appalling difficulties in any other than one way; namely, by a reduction of the proposed peace establishment. It was in vain to listen to the suggestions of those who recommended a little loan; suggestions which, by the way, might be merely intended to sound the House, upon the practicability of such a mode of proceeding. All this was a plain and palpable delusion; the difficulties of the country were most urgent and pressing, they must be met; and if Ministers could show, that there really existed a necessity for the maintenance of the proposed system, he, for one, would not hesitate to vote for the property tax. But he was firmly satisfied they were totally incapable of establishing that necessity. He had indeed consented to the enactment of that tax, during the war, although persuaded of its odious, oppressive, burthensome, inquisitorial character; because he felt the force of that policy which compelled its existence. Those times had now passed away, and the real question for the Commons of England, in the exercise of their sacred trust, was at once to say aye or no to the momentous proposition now submitted to their consideration. Was it necessary to support 50,000 troops for the British Isles? Was it necessary to erect a peace establishment of 150,000 men? In his opinion, he would reply no; and he would affirm and maintain that negative, through every part of the details which it was said were to be forthcoming. The situation of the country was not what it had been but a few years ago. Was the necessity of defence, he should ask, greater or smaller than at the period to which he would allude? France, at the close of the American war, had a navy almost at our shores, and superior, perhaps, to the fleets destined for our protection. Spain and Holland had also a maritime

strength of no inconsiderable magnitude. All these external considerations had happily disappeared; the safety of our colonial settlements was also placed on a steady footing; and yet the country was required to keep up a military force of an enormous and most unexampled extent. If such a peace establishment as this were listened to by the people of England, he would predict, from a measure so alien to their system, the downfall of their liberty and constitution in a very few years. It was nothing less than a project to alter the uniform policy of Great Britain, and to amalgamate her character with that of the military states in Europe, by a total subversion of the principles of her constitution. From her insular situation, she was by nature a naval and maritime state; and to the preservation and cultivation of the advantages necessarily belonging to that state, she was paramountly bound to adhere. She might, indeed, be dazzled with the newly acquired glories of her army; she might take her rank with the despots of the Continent; but in vain could she expect to prolong the native pride of her free character. The two systems were incompatible. Either the government or the military establishment must give way; and when the question was a struggle for ascendency, between liberty and the constitution on the one hand, and power and despotism upheld by a military establishment on the other, the warning experience of history proclaimed, that the struggle was short, and the termination most ruinous. Independently of these, to him conclusive reasons against the adoption of the present measure, the financial state of the country presented an unanswerable argument on the same side. He would, therefore, protest against it altogether, and insist that it was a mere delusion to talk of expedients, and to hope for a

diminution of burthens, if the proposed establishment was to be maintained. If the people were to hope for relief, they had but one chance of having their expectations realised, and that was, by a reduction of the peace establishment."

IRISH GRAND JURY LAWS.

On the 14th of February, Mr. Horner brought under the consideration of the House a measure of great importance, connected with the administration of justice in Ireland. He stated, that an extraordinary practice prevailed, in the proceedings of the grand juries, of finding bills of indictment upon the mere depositions obtained from witnesses by the magistrates, without any resort to parole evidence, and that this practice was established over the greater part of Ireland. That it was not of recent growth, but almost as ancient as it was universal; for it had prevailed so long, that the records of the courts scarcely reached back to a time when it did not exist. That it was almost unnecessary to say how different this was from the practice that prevailed in England, where the witnesses of the prosecutor were sworn and examined before the grand jury. That the common law of England and Ireland were the same; and that in determining what was proper to be done, we had only to inquire what was the law of England; and though an opposite practice had been long established in the sister kingdom, the length of usage was no sufficient bar against a return to the punctual administration of it. That, by this practice, Ireland was deprived of a most important privilege; and there was nothing that could be more essential to the interests and rights of those individuals who were exposed to trial, whether

justly or unjustly, than restoring this privilege. That, for this purpose, there would be no necessity for an enacting statute, but merely for a declaratory one; that any other, besides being useless, would have the appearance of altering the common law of the land. He concluded by moving, "for leave to bring in a Bill to declare the law for the right proceeding of grand juries in Ireland upon bills of indictment."

The Bill was strongly opposed by the Judges, and by many eminent lawyers in Ireland, and was in consequence retarded in its progress; but it passed into a law before the close of the session. It was the last measure which Mr. Horner originated in Parliament, and was one to which he attached great importance. I am, for this reason, induced to give a detailed statement of the origin and progress of the measure; and, by a slight deviation from chronological order, I can give this account in Mr. Horner's own words, in the following letter to Mr. Murray, instead of having recourse to the imperfect records of the proceedings, in the successive stages of the Bill, contained in Hansard's Debates.

My dear Murray,

Woburn Abbey, 9th July, 1816.

You desire to have some account of my Irish Grand Jury Bill. The history of it is this. In reading a pamphlet published by Mr. Rice*, an Irish country gentleman, upon the subject of their money presentments, I was much surprised to find a statement by him, that the grand juries of that country, in their proceedings upon criminal charges, frequently found the bills without examining witnesses, upon the mere inspection of the depositions taken by the committing magistrates.

*Thomas Spring Rice, Esq., the present Lord Monteagle.

This instance of the corruption of law and justice in that neglected country, and of the manner in which the gentry disregard the rights of the lower orders, made so strong an impression upon me, that when I was named a member of the committee upon presentments, I thought that an opportunity not to be lost for ascertaining the extent of so culpable a practice. We examined as witnesses most of the county members of Ireland, and many other gentlemen who had served as grand jurors; I started the inquiry with the very first of them, and the committee followed it up with the rest, and the result ascertained was, that with very few exceptions, the general practice of the grand juries was to find their bills without examining witnesses, "unless," (as the Irish gentlemen very simply said,) "unless they had doubts;" and with the universal exception of bills for one crime, which you will think a curious one, rape, in which they always made the witness, that is, the woman, tell the story. The English members of the committee were much scandalised at this discovery, and, with the assistance of the most respectable Irishmen upon it, we tried a proposition for a special report to the House upon this particular point; but we were left in a minority, Peel and Fitzgerald taking a strong part against us. I then told the committee, that the thing seemed to me so important that I would take it upon myself to bring it before the House, and I gave notice immediately of a bill to declare the law. In the interval, after my notice, Peel had an opportunity of consulting the crown lawyers here, who told him, of course, that the practice in Ireland could not be vindicated, but was clearly against

*The present Sir Robert Peel, then Chief Secretary for Ireland.