Catholic theology, they cannot refuse believing the professor of theology at Maynooth, and Doctor MacHale, who certainly are the best living authorities in Ireland as to the doctrines of their church.

"Hear Dr. MacHale :- Who is to be the judge of what the utility of the church may require?' Answer:- The superiors of the church.' "Does it

not appear then to be laid down as a universal proposition, and without any qualification, that the utility of the church is a just cause for dispensing from oaths?' Answer: It is laid down as a proposition, that the utility of the church is a just cause!'-Irish Education Report, 8; App. p. 284.

"There is Dr. MacHale, admitting that if he perjured himself for the utility of the church, he should, in so doing, have acted consistently with the doctrine of his church.

"O MacHale! O holy mother-the son is worthy of the mother, and the mother of the son! Ex ore filii indice matrem.

"No Roman Catholic should be allowed to sit on a jury until he renounced this horrible doctrine; for, according to it, the pope can absolve from their oaths all the Roman Catholics throughout the universe, the bishops all those in their dioceses, the priests all those in their parishes: if they think, or pretend to think, that the utility of the church requires it; for they are the superiors, and the superiors are the judges. No wonder if Roman Catholics will not find a verdict! Your second reason is, the possibility of Sir Francis Hopkins having been deceived. If that were admitted as a reason, no verdict could ever be found. The courts of justice should be closed, and the clearest evidence set aside; for there is always a possibility of deception. Your third reason is, that the public sympathize, and declare their belief in his innocence. Is there one instance, I ask you, of an execution to be found in Ireland, in which that portion of the community which you call the public, have adopted a different course? Your fourth reason is, that Seery declared his innocence on the scaffold. I need not tell you, sir, or any priest of your church, why the Roman Catholic fears not to go before his God, after telling a lie! Having been eleven years a priest of your church, I know the reason, and you know it, and the public shall know it also. It is this: after telling it, he kneels down to his confessor, and gets absolution. This is the solution of a problem that was too difficult-the unravelling of a mystery that was too dark for Protestants to understand. The ego te absolvo of the confessor is the cause. The priest, standing by the side of the criminal, gives a false security to his guilty soul; and, like the false prophet mentioned in scripture, cries to his troubled conscience, Peace, peace, where there is no peace.' He ushers him into eternity, with a lie on his soul, and gives his absolution, as a passport to St. Peter, for admittance. The Council of Trent consigns to eternal flames any who will deny the validity of that passport! There can be no preventative against this but one, and that is to give the chaplain full and free access to the convict, and to afford to the convict every means and help to make his peace with God, and after he has declared that he has done so, to allow no other absolution after he addresses the public; as we see by the papers Seery was allowed. If this rule were established, we would hear no more of these awful imprecations, that blaspheme God, if false, and scandalize the Christian, even if true. Ás an instance of how little importance should be attached to those declarations of innocence on the scaffold, I shall cite an example. In the year 1821, a notorious ruffian, named Daly, a captain of Ribbonmen, called Ballinafadmen, was executed at Seafin, near Loughrea. The most of the murders and outrages committed in the county of Galway that year were committed by this Captain Steele (as he was called) and his men. On the day on which he was led to execution, I heard one of his associates say that he was along with him the very night he committed the murder for which he was executed; yet on the scaffold this man declared before God that he was innocent of that crime, and the next moment knelt down and got absolution. The Marquis of Clanricarde, whose tenant he was, or Robert Daly, Esq. his agent, a Roman Catholic, can bear testimony to the truth of

what I state. Since I became a priest, I never attended convicts on the scaffold, but on one occasion. Two men were executed in Montreal, in 1832, for the murder of a soldier. The two were guilty; one of them said nothing on the scaffold; the other declared his innocence, although I knew that he was guilty."

Here are statements which must astonish every Englishman, and we wish the Commissioner could be brought to believe them; we fear he never can, for if a man is honest himself, he is unwilling to attribute such dishonesty to any body of men. In the evidence before Lord Devon's commission we have frequent instances of explaining away the real state of Ireland. This the radical party always endeavour to do; and, in case of a murder, they try to show that it arose from some particular act of an individual, or some private cause. On the subject of outrages, Lord Devon

says,-

"In Tipperary for a long time past, and in some other counties more recently, there has prevailed a system of lawless violence, which has led, in ' numerous instances, to the perpetration of cold-blooded murders. These are generally acts of revenge for some supposed injury inflicted upon the party who commits or instigates the commission of the outrage. But the notions entertained of injury in such cases are regulated by a standard fixed by the will of the most lawless and unprincipled members of the community. If a tenant is removed, even after repeated warnings, from land which he has neglected or misused, he is looked upon, in the districts to which we are now referring, as an injured man; and the decree too often goes out for vengeance upon the landlord or the agent, and upon the man who succeeds to the farm; and at times a large numerical proportion of the neighbourhood look with indifference upon the most atrocious acts of violence, and by screening the criminal, abet and encourage the crime. Murders are perpetrated at noonday on a public highway; and while the assassin coolly retires, the people look on, and evince no horror at the bloody deed. The whole nature of Christian men appears in such cases to be changed, and the one absorbing feeling as to the possession of land stifles all others, and extinguishes the plainest principles of humanity."—(Report, p. 42.)

The Commissioner thus comments on the text above,

"Men in England who follow their occupations in peace and security, can form no estimate of circumstances here (in Tipperary), unless put in possession of the facts as they exist. The walls of this town (Roscrea) are covered with placards offering rewards for the apprehension of criminals charged with shooting into houses, waylaying, beating, and murdering. One is at this moment being stuck up (a copy of which I send you with others), offering £100 reward by the Government for the apprehension of some cowardly villains who, last week, fired two shots through the back of the overseer of a neighbouring coal-mine. Men are seen walking about the town followed by a couple of armed policemen to protect them as they transact their business. Threatening notices, which are not mere idle threats, are sent by every post; crime escapes with comparative impunity, and, in such a state of society, what sane man can expect prosperity? I do not however admire vague declamation, but prefer giving facts, that Englishmen may form their own judgment of the condition of all classes of people in Ireland. I do not think that it is the starving people who dwell in hovels who alone deserve sympathy here. Nor do these offences all spring from starving people; many farmers

well to do are engaged in them. They have for their object a system of terrorism which shall set the law and the rights of individuals at defiance, and they are directly fostered and increased by the repeal agitation which is going on. I have it on undoubted authority, and from numerous parties, that the expectation of the small farmer is, that if he gets repeal he will secure the possession of his land, without acknowledgment or rent to any body. Under this impression a code of terrorism is encouraged, which resists not only ejectment from land and the payment of arrears of rent, but which for bids the turning away of a servant, resists the payment of debts, prevents the giving of evidence, and punishes the assertion of every right with the threat of violence or death, which is almost invariably carried out. When this is the case, who can wonder that men of capital will not resort here; that landlords who can afford to live elsewhere will not live here; and that the country does not prosper? I saw a respectable-looking man walking about the town, guarded by two armed policemen who followed him wherever he seemed to wish to go. I inquired the reason of this. I was informed by the authorities that he is a schoolmaster named James, whose house was attacked some months ago by three men searching for arms. He made some resistance, and one of the men immediately fired at him, and shot him with slugs in the head, some of which are still not extracted. Thus wounded, he seized a dirk, and with it killed one of the parties, and the other two ran away. One of them was afterwards apprehended, and transported on his evidence. Instead of his courageous resistance carrying with it the sympathy of the people, their sympathy is with the cowardly ruffians who attacked him, and if not guarded by the police he would be murdered."

In the same letter we read, among many other instances of a like nature,

"In February last, Mr. Henry Bridges, a landowner at Ashbury, within a mile of this town, dismissed his ploughman because he was an idle fellow, and took another man into his service; the fresh ploughman has been repeatedly threatened, that if he did not give up his employment he would be shot. Last week a party of men visited Mr. Bridges' steward, fired two bullets through his door, and warned both him and the ploughman to leave Mr. Bridges' service. To avoid losing both his steward and his ploughman, Mr. Bridges has been compelled to apply to have them both protected in the discharge of their duties by the police. A gentleman named Mason, residing at Clonekenna, four miles from this town, had some property left him there by a relative some time ago. The tenants on the property would not pay any rent for several years, and at length he was compelled to eject them about a year ago. His life was immediately threatened in a most outrageous manner, and since then, to this day, two armed policemen, paid partly by the county and partly by the country, accompany him to protect him, whereever he goes.

"A gentleman named Hone, an English barrister on the northern circuit, has recently had a property left to him in the neighbourhood of this town. For the last three months he has been living on his estate, and report says he has been most kind to his tenants, in giving them lime and slates for their own houses and land. This gentleman received a threatening letter (which is given at length), desiring him to leave the country, as he had been tried by a jury under Captain Starlight's law, and would be shot if he remained. The letter has been under investigation, and Mr. Hone has returned to England." (pp. 346–350.)

That any society should exist in this state is an anomaly in a civilized country. We believe that the murderer has no idea that he is committing a crime, but fancies that he is enforcing a law.

Like the Jews of old, the Irish seem to say, "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die: " the law is, that no man shall be dispossessed of land, and the penalty for the infraction of it is the death of the landlord. On this subject we refer to Lord Devon's commission, and find the Rev. Patrick Quade stating that "he had great difficulty in preventing the murder of the agent and the incoming tenant. One of the men who had been ejected, said that he would not make it a private thing, but that he would shoot him in the middle of the day, and suffer the penalty of the law; that his family were thrown beggars upon the world, and that he thought God would hardly blame him for it." 1

A witness at Waterford states, that "Mr. John Keefe was shot by public subscription. He has heard and believes that there was money raised to shoot him. The people all rose as one man to put him out of the 192 way."

Let us now compare the facts above stated with the opinion of a gentleman long resident in a county next to Tipperary, William Hamilton, Esq. There had been agrarian outrages to a fearful extent. I cannot venture to define their origin, but their proximate cause is local political agitation. Though the years 1827 and 1828 were years of great scarcity and distress, yet during that period no one regarded bolting or barring of houses. The year 1829 was marked by violent local political agitation; simultaneously life and property became insecure, and society has never recovered the shock. Of late years outrage has considerably abated-in some districts it has ceased altogether; local agitation has declined in a corresponding ratio. The witness was asked what he meant by outrages, and he says-Murders, burnings, and every species that can be named. He defines local agitation to mean local general meetings, at which a very low description of political agitators undertook or attempted to excite the people against their superiors in the country. The poison was administered to the people at that time; they became discontented and violent towards those who possessed property. They were told that they had a right to the produce of the soil-that the landlords and magistrates were oppressors-had no right to enforce rents; and thus they heard all sorts of inflammatory language calculated to disturb the minds and excite the passions of the lower classes. He is then asked as to the case of Connor, an English Chartist who was tried some years ago. He says that he was opposed by the priests, and that the people did not attend to him; but that the agitation above-mentioned was countenanced by the Roman

Evidence, No. 577.

2 Ibid. No. 912.

Catholic clergy, and took place frequently in the chapels or chapelyards. Connor, who was an infidel, attempted to propagate doctrines opposed alike to Rome and England, and he failed; but the local agitator who did the priests' work in the chapel-yard, had all the power of the church with him. It was either made a religious question, or the people could see that the orator had the sanction of the church, and he could therefore lead the people as he pleased. Mr. Hamilton is then asked, whether he considers any act of the clergy to be the cause of the outrages? He is evidently unwilling to swear that it is so, but he says very significantly, "I am not inclined to say it was with their wish or sanction, but the effect was so." Their wishes are easily known by their acts; they are prudent enough to withhold their avowed sanction to what is illegal; but we believe Mr. Hamilton's private opinion coincides with our own.

All through Lord Devon's commission an attempt has been made on the part of the priests to blacken the character of the landlords, to accuse them of cruelty, and to show that they have ejected numbers of tenants for their own convenience. On this subject the Times' Commissioner says

"The Rev. Thomas Barry, the Roman Catholic priest is asked as to Lord Kenmare's estate- Have there been any cases of extensive removals of tenantry in the district with which you are acquainted?' 'Yes, the most brutal. I have known an instance where there were persons of the most unexceptionable character, willing to pay the highest rent which could be put on land in the country by their industry and exertions, and they have been thrown on the world.' Recently?' Yes, there has been some instances within this year.' 'Were those persons who had previously paid their rent regularly? 'Yes; and were willing to pay to the last.' Mr. Galway contradicts these statements, and attributes them to resentment against himself."

After numerous instances of this kind the Commissioner adds—

"I have simply given you a digest of the evidence on both sides. Do not imagine that I offer an opinion upon it; for one naturally shrinks from meddling with a question where truth has so many aspects; where gentlemen on the one side are ready to state upon their oaths that black is black, whilst gentlemen on the other are equally ready to assert, upon their oaths too, that this is all a mistake, for black is not black at all, but a lovely white. The reference backwards and forwards to these pros and cons has brought under my eye the immense mass of downright flat contradictions which are to be found in the appendices to each volume of evidence; I had the curiosity to count them, and find 310; and there are at least double this number dispersed through the evidence on oath. That is to say, in about 1000 instances the statements made before Lord Devon upon oath, have been flatly contradicted upon oath."-(pp. 408-410.)

We can account for these contradictory statements though the Commissioner cannot; some would say the subject is made a party matter; we say it is made a religious question. If it be for the