constables were at the head of the two parties into which it was divided. The two constables mutually applied to the magistrates with whom they were connected, for warrants to arrest one another; having obtained such warrants, each proceeded with a considerable force to execute them; and the two parties having met, a violent conflict ensued between them. Was this an objection to the principle or the practice of the present system? Did not the whole evil consist in the manner in which, and the motives from which, the magistracy and constables were appointed. If, from a principle that was good, and a practice that was not faulty, such consequences as were at present deplored had resulted to Ireland, the system undoubtedly ought to be subverted; but when the practice was allowed on all hands to be bad, why was the principle to be thus suddenly abandoned? Ministers, before they changed the principle of the system, were bound to show that every mode of correcting its practice had been tried, and upon trial had been found inefficient. Now with respect to the magistracy, what attempt had been made to exclude unworthy persons from the commission? None: Complaints had often been made of their supineness, but no measures had been taken to remove it. So also with regard to the constables and the police. Had any law been made to correct the gross and palpable abuses in the appointment to those offices? No such thing: laws had been made to in

late their emoluments; but none to regulate the qualifications necessary to their appointment, either with regard to their age, their strength, or their previous education, or to exclude tithe-proctors and others filling any odious or obnoxious situations. About two years ago indeed the names of the whole body of the magistracy had been submitted to the lord chancellor, who had given up à considerable portion of his time to the investigation of the list. That revision, however, was not yet completed; and why was this bill introduced before it was so? With regard to the degree of strength which belonged to this measure, Mr. Grant thought it too strong. He conceived that a plan of less coercion might be devised, so as to meet the approbation of both sides of the House-a plan which would compel grand juries to be strict in the examination of the constables they employed, to inspect them occasionally, and to render them at all times liable to the control of the magistracy. He even thought that gratuitous parochial constables might be introduced with great advantages into part of Ireland. A proof of the beneficial effect of such a plan was now visible in the county of Longford. Lord Forbes had made the experiment of it in that county; which for five years had been thus administered; and now there was not a person in it, however powerful his faction, that could not be immediately seized, nor a fair, however riotous, from which a constable could not immediately bring forth his prisoner.

Mr. Grant, after pointing out the benefits of such a plan as he had described, proceeded to argué

Even

if other remedies had been tried and found ineffectual in removing -the evil, he should still doubt whe ther this bill would be more successful. Of the great causes which had been most operative in producing the past and present distressed state of Ireland, the first was, that system of coercive laws to which the government had recourse upon every extraordinary emergency. What had been the result? Security? No: it had excited feelings of ill-will, hatred, and revenge. It had revived a conviction in the minds of the lower classes of Irishmen, that the law was framed upon principles hostile to them, and that the governors of England felt themselves at liberty to resort to unconstitutional measures for the administration of Ireland, which they dared not employ in England. The present bill was another of these extraordinary measures of legislation intended for the benefit of Ireland, and one of its merits its advocates stated to be, that it was a preventive bill. It was on that very ground he objected to it; for if it was a preventive bill, it must be founded on a system of espionage; and the violation of public confidence, and the destruction of domestic tranquillity must form the very soul and essence of it. A second cause tending to the injury of Ireland was, the habitual interference of the government in all the matters of its internal police. The combined operation of this eause with the former, the blending of extraordinary legislation on matters of general government with extraordinary interference in matters of private police had created a supineness among the

country, which could never be sufficiently deplored. That supineness had led the way to humiliation; humiliation to want of self-respect; want of self-respect to carelessness in the discharge of public duty; and that carelessness to the abuse of all public trusts. The best means of removing such abuses would be, to use every exertion to excite feelings of selfrespect and dignity in the minds of the magistracy of the country: but this bill would produce the very contrary effect, and would disgrace for ever the country gentlemen of Ireland. To assign the care of a whole barony to a high constable was as disrespectful to the magistrates in it, as assigning the command of an army to a serjeant-major would be. to the officers attached to it. Mr. Grant further objected to the bill, on the ground of the increased expenditure which it would create, and of the strength which it would give to the first cause of corruption. A greater engine of corruption than had ever yet been used by an English government was by it called into existence, and placed under the control, not of the crown, but of the lord lieutenant? According to the bill, there would be 5,000 well-armed men continually under his orders: besides these 5,000, there would be 300 persons more, of vigorous minds and capacities, to control and command them; then there would be at least 10 or 12 well-paid persons to inspect them occasionally, not forgetting 25 stipendiary magistrátes, who must be still better paid than their subordinate officers-all bound to act just as the lord lieutenant should direct them.

The only answer made to Mr.

Grant was, by the question-Why had not he himself introduced some mild measure of the kind which he now eulogized, during the period of his secretaryship? His answer was satisfactory-A revision of the magistracy was begun, which must by this time be nearly complete; and he had prepared a bill for the regulation of the constabulary system, which he much wished to have brought forward last session; but he had been prevented from doing so by circumstances over which he had no control.

Upon a division, 113 voted for the second reading of the bill, and 59 against it. In the subsequent stages of the measure no debate worthy of notice occurred; but a few minor regulations and modifications were introduced, which, without altering the principle of the plan, rendered it less objectionable than it was in its original form.

Tithes had always been the subject of great clamour in Ireland. The payment of the clergy by a tax on the gross produce of agricultural capital must in all cases be a heavy grievance, and must ever present the most insuperable obstacle to the progress of wealth, improvement, and population, that legislative ignorance has yet devised. But, in a country like Ireland, the evil becomes doubly oppressive. The capital, which is thus excluded from agriculture, can find no other profitable channel of industry into which to flow: and, the great majority of the population being hostile to the established church, the payment is felt to be more grievous, because it is made to a clergy, who must be the object of dislike rather than of reverence, to their Roman Catholic parishioners. The attention

of the government had been long called to the consideration of this constant source of disquietude in Ireland; and the palliative, to which they now had recourse, was an act to enable the proprietors of tithes to lease them for terms not exceeding 21 years to the persons seised or possessed of the lands out of which they issued. The lease, when made by the incumbent of the benefice, was to have the consent of the patron indorsed on it; and it was also requisite that the consent of the ordinary should be in like manner indorsed, whenever the lease was granted by any ecclesiastical person or body corporate. The rent reserved was to be the best annual value of the tithes; no fine was to be taken; and no surrender or renewal of any lease was to be made, till within three years of the expiration of the subsisting term. Where the lessee of the tithes afterwards demised the lands, he was bound to let them tithefree; the occupant was to pay to the tithe-owner the sums accruing due to him, and was to deduct the amount from the rent which he paid to his own landlord. Leases made by virtue of the act were exempted from stamp duty, and, from the time of registry were good and valid, on the one hand against the lessors and all persons claiming, in their right, or as their successors, and on the other, against the then and all subsequent occupiers or proprietors of the lands.

It would be a waste of time to enter into any detail of the desultory remarks, which this bill called forth in its progress. There was no opposition to it, for it did no harm. The fault of it lay, not in any demerits of its own, but in the merits which its framers as

cribed to it. According to their representations, it was to have an important share in the tranquillization of Ireland, and was to be a very powerful remedy of the evils connected with the Irish tithe-system. It removed none of the mischiefs springing necessarily from that system; it did not even palliate them. The pressure on the industry and wealth of the country was in no degree lightened. A much more efficacious measure had been expected. Accordingly, on the 19th of June, Mr. Hume brought the subject again before the House, in a speech which was peculiarly well calculated to defeat his own end. The principles which he laid down were, that the property of the church was resumable at the pleasure of the state; that the Irish church was richer than any established church ought to be; and that the Irish clergy were very negligent in the execution of their duties. After a speech, in which bold statements of supposed, but totally unauthenticated facts, were intermingled with the most extravagant abstract propositions, and the most impotent attempts at reasoning, he concluded by moving, "That this house do, early in the next session of parliament, pledge itself to take into consideration the state of the established church of Ireland, and the manner in which tithes are there collected, with a view to make such alteration and improvement as shall seem necessary in its disposition and administration."

The true mischief of tithes lies in their own nature, and not in the quality of the hands by which they are received. Whether they belong to a layman or to a clergyman, they are equally objectionVOL. LXIV.

able: the lay impropriator and the spiritual vicar or rector stand entirely on the same ground. But Mr. Hume and the few who thought with him, did not view the matter in this light. They were hostile, not to tithes, but to the interest of the church in tithes. There was no objection to tithes, when they were to be taken by a layman, who would probably exact their value to the uttermost farthing; it was only when they were claimed by persons in holy orders, that they became an evil. This blindness to the true nature of the mischief proved clearly, that Mr. Hume and his coadjutors were now meddling with a matter, of the principles of which they were entirely ignorant. Mr. Ricardo was present at the debate, but took no share in it. His prudence made him tolerate absurdity. The reasonings, to which his science must have led him, would have been pleasing to neither party; and he therefore probably thought it wisdom to be silent, where his audience was not prepared for the reception of the truth.

The opposition were alarmed at the doctrines of spoliation, which Mr. Hume had advanced; and sir John Newport moved as an amend ment upon his motion, "That, with a view to the tranquillity and happiness of Ireland, this House will, in the early part of next session, take the subject of tithes, as affecting that part of the United Kingdom, into its most serious consideration, with the view of substituting for the present vexatious and precarious mode of supporting the established church, a full and liberal compensation, to be fairly assessed and levied." Mr. Hume abandoned his proposition; and, a division taking place on sir [E]