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soundly on his pillow after voting for expulsion.

Lord Castlereagh entreated the house to pause, and not let their feelings mislead them. It might be much better to run the hazard of letting individuals remain among them, with a stain upon them, than to risk a measure which lowered the exalted character of the public tribunals. Would they delegate Would they delegate a sort of star-chamber above stairs, to review the proceedings of the first criminal court in the land? Could the house call the prosecutors, and hear the cause from beginning to end? What person convicted might not hereafter suggest doubts to parliament? The same plea might be made for all.

Mr. Stuart Wortley confessed, that after all he could read on the matter he had some doubts: now he had great ones. The The circumstances might have been brought about by others, without the noble Lord's guilt; and therefore he could not sleep on his pillow, if he voted for expulsion.

Mr. Bankes saw no third mode of proceeding that would not create a pernicious precedent. They ought not to step out of their natural wholesome functions to attack the Chief Justice and the jury.

Mr. Whitbread asked, were they prepared to vote expulsion, which was called no punishment, without a full conviction of guilt, for the exalting the character of the house, whose purity was such, that suspicion was never to alight upon it? Would it not be among the bitterest moments of any gentleman's life to know that he had been expelled from the house? He felt all the difficulties respecting the appointment of committees. The question was, whether he had doubts of the noble Lord's guilt? He must confess, that after his defence, the bent of his mind was, that he might appear wholly guiltless. There was an innate value in some points, notwithstanding the noble Lord's injudicious mode, by which he seemed to embody the whole feeling of the house against him. Now, however, he did doubt his guilt: and if compelled to a vote, he would say "No," to expulsion.

Sir F. Burdett was not an advocate for the interfering unnecessarily; but it was of the highest importance that the house should

sometimes look a little into the conduct of the judges. The property, liberty, and character of the people were deeply interested in such a protection; and he had no notion of being led into so much awe and reverence for the courts, that the house should suffer themselves to hesitate in granting protection whenever a case justified to interference. If it had been represented by the judge, that Berenger did appear before Lord Cochrane in his red coat, stars, and various orders, more like a mountebank than an officer, and there was no evidence given to that effect, he thought that was a case sufficient for the house to inquire into. Lord C. had seized the first moment to entreat a hearing; and having obtained it, declared on his honour that he was innocent; and such a declaration from a man of a profession, the life and soul of which was honour and glory, ought to have weight. As to the rule, he did not think it was law. Lord C. appeared but slightly connected with the transaction, and appeared drawn into it by his relation; and he approved of the mode of defence of his noble friend,-for he would call him, so, because he verily believed that he was truly innocent; and he should have thought that the noble and heroic exploits he had achieved ought to have protected him against one part of the sentence, at least, even if guilty, and which was to the majority of the country cruel, disgusting, and dreadful beyond example. When, some years back, a forged French newspaper made its appearance in this country, no prosecution whatever had been instituted against the fabrication, though the object undoubtedly had been to raise the funds. Such a practice was only accounted a misdemeanour, and liable to be punished by six months imprisonment. But Lord C., with those feelings natural to his rank and to his profession, was to be punished with the pillory. The Attorney-General had given his sentiments: formerly that officer had no seat in the house. The learned gentleman had not negatived a single point of the speech of Lord C.; but had praised the Chief Justice, and the trial by jury, drawing largely upon his own eloquence, and the ignorance of his audience. He knew something of the mode of striking

special juries; and he believed it would have been difficult to find a common jury who would have condemned Lord C. It was most unnatural to suppose, that a man so indifferent about money as Lord C. would become a swindler, and that he who was one day a hero, would the next be a cheat.

Mr. Wilberforce.-The house was not qualified to act as a court of justice. Of this they seemed sensible, when they renounced the power of deciding on contested elections. The sentence of a court of justice had been hitherto untainted by the breath of calumny; and our administration of justice had been extolled among foreign nations as the most excellent institutions; the greatest among the great, and the fairest among the fair.

The motion for expulsion was carried. It is a circumstance no less singular than unfortunate that Ireland, with the great capacity which she unquestionably has for improvements of every kind, and the ample means which she possesses of adding to the power and prosperity of the empire, should hitherto, on almost every occasion where the energies of the country were called forth, have repressed rather than augmented our exertions. With a fertile soil, considerable wealth, and a numerous population, at once adventurous and brave, instead of promoting the general interests of the united kingdom, she has too often presented the most serious obstruction to the proceedings of government. The truth is, that Ireland has always been agitated by much deep and alarming discontent, and that many of the most daring and active of her people are employed in devising means by which a separation may be accomplished. It is the misfortune of the Irish nation that the lower orders become an unsuspicious and easy prey to all classes of adventurers, and their ardent spirits, and ill regulated habits, are seduced into enterprises of the most hazardous and attrocious nature. It may seem strange that, situated in the immediate neighbourhood of a great and enlightened country, enjoying all the advantages of an easy and unrestricted intercourse, and possessing the benefits of a political union with a people far advanced in wealth and knowledge, she should still exhibit, amidst all her virtues, a barbarism which,

under the present system, seems to be incurable. Some pardonable faults have no doubt been committed by the people, and great crimes by the demagogues who are always at work to agitate the public mind, but the very success of such attempts, and the eagerness shewn by the people to second them, afford a strong presumption that there is something in the political state of Ireland which demands a remedy. The manifold errors of the government of Ireland, committed in past times, have left in the present age evils so difficult to be corrected, that those who are most ardent in the cause of improvement have often been deterred by the arduous nature of the task, and by the violence and dissatisfaction which centuries of misgovernment and oppression have produced among the Irish people. It is no easy task to remove the barriers which an ancient tyranny has established in its own support, and to produce, amidst the conflicting struggle of unpropitious circumstances, any immediate improvement on the state of this unhappy country. To add to the other misfortunes of Ireland, a great proportion of her people profess a religion which is not the religion of the state, and which is avowedly odious to all the professors of the reformed belief. It cannot be wonderful that in a country thus situated frequent symptoms of disaffection to government, and a general spirit of distrust and discord should prevail.

Whatever relates to Ireland must always be interesting to those who know what the inhabitants of that country might be made, and what they actually are. Some persons, indeed, affect to believe that the Irish are naturally so vicious, that no measures of government, no length of time, could reform them: but how these people would ridicule the notion that the Turks were naturally so bad that they could not be made better! If such an opinion were avowed, would they not immediately reply, that the fault was with the government, not with nature? At the same time it must be admitted that the Irish catholics (for in speaking of the Irish they are to be principally if not exclusively considered) in many respects conduct themselves as if they thought that it would be better to irritate than to soothe the English E

government,-better to augment than to diminish the evils of which they complain. This character applies more particularly to the catholic committee of Ireland, whose proceedings, have already alienated from their cause many of their most conscientious and respectable advocates. In our last volume we mentioned that the violent Irish catholics rejoiced at the failure of the bill brought into parliament for their relief, which they represented as an insult to the religion whose professors it was intended to relieve.

In this opinion of the bill they expected they would receive the sanction of the pope; but if his opinion were to be gathered from that of Monsignore Quarantotti, president of the sacred missions in his absence, it was strongly adverse to them. In an official and public letter he styled the bill which was rejected, a most desirable measure, which, if it were to be passed into a law, the catholics ought not only to receive with pleasure, but to yield to their sovereign and to both houses of parliament unfeigned gratitude, and to show themselves by their future conduct worthy of so great an indulgence. In his letter he lays down this maxim,-upon which, however, it is vain and absurd to expect that the Irish will act while they labour under civil as well as religious oppression,-that they should not mix themselves with civil affairs: he admits that the government ought to be freed from every reasonable doubt of the fidelity, submission and allegiance, of those who profess the catholic religion; and more especially of those who are admitted to holy orders, or raised to the episcopal rank; that, with respect to the latter, it would be reasonable and just that the king should name commissioners to examine whether the candidates were perfectly unexceptionable in point of loyalty and obedience to the laws; that foreigners, or those who had not resided within the realm for five years, should not be admitted to the exercise of ecclesiastical functions; that, on the death or promotion of a bishop, the clergy of the diocese should recommend to the king a person as successor, and, if disapproved, should recommend others until the king should be satisfied; and that the king's commissioners should inspect all letters which might pass between the Roman

see and the catholic clergy in the British dominions, under such restrictions only as were suggested in the late bill.

It is easy to perceive that the writer of this letter is, in fact, disposed to concede the veto; and it was therefore not to be expected that he would have much influence with the Irish catholics. Such was the case; and those men who were represented as so devoted to the pope, and so entirely governed by the authority of the church, were found refusing to acknowledge the authority of the pope's representative. This difference of opinion necessarily weakened their cause; and as the catholic committee still went on in the same violent manner, refusing that liberty and toleration to others which they claimed for themselves, and at the same time accusing each other of insincerity, it is not to be wondered at if the catholic cause in Ireland rather retroceded than advanced during the year 1814.

The only circumstances in which the condition of Ireland appeared to be improved, was its agriculture: it was ascertained by the evidence and the documents laid before the committee of the House of Commons on the corn trade, that the importation of wheat from Ireland into Great Britain had very much increased within these few years; and that this increased importation was owing to a spirit of agricultural improvement which had pervaded many parts of that island. But much still remains to be done, even for the agriculture of Ireland; for how can improvements be permanent, or carried on with that spirit and to that extent which will render them advantageous both to the individuals concerned and to the nation at large, while it is actually dangerous in many parts to take a farm, since the dispossession of a native, or an advance of rent, will expose the new comer to assassination? In fact, till the minds and the morals of the Irish nation are improved, it is in vain to expect, either that the soil will be as productive as nature seems to have intended it should be, or that the inhabitants will be as happy in themselves, and as high among European nations, as their warm hearts and excellent talents entitle them to be.

But we cannot unfold the causes of the

low condition in which Ireland has so long been placed, or of the discontents that constantly agitate her peasantry, more fully or satisfactorily than by laying before our readers the substance of the charge of justice Fletcher at the Tipperary assizes:-in it there undoubtedly are some exaggerations, and some partial and unfounded statements; but on the whole it lays open many of the most fruitful sources of Ireland's grievances, which the British government ought to redress, not merely from a wish to benefit that country alone, but England also; for the strength and happiness of Ireland will most materially add to the strength and happiness

of Britain.

His Lordship made some preliminary observations on the general duty of the grand juror's office; bound as he was from the station in which he was placed, between the government and the people, to a scrupulous inquiry into the ground of every matter of presentment. After his Lordship had expatiated on this topic, he proceeded to notice more particularly the state of the country. From the appearance of the calendar, although the quantity of criminal business was very great, he found it had been exceeded on recent occasions, and hoped he might congratulate the country, from this comparison, that some improvement had fortunately taken place in the public manners. If, however, unhappily, the country continued to be disturbed, notwithstanding the enactment of law after law, enforcing a coercion unknown to the constitution, it showed most clearly that the check against this contagion was to be found only in the exertions of the upper classes. He had often heard it sneeringly observed of the Irish character, that, contrary to all other countries, they had become more barbárous as they increased in that wealth and those comforts which tended to civilise all the rest of the world. How the system of outrage which took place among the lower orders here was to be accounted for, he did not know. It could not be extenuated or justified any where; but in other places with which he was familiar, there were many natural causes to which this unfortunate spirit of insubordination could naturally be referred, The severe and heavy burdens to which the

peasantry were liable excited that irritation and ferocity, against which the state of ignorance they were suffered to grovel in, without care or education, offered little correction to prevent a deluded people from exposing themselves to the punishment of those laws which they set at defiance. Much also was to be attributed to the enormous rise of lands, occasioned by the deluge of paper money,and extraordinary calls occasioned by the war for all the produce of the earth, by which every necessary of life increased so much in its value. He repeated, that the prosperity of the country brought mischief to the peasant: after his landlord and his taxes he had the clergyman and the proctor; the latter, who was paid, with execrations, for an agency that was odious; and the former paid with reluctance by those to whom, as a pastor, they looked for no spiritual comfort. It was not, his Lordship emphatically said, to be understood, that in any case the established clergyman got the full value of his tithes; but it was not to be wondered at that much dissatisfaction should be excited by the tithes-farmer, who kept to himself so great a portion of what he exacted from the poor under the title of the clergyman. This latter class, his Lordship said, ought, for their own sakes, to establish a system as moderate as consisted with their situation; for, surely, in point of personal interest, it was wise in them to secure a certain income by encouraging tillage under moderate charges, rather than drive the farmer to a system of pasturage, by which, under the agistment law, the tithes would be lost altogether.From this countenance and kindness, from a wise liberality in the landlords, the tenantry would naturally be led, during the present state of depression in the value of their pro duce, to look for assistance and encouragement; and the landlords could not well set up any argument to resist this appeal to their consideration, when they reflected on the failure of the corn bill, to the protection of which the farmer had looked with so much hope and anxiety. But no man on these accounts, or any of them, was to violate the laws: and it was only by the exertions of such men as he then addressed, that the advantages and blessings of that peace and

obedience were to be expected, in the improvement of which they had no excuse for apathy or relaxation. In other counties, his Lordship said, he found also that murmurs and discontent arose from the conduct of the clergy, not of the established church, looking for an increase of those voluntary contributions from which they derived their only support; and in some of those places the lower orders had not been refrained from acts of violence to prevent exactions. But if every man in the higher ranks of life would individually exert himself, it would be easy to come at the root of all those evils of which we complained. To effect this, the great and opulent landholder, instead of standing at his post ready at all times to support the laws of his country and to promote its peace and prosperity, should not desert that country to spend its produce in another, and leave his tenantry to the management of a griping agent, whose only object was by misrepresentation and deception to grasp all he could for the gratification of his own avarice. It was to men such as he was addressing that it particularly belonged to have a close and watchful eye on the conduct of the magistracy, in the exercise of those powers which, in fact, superseded the old constitution. They were on the spot, and could trace every mischief that arose from zeal or supineness.The latter was, in all cases, reprehensible and disgraceful: the former became baneful only when it brought an over vigilance of power into action to administer to some private purpose; when men cram the gaols with their miserable fellow-creatures, merely to show the extravagance of their loyalty.-Nothing, said his Lordship, could beget amongst the multitude a proper respect for the laws, more than the observation that the scales of justice were too steadily and firmly placed to be warped by any little feelings of cabal or party. But of the two descriptions of men to whom he alluded, he did not know whether the apathy of the one or the vigilance of the other was more criminal or mischievous. His Lordship earnestly recommended a strict frugality in the admeasuring of those public burdens which it was compulsory for them to lay upon the country; and not a shilling which was not imperiously

called for, would, he hoped, be imposed by them: he trusted that not a single pound would be raised upon the country to gratify that vile spirit of jobbing, which he had witnessed in other counties; but, on the contrary, that the gentlemen whom he addressed would be governed by the most conscientious scruple in levying the public money, and by the minutest scrutiny in inquiring into its fair and just expenditure. This part of their duty was one, his Lordship said, in which the capacity even of the peasant was capable of forming a proper estimate; and every man's reasoning would point out to him where grants were made for the purpose of public convenience and accommodation, or to put money into the private pockets of individuals; for it was impossible that the peasant should not feel, at the means which should administer to the hunger and nakedness of his children, being diverted to any of those improper purposes, or submit to the discontented sentiment, that all law was made against him, and no law for him. Let him, said his Lordship, have, from bodies such as you, the protection he claims at your hands, and no such unworthy idea will ever arise in his mind. Let him see that all public grants are for public purposes, and to promote general intercourse, and you encourage him to bear up against his burdens. His Lordship was glad to bear testimony, that he no where found, accompanying the most disgraceful outrages, any thing like a conspiracy against the government, or a correspondence with that great bad power, whose state was fallen, he hoped, never to rise again. His Lordship directed the most particular attention of the grand jury to the subject of private distillation-an evil which struck at the revenue, which it defrauded to the amount of two millions of money in the year; at the comforts of all classes of life, by rendering it necessary to resort to other sources of taxation in order to meet the losses occasioned by this fraud; and at the morals of the poor, who were become so perfectly familiarized with perjury in defending themselves and their neighbours against prosecutions for this of fence, that all the sanction of an oath was obliterated in the districts where it was practised. His Lordship again adverted to the

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