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placed in this perilous situation, no men had ever performed a public trust with more undaunted spirit than the juries of Munster at the late special commission. What pretence was there then for abolishing jury trial in similar cases? If the experiment of trial by jury had been attempted under all possible disadvantages, and if it had been found to answer every purpose for which it was originally instituted; what good reason could be adduced for suspending the great constitutional right of the country? It was in the power of the magistrates, under this bill, to try the accused party without a jury; it was in their power to extend to the prisoner in the dock, if they pleased, the merciful interposition of a jury; but surely a jury trial should have been the rule, and not the exception.

This was unquestionably a powerful, we had almost said, an unanswerable argument; at least no answer was attempted, either by Mr Peel or Mr Plunkett, who followed Mr S. Rice in the debate. However expedient it may have been to empower the magistrates, in certain circumstances, to dispense with a jury, still we hold, with the honourable member for Limerick, that this ought to have been the exception, not the rule; and that even this power of dispensing with the great constitutional safeguard of the subject ought to have been restricted to cases of urgent necessity, where the difficulty or delay of assembling a jury might have emboldened the guilty, impaired the salutary terrors of the law, and thus compromised the public tranquillity. Be this as it may, however, the measure was carried by a most triumphant majority, 135 voting for the original motion, and only 17 for Sir R. Wilson's amendment.

In the committee, Sir J. Newport moved as an amendment, that the duration of the bill should be limited to

the 1st of May, instead of the 1st of August 1823; but this was also negatived by a majority of 94 to 37. Here all opposition terminated, and the bill having gone through its subsequent stages, and through the upper House with little or no remark, passed into a law.

It cannot be denied by any one who attends to the foregoing narrative, that the Government and the Legislature displayed great energy and zeal in organizing a formidable apparatus for the cure of Irish turbulence; but it unfortunately turned out that its vis medicatrix did not prove altogether equal to the predictions which had been hazarded, and the expectations which had been formed respecting it. As winter approached, and especially towards the end of December, notices were again posted up in name of Captain Rock, forbidding the payment of tithes or taxes, and demanding a reduction of rents; farming stock, which had been seized in behalf of the landlord during the day, was carried off or destroyed during the night; and instances of fire-raising, house-breaking, and murder, were of frequent occurrence, particularly in the counties of Cork and Limerick, the principal scenes of the disorders which distinguished the close of the last, and the commencement of the present year. In short, the same barbarous and ferocious villains, at least those of them who had been successful in eluding the vigilance of the police, were again at work, and serious apprehensions were entertained, that the former excesses, which famine, pestilence, the Insurrection Act, and the military had so lately checked, would be renewed in all their wanton cruelty and atrocity. Fortunately these fears proved, in a great measure, groundless. Some alarm was excited by the apprehension of several persons at Armagh, charged with high treason; but they were subsequently

liberated without being brought to trial. Many acts of the most ferocious kind were from time to time perpetrated; but the odds were now greatly against the banditti, who were, therefore, compelled to confine their operations within narrow limits.

We have already, at the commencement of this chapter, noticed the anomalous position in which the present Lord-Lieutenant was placed, and adverted to the peculiar difficulties with which we conceived he had to contend, in a country lacerated to the core by faction, and the prey of disorder and oppression. In this critical predicament his conduct was temperate, yet firm and energetic. He continued, by all the means in his power, to discourage every manifestation of that politico-religious fanaticism, which has been so long the master plague of Ireland, and to endeavour, if possible, to break down the barriers of hatred and exclusion which it had reared. This policy could not fail to render him an object of supreme hatred and abomination to the Orange party. Hitherto, however, they had kept their aversion within some bounds of decorum. But the order forbidding the decoration of King William's statue, on the 4th of November, raised their fury to such a pitch, that they broke through all restraint. A meeting of the corporation of Dublin was immediately held, and a vote of censure passed upon the Lord Mayor, who co-operated with his Excellency in preventing the decoration of the statue. This was intended to be, and most certainly was an indirect insult to the Lord-Lieutenant; but it was more; it was a convincing proof of a rancorous, intolerant, and domineering spirit of faction, incompatible with the existence of any other form of government, except that which acts by the instrumentality of mere physical force. The object of the Lord-Lieutenant, in forbidding a foolish ceremony, kept up for no other purpose than to provoke

and humiliate the Catholics, was one which no human being, not under the influence of the worst passions, could disapprove; but the contemptible and furious faction which had so long enjoyed a prescriptive right of insult were stung to madness at finding themselves for once precluded from the exercise of their darling prerogative; and the LordLieutenant had soon a very unequivocal proof of the rancorous animosity which his conduct had excited.

On the evening of the 14th of December, he went in state to the theatre, and on his entrance was greeted with hearty applause by all the respectable part of the audience; but it soon appeared that a gang of ruffians had established themselves in the gallery, for the express purpose of indulging their malignant passions, and insulting the Lord-Lieutenant. As the performances of the evening proceeded, the disorder became more outrageous; till at length, first a bottle, and then a large wedge of timber, which formed the heavy part of a watchman's rattle, were flung with violence from the gallery, at the viceregal box. By the activity of several gentlemen belonging to his Excellency's suit, several of the most active of the rioters were immediately seized, and carried to the police-office. The Attorney-General immediately instituted an inquiry into the circumstances of this most disgraceful and cowardly outrage; the result of which was, that of the persons who had been taken into custody, some were committed for a riot, and others for having conspired to murder the Lord-Lieutenant.

It may be noticed here, in passing, and as another illustration of the existence of that spirit which we have already attempted to describe, that, on the night in question, the conduct of the municipal police was singularly patient and forbearing. They kept their seats with the most stoical apathy, while the Lord-Lieutenant was insult

ed, and even his life endangered; and it was not till a gentleman of his suite reproached them with their strange inactivity, that they made any exertion to aid him in securing the rioters. Attempts have been made to exculpate this gross dereliction of duty; but in our opinion without success. Every thing, in fact, tends to prove, that the outrage was premeditated.

On this occasion, the Lord-Lieutenant conducted himself with his characteristic firmness, and showed that he was not to be intimidated, by the violence and uproar of a gang of intemperate blackguards, from pursuing the

course which his duty to his Sovereign and his country pointed out to him. Protestants and Catholics, in short persons of all classes except Orangemen, assembled in crowds to vote addresses of congratulation to his Excellency on this occasion, and to express their warm approbation of the principles by which his government had been guided so that the only effects of this preposterous and wicked attempt was to guide the reflections of the people to the services which had provoked it, and to increase the popularity, among all the respectable classes, of the illustrious individual who was its object.

CHAPTER III.

MEASURES FOR THE RELIEF OF THE AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS.

Retrospect of the proceedings of last Session respecting the Petitions of the Agriculturists praying Parliament for relief-Diversity of opinions concerning the causes of the existing distress-Motives by which Ministers were probably influenced in giving the pledge contained in the King's Speech-Mr Brougham's motion on the distressed state of the country, and for relieving the Agriculturists by a reduction of taxation-Financial Measures proposed by Government for their relief-Revival of the Agricultural Committee-Lord Althorp's resolution on the Plan for the Relief of the Country-Schemes of Lord Londonderry, Mr Ricardo and Mr Huskisson, for a new system of Protecting Duties-Lord Londonderry abandons the resolution for a Loan to the Agriculturists-Schemes of Sir T. Lethbridge, Mr Bennett, Mr Ricardo, and Mr Huskisson for a new system of Corn Laws rejected, and that proposed by Lord Londonderry adopted-Mr Western's motion for a Committee to inquire into the effects produced on the Currency by a bill for the resumption of cash payments-Renewal of the motion.

In the course of last session, the table of the House of Commons was literally inundated with petitions, from almost every county in the kingdom, complaining of the general distress which affected all classes of persons connected with agriculture; and a committee was accordingly appointed to take into consideration the allegations contained in those petitions, and report the result of their inquiries to the House. This committee, after a full and patient investigation of the subject, produced a most able and satisfactory report, in which the extent of the distress under which the agriculturists laboured was accurately defined, the causes which were conceived to have produced that distress unfolded, many sound principles stated and illustrated, and some measures intended for the relief of the

petitioners recommended to the consideration of Parliament. Meanwhile, the prospects afforded by the state of the markets were peculiarly discouraging; and notwithstanding the total exclusion of foreign grain, and the consequent monopoly enjoyed by the home grower since 1819, the depreciation of agricultural produce continued to increase, towards the close of the year, so as to threaten the total destruction of the most commanding interest in the kingdom. Large abatements in rent had already been very generally made by the landed proprietors; but still tenants were unable to fulfil their engagements, because the price to which corn had fallen was insufficient to replace the capital employed in its production, exclusive of any rent to the landlord. According to the true theory

of rent, it is the difference in the quantity of produce, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of the difference of the quantity of produce, by which the superior classes of soil exceed the worst in actual cultivation, and which yield only the ordinary wages of labour and profits of stock. The profits of the cultivators of the best and the worst lands are the same; but the rent of the best land will exceed that of the worst by the excess of produce which, with the same expense, it can be made to yield. Rent, therefore, is the effect, not the cause of a rise in the price of corn, and is created by the necessity of having recourse to inferior soils, which, with the expenditure of the same quantity of labour, cannot be made to return the same quantity of produce. The price of corn, to be remunerative, should be equal to the payment of all charges, including rent, and leaving to the grower a fair profit on the capital employed on its production.

But when, from whatever cause it may proceed, the price of corn has ceased to be remunerative, and continues for a length of time depressed below the lowest limit at which it can be so described, (the cost of production being meanwhile the same or nearly so, and the public burdens continuing undiminished,) this alteration in the price and, by supposition, in the value of corn, will affect, though, perhaps, in unequal degrees, all classes who derive their usual incomes from the produce of the soil; but the occupier of the land will be the sufferer in the first instance; for as he had only a fair profit on his capital when corn was at a remunerating price, it is obvious that he cannot fulfil his engagements, when corn has fallen below that price, without a sacrifice on his part equal to the difference between a remunerating and the actual price, whatever it may be. In this state of things he naturally ap

plies for relief, in the only direction open to him, namely, an abatement of rent on the part of the landlord, to whom, as the proprietor and cultivator of the soil can never have but one interest, part of the deficiency is thus transferred. But, from the very nature of things, this mode of relief, at best partial, may be altogether withheld, and, even when afforded, will leave the gross amount of the deficit exactly as it was. In the course of last year, landlords very generally granted deductions of rent; but these deductions were justly considered rather as incontestable evidences of the existence of the distress than as contributing in any effectual way to relieve its pressure.

It is evident that matters cannot long remain in this state, without being productive of the most fatal consequences; for it is equally impossible that the landlords can exist without receiving rent, or that rent can be paid by the farmer from the capital employed by him in cultivating the soil,-which was asserted, in a number of the petitions laid on the table of the House of Commons, to have been in many instances the case. For such an evil, however, the great difficulty is, to devise an adequate remedy. This proceeds from two causes; first, the difference of opinion that generally prevails as to the real source of the existing distress, and, secondly, the incompetency of any legislative measures calculated to interfere with the laws that naturally regulate the profits of capital, whether invested in agriculture, manufacture, or commerce.

Almost every

one of the petitions presented to Parliament contained some theory of its own to account for the existing depression of the agricultural interest, and concluded by proposing a corresponding nostrum or specific for restoring remunerative prices, and placing the capital invested in the soil on a level with that employed in manufactures or

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