last year thirty-two murders and attempts at murder, thirty-four cases of house-burning, five hundred and nineteen burglaries, thirty-six cases of houghing cattle, and one hundred and seventy-eight illegal notices and serious assaults, endangering life; and that in the Queen's County murders and attempts at murders were sixty, burnings and riots six hundred and twenty-six, malicious injuries to property 115, and serious assaults endangering life two hundred and nine. "This list," he continued, "frightful as it is, contains only a small portion of the offences which have been committed against the law, and were reported to the police and other authorities. He also mentioned, that although one hundred and twenty proclamations had been issued by government offering rewards to the amount of £12,000 for bringing of fenders to justice, yet such is the condition of the country, that only in two instances were these proclamations

successful.

And this frightful state exists, while a military force is stationed there, larger and more effectual than at any former time, the numbers of the regular army being, as stated by Lord Grey, as four to one, compared with the numbers even at the time of the rebellion.

To illustrate the real state of crime in Ireland, we will avail ourselves of the very able and important charge of the present Lord Chief Justice, on the opening of the late special commission at Maryborough on the 23rd of last May.

"It is scarcely two months," said his lordship," since the goal of this county was delivered at an assizes, which lasted almost three times the usual period. During the greater part of that time, two judges were engaged in separate courts in criminal trials, yet your prison is again thronged, not with that class of offenders, whose crimes grow out of the frailties of man in his individual character, but with insurgents systematically confederated together against the laws and institutions of their country.”

In that short interval it appears, from the reports of the police department, that more than three hundred outrages have been committed, of every class from murder downwards: in about sixty cases informations have been taken, and the calendar before us exhibits a list of one hundred and

twenty-five prisoners already made amenable.

If a landlord looks for a good tenant-if a farmer proposes for a vacant farm-if a master hires a servant from another county or province-if a higher rent, or lower wages have been paid than those confederates approve, all these have been represented as so many grievances; and the deluded people have persuaded themselves, or have been persuaded by others, to think, that it is their duty to redress them.

I cannot recollect an instance in the experience of many years, and it is a formidable view of our situation, in which a man has been charged with an insurrectionary offence, whose crime could be traced to want or poverty.

Men are deliberately assassinated in the open day, who have in any way become obnoxious to the insurgents, or opposed their system, or refused to participate in their outrages; and sometimes the unoffending members of a family are indiscriminately murdered by burning the habitation of one devoted victim. Entire classes are proscribed by them, especially those who, in any way, from the highest to the lowest department, contribute to the administration of justice. The humble being, who earns his bread by serving the process of a court of law, is held up to public hatred, and persecuted like a noxious animal. The witness who gives evidence in a court of justice, is stigmatised as an informer, and devoted to general execration; and the juryman is ordered on pain of death not to discharge his duty. It is quite plain, that ordinary laws, calculated for civilized communities are not applicable to a country so circumstanced.

An incident occurred at the same commission, which throws light upon the moral state of Ireland, and shows, in a remarkable manner, the feelings entertained and encouraged by the Roman Catholics towards their Protestant brethren. In the case of the King against Francis Adams and Thomas Langton, who were Roman Catholics, and stood charged with a transportable felony.

A challenge was made to the array of the pannel; it was insisted that it had not been arrayed by the sheriff, nor by the sub-sheriff, but by a third person, and that persons had been put

upon it in high places, who were more likely to convict the prisoners than others who had been left off, or had been placed lower upon the panel. "When I look," said the Chief Justice, "at the words of the challenge, I cannot imagine how the evidence we have heard, supposing all the inferences claimed from it to be well-founded, can apply to the question before us. Unless we are bound to identify that insurrection and the crimes it has produced with the religion of the prisoners, an insult and calumny in which I cannot consent to participate, yet I am at a loss to discover any other grounds for this anomalous proceeding, except the assumption of that opinion, which I have deprecated, that the wicked and dangerous conspiracy now infesting this country, is identified with the profession of the Roman Catholic faith.

The sheriff was honourably acquitted by the triers of both charges, that had been without the least foundation, malignantly made against him. The Counsel for the prisoners were, we understand, Roman Catholics; and thus a want of confidence in the administration of the laws, is inculcated on the lower classes, with no other effect, than that of increasing hatred and vengeance amongst the deluded people."

When we turn to the evidence before the committee of the House of Lords, in 1824, on Ireland, we find men of the highest integrity, intelligence, and great professional experience, bearing the strongest testimony to the firmness of the administration of the law in the country.

Mr. Bennett, K.Č., who had some time previously administered the Insurrection act in the County of Kildare and part of the King's County, was asked,

Do you think that the people have had no reason for supposing the laws to be partially administered in Ireland but the circumstance of their being told that they are so ?

"I do; as far as my experience goes, they have been most impartially administered."

To what parts of the kingdom does your experience particularly refer ?

"I have been called to the bar since Easter Term 1800,......... I have gone the Munster circuit, and my experience has been latterly considerable. I have

uniformly been attentive to the administration of justice, and my observation is, that the laws have been most impartially and fairly administered."

To the same effect is the evidence of Mr. Blacker, K.C., who went the North East circuit for many years, and administered the Insurrection Act in Tipperary and Cork.

As far as your experience goes, have Juries always been fairly struck?” "I think so: I never heard any complaint, that there was any system pursued, which led to any unfair decisions of Jurors."

"As far as your experience goes, have you ever had any reason to doubt the impartial administration of justice in any part of Ireland?" "None."

The evidence of his Grace, the Duke of Leinster, of Mr. Wrixon Becher, then a member of the House of Commons, and a magistrate in the county of Cork,) of Mr. Newenham, and of Mr. M'Carty, also three magistrates in the south of Ireland, is precisely to the same effect.

But it little matters what is the character of jurors in a country, in which, as Lord Grey lately stated in the House of Lords, out of a panel of 265 jurors, only 76 dared to attend the Assizes, under apprehension of their lives.

But we are often told, that all this insubordination and crime arises out of the abhorrence of the peasantry to tithes. Now how is this assertion borne out by fact?

"The Attorney-General for Ireland," said Lord Grey in the House of Lords on the 16th of last February, "states, that shocked as he is at the catalogue of crime, he does not find out of 150 cases, a single one connected with tithes! The widow and the helpless orphan are the victims of the existing tyranny: and every act of atrocity is committed under circumstances, which make the blood run cold." So Mr. Barrington, the Crown Solicitor for Munster, states, in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee, that from the passing of the Composition Act, there was not a single outrage in Munster connected with tithe.

But we turn from this desolate picture to another page in the moral statistics of the country.

The subject of Friendly Societies

amongst the lower classes, though much neglected by our politicians, is both in a moral and political view, of most serious importance.

We have had, professionally, personal knowledge of their operation, and know them to have been, in many instances, sources of alarming evil. They are scarcely ever under the patronage and guidance of persons of influence and respectability. The distribution of their funds is on a scale altogether false, and the greatest frauds are practised with impunity and with success. The members are not subject to any effectual control, and the monthly or weekly meetings, which are usually held in public-houses, and become, in many instances, arenas of angry political discussion, are most favourable occasions of entering into combinations against manufacturers and farmers, ruinous alike to the employers and the employed, of exciting rancorous partyspirit, both in politics and religion, and of secret and diabolical associations.... That this is the case very generally in the South of Ireland, we were recently informed by an intelligent English manufacturer, who has been for many years at the head of a Benefit Society in one of the largest of our southern counties.

Indeed, the entire organization of Friendly Societies in Ireland, seems most objectionable. The committees of management should, we think, uniformly consist, in part, if not altogether, of honorary members, consisting of influential country gentlemen, respectable master manufacturers, merchants, and wholesale shopkeepers. Thus a check would be provided on the abuse of the funds, and a sympathy would be created between the employers and the employed, and between landlords and tenants, which is so much to be desired, and has been hitherto so lamentably neglected in Ireland. It is sincerely to be wished that the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, should thus meet together, and be brought into friendly co-operation, under a mutual sense of the several relations in which it has pleased God to place them. The rich should take upon themselves the expense and trouble of the management, and the others alone receive the benefit. Where the funds are managed exclusively, as is usual, by the

members personally interested in them, great frauds frequently prevail. The ignorance of the lower classes respecting compound interest, and the best mode of investing their funds, prevents their availing themselves fully of the pecuniary opportunities presented.

The general meetings should consist of honorary Trustees and Directors, but not of the members at large. The latter, however, should be at liberty to attend as visiters, and such as had incurred penalties, or were to be deprived of sick pay, to which they claimed to be entitled, should be heard in their defence, and any suggestions, which they thought proper to make, should be courteously received, and deliberated upon.

It would be desirable that the advantages of a life annuity insurance should be occasionally united with the ordinary objects of a friendly society. This has been done successfully in various parts of England. In this case, the amount of weekly or monthly contributions should be proportioned to the age of each member. The funds ought to be allocated to secure relief to subscribers in sickness, or when unavoidably out of employment, to provide medicine at reduced prices, to afford support in old age, or secure a sum of money, payable, on the death of a subscriber, to his family, or in his lifetime, on a child attaining a particular age. Tables for the direction of such societies have been constructed by Mr Finlayson, one of the actuaries in the National Debt Office, and are abstracted in the British Almanack for this year.

One of the great evils connected with friendly societies is the habit of holding their meetings in public houses. The Report of the Committee of the House of Commons in 1827, mentions one society which spent £86 in one year, in dinners. When Mr. Becher wrote his excellent pamphlet on the constitution of these institutions, there were 925,489 members in England, and supposing each member to spend sixpence at each meeting, and that there were, as there generally are, fifteen meetings in the year, £347,053 would have been, at that time, the sum annually spent in public houses! Every honorary member should contribute some annual or original sum to the funds. The most eligible means of

instituting such societies is to gain the confidence of the poor by a voluntary subscription in the first instance. Institutions thus originated upon principles and feelings of benevolence, are more satisfactory both to the feelings of those who receive and of those who provide relief. (See the evidence of Mr. Becher before the Committee of the House of Commons.)

The plan adopted by the Highland Society of Scotland, of giving premiums of £21 each for the two best returns from friendly and benefit societies in Scotland, is well worthy of imitation. Communications were received in one year from 79 societies.

It is said that no society should consist of less than 200 members; amongst a very few individuals the law of average cannot be depended upon.

In many cases it would be desirable to unite a Savings bank with a provincial friendly society. This has been done in Liverpool. The two establishments were combined in the same place, managed by the same secretary, and superintended by the same directors.

The concurrence of the two institutions is recommended by the Committee of the House of Commons, which reported on friendly societies in

1827.

These societies have several advantages over Savings banks. The power of commanding the deposits and withdrawing them at pleasure is as frequently a temptation to the improvident, as it is beneficial to prudent and speculative industry. Savings banks, moreover, can be considered only as depositories for the private advantage of each contributor. Friendly societies develope the social sympathies of our nature, giving the poor an opportunity of bearing each others' burdens, and inducing them to insure for one another

subsistence in sickness and age from the combined products of their mutual exertions in health and youth.*

Much useful information and many valuable hints are contained in Mr. Becher's numerous pamphlets on this subject, and in the Tradesmans' and Mechanics' Almanack for 1830, to which the reader is referred.

It is also desirable that a lending library should be connected with every friendly, benefit, or loan society. The books that should be introduced might contain the elements of domestic economy, improved agriculture, the simpler trades, and mechanical inventions, or short narratives and explanations of the evils of trade combinations, of the principles regulating wages, the conduct useful to be pursued in times of scarcity, and above all, illustrations of the dispensations of Divine Providence in the subordination of different classes and individuals in society, and of the happiness which results from moral order, industry, brotherly love, temperance, and peace.

But until the present organization of friendly societies is altogether changed they should be discouraged in Ireland, and should receive no patronage, especially from the legislature. The late act in their favour expired in the summer of last year. Many societies had delayed or neglected to take advantage of it, and we think there is much reason to regret that it was revived and extended last session. Otherwise many, if not all of those societies, that had neglected to avail themselves of the former act, might have been put on a different foundation and entirely remodelled.

In the above view of the moral state of Ireland, we have purposely avoided suggesting or considering any immediate measures, which it may be desirable

that legislature should adopt. A great deal has been written and a great deal said upon this topic during the last twelve months, and when the proposed measures of the present Government come into action, it is to be hoped that something will, at length, be done. Much valuable information and many excellent suggestions may be derived from the evidence before the Parliamentary Committee last session, which, together with the report, deserves the most anxious consideration. But there are gradual and permanent remedies, such as those above suggested (the religious education of the people, and an earnest and systematic sympathy between the upper and lower classes, which it rests with the former to create and to maintain), without which temporary measures of physical restraint, or the reremoval of taxation, or of any other alleged pecuniary grievances, can produce no solid good, nor restore permanent tranquillity. He then, who will earnestly promote the measures, and labour to counteract the evils, political and religious, which we have thus hastily enumerated, and, above all, who humbly but ardently strives for the universal diffusion of scripture truth, would justly be entitled Ireland's true Patriot."

Hitherto, throughout her long and dreary annals she has had few such. Yet the language of Lord Bolingbroke is no less true than eloquent, that, "Neither Des Cartes, in building new worlds, nor Newton, in establishing the true laws of nature on experiment and sublimer geometry, felt more intellectual joys, than he feels, who bends all the force of his understanding, and directs all his thoughts and actions to the good of his country."

We would rejoice that these words were graven with a pen of iron on the heart of every Irishman, then "she who has lain among the pots," and been a bye-word to the nations, should be "as the wings of a dove, that is covered with silver wings, and her feathers like gold." The voice of joy and health would, with God's blessing, be heard in

her dwellings; her land, now rent by civil and religious discord, obedient to the beck of the demagogue, and the slave of every evil passion, would become a scene of industry, contentment, prosperity and peace; and the beautiful apostrophe of Schiller in his "Song of the Bell," where he contrasts the serene stillness and security of the inhabitants reposing under the watchful eye of order and law, with the horrors of moral insanity, insurrection and murder, would, at length, be realised. With regard to the great subject of scriptural education, which must be our sheet anchor, in the sea of troubles on which our country is cast, no one who knows the Irish can possibly doubt of their thirst to drink of the chrystal streams of the Divine Word, and to investigate those truths which relate to their permanent being, (ro TÕUS ÒV), where they are not thwarted by their priests. The progress of the Sunday School Society in the last ten years, amidst every species of threat, promise, terror, and excommunication, is alone an abundant proof. The Irish were, indeed, remarkable for their earnest desire for scriptural knowledge two centuries since. Dr. Owen, who came over in 1649, at the instance of Cromwell, speaks of them as a numerous multitude of as thirsty a people after the Gospel as I ever conversed with." When he returned to England, he took occasion, in a sermon preached before the Parliament, to urge the preaching of the truth in Ireland. "The people," he said, "are sensible of their wants, and cry out for supply. The tears and cries of the inhabitants after the manifestations of Christ are ever in my view. If they were in the dark and loved to have it so, it might somewhat close a door on the bowels of our compassion; but they cry out of their darkness, and are ready to follow every one, to have a candle." These remarks are even more applicable to the Irish of the present day; to those at least, who are not yet enrolled in murder's ruffian bands, nor spell-bound in the thraldom of the cruel demagogue.

VOL. I.

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