IRELAND.

The Dublin Evening Mail makes this bold assertion- " We can state upon the best possible authority, that very early in the next session there will be a Committee of the House of Lords granted for the pur- pose of inquiring into the mode and manner in which the Poor-law works in this country ; and this with a view to the reform or modification of the sys- tem, or should such course appear desirable, to entire reorganization."

[It ought to have been done last session : why was it not ?]

The Marquis of Londonderry, reputed one of the best landlords in the province of Ulster, entertained a large party of his principal tenants, at Mount Stewart, on the 7th ; when he formally declared him- self in favour of" the maintenance of the tenant right '"—

" I trust there is power in the Irish tenantry to accomplish gradually the agricultural improvements which are essential to their own very existence, and to the maintenance of the income of their landlords ; and I am quite sure that the best mode of calling that power into action is for the landlords to give that confidence of possession to them and their families after them, which they have ever felt, and I trust ever will feel, on my estate. I do not dispute, with those gentlemen who have eagerly embraced the amelioration of our sys- tem, that almost all the misery and want of Ireland arise from a want of con- fidence in their holdings of situations. But while I can look or see no chance of benefit from any legislation upon the subject, I feel persuaded all landlords will best consult their own interests by securieg to the tenantry, without legis- lation, that peace of mind and confidence which sweeten toil, and stimulate the desire to improve their condition."

Some remarks made by Mr. Naper at the annual dinner of the Rells Agricultural Society, on the 7th instant, show the growth of a feeling that important changes must soon be made iu Ireland. The Marquis of Headfort presided, and several leading gentry and farmers were pre- sent. Mr. Naper is one of the most extensive landlords in Meath-

" The time is come," said he, "when some change must take place. The people must procure ;heir rights—lie meant employment, and remuneration for their labour. ("Hear, hear! ") If the landlords of Ireland, or their fathers, had been too lavish upon luxuries and superfluities, the time is now come when the landlords of Ireland—ay, and of England and Scotland—ought to take the matter into consideration. He was sure many of them would cut off a portion of their superfluities if they thought they could thereby give employment to the people. Let them attend to the matter in good time. The people are now temperate, and fitted for industry. A change is taking place—for God's sake, let it not be too rapid nor too slow." (Mr. Naper dosed amidst the cheering of the company.) Mr. O'Connell has held another monster meeting, the first since the Queen's Speech, at Loughrea, in Galway. He slept on Saturday night at Ballinasloe, fifteen miles from the rendezvous ; and next morning he was met three miles from Loughrea by a multitude who escorted him into the town, with the usual display of bands and banners. Among the hundreds of horsemen, many had their wives mounted behind them. The place of meeting was the market-place outside the town. A heavy rain, which began to fall just as the assembly took up the ground, and continued throughout, rendered the numbers comparatively small and -the speaking brief Mr. Bodkin, M.P., took the chair. The first reso- lution, moved by Mr. M. J. Ffrench, was a declaration against the Speech from the Throne- " That, while we recognize, as the only constitutional doctrine, that the Speech delivered by her Majesty at the close of the late session of Parliament is not to be considered as conveying her personal or individual sentiments, but is to be taken as being in every respect the speech of her Ministers, we deem it right to condemn, in the most emphatic terms, the foul and false charges of disaffection put forward in that speech by a selfish and degraded Administra- tion; who, having got into power to serve an unworthy party, seek to continue that authority by exciting the anti-Irish passions of the English people against this oppressed nation; a nation that does not yield to any portion of her Ma- jesty's dominions in generous and unaffected loyalty to her person and her throne."

Some further resolutions, against the Union and so forth, having been moved, Mr. O'Connell delivered a speech in the customary style ; only, as he spoke from under an umbrella, and his listeners with no umbrella at all, his oration was more compressed than usual. He held out some tempting promises, of local reference— If they had the repeal of the Union, they would get rid of the incubus of the Church—each man would pay his parson as he paid his tailor or lawyer.They would not .tve to pay the Trenches. (Groans_) He wished he had time to speak about their landlords. Lord Clanearty was guilty of a cruel violation of conscience in compelling his tenants to send their children to his schools to be taught the doctrines of a religion which their parents believed to be untrue. (Groans.) Lord Clonbrock was equally guilty of a violation of conscience in compelling his Roman Catholic labourers to work on holydays.

His Parliament, he said, was speedily forthcoming-

" Believe me, my friends, that if you follow my advice, the day is not far distant when you shall have your Parliament restored in Ireland. I am work- ing the plan out. I have it in detail. I will have this protective society of three hundred sitting before Christmas, and I hope to be able to give you as a New Year's gift a Parliament in College Green. (Cheers.) People of Ire- land, you deserve it. Brave, noble-minded people of Ireland, you deserve it. Faithful, religious, moral, temperate people of Ireland, you deserve to be a nation, and you shall be a nation. (Much cheering.) The Saxon stranger shall not rule you. Ireland shall belong to the Irish, and the Irish shall have Ireland." ("Hurrah ! ") At the subsequent dinner in the evening four hundred persons sat down to table, Mr. O'Connell began his principal speech with an anecdote and some constitutional remarks on the Queen's Speech— Yesterday, at Athlone, a worthy and honest Repealer, with a good deal of anxiety in his countenance, but a happy facility of Irish diction, asked him this question: "Shall I be afraid of the Queen's Speech?"Me replied at once, he saw no objection to his being afraid, if he were so timid as to be ter- rified by the ghost of a speech. (Laughter.) The Queen's Speech was the speech of her Ministers. The people were not always so ready to make the distinction; but it was his solemn duty to point it out to them to make them understand it.

After effusing a good deal of loyalty towards the Queen, he went on to defy her Ministers— The Queen's Speech was the last card Ministers bad to play. The majestic movement for Repeal was in progress ; and they came out six months ago, when the movement was 100 years younger—for, in a national cause, years count by minutes—with bullying the people of Ireland. They talked of civil war: Did the people crouch? (Cries of "No, no ! ") It might be vain in him—for they made him proud—but he would ask, did the leader of the Irish people on that occasion conduct himself otherwise than as the leader of such a people ought ? (Cheers.) Let him not be mistaken—he claimed no merit for himself. It was the people who inspired him—it was a knowledge of the sen- timents of a noble and majestic people; it MIS the knowledge that they might be slaughtered, but could nett be intimidated. He burled back a proud defiance on them in a voice of thunder. (Cheers, and" So we will again!") He ridiculed the fruit of last session, the Arms Bill; with a practical hint— A friend wrote to hint the other day to ask whether be should allow his arms to be branded ; and he replied that be did not like to advise in such a case, but that he intended to have his own branded, in order that they might serve as a fresh proof of the insolence and tyranny of the Saxon. (Cheers.)

More defiance- Neia supposed that the Irishman a changeable nation, and that they would

soon get tired of the Repeal agitation : hut he was grossly mistaken. liow many hundred thousands had assembled that day. The meeting of that day- was one of the most magnificent and numerous he had seen. It made his heart throb with delight, and he exclaimed to himself, "This is an answer to the Queen's Speech." He had lately read an article in the Times news- paper, which said, "Does not Mr. O'Connell know that of the large multitudes he calls to attend him, there are few that would not ahrink from actual danger?" He could tell the Times newspaper, that the reason why he called large meet- ings was, that the people might not be tempted, not to shrink from but to dare danger. H. called those meetings to revive hope—hope that stood between the people and despair, and the want of which soon drives them on hostile bayonets. So far from shrinking from danger, did not hundreds call out to him, "Sir, when will you let us at them ?" (Much cheering.) These mighty meetings were the safety-valve through which the boiling courage of the people evapo- rated.

He explained that he was preparing his Parliament to be ready for use in case of accidents— He was making arrangements to have his Parliamentary scale complete and ready against accidents; for who could calculate how soon they might have their Parliament ? Let England be involved in any awkward dilemma with one of the states of Europe—let any other country on the face of the earth attack her, and in twenty-four hours they would have their own Parliament. Ireland had his plan before it, and lie was going on with it. He hoped that every town mentioned in his scheme would furnish two persons to act as Re- peal Wardens, for the purpose of enumerating voters. When that was done, he would call his Protective Society of three hundred Irish gentlemen about him. More than one Member of Parliament had offered himself as a member of this Society already. He would proceed cautiously and deliberately, with an eye to the breakers ahead, and with a full knowledge of the shoal-water, steering the bark of Irish liberty through every danger, till it should reach in safety the port of Repeal.

At the usual meeting of the Repeal Association on Monday, the rent for the week was declared to be 735/.

At an adjourned meeting next day, Mr. Dillon, a gentleman from Philadelphia, handed in 5001.; and Mr. O'Connell handed in 3991. col- lected in Connaught. Mr. Steele stated that he had bad a communication- from a non-commissioned officer, in the Army complaining of oppres- sion; but Mr. O'Connell had given orders that no person should enter into any kind of political communication, public or private, with any portion or body of the Army. Mr. O'Connell confirmed that state- men t— They had been much calumniated in reference to the Army, whom it was- said be wanted to seduce. He was accused of showing too much sympathy towards the corps of sergeants and non-commissioned officers : and he freely admitted, that if it were a crime to be conscious of and to admit their merits, and to say he considered that the discipline of the British Army mainly de- pended. on them, and that it was the best-disciplined and bravest army in the world—if it were a crime to feel for the position of the soldier, and to have voted seven times in the House of Commons for the abolition of corporal punishment in the British Army and Navy--then did he plead guilty to the accusation.

Another adjourned meeting was held on Wednesday, to vote an address to the British Empire, or Irish grievances. Mr. O'Connell prefaced the motion with some remarks— What were the Presbyterians of the North to expect from a British Parlia- ment, which treated them as unjustly as the Roman Catholics. They had' heard the twelve Judges of England praised: why, they met upon the Pres- byterians' marriage question, and unanimously declared such marriages to be invalid. So unfounded a judgment was never pronounced at this side of a hot place. Nothing so utterly groundless, nonsensical, and destitute of principle, was ever thought of: they confounded a contract "thereafter to marry" with an actual marriage at the time, thus arriving at a happy exuberance of blunder. The Presbyterians of the North should look to this; and they would see that there was as great a readiness in England to treat their clergy with indignity and contempt as the Roman Catholics. There was no magic in the twelve Judges. They were not witches of a higher order than the Irish, to be able to discover bidden things by conjuration. They were as stupid a set of fellows as, he ever saw. (Cheers and laughter.)

This is the address-

" TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE COUNTRIES SUBTECT TO THE BRITISH

CROWN.

"Fellow Subjects—The People of Ireland would anxiously desire your sym- pathy and support. But long and painful experience has taught them not to expect either the one or the other. Confident, however, in their own exertions, they content themselves with laying before You a simple statement of some of the grievances under which their country Omura; yet have no other hope, as far as you are concerned, than that of vindicating themselves in the eyes of all rational and just men among you, for the magnitude of the struggle they are now making in the cause of their country. "There is no truth more undeniable than this—that England has inflicted more grievous calamities upon Ireland than any country on the face of the earth beside has done upon any other. In the history of mankind there is no- thing to be compared with the atrocity of the crimes which England has per- petrated on the Irish people; nor as yet has the spirit which created and ani- mated such crimes been much mitigated, if mitigated at all, from its original, virulence. The consummation of such crimes, up to the close of the last cen- tury, is to be found in the atrocious manner in which the Legislative Union between both countries was effected.

"The hypocritical pretext under which that Union was offered to the Irish was, that the people of both countries should be identified into one' that the- two countries should be amalgamated into one nation ; that there should be no longer any difference of rights or privileges betwcen the English and Irish, but, on the contrary, that the people of both countries should be placed upon a footing of perfect equality in law, and in fact, without any-unfavourable dis- tinction towards the one or undue preference towards the other. Such was- proclaimed by the British Government to be the intent and meaning of the Act of Union; and such, in point of common sense and of honesty, the Union, if fairly worked out, ought to be. But the exact reverse is the case. The promises held out by the English Government were shamelessly and totally violated. Every preexisting evil was by means of the Union continued and aggravated, and no opportunity has been omitted to inflict new and severer grievances upon this unhappy country. "The manufactures, which before the Union flourished in many of our cities and towns, have been annihilated in most, and continued only in a few, and with diminished productiveness. The productive commerce of Ireland has been put down, and in its room there has been substituted the export of the prime necessaries of life, the produce of our fertile soil ; exported, however, not to bring any return to Ireland, but to be disposed of for the payment of the rents of absentee landlords, rents to be expended in foreign lands, and for the exclusive benefit of strangers. "Another destructive branch of our remaining foreign commerce consiitrin the conveyance from our shoreeof our hardy popl-*;nn; who,,,haviag no cm.

ployment at home in their own naturally fertile and teemingly fruitful soil, are compelled to seek a livelihood in foreign countries, and to enrich, by their pro- ductive labour, any country but their own. " The consequences are obvious: widely•spread pauperism has covered the land; and the Commissioners of Poor-law Inquiry have authenticated the awful fact, that more than 2,385,000 of the people are, some fur the entire, and others for at least a portion of the year, in a state of absolute destitution.

" Under the protection of the Irish Parliament, Ireland was the least taxed country in Europe ; whilst under the iron rule of the British Legislature it is an universally admitted fact that Ireland is, in proportion to her means, the most heavily-taxed country on the face of the globe. " The agricultural interests of Ireland, also, bear comparatively greater bur- dens than the agriculture of any other nation—burdens exclusively confined to the land. They are these : the tithe rent-charge exceeds half a million of pounds sterling per annum ; the grand jury assessments, in a great part compulsory, amount to near 1,500,000/. sterling per annum ; and the poor-rates on lands will very soon amount to more than another million sterling per annum—all payable out of the land alone.

"The enumeration of the Irish people, lately published by Government, affords facts that show the most fearful destitution of the people of Ireland. It is shown that more than one-half of the rural population, and one •third of the town population are living in the lowest state, namely, in a cabin of a single room. It is also shown that there is a second class, very nearly in the same proportion, and but little removed in comfort from the first or most destitute ; leaving for a class that may be said to enjoy any thing like comfort- able circumstances only 16 per cent in the rural and 30 per ceut in the town districts. Thus, there are 84 per cent of the rural population in woful want, and 70 per cent of the civic population in equal distress. Attend to these facts, fellow-subjects, weigh them well, and sec whether there be on the face of the earth wo equal to ours.

"These terrific truths, indicative of great suffering, are authenticated by the Government Commissioners, upon whose unquestionable authority we state them.

" Another fact of a still more awful nature is derived from the same autho- rity: it is, that the population of Ireland has, for the last ten years, diminished by more than 700,000 souls. The hideous importance of this statement will be felt, when it is recollected that one great proof of increasing prosperity is found in the due augmentation of the people, whilst the most decisive evidence of human misery is found in the fact of a retrograding population. In Ireland that misery is evinced to the extent of an annual retrocession of the population of more than 700,000 souls.

" Such, fellow subjects, is the general outline of the impoverishment of the Irish people, and their sufferings, originating in and continued by the fatal measure of the Legislative Union : such is the condition of the people of Ire- land more than forty years after the Union : such is the authentic picture of the wretchedness of the Irish after the Union has subsisted near half a century, the facts derived from the highest and the most reluctant authority, that of Government itself,—a reluctance naturally arising from the obvious truth that the Government thus doth confess its own crimes; for the misery of the people in a fruitful land must be the crime of the Government.

" In addition to the physical evils produced by the Union, the misery of Ireland is aggravated by political injury and religious insult.

"These are the aggravations of the wretchedness arising from our physical destitution—

"1. The great bulk of the Irish people being Catholics, do, even in their im- poverished state, cheerfully support a complete hierarchy of their own clergy. They are impelled by religious motives to support that clergy ; and they do support that clergy out of means that are little better than actual destitution. Iii the mean time, the ecclesiastical temporalities of Ireland emanating from the bounty of our Catholic ancestors are dedicated to the sustentation of the clergy of a comparatively small minority. This grievance would not be endured in England. This grievance would not be borne in Scotland. It is borne in Ireland; but it is not thereby the less keenly felt by the sensitive and religious Irish people.

"2. The representation of Ireland is most unjustly and unfairly dispro- portioned to the population and resources of Ireland. At the Union, Ireland was compelled to give up two-thirds of her Representatives. Great Britain did not give up a single one. It was an iniquity without a single ingredient of reciprocity. Ireland gave up two hundred Members—England not one. If the lJnion were a bargain, it would be in the nature of a partnership. The man would be only fit for Bedlam who should become a partner on the terms of annihilating two-thirds of his capital and receiving nothing in return from his partners. Two-thirds of the Irish representation was confiscated for the profit of England—that is, to enable England to have Ireland at her feet, without any adequate power for her protection. The Reform Bill afforded an opportunity to remedy this grievance. There were 220 Members who had belonged to the extinguished boroughs to be distributed between these three countries: Scotland, with a population of little more than 2,500,000, got 8 in addition to her 45; England (then with a population of 13,000,000) took to her eaten share 207 out of the 220 Members, and distributed some among her great towns, and the far greater part among her counties, according to the ratio of their respective populations. Ireland, at that time containing more than 7,000,000 inhabitants, got an increase of only 5 Members. "Let us dwell a little upon the complicated enormity of this injustice. Ireland lost by the Union two-thirds of her representation. She ought to have got by the Reform Bill at least from seventy to one hundred additional Members? Ireland did get—fully five !—ay, fully five. "And there are people absurd enough to complain that the Irish are dis- contented. Ay, that they are. "Let us recaplitulate. England, on 13,000,000, got 207 Members; Scotland, on 2,500,000, got 8 Members ; Ireland, on 7,000,000, got 5 Members.

"3. Our Parliamentary franchises are wholly inadequate to secure any thing like a true reflection of the opinions of the mass of the nation. Two facts will establish this grievance. "One of these facts is, that one Riding of Yorkshire has more voters than all the eight agricultural counties of Ireland. "The other fact is, that Wales, with a population of 800,000, has more than 36,000 voters, while the county of Cork, with an agricultural population of 720,000, has only 2,000 voters. "Add to these, that in Ireland, from the legal nature of the franchise and the tedmiealities with which it is surrounded, and the power that it gives to the aristocracy to prevent the right to register, the consequences are, that re- stricted as is the franchise at present, it must, day by day, become more limited, until it is totally, for all popular purposes, extinct. It is actually in the rapid progress of extinction. If the present system is to prevail, there will shortly be in Ireland no popular franchise at all. "4. The Municipal Reform Bill for Ireland is almost an entire mockery ; and even the few nghts that have been left to the reformed corporations are confined to the wealthier classes. The pecuniary value of the franchise is so high as to exclude the great bulk of the population of our towns and cities. "In England, the richer country, in the corporate towns and cities, every man rated to the poor-rate and borough-rate, no matter at how low a sum, is a burgess, and entitled to enjoy corporate franchises. "In Ireland, the poorer country, no person can be a burgess, or enjoy the corporate franchise, who is not rated to the poor at 10f. per annum, or up- wards.

" In England, the richer country, the corporate franchise is enjoyed subject to the payment of two taxes, the poor-rate and the borough-rate.

" In Ireland, for example in Dublin, the corporate franchise cannot be en- joyed without the payment of nine or ten taxes or rates.

" Is there a human being so absurd as to suppose that there is any thing which ought to be called an union between countries thus circumstanced?

"5. The pecuniary exhaustion occasioned by absenteeism is one of' the main- springs of all the evils which Ireland suffers. There is no country in the globe in which any thing like one-third of the comparative absenteeism existing in Iretand can be found. It woeld be as well for Ireland that nine-tenths of the provisions that she exports to England were sunk in the sea, as that they should arrive in safety at tie British markets. When sold, no return is made in Ire- land, either in money or in goods. The price goes into the pockets of the ab- sentees, who spend every shilling of it out of Ireland. No country in the world pays such a tribute to another as Ireland thus pays to England—a tri- bute creatiog exhaustion, poverty, misery, and destitution, in all their frightful forms.

" 6. The connexion between landlord and tenant in Ireland, arranged as it has been by a long course of vicious legislation, wants that mutual confidence which is essential to the benefit of productive industry. The labouring pmulation, unable to obtain employment, live habitually on the verge of extreme destitution. They must obtain land, or they die. The issues of life and death are in the hanis of the landlords. The massacres of the clear- • ance-system consign to a premature and most miserable grave hundreds of thousands of victims. They are wholesale murdere, followed by the hideous assassination in detail of the instruments of landlord rapacity. These crimes, on both sides, cry to Heaven for vengeance and redress—for a redress capable of giving to the landlord his just right to adequate rent, and to the tenant just protection for the produce of his labour and capital.

"Another species of tyranny—the basest and most atrocious of all—has been recently put in practice by some of the most cruel and bigoted of our landlords. Not content with the dominion of the landlord over the tenure and the rent, they insist upon and exercise a diabolical despotism over the religion and the conscience of their tenants, and require of them to send their children to schools from which the Catholic clergy are excluded, and in which no religion is taught but that which the parents believe to be false. Thus, these land- lords usurp a bigoted power over the souls as well as the bodies of their' wretched serfs. It is only an Irish landlord who could be guilty of this climax of cruelty.

" The relation between landlord and tenant cannot subsist as it is in Ire- land. It is a subject replete with the utmost difficulty. Its solution is filled with dangers. It would require the aid of the honest and feeling portion of Irish landlords to enable the honest and conscientious friends of Ireland to Place the relations between landlord and tenant on a satisfactory footing to both. But, alas I these landlords will not join in our struggle until it ill too late, and then they will become the principal sufferers.

"Notwithstanding our connexiou with a nation which boasts to be the wealthiest, the most enlightened, and most powerful in the world, our com- merce, our fisheries, our mines, our agriculture, attest, by their languishing and neglected condition, the baneful effects of English misgovernment.

"7. An auti-Catholie and anti-Irish spirit governs the distribution of offi- cial situations ; and has been most painfully exhibited in the great majority of official appointments made by the present Ministry.

"8. Deep-rooted and increasing discontent pervades the entire nation. Feel- ings of estrangement are rapidly supplanting those affections which kindness and justice could have placed at the command of Government. Despairing of redress from the Legislature, the people of Ireland, confining themselves to legal and constitutional means, now rely upon their own strength and resolution for the attainment of those rights which they have sought from the British Par- liament in vain. They know full well that they can obtain adequate redress from a domestic Legislature alone.

"9. The voice of the civilized world lays to the charge of the English Go- vernment the guilt of having produced this exasperation of natiunal feeling, this misery, this wretchedness, this exhaustion, this destitution. Upon that Government lies the responsibility of having failed to secure the welfitre and the content of the Irish people, and of having, on the contrary. diffused throughout the nation want and wo, and bitter discontent, and heart-rending sorrow.

"Such, fellow-subjects, are the loud and distinct complaints of the people of Ireland. We have applied in vain to the Legislature for redress. Our com- plaints are unheeded, our remonstrances unavailing. The poor boon of inquiry, conceded to the advocate of the Negro and of the Hill Coolie, has been denied to the moral, the temperate, the religious, the brave Irish nation. "The black catalogue of grievances which we have thus detailed, instead of being mitigated by hope, or softened by kind or conciliatory deportment, is aggravated and embittered by recent events. The present Ministry, instead of giving us redress, insult us with an Arms Bill—an insult which they would- not have dared to offer to Scotland, to England, or to Wales. They have fur- ther insulted us by what they are pleased to call an amendment of the Poor. law Bill; an amendment which increases the despotic power of the ruthless Poor-law Commissioners—gives them the appointment of valuators, and takes away the electoral franchise from the poorer classes without giving them any real relief.

"Lastly, to crown all, they conclude the session with a speech which they cause the Queen to pronounce—of course the Minister's speech—full of sound and fury—giving us for all relief and redress, for all conciliation and kindness, the absurdity of Ministerial assertion and the insolence of half-whipt Minis- terial anger.

"Fellow-subjects, our case is before you, and before the world. Grievances such as the Irish people endure no other country has ever suffered. Insults such as are offered to us were never inflicted on any other. "There is one consolation. It is admitted by all; and is as clear as the noonday sun, that unless we redress ourstives, we can have no succour from any other quarter. But we suffer for ourselves and our country. We suffice for the Repeal. "We expect nothing from England or Englishmen, from Scotland or Scotch- men. In each of those countries the benevulent few are overpowered by the- anti-national antipathy to Ireland, and the virulent bigotry against the Catholic religion of the overwhelming majority of both England and Scotland. The present Parliament has been packed, with the aid of the most flagitious bribery, to suppress and crush the Irish nation. From them there is neither redress or even hope.

" But, Irishmen, we suffice for ourselves. Stand together—continue toge- ther in peaceful conduct—in loyal attachment to the Throne—in constitutional- exertion, and none other—stand together and persevere, and Ireland shall have her Pediment again.

" Such are the words we address to our fellow-suljects all over the globe-

DANIEL O'CONNZLL,

"Signed by order,

Chairman of the Committee."

Of course Mr. O'Connell's address was adopted, 'with loud accla- mations.

The Mayo Constitutional says that some Roman Catholic priests have taken the hint conveyed in the titular Bishop of Ardagh's " warning" that the time would come when the people would refuse to pay their rent— 'We have been informed of two curates in particular who addressed their congregations on the subject some days since ; telling them to gather in their crops, first to supply their own wants, as they would be fully justified in doing, and then, if they had any thing to spare, to give it to the landlord for his rent."

The Carlow Sentinel says that "the new system of paying rents" increases in favour with tenants. Here is a specimen of the plan, as exercised on behalf of a man who is described as being prosperous- " On Sunday morning last, between the hours of twelve and one o'clock, about 200 men and women, principally strangers in the district, proceeded to the farm occupied by a man named John Harney, near Ballon, in this county, and cut down and carried away about five acres of wheat and two of oats, before aix o'clock. The party, who were provided with horses and cars, bore off the crops towards Hacketstown, and have not since been heard of. This plan of evading the payment of rent, or of preventing a distress on the lands, is being generally adopted, and hitherto with complete success."

Those who commit this kind of collusive robbery of the tenant's pro- duce to defeat the landlord are always brought from a distance.

A correspondent cf the Drogheda Conservative gives instances of the coercion used to swell the Repeal rent- " On the 29th August, eleven or twelve men passed thrcugh this town [Bailieborough,J returning from the county Meath, whither they had gone to assist in reaping the harvest ; and when asked why they left it so soon, they said 'they were going home for their Repeal cards, as they were refused em- ployment when they could not produce them—and that those who accom- panied them, (but who were so fortunate as to bring their cards,) were readily employed at Is. 6d. a day with diet.' To use the language of one of these poor fellows, whose feet were so blistered that he could scarcely walk, and whose general appearance betrayed the most abject poverty—'If O'Connell knew our poverty, and what comfort a shilling would procure for our families— if he has one particle of humanity in him, he would leave poor Ireland and her brave sons to the enjoyment of that tranquillity in which he found them.' I may add, that on the 30th some men from the parish of Drum, near Cootehill, on their way to the county Meath, for a like purpose, and when made ac- quainted with the above, searched through this town for Repeal cards, offering any reasonable price, *although they paid their shilling at the chapel-door, as they would be denied admittance if they refused.'" The Dublin Evening Mail describes the arrangements for giving effect to the marking-clause in the Arms Act- " Government has entered into a contract with Mr. Grubb, the scientific and very able mechanist of the Bank of Ireland, for the construction of the ma- chinery intended to he used in the marking of arms under the new law. They are not to be subjected to the operation of punching ; still less, as some strangely supposed, to the action of fire. The letters or figures will be marked by cutting ; and so simple and ingenious is the method employed, that the most unskilful workman, even an ordinary person unpractised in any trade, can effect the pro- cess with the most perfect ease. Four figures and two letters are expected to suffice for designating the county or riding of a county, and the number of the piece; the time occupied in the engraving will be one minute. The expense will be extremely moderate ; the cost of each machine being, we understand, only twenty-five guineas ; one-half of which, by law, will be defrayed out of the Consolidated Fund, the other half by the county ; and, except for the counties of Dublin, Cork, Tipperary, and Galway, it is expected that one such machine will suffice."

The first case under the Arms Act occurred at Dublin on Saturday. Mr. Kelly, a young gentleman, the son of a Dissenting minister, went into a shop to buy a pamphlet : he showed the bookseller a "walking- stick gun"; the bookseller informed against him ; at the Head Police- office he was held to bail for having unregistered arms in his possession ; and afterwards, on Wednesday, fined 101.

A strange visiter appeared at the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, on Saturday—Thomas Campbell, who had been fireman on board a steamer, and was discharged for ill health. He bore a very long pitch- fork, and a hammer ; and sought admission to the Lodge, he said, to give a message to the Viceroy. The sergeant of the guard opposed his entrance ; on which Campbell assaulted the soldier with his fork. The guard were turned out, and charged the madman ; but he kept them at bay for some time. They were about to shoot him, when a Police- man came up and prevented them, at the same time engaging in the contest to capture the man-

" Campbell at this time stood with his back to the door of the Viceregal Lodge; and, after a second's pause, the constable rushed at him singly ; when Campbell made a dreadful thrust of the fork at his antagonist, which if suc- cessfully aimed would have settled the poor Policeman's worldly accounts. The blow was not effective, however, so far as the constable was concerned; but it was given with so much force that the fork-prongs became fixed deeply in one of the wooden pillars of the door; and at this instant Campbell, by a tremendous effort of his back against the door, burst it open, and at once en- tered the hall ; whither he was pursued by the constable. Campbell then drew the hammer from under his coat, and attacked the constable in the most furious manner. The conflict was extremely doubtful for some seconds, until the constable gave him what is termed 'a foot,' at the same time seconding it with a tap of his baton on Campbell's temple, which brought him not only to the ground but into the safe custody of the Policeman and the guard."