XXXI. 1833. 40. "Personal liberty being abolished, the right of petition, CHAP. as a matter of course, is to share the same fate. The Lord-Lieutenant is to be empowered to prevent, whenever he thinks fit, a meeting for the purpose of petitioning! Continued. When will he ever "think it fit" to sanction such an assemblage? A couple of individuals are to be allowed to meet in a coffee-house, agree on a petition, and hawk it about from door to door for signature; but is that the way in which the constitutional right of petitioning is to be exercised? The act tolerates nothing but hole-andcorner petitions, because its authors well know in what light such petitions are received when presented to this House. It does not absolutely prohibit petitioning-it does worse; it renders it the object of ridicule. The press, too, is to be equally enslaved; for any man discussing the question of tithes, for instance, in a newspaper, and expressing sentiments obnoxious to the existing authorities, is liable, according to the Whiteboy Act, to be transported for inciting to the commission of crime by words, gesture, or writing.' Nay, so anxious are the framers of this bill to surpass all former precedents of despotism, that they have overturned the old and equitable presumption in favour of innocence, and enacted that a man is to be presumed to be guilty unless he proves himself to be innocent. If arms are found in a man's house, he is to be held guilty of a misdemeanour, unless he proves they are there without his knowledge, privity, or consent.' How is he to prove such a negative? Government in this bill requires a man, if he would avoid transportation, to prove his own ignorance,-a burden never yet laid upon an accused party by the jurisprudence of any country, ancient or modern. 41. "Trial by jury is, in the close of all, to be abolished, and the law administered by courts-martial! Has, then, Concluded. the experience of this species of tribunals been so very favourable in Ireland, that they are to be selected par excellence to solve a difficulty inextricable by other means? Are there no reminiscences connected with these XXXI. 1833. CHAP. tribunals in Ireland, which harrow up our very souls when we think of them? Is the education, are the habits, age, or occupations of young men in the army such as peculiarly fit them for dealing in disturbed times with the delicate matter of political offences? Officers are accustomed only to obey orders-to have no opinion of their own to be the armed hand by which Government acts. If Government directs, or, what is the same thing, is known to desire a conviction, what chance, with such judges, has a poor peasant of avoiding it? Jurors may be challenged without risk; but let a prisoner say a word against one of the four ensigns forming his court, and there is an end of all chance of an acquittal. A bare majority is to convict; the casting-vote of a youth of twenty-one, who has been two years in the army, and is dying for his lieutenancy, may decide the fate of a 1 Parl. Deb. prisoner-the ruin of a family. The disturbances do not 1833; Ann. extend beyond a few counties, with a population of half a million, and for their misdeeds eight millions of the King's subjects are to be put out of the pale of the law ! "1 March 7, 28, Reg. 1833, 57-67. 42. Progress of the bill in both Houses. The bill experienced very little opposition in the House of Peers, so strongly had the necessity of the case impressed itself on the minds of the lords acquainted with the state of that ill-starred land. But it was otherwise in the House of Commons. There the bill, in all its stages, met with the most strenuous resistance, from an Opposition inconsiderable in point of numbers, but formidable from its vigour, its perseverance, and the unscrupulous manner in which it took advantage of every formality to delay the progress of the measure. The largest division it mustered was on the clause establishing courtsmartial, in which several of the staunchest supporters of Ministers, particularly Mr Cutlar Fergusson and Mr Abercromby, voted against them; the clause was only carried by a majority of 140, the numbers being 270 to 130. On the other clauses, the minority was reduced to the Irish Catholics and a few extreme English Radicals, and seldom XXXI. 1833. exceeded 40 or 50. So strenuous was the opposition, CHAP. however, which this small phalanx made, that the bill was above six weeks in getting through the Commons, and was only passed on 29th March, when the majority in its favour was 345 to 86. It was passed by the House of Lords by a majority of 40-the numbers being 85 to 1 Parl. Deb. 45; not without some severe animadversions by the Con- March 29, servative peers on some amendments in the Commons, 1833; Ann. which had, in their opinion, impaired the efficiency of the 77, 82. measure.1 April 1, Reg. 1833, on the Co In reviewing this memorable debate, remarkable not 43. merely from the light it throws on the condition of Ire- Reflections land at that time, but from its being the first occasion in ercion Act. which the split between the Whigs and Radicals, consequent on their common victory, became apparent, it is evident that the weight of argument was decidedly with the Government. There was a great deal of truth in what was so strongly urged by the opponents of the bill, but it did not meet what was urged in its support. It was true that great part of Ireland was comparatively quiet, and the outrages confined to certain districts, and that in the ordinary case it is unjust to coerce the innocent for the faults of the guilty; but that did not meet the argument that the crimes committed in Ireland, being the result not of local grievances or heartburnings, but of a general combination acting under foreign sacerdotal influence, and extending over the whole country, it was necessary to make the remedy as extensive as the disease, although the malady had only as yet broken out in particular places, leaving it to the Lord-Lieutenant by proclamations to fix its application in those districts where it was more immediately called for, which is just what the act did. It was true that courts-martial are in general little conversant with the rules of evidence, and little qualified to estimate its weight; but it is not the less true that they are better qualified to do both than intimidated juries listening to terrified witnesses; and if such a tribunal is CHAP. 1833. 44. Decisive proof which the result afforded of the necessity and wisdom of the act. an exception to the constitution, let those answer for it whose systematic and organised violence rendered such an exception necessary. But whatever difference of opinion might exist a priori in regard to the wisdom or necessity of the act, the result soon proved to demonstration that it was the remedy suited to the disease. Its effect in arresting the crime and stilling the passions of Ireland was little short of miraculous. It at once did what the Liberals had so fondly anticipated and so confidently predicted from Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill. Swift and frightful as had been the increase of crime under the influence of these unhappy stimulants to passion and incitements to agitation, it was now almost equalled by the rapidity with which it diminished, from the application of this rude but effective measure of repression. The Lord-Lieutenant, as soon as the bill was passed, proclaimed the county of Kilkenny, including the city of the same name; and such was the effect of the measure, that within two months serious crime had diminished in it to an EIGHTH of its former amount; it had declined from 121 to 15 Over the disturbed districts of Ireland, the decrease of crime in May 1833, compared to March, was from 472 to 162!* There was no need to summon the courtsmartial; not one of them was held. The moment it was XXXI. 1833. known that Government was in earnest, and that tri- CHAP. bunals were ready to be called into action which were proof against intimidation and indifferent to agitation, the atrocious system was checked, and ere long died, for a time, a natural death. If ever a political truth was demonstrated by experience, it was the lesson taught the 1833, 83. British empire on this occasion.1 1 Ann. Reg. reduction of Church Desirous to redeem their pledge of introducing mea- 45. sures for the practical amelioration of Ireland, hand in Bill for the hand with those intended to check its withering agita- the Irish tion, Ministers next brought forward a bill for the re- Establishform and improvement, as they deemed it, of the Irish ment. Church. Lord Althorpe opened this measure in the Lower House on the 12th February, and in so far as reduction went, it was certainly calculated to satisfy the wishes of the most ardent reformers. He began by stating the real amount of the revenues of the Irish Church, which had been the subject of unbounded exaggeration by the Radical and Catholic party, who had usually stated it at L.3,000,000 a-year. In reality, including the whole bishoprics, it was only L.732,000, being less than a fourth part of that amount.* Upon this property the Government proposed to levy a peculiar income-tax, commencing at L.200 a-year, when 5 per cent was to be deducted, and rising to 15 per cent upon all above L.1200 a-year. A similar graduated tax was laid on bishops, and with the produce of both, estimated at L.69,000 a-year, it was proposed to establish a fund, which was to come in lieu of church cess, which was to be abolished. Considerable reductions were also made on the revenues of the bishops, to take effect on the death of the present incumbents; and ten bishoprics were to be |