hearty support to the Government so long as it showed itself in earnest in putting down murder and preventing assassination in Ireland. The blood of every man who should be murdered hereafter in Ireland would be on the head of the Ministers, and of that House, if they joined in retarding unnecessarily the progress of a measure like this. The party with which he had the honour to act yielded to none in love of liberty, but it would not allow the name of liberty to be prostituted to the protection of broad-day murder and midnight assassination.

Sir George Grey thought that the Corn Importation Bill ought to take precedence of the present

measure.

Lord John Russell adopted the same view, adding, that if Sir James Graham should make out a case justifying a Bill like the present, he should feel himself at liberty to give his assent to it. At the same time he could not help adding, that if Government succeeded in reading this harsh measure a first time, it ought to follow it up by remedial measures, calculated to reach the causes of these disorders. A great moral advantage would be gained if the House should declare, that while it enforced the law against the assassin, it would search into the causes of his crimes, and would consider whether, by removing them, the necessity for such unconstitutional Bills might not in future be averted.

Mr. Henry Grattan declared his intention of supporting Sir William Somerville's amendment, but with a firm determination, nevertheless, to put down the spirit of insubordination which now prevailed in some districts in Ireland. VOL. LXXXVIII,

Sir Robert Peel did not expect to have heard a doubt expressed that evening as to the sincerity of Her Majesty's Government in bringing forward this Bill for the preservation of life and property in Ireland. When the fitting time came, the House would see whether he was sincere in his declarations respecting his intention to proceed forthwith with the Corn Bill. It was, however, his duty to insist that this Bill should previously be read a first time. Lord George Bentinck had said, that Government would be responsible for every murder which should hereafter be committed in Ireland, if this Irish Bill were not passed, while the gentlemen on the Opposition benches contended that Government would be responsible for every man who died of starvation in Ireland, in case the Corn Bill were not passed. Between these two measures, he admitted that the Government was placed in a position of some difficulty, but he thought that it had reconciled its duty with those difficulties by proposing to read this Bill a first time. Ministers had been told that they should be met with every kind of delay upon this Bill. It was the duty of Government to disregard menaces of that kind, and to take that course which was most conducive to the public interest. It would not be seemly, in the present state of Ireland, not to take this measure into immediate consideration.

After some further discussion, the House divided, when there appeared for the motion of Sir James Graham

Sir James Graham then proceeded to make a statement of the reasons which induced him to move that the Bill for the protection of life and property in Ireland should now be read a first time. His task in bringing in the present measure was painful, but it was accompanied by some topics of consolation. He had not to bring any charge against the people of Ireland generally; he had only to expose the outrages which had occurred within certain localities. Ministers had now conducted the government, during difficult times, for five years, and had discharged the arduous duties of their position without applying to Parliament for any extraordinary or unconstitutional powers. They had also proposed and carried, within that time, various measures conceived in a spirit not unfriendly to the people of Ireland. With reference to the present measure, painful and unconstitutional as it must appear to all to be, he could not reconcile it to himself to be a party to proposing it, without having previously made provision to relieve the physical wants of the people of Ireland, aggravated as they were by the failure of the potato-crop. Time was necessary for the full development of the other remedies proposed by Government for the distresses of Ireland; but no time ought to be lost in applying the present remedy to the evils of Ireland. In thirty-two counties of Ireland it would be found that life and property were as secure they are in any county in Great Britain; and in eighteen of them, crime, instead of increasing, was actually diminishing. If it were not for the condition of five counties in Ireland, he should have had no occasion to bring forward a

as

measure like the present. Those five counties were the counties of Tipperary, Clare, Roscommon, Limerick, and Leitrim. The popu lation of Ireland consisted of 8,175,124 souls, and that of these five counties consisted of 1,412,000. After reading an account of the number of homicides and other grievous crimes committed in Ireland, he showed that, while in the whole of that country the number of homicides did not, in the year 1845, exceed ninety-two, the number in those five counties amounted to forty-seven; and the like proportion was visible in the relative amount of other crimes, with this exception, that the nightly firing into dwelling-houses in those five counties amounted to seven-tenths of all that species of crime committed in Ireland. He then proceeded to classify the different species of crime committed in that country, and to bring specific instances of them under the notice of the House. It was some satisfaction to be able to state that these crimes were neither of a sectarian nor a political character, but were perpetrated indiscriminately on the Orangeman and the Catholic, on the Whig or the Tory. He then read a frightful catalogue of murders, committed in noon-day, upon persons who had taken or refused to give up portions of land, upon magistrates who had given offence by the vigorous execution of their magisterial functions, and upon. witnesses who had given evidence in courts of justice. that the parties who perpetrated these offences interfered in the most extraordinary manner. He contended that, unless such interference were prohibited, the influx of capital into Ireland would be stopped, and the poverty and dis

He showed

tress of the people would remain for ever unchanged. The interposiThe interposition of the Legislature had become indispensably necessary; and a memorial calling for it had been presented to the Lord-Lieutenant, by the magistrates and grand jurors of the five counties to which he had already referred. He then proceeded to describe the heads of the Bill sent down from the House of Lords for the repression of these outrages, and observed, that as he should have another opportunity of defending their policy, he would not enter at all into that subject at present. After dwelling with great emphasis on the recent murder of Mr. Carrick, and reading the able letter addressed by Mr. Ryan to Mr. O'Connell, calling upon that gentleman to give up his agitation against this measure, he implored honourable Members not to refuse a reading of this Bill, if they loved Ireland, abhorred injustice, and detested murder. He then moved that the Bill be read a first time.

The debate thus commenced was not suffered to come to a close till after repeated adjournments, and much loss of time.

Mr. O'Connell addressed the House in opposition to the Bill, on the next occasion when the subject was resumed. He did not deny the existence of disturbance and crime in certain parts of Ireland, neither would he palliate the atrocious attacks against life which had taken place; but he disputed the efficiency of the Ministerial remedy. Sir James Graham had failed to show that the measure would operate as a remedy; if this point had been made out, Mr. O'Connell would have given the Bill a hearty support. He called upon the Government to look into the real condition of the people of Ireland, and

to pass the only Coercion Act that was required-an Act to coerce the landlord who would not do his duty, and to rescue the people from their present condition. Of course the Government wished to see Ireland prospering, and they had given a strong proof of this desire. They had the power in their hands, and if they would take a manly tone, and adopt a temperate and dignified estimate of human nature with respect to Ireland, they might stand over her and wave the wand that would turn her misery and poverty to prosperity and happiness. He traced the outrages whose existence formed the pretext for the present coercive measure to the nature of land-tenure, and the anomalous relations between landlord and tenant. He referred to the Acts passed since the Union, to show the many unjust advantages conferred upon the landlord, and the consequent helplessness of the tenant. These advantages had proved fertile sources of murder, especially that which related to the power to distrain upon growing crops. "There was in Ireland what was called a 'starving season,' for about six weeks before the new harvest, and, if the growing crops were distrained, the labourers were deprived of their means of subsist

ence.

They were prevented from digging: if their wives or children came out in the evening to take a few potatoes, they were consigned to a gaol; the husbands were driven to madness; and could it be a matter of surprise that this state of things was a fruitful source of crime?-of crime which did not exist in Ireland before the Union, but which was traceable directly to the legislation of that House." The evils which had been fostered under the existing system would not be

cured by. a Coercion Bill. Similar experiments had been tried seventeen times, and every one of them had failed. This he showed in detail. As to remedies, Mr. O'Connell recommended measures for the adjustment of the tenure of land, and for securing to tenants a fair compensation for improve ments; a modification of the Ejectment Bill, to check the wholesale clearance system; the extension of the Ulster tenant-right; a modification of the Grand Jury Law; a more adequate number of representatives in Parliament; adequate corporation reform; and a better distribution of the church temporalities. In conclusion, Mr. O'Connell moved his amendment, to the effect -that, instead of passing an arbitrary and unconstitutional Bill like the one proposed, they ought to adopt measures tending to eradicate the causes which produce crime.

Mr. Bernal Osborne seconded the amendment. He thought the tendency of the Bill was to inflame discontent, and insisted on the necessity of measures to remove the causes which led to the commission of outrages.

Mr. Sidney Herbert defended the Bill. He endeavoured to show that its object was the care of the poor man more than of the rich: the clause which made it penal for a man to be out of his residence between sunset and sunrise, except upon lawful cause, was specially intended for the protection of the helpless, inasmuch as the murders committed in broad day were upon the rich, and those at night chiefly upon the poor.

Lord John Russell thought that Sir James Graham had not made out his case, in so far as regarded the efficiency of the measure to remedy the admitted evil; he had

not shown in what way the Bill would prevent murder. In fact, the most important step of the whole deliberation, the connection of the evil with the remedy, had been lightly and briefly passed over. Lord John thought a milder measure would have been more effectual. If he agreed that the Bill should be read a first time, he was bound to state that, in the future stages, he should have objections to offer which would reach the foundations of some of the principal provisions. He did not think the House should now rest satisfied with copying the legislation of the last forty or fifty years, in reference to Irish grievances. He complained that Government had neglected to bring forward remedial measures in conjunction with the Coercion Bill, and stated differences in the policy of the Whigs, in Earl Grey's time, when introducing their coercive measure. Lord John Russell expressed satisfaction that the monstrous proposal originally made of making the Bill permanent had been abandoned. IIe trusted, before the Bill was read a second time, a measure would be introduced for adjusting arrangements between landlords and te

nants.

On a subsequent night the discussion was resumed, when Mr. R. S. Carew, Mr. Dillon Browne, Mr. Poulett Scrope, and the O'Connor Don spoke against the Bill; Mr. Milnes supported it, as did Lord George Bentinck; and Lord Morpeth gave a qualified support to the first reading. He observed, that though he was ready to admit that remedial measures ought to have preceded, or, at any rate, to have accompanied this measure of coercion, yet he could not take upon himself the responsibility of refusing to give to the Government

some of the powers which they alleged to be essential to the security of human life in Ireland. Even now, when he was going to give a vote not in conformity with the majority of the representatives of Ireland, he was ready to allow that the people of that country, in honesty of dealing between man and man, and in patience under want and privation, were superior to any other people in the world. He was also ready to allow that it might be easy to pick out crimes more enormous in England than any committed in Ireland; but it was not the enormity, but the system of Irish crime, which called at present' for some intervention on the part of the Legislature. He considered that this Bill was not calculated to gain its own ends; but that was a reason for considering its clauses in committee, especially as he could not refuse to legislate upon the subject altogether. He had been one of those who had originally supported the Appropriation Clause, and he had subsequently stated in his place in Parliament that that clause, baffled as it was, would not do full justice to the people of Ireland. He was also of opinion that all the franchises of Ireland, Parliamentary as well as municipal, ought to rest upon the same bases as those of England and Scotland. Though the Whig Government had introduced a Poor Law into Ireland, he thought that the relation between the property and the poverty of that country required further adjustment; and most earnestly did he hope that the new law of landlord and tenant which Government was going to propose would be formed with due consideration of the rights of the weak and defenceless. He was also of opinion that the bogs and waste

lands of Ireland might be made productive of greater advantage to its population. He then proceeded to remark, that whenever the period should arrive for the first reading of this Bill, some time must elapse before it arrived at its third reading. If in the interim the abhorrence with which these crimes had been branded by the popular leaders of Ireland should have produced a diminution of their number, and if the benevolent hand of Providence should have restored security to property and life, he hoped that Her Majesty's Government would meet that manifestation of improvement in a corresponding spirit, and would dispense with the whole, or with the severer part of this law; but if the event should be otherwise, then he must bow before the necessity, and accede to the demands of Government for increased powers. In the first specch he had ever made in Parliament, he had called upon England to be great and to make Ireland happy. Since that time England had gone on culminating in greatness; but he was afraid that, still, much was left for her to do in order to make Ireland happy.

After a great number of speeches against the Bill, chiefly from Irish members, insisting on nearly the same grounds of objection as those of which a summary has been given, Sir Robert Peel vindicated at considerable length the conduct of his Administration with respect to this Bill. He said that, on the very first day of the session, one of the first practical measures recommended to the House in Her Majesty's Speech was a measure calculated to give increased protection to life, and to bring to justice the perpetrators of deliberate assassination. There an assurance given by the

was