the north of Ireland. There, those disturbers of the public peace, who assume the name of Orange Yeomen, frequent the fairs and markets, with arms in their hands, under the pretence of self-defence, or of protecting the public peace, but with the lurking view of inviting attacks from the Ribbon Men, confident that, armed as they are, they must overcome defenceless opponents, and put them down. Murders have been repeatedly perpetrated upon such occasions; and, though legal prosecutions have ensued, yet, such have been the baneful consequences of those factious Associations, that, under their influence, Petty Juries have declined (upon some occasions) to do their duty. These facts have fallen under my own view. It was sufficient to say, such a man displayed such a colour, to produce an utter disbelief of his testimony; or, when another has stood with his hand at the bar, the display of his party badge has mitigated the murder into manslaughter.

Gentlemen, I do repeat, that these are my sentiments, not merely as an individual, but as a man discharging his judicial duty, I hope with firmness and integrity. With these Orange Associations I connect all commemorations and processions, producing embittering recollections, and inflicting wounds upon the feelings of others; and I do emphatically state it as my settled opinion, that, until those Associations are effectually put down, and the arms taken from their hands, in vain will the north of Ireland expect tranquillity or peace.

Gentlemen, That moderate pit

tance, which the high rents leave to the poor peasantry, the large county assessments nearly take from them; roads are frequently planned and made, not for the general advantage of the country, but to suit the particular views of a neighbouring land-bolder, at the public expense. Such abuses shake the very foundation of the law; they ought to be checked. Superadded to these mischiefs, are the permanent and occasional absentee landlords, residing in another country, not known to their tenantry, but by their agents, who extract the uttermost penny of the value of the lands. If a lease happens to fall in, they set the farm by public auction to the highest bidder. No gratitude for past services, no preference of the fair offer, no predilection for the ancient tenantry, (be they ever so deserving;) but, if the highest price be not acceded to, the depopulation of an entire tract of country ensues. What then is the wretched peasant to do? Chased from the spot where he had first drawn his breath; where he had first seen the light of Heaven, incapable of procuring any other means of existence. Vexed with those exactions I have enumerated, and harassed by the payment of tythes, can we be surprised that a peasant, of unenlightened mind, of uneducated habits, should rush upon the perpetration of crimes, followed by the punishment of the rope and the gibbet? Nothing (as the peasantry imagine) remains for them, thus harassed and thus destitute, but with strong hand to deter the stranger from intruding upon their farms; and to extort from the weakness and terrors of

their landlords, (from whose gratitude or good feelings they have failed to win it) a kind of preference for their ancient tenantry.

Such, Gentlemen, have been the causes which I have seen thus operating in the north of Ireland, and in part of the south and west. I have observed, too, as the consequences of those Orange combinations and confederacies, men, ferocious in their habits, uneducated, not knowing what remedy to resort to, in their despair flying in the face of the law; entering into dangerous and criminal counter associations, and endeavouring to procure arms, in order to meet, upon equal terms, their Orange assailants.

To these several causes of disturbance, we may add certain moral causes. There has existed an ancient connection, solitary in its nature, between the Catholic pastor and his flock. This connection has been often, with very little reflection, inveighed against, by those who call themselves friends to the constitution in church and state. I have had judicial opportunities of knowing, that this connection between the Catholic pastor and his flock, has been, in some instances, weakened and nearly destroyed; the flock, goaded by their wants, and flying in the face of the pastor, with a lamentable abandonment of all religious feeling, and a dereliction of all regard to that pastoral superintendance, which is so essential to the tranquillity of the country. For, if men have no prospect here, but of a continued series of want, and labour, and privation; and if the hopes and fears of a future state are withdrawn from them,

by an utter separation from their own pastor, what must be the state of society? The ties of religion and morality being thus loosened, a frightful state of things has ensued. Perjury has abounded. The sanctity of oaths has ceased to be binding, save where they administer to the passions of parties. The oaths of the Orange Associations, or of the Ribbonmen, have, indeed, continued to be obligatory. As for oaths administered in a court of justice, they have been set at naught.

Gentlemen, another deep-rooted cause of immorality has been the operation of the county presentment Code of Ireland: abused, as it has been, for the purposes of fraud and peculation, will you not be astonished, when I assure you, that I have had information judicially, from an upright country gentleman and Grand Juror of unquestionable veracity in a western county, that in the general practice, not one in ten of the accounting affidavits was actually sworn at all? Magistrates have signed, and given away printed forms of such affidavits in blank, to be filled up at the pleasure of the party. This abuse produced a strong representation from me to the Grand Jury; and had I known the fact in time, I would have made an example of those magistrates who were guilty of so scandalous a dereliction of duty. Another source of immorality may be traced in the Regis try of Freeholds. Oaths of registration are taken, which, if not perjury, are something very near it. The tenantry are driven to the hustings, and there, collected like sheep in a pen, they must poll for the great undertaker, who ha

purchase

purchased them by his jobs; and this is frequently done, with little regard to conscience or duty, or real value of the alledged freehold.

Another source of immorality lay in the hasty mode of pronouncing decrees upon Civil Bills, which was common before Assistant Barristers were nominated for the several counties. All these concurring causes, however, created such a contempt for oaths, that I have often lamented it to be my painful lot to preside in a Court of Justice, and to be obliged to listen to such abominable profanation.

I now come to another source of vice and mischief, with which you are, perhaps, unacquainted, "Illicit Distillation." From this source, a dreadful torrent of evils and crimes has flowed upon our land. The excessive increase of rents had induced many persons to bid rents for their farms, which they knew they could not fairly or properly discharge; but they flattered themselves, that, in the course of years, the value of those farms would rise still higher, and that thus they might ultimately acquire beneficial interests. In the mean time, they have had recourse to illicit distillation, as the means of making good their rents. Hence the Public Revenue has been defrauded to the amount of millions. Nay, it is a fact, that at one period not far back there was -not a single licensed distillery in an entire province, namely, the northwest circuit, where the consumption of spirituous liquors is, perhaps, called for by the coldness and humidity of the climate. The old powers of the law having proved unavailing, the Legislature

was compelled to enact new laws, which, though clashing with the very first principles of evidence under our happy Constitution, were yet called for by the exigency of the times, laws, which qualify a prosecutor to be as a witness in his own cause. If he feared not the consequences of perjury, he gained the suit, and put the money into his pocket. Hence, a kind of bounty was necessarily tendered to false swearing; and, we all know, the revenue folk are not very remarkable for a scrupulous feeling in such cases. These oaths were answered again by the oaths of the parties charged, who, in order to avoid the fine, denied the existence of any still upon their lands. Thus have I witnessed trials, where, in my judgment, the revenue officer, who came to impose the fine, was perjured, the witnesses who came to avert it, perjured, and the Petty Jury, who tried the cause, perjured, for they declined to do their duty, because they were, or might be, interested in the event; or because the easy procurement of those illicit spirits produced an increased consumption of grain for their benefit. The resident gentry of the county, generally, winked with both their eyes at this practice, and why? because it brought home to the doors of their tenantry a market for their corn; and consequently increased the rents of their lands; besides they were themselves consumers of those liquors, and in every town and village there was an unlicensed house for retailing them. This consumption of spirits produced such pernicious effects, that at length the executive powers deemed it high time to put an

end

end to the system. The consequence was, that the people, rendered ferocious by the use of those liquors, and accustomed to lawless habits, resorted to force, resisted the laws, opposed the military, and hence have resulted riots, assaults, and murders.

:

Can you wonder, that, in such an immoral state of things, all tranquillity and obedience to the law were banished from those counties? Absentees, too, have increased disgusted with the state of things, they desert their post in the time of peril: but, yet, should a farm happen to fall out of lease, keeping strict eye that it be set up to the highest bidder. These things have produced disturbances every where; but, Gentlemen, whether they apply to your county, to any extent, or at all, is for your consideration.

I have thought it right from the false colouring that has been given to those things, to remove all such illusions, and to state the plain facts. Gentlemen, I have heretofore, with good success, called upon the Grand Jury of a great northern County (Donegal), where private distillation had reached to an intolerable excess, to shew some sense of their own interests by the suppression of that practice; and I am happy to say, that call was attended to, and produced useful public resolutions. I am glad to hear that this mischief is a stranger in your county; guard against its introduction; it is one of the greatest practical mischiefs; the revenue is plundered by it, the morals of the people depraved, and their conduct rendered riotous and savage: establish, in the room of whiskey, a wholesome malt liquor,

and you will keep your peasantry in peace, in health, and in vigour.

Having thus given you a sort of sketch of what I have seen upon other circuits, I shall advert to what I have observed upon the present circuit. The first county of this circuit which was the object of his Majesty's Commission, was Kilkenny. The country had been previously alarmed with such rumours and stories from that quarter, that the order of this circuit was inverted, for the express purpose, as was alledged, of meeting the supposed exigencies of that county by an early assizes. I did not preside in the criminal court there; but I have been informed by my brother Judge (Day) of what passed. Four capital convictions took place; of which the subject matter arose from two transactions only. One of those transactions, comprising two of those convictions, was of no recent date; it occurred early in 1813; and had been already tried at the Summer Assizes of Kilkenny, in that year. At that Assizes, the two criminals had been found guilty of an attempt at assassination, a most atrocious outrage indeed. Their execution was suspended by an argument upon the legality of their conviction; the conviction was proved illegal; and of course they were, for the second time, tried and convicted at the late Assizes. But how such a case could warrant the extraordinary colouring which was given to the alledged disturbances of that county, or called for any parade or bustle, I am wholly at a loss to discover. The other of those transactions was, also, of a flagitious nature; it was a heinous burglary,

burglary, committed by the two other criminals, in the house of Mr. Sutton. They were convicted, and have suffered the punishment due to their crime. But was this a case for exciting public alarm, or spreading national disquietude, or for causing the ordinary course of the circuit to be inverted, and leading every person to apprehend machinations and conspiracies of the most deep and desperate kind? From Kilkenny the Commission proceeded to Clonmel. There I presided in the Crown Court; the Calendar presented a sad list of crimes, one hundred and twenty names appeared upon the face of the Crown Book. There were several government prosecutions, conducted by able gentlemen of the bar, and by the Crown solicitor; at the appointment, and by the direction of the Government, who had been alarmed for the peace of the country. Yet, notwithstanding all this formidable array of crime, and this multitude of prisoners, I had the good for tune to discharge the gaol of that county in two days and a half. Two persons only were capitally convicted, at that Assizes. One of them was neither the subject of a public prosecution, nor of a private one. It was a case upon Lord Ellenborough's Act, for assaulting with weapons (in that case with a pitch-fork) with an intention to kill, maim, or disfigure. The unfortunate man had been out upon bail; and, supposing that he had made his peace with his prosecutor, had surrendered himself, not apprehending any prosecution. The bail had forfeited their recognizance at the assizes preceding, and I mention this

fact, lest it might be imagined that the conductors of the Crown prosecutions had slumbered on their post, or had been remiss in their duty. I do believe they knew nothing of the prosecutor's intention to appear. The prisoner was compelled to come in by the magistrate who had bailed him, and who had been at the preceding Assizes, fined one hundred pounds for thus bailing a person, charged with a capital felony. The prisoner had the benefit of able Counsel; his trial was not hurried on; a Jury of his Country, under the superintendance of a Judge (I hope, not devoid of humanity), found him guilty. But, let me ask, what had all this to do with public disturbances? A people ferocious in their habits and violent in their animosities, when intoxicated with whiskey, formed into factions amongst themselves, classed by barbarous appellations, may bruise each other with sticks, or even slay each other with mortal weapons; but I would ask any man, what connection could the conviction of that criminal (under Lord Ellenborough's Act) have with associations against law, order, and the government?

There was a second conviction at Clonmel, in a case of a rape and forcible abduction. The prosecutrix was the principal witness in support of that conviction; but the credit due to her testimony has been so materially affected by facts since disclosed, that I thought it my duty to name a distant day for the execution of the sentence, in order to afford time for the respectable Gentlemen, who have interfered on behalf of the prisoner, to bring his case fairly and satisfactorily