WHAT HAS THE LAW DONE FOE IRELAND? La-rrnit IL
TO THE F.DLTOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Dublin, 14th December 1847.
SIR—It would not be difficult to draw from the stores of my own memory many more illustrations of the failure of a " thorough enforcement of every law in Ire- land "; but to do so would be a vain repetition, and I shall leave those I have al- ready cited as genuine exemplars of the fact, which they really are, and by no means peculiar or extraordinary exceptions. I have little doubt that few Irish- men will deny them to be what I state; but I have also as little hope that they will not be generally excused as harmless instances of clemency, and as such not calculated to produce results generally evil. Those who think so, however, do not take a large view of the matter, nor one warranted by the lessons of an ex tended experience. To me they seem plainly to have led to that universal belief, to which I have already adverted, that "there is one law for the rich and another for the poor in Ireland," and consequently to a tone of thought and a course of action incompatible with a sound social state.
Thus, as an Irishman seldom thinks that he can trust his case to the unaided
influence of its own merits upon the mind of either judge or jury, nothing is more common than for a suitor, whether he be in the position of plaintiff or defendant, to turn his attention less to the development of truth, though he may believe that to be in his own favour, than to the securing of a friendly tribunal. I have often known an exciseman to postpone, or even abandon in despair, a prosecution for an offence against the revenue-laws when it was necessary that the case must be de- cided at a certain petty sessions, or when he had ascertained that a particular magistrate would sit upon the bench on the day of trial. On the other hand, every resident Irish landlord and parson knows how frequent are the applications for a "line from his honour or his reverence," which the applicant confidently ex- pects will produce an important effect at the petty sessions upon the following Tuesday, when it shall be necessary for him to defend himself against a charge of assault or trespass. This practice still prevails, notwithstanding the bad feeling that exists in too many districts between landlord and tenant; and I was not a little amused at the revelationof an example of it which I witnessed in a Commit• tee-room of the House of Commons last summer, and at the astonishment excited among some of the English Members of the Committee, when a frieze-coated wit- ness, in exculpating himself from a charge of robbery insinuated (I believe unjustly) against him, triumphantly produced an autograph of his County Member com- mending him to the care of the magistrate before whom he was cited, as "a very honest man, and one of the writer's constituents." The honourable gentleman who wrote the note did not deny his writing ; and neither he nor any other Irish- man present was in the smallest degree struck with this private dealing with the administration of justice as being strange or singular. That applications so di- rect as these are ever made to a higher class of magistrates, is, of course, not to be supposed; but still, a feeling is entertained that it is safer to appear in certain courts with a particular class of cases than in others; and I have not unfre- quently heard the leanings of learned judges gravely discussed between attorney and client, preparatory to deciding upon the form and court in which legal re- medy for a wrong should be sought. I do not pretend to say that there was any sufficientground for these discussions; but the fact of their occurrence is certain, and is sufficient for every purpose, as proving the existence of a common belief that something more than a good cause is requisite for the attainment of justice in Ireland. But if this feeling operates in relation to the magistrate and judge, its prevalence in reference to juries is still mom notorious—so notorious, indeed, that to adduce proofs of its existence would be but a waste of time. " The common law," thus wrote, in 1596, one who well knew Ireland, " appointeth, that all tryalls, as well of crimes as titles and rights, shall bee made by verdict of a inry, chosen out of the honest and most sub- stantiall freeholders Now, most of the freeholders of that reacts are Irish, which, when the cause shall fall betwixt an Englishman and an Irish, or between the Queue and any freeholder of that countrey, they make no more scruple to passe against an Englishman, and the Queen, though it bee to Wayne their loathes, than to drink milke unstrayned. So that before the inry goe together, it is all to nothing what the verdict shall bee. The tryal have I so often seene, that I due confidently avouche the abuse thereof." As juries were in the days of Edmund Spenser, so are they now—unless their nomination be managed in such cases as these to which he refers, "it is all to nothing what their verdict shall bee"; and if they should be managed so as " to appoint either most Englishmen, and such Irishmen as were of the soundest judgment and disposition; for no doubt but save these bee incorruptible, then "—(witness the State prosecutions of 1843) —" then would the Irish partie crye out of partialitie, and complaine bee bath no justice—bee is not used aa a subject—he is not suffered to have the free benetite of the law."
The failure of a "thorough enforcement of every law" has thus established among Irishmen a habit of thinking that the law is insufficient to the mainte- nance of order by its own resources. Secondly, it has taught them to look upon the law less as an agency apt and able for the ascertainment and protection of the rights of property and industry, than as an ingenious contrivance, by the skilful use of which, the consequences of crime and the performance of just obligations may be evaded. Thus they become "so cantekent and wylie-headed, that you would wonder whence they borrow such subtiltyes and slye shifts." Of the ap- plication of this teaching of the law, and of the mode in which it is judicially taught in criminal cases, an instance sufficiently in point was given in my last letter, in that of the stock-broker, whose admitted crime remains unpunished, be- cause, in the jargon of a judge, nine thousand pounds' worth of stock was declared to be incapable of " manual prehension," and not a "valuable security." The use made of these " sabtiltyes and slye shifts" in civil transactions, the following example will shortly explain. Among the lands of the Crown is a district in the county of Roscommon, named Ballykilcline, the tenants upon which have for eleven years successfully resisted the payment of rent, and are at this moment in adverse
pmsmsion, under the full belief, rendered strong and euduring by the failure of a thorough enforcement of the law," that the Queen not having administered to the effects of William the Fourth, they have thereby a good quibble of law in favour of a permanency of tenure. " They can't lay a finger on us," said the deviser of this ingenious theory to my informant: " the Queen, God bless her, is too 'cute a piece to make herself liable for the debts of her ould uncles." Upon this example of what the law has done for Ireland, it will be sufficient commen- tary to mention, that the murder of Major Mahon was celebrated by a general illumination of the hills of Ballykileline.
In the third place, the failure of "an enforcement of every law" has led the Irishman to seek substitutes for the ordinary tribunals, to which he may have recourse in what he supposes to be his case of need. But, as I have already tres- passed upon your space as far as the crowded state of your columns at the present season will permit, and as this subject is one of importance, I will ask your leave
to resume its consideration at another opportunity. H. hi.
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