FORE:The disorganised state of Ireland, occasioned by the famine and the enormous system of public relief which fostered idleness and destroyed the customary social restraints that kept the people in order, naturally led to much outrage and crime in that country. At the close of the ordinary Session of 1847, the Parliament, which had existed six years, was dissolved. The general election excited very little political interest, the minds of all parties being concentrated upon the terrible famine in Ireland, and the means necessary to mitigate its effects. The first Session of the new Parliament commenced on the 18th of November. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre was re-elected Speaker without opposition, some leading Conservatives expressing their admiration of the impartiality and dignity with which he had presided over the deliberations of the House. The Royal Speech was delivered by commission. It lamented that in some counties in Ireland atrocious crimes had been committed, and a spirit of insubordination had manifested itself, leading to an organised resistance to legal rights. Parliament was therefore requested to take further precautions against the perpetration of crime in that country; at the same time recommending the consideration of measures that would advance the social improvement of its people. In the course of the debate on the Address the state of Ireland was the subject of much discussion; and on the 29th of November Sir George Grey, then Home Secretary, brought in a Bill for this purpose. In doing so, he gave a full exposition of the disorganised state of the country. He showed that "the number of attempts on life by firing at the person, which was, in six months of 1846, 55, was in the same six months of 1847, 126; the number of robberies of arms, which was, in six months of 1846, 207, in the same six months of 1847 was 530; and the number of firings of dwellings, which in six months of 1846 was 51, was, in the same six months of 1847, 116. Even this statement gave an inadequate idea of the increase of those offences in districts which were now particularly infested by crime. The total number of offences of the three classes which he had just mentioned amounted, in the last month, to 195 in the whole of Ireland; but the counties of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary furnished 139 of themthe extent of offences in those counties being 71 per cent. on the total of offences in Ireland, and the population being only 13 per cent. on the whole population of Ireland." It was principally to those counties that his observations applied; but as the tendency of crime was to spread, they must be applied in some degree also to King's County, Roscommon, and part of Fermanagh. The crimes which he wished to repress were not directed against the landlord class alone, but against every class and description of landowners. Their ordinary object was the commission of wilful and deliberate assassination, not in dark or desolate places, but in broad daylightof assassination, too, encouraged by the entire impunity with which it was perpetrated; for it was notorious that none but the police would lend a hand to arrest the flight, or capture the person, of the assassin.
