THREE:
THREE:The news of his liberation was carried that night by the mail coaches over all parts of the country, and produced extraordinary excitement throughout the south and west, particularly in Cork, which Mr. O'Connell then represented. There the whole population seems to have turned out, some of the streets being so packed that it was impossible to get along. Processions were soon formed, with bands of music, and green boughs. Even the little children were furnished with the emblems of victory. Along the country roads, too, as well as in the towns and villages, every little cabin had its green boughs stuck up, and its group of inhabitants shouting for "the Liberator." At night, in the towns, every house was illuminated, while bonfires blazed on the mountains, and the horizon seemed on fire in every direction. On the following Sunday the liberation of the prisoners was celebrated in the Metropolitan Church, Dublin. Archbishop Murray sat with his mitre on, and in his grandest robes, on an elevated throne, with crimson canopy. On the opposite side, beneath the pulpit, were chairs of state, on which sat O'Connell and the rest of the "Repeal martyrs." A Te Deum was sung for the deliverance of the liberator of his country; a sermon was preached by O'Connell's devoted friend and chaplain, the Rev. Dr. Miley, who ascribed the liberation, not to the law lords, but to the Virgin Mary.
THREE:The Irish corporations were included in the inquiry, which commenced in 1833. The Irish Commissioners took for their local investigations the one hundred and seventeen places which had sent representatives to the Irish Parliament. They found everywhere the grossest abuses. By an Act of George II., residence had been dispensed with as a qualification for corporate offices. The effect of this was to deprive a large number of them of a resident governing body. In some cases a few, very rarely a majority, of the municipal council were inhabitants of the town. In others, the whole chartered body of burgesses were non-resident, and they attended as a mere matter of form, to go through the farce of electing members of Parliament, or for the purpose of disposing of the corporate property. In some boroughs the charter gave the nomination of a member of Parliament to the lord of the manor or some local proprietor. In others the power of returning the Parliamentary representative was vested in a small self-elected body of freemen; almost invariably the power of nomination was actually possessed by the gentleman known as the "patron" or "proprietor," who could dispose of the seat as he thought proper, and if not reserved for himself or some member of his family, it was sold for the highest price it would bring in the markettreated in every respect as absolute property, which was transmitted, like the family estate, from father to son. This property was fully recognised at the union, and it was by buying it up at an exceedingly liberal price that Lord Castlereagh was enabled to carry that measure. By the Act of union a large number of those rotten corporations, some of which had not even a hamlet to represent, were swept away. But a considerable number remained, and of these the Commissioners of inquiry remarked:"This system deserves peculiar notice in reference to your Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects. In the close boroughs they are almost universally excluded from all corporate privileges. In the more considerable towns they have rarely been admitted even as freemen, and, with few exceptions, they are altogether excluded from the governing bodies. In someand among these is the most important corporation in Ireland, that of Dublintheir admission is still resisted on avowed principles of sectarian distinction. The exclusive spirit operates far more widely and more mischievously than by the mere denial of equal privileges to persons possessing perfect equality of civil worth; for in places where the great mass of the population is Roman Catholicand persons of that persuasion are for all efficient purposes excluded from corporate privilegesthe necessary result is that the municipal magistracy belongs entirely to the other religious persuasions; and the dispensation of local justice, and the selection of juries being committed to the members of one class exclusively, it is not surprising that such administration of the law should be regarded with distrust and suspicion by the other and more numerous body."
TWO:The chief governor of Ireland, at that time, was no timid civilian. He was a brave and distinguished soldiera man of chivalrous honour himself, and therefore not prone to entertain doubts injurious to the honour of the profession of which he was an ornament. But Lord Anglesey was also capable of estimating the force of popular contagious influences on military discipline and fidelity in an extraordinary national crisis; and he was so alarmed at the state of things developed by the Clare election, that he wrote confidentially to Mr. Peel, cautioning him against supposing that Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, from vexation and disappointment, should exaggerate the danger of the crisis, and telling him that he would send Major Warburton on a secret mission, known only to his private secretary, to explain to the Government in London the state of affairs. Major Warburton, a very intelligent and trustworthy officer, was at the head of the constabulary, and commanded the force at Clare during the election. He testified, as the result of his observation there, that, even in the constabulary and the army, the sympathies of a common cause, political and religious, could not be altogether repressed, and that implicit reliance could not long be placed on the effect of discipline and the duty of obedience. On the 20th of July Lord Anglesey wrote as follows:"We hear occasionally of the Catholic soldiers being ill-disposed, and entirely under the influence of the priests. One regiment of infantry is said to be divided into Orange and Catholic factions. It is certain that, on the 12th of July, the guard at the Castle had Orange lilies about them." On the 26th of July the Viceroy wrote another letter, from which the following is an extract:"The priests are using very inflammatory language, and are certainly working upon the Catholics of the army. I think it important that the dep?ts of Irish recruits should be gradually removed, under the appearance of being required to join their regiments, and that whatever regiments are sent here should be those of Scotland,[279] or, at all events, of men not recruited from the south of Ireland. I desired Sir John Byng to convey this opinion to Lord Hill."
TWO: