IRELAND.

The annual presentation of premiums by the Lord-Lieutenant to the pupils of the Royal Dublin Society took place on the 17th. In addressing the assembly, Lord Clarendon complimented the Society as the parent of all such establishments, including even Schools of Design. Such a school ought long since to have been established in Dublin; and last year, Lord Clarendon, while President of the Board of Trade, took some steps towards the establishment of one. He urged the matter on the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer; but, unfortunately, that Minister was always able to plead " no effects." Still he trusted that happier days were in store. Referring to the exhibitions at which he had been present, the Lord-Lieu- tenant added- " I have some little experience in these matters; and I do not hesitate to affirm, that I never saw in England, and I am quite convinced that England could not produce, such an exhibition of roots as were exhibited here two months ago; and the increasing number of competitors, and the interest which the public takes in the subject, demonstrates that a stimulus has been given in the right direction, and that the agriculture of Ireland is rapidly improving. And just allow me to tell you, that is the real mode of participating in the manufacturing prosperity of England. The exportations of cattle and corn from this country to England, we are all well aware, have increased of late in a manner that is perfectly astonish- ing; and exactly in the same ratio they have stimulated the manufactures of England by cheapening the provisions of our artisans. Provisions are as mach a component part of manufactures as the cotton, silk, and wool of which those manufactures are composed, or the wages of the workmen employed in their pro- duction. I hold it to be a fallacy to say that Ireland does not bear her part, and an important part, in the manufactures of England; and she does so by other than indirect means. It is generally believed that she has not the same resources, the same facilities, for sending her children to the manufacturing districts as England has: whereas it is a well-ascertained fact, that Lancashire absorbs more of the surplus labour of Ireland than of the whole South and West of England put to- gether; and the manufactures in Lancashire afford a stimulus to the industry of the Irish agriculturist; for, by consuming the produce exported from this country, as much benefit is conferred on Ireland as if the looms and spinning-wheels were at work in Kerry or Tyrone. It is for these reasons I think the Royal Dublin Society acts wisely and patriotically in promoting, as it does, the improvement of agriculture."

The subjoined correspondence has been sent to the newspapers by the nobleman with whom it originated: it was not intended for publication, but he thinks that its appearance may be useful.

The Earl of Arundel to Dr. AP Hale, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam.

"11, Carlton Terrace, London, Friday, Nov. 26, 1847. "My Lord Archbishop—I must entreat your Grace to forgive me for the liberty I am taking in addressing you. My acquaintance with the high character your Grace bears, as well as your exalted position in the Irish Church, emboldens me to lay before you the grief which heavily oppresses me as a faithful son of the Holy Catholic Church. I am deeply sensible of the claims which the Irish Church has to the love and admiration of the Christian world. History relates the heroic constancy with which the Irish Catholics have endured the relentless persecution and bitter scorn of those who claimed religious liberty for themselves and denied it to their unhappy brethren. With the knowledge of such sufferings endured for the faith, how bitter it is to my heart that I cannot defend the Irish Church in my intercourse with my friends, or against the attacks of violent opponents in the House of Commons. It is not of the fearful crime of murder by individuals of the peasantry that I wish to speak, however shocking such cold-blooded revenge appears to those at a distance. Nor do I wish to notice the frequent connivance of the peasantry in the escape of the assassin. It is not so difficult to make excuses for men in their circumstances. But that which completely overpowers me, and deprives me of all defence, is the conduct of some members of the priesthood. Denunciations from the altar followed by the speedy death of the denounced, and public speeches of most dangerous tendency to

inflammatory people, are the melancholy accusations to which I am unable to reply. If I assert the small number of the clergy who have recourse to such means of obtaining or retaining influence, I am immediately asked—Where, then, is the boasted discipline of the Catholic Church ? How is it that men so imprudent, if not so wicked, are not suspended from their spiritual functions? I am told that either virtue or discipline is banished from the Church. If I assert the primitive custom of the Church, the public penance, and the paternal admonition of the pastor, delivered in the presence of the people, the reply is, why denounce those not subject to your discipline? And why make use of such dangerous methods in a country which has not forgotten the crimes engendered by cruel persecution and consequent despair ? Oh, my Lord, it is indeed severe to feel the justice of such remarks; not the remarks, be it observed, of thoughtless and uncharitable men, but of those whose best feelings world willingly seek for all that is pious and good in the Catholic faith. These are the topics which I venture as a hum- ble and faithful member of the Church to bring under your Grace's notice. Can nothing be done to remove from us so heavy a scandal? What comfort and secu- rity would be brought to many a confiding Catholic by the speMy and stern cen- sure of ecclesiastical discipline upon the offenders t The fierce declamations of Exeter Hall, and all the vehemence of Parliamentary opponents, and all the free- dom of Protestant assertion, have not done so much injury to the cause of the Catholic faith in this country as these unhappy circumstances. And now, my Lord Archbishop, it is my duty to beseech your forgiveness for my great boldness, which anxiety for the Church has alone prompted. "I entreat your Grace's benediction; and have the honour to be, with every feeling of the deepest respect, your Grace's very humble, faithful, and obedient

servant, ARUNDEL and SURREY. " To his Grace the Archbishop of Tnam, St. Jarlath, Tuam."

Dr. 3Pliale's Answer.

" Tuam, Dec. 1, 1847.

"My Lord—I am honoured with your Lordship's very kind letter, and feel sin- cerely obliged for such a communication. If my acknowledgment should not ap- pear to your Lordship sufficiently prompt, the delay arose from my anxiety to meet your anxious wishes to satisfy those who feel much surprise and sorrow at the present condition of Ireland. From other respected individuals I have had lately similar letters; and as the calumnies of the publicjournals regarding the conduct of the Catholic clergy—for calumnies they mostly are—appear to have made an unfavourable impression in the sister country, I thought it but right to put before the public a correct statement of the relation in which the clergy of Ireland stand regarding the present circumstances of the country.

" The same post by which this letter will reach your Lordship, will also convey a public communication to the Prime Minister on the important subject on which you did me the honour to write. I should perhaps be too sanguine if I anticipated that the sentiments of the letter would give general satisfaction, even to all pions and benevolent Catholics, who are sorely afflicted, as well at the sufferings of the people as at the imputed connivance of some of the clergy at those excesses of barbarity of which some of the people have been guilty. It is not necessary that I should repeat what I have publicly stated, beyond the assertion, that if the clergy were capable of encouraging or abetting, not only such heinous crimes as they are charged with encouraging, but even lesser offences, they would assuredly pay the forfeit by being suspended from the duties of their sacred office. Vague charges, however, originating with the bitter calumniators of the Catholic Church, and widely circulated through those adverse organs, cannot be deemed accusation', on which any canonical proceedings could be founded. Your Lordship will not I trust, imagine that I am now vindicating or excusing intemperate language, which I deplore. We must suppose that when such is uttered, the usual evangelical pro- cess of admonition is made use of. Should such language, however reprehensibly, be found accompanied with such zealous reprobation of crime as the best friend of society and religion could give expression to, and should the sincerity of that zeal for public order be so borne out by the blameless tenour of a long and laborious life in advancing the interests of piety and of the public peace, that it could not be questioned, the isolated words which could bear a bad meaning would be favotir- ably interpreted by any lay impartial jury. I think, then, your Lordship could put it to any of your scandalized friends, whether such a person, so circumstanced, deserving admonition no doubt, could be ignominously laid aside from the discharge of the duties of a ministry which he faithfully fulfilled. I have dwelt on this case as somewhat analogous to one which has excited, and I regret the occasion, much animadversion. No provocation, it must be avowed, can excuse the hideous crimes of some of the peasantry. If religion were entirely out of the question, good taste and a sense of propriety should check the use of language of which the awkward fashion is sometimes as reprehensible as the idea which it may convey. Still I would implore of your Lordship to plead for us from your English friends, when contrasting the two countries, the consideration of the different cir- cumstances in which the two countries are placed. It is not to extenu- ate crime—that is out of the question—but within the range of lawful regimens, it might as well be said that the ordinary dietary suited to a sound man is also fitted for one in the last state of sickness and exhaustion, as that the game course of instruction and discipline adapted to the well-adjusted relations of English society would be equally efficacious in restoring the shattered frame of society in Ireland. All I can say is, that from all your Lordship could read and hear of the cruelties, the ordinary, the every day recurring cruelties en- dured by the Irish peasantry, and inflicted by those from whose position and edu- cation some humanity should be expected, you would have no idea of the state of Ireland, or the difficult and anomalous position in which the Catholic clergy are placed. It is a state of which I pray your Lordship will continue ignorant in England, to the benefit of the people and the honour of their aristocracy and gentry. But whilst I sincerely wish you the continuance of this comparatively happy state, I beg, in return, to claim some indulgence for the position of those who are not similarly favoured. The clergy of Ireland may adopt a line of con- duct which, however within the pale of Catholic discipline as well as the consti- tution, may appear somewhat strange, nay, utterly unaccountable to their brethren in England. It may be—and I own it is the case—that their conduct, strictly within the laws of propriety too, would appear equally strange to those on this side of the Channel in some circumstances. I have not the least doubt but many of those who thus view each other's conduct with equal surprise, would change their line of conduct if they were to exchange their mutual positions. And yet to neither one or the other should I impute inconsistency, or any subserviency either to popular or aristocratic influences unworthy of their order. No, my Lord; in these reflections I am only feebly copying those precepts of wisdom to which the ancient fathers of the Church, and especially the great St. Gregory, gave ex- pression. He tells us that the mode and topics of address suited to one may not be applicable to another. He illustrates this judicious and seasonable variety of treatment by a reference to the different states of the human constitution; and the same may be said of different states of society. " Public denuuciations of persons by name, whatever be their misdeeds, are not the practice in Ireland. The duties, however, of all without exception, as they are contained in the code of Christian morality, come within the legitimate sphere of the priest's instructions. With regard to the observation of some not being amenable to the discipline of the Catholic Church, I have only to remark, that justice and humanity do not exclusively belong, or at least should not, to any peculiar body of Christians, and that the inculcation of those duties should form the theme of every pastor's instructions. True, the Catholic pastor cannot sub- ject the violators of justice or humanity not belonging to the Catholic Church to its rigorous penances and satisfactions; but that does not preclude his right of denouncing aggressions on the rights of justice and humanity belonging to his flock from any quarter. Such was the feeling, each too the practice, of the an-

tient fathers, who denounced the cruelties and persecutions of Pagans and heretics against their flocks, without thinking they were guilty of any inroad on the rights of others.

" I fear I have tired your Lordship: if so, I respectfully crave your kind in- dulgence. My very prolixity will impress your Lordship with the conviction that I am anxious that our conduct should not stand in an unfavourable light with a nobleman whose hereditary zeal for the glory of the Catholic Church, and the good name of its priesthood, is well worthy of the many accumulated titles to re- spect which he has inherited from his ancient house.

" I have the honour to be, my Lord, your Lordship's most respectful and obe-

dient servant, Joser., Archbishop of Tuaat " To the Right Honourable the Earl of Arundel and Surrey."

Dr. M`Hale also favours Lord John Russell, spontaneously, with a de- fence of the Roman Catholic clergy, in a letter written on the 17th instant-

" Your Lordship will not be surprised to learn that we have listened with more of pity than of anger to the real or affected surprise of some Members of Parlia- ment that we did not interpose by some further pastoral instructions to our clergy. Those who will not believe without miracles are for ever looking for more. Is it to be supposed that an additional miracle, wrought in the court of Herod, would have swayed more with that vain monarch than all the miracles of our Redeemer's life? A Bishop's exhortation to his clergy to fulfil their duties during the awful season of famine would, no doubt, have brought conviction to the minds of those whom the spectacle of hundreds of clergymen laying down their lives as holocausts for their flocks could not have rebuked into reverence for such heroic sacrifices. The cruelties committed in Ireland on the starving people are scarcely equalled tinder the sun. Hence the hideous and-atrocious deeds of retaliation, which we all deplore and execrate, and against which the warning voice of the clergy has been raised with zealous energy. • • • In justice to the calumniated clergy of Ireland, it is but right you should know, that, howeveraring of their publica- tions, their exhortations from the altar have done more for the protection of so- ciety than the entire of all your salaried functionaries put together." These charges, he says "remind one of the accusation preferred against the lamb in the fable, of having at the lower current troubled the beverage of the animal that drank at the higher portion of the fountain." He makes the counter- complaint, that for seven centnrie.s the cry has been first coercion, and then measures of amelioration. " With a full and applauding Senate, the Prime Minister of 1847 introduces measures exclusively coercive; and, with some dis- creet professing Catholics to second his policy, they are ushered in amidst in- vectives against the Catholic clergy which the Covenanters of 1647 would have hailed; whilst he reserves the oft-untried counterpart of justice and conciliation to the kalends of next year. The kalends of January will soon come; and though numbers of the poor evicted tenantry are perishing from hunger and cold during this inclement season in the morasses into which they are cast without a shelter, the justice of any measures to protect them from any similar treatment in future will in all probability be forgotten. Time, coercion is always for today, and a healing policy the reversionary inheritance of a tomorrow which never arrives; and it will be well if the kalends of January or February next do not realize the kalends of the Greeks; and if the observer of the scenes of centuries to come do not find in the present session of Parliament another prototype for the Prime Minister of the day, who will proclaim, with all due solemnity, that the people must be first taught by coercion to feel all the terrors of rigorous enactments, before they are suffered to partake of the blessings of a wise, a just, and beneficent legislation.

" I have the honour to be, your obedient servant,

" t Jonx, Archbishop of TITA3I."

The very Reverend Mr. Hughes, pastor of Claremorris, to whom had been imputed a highly inflammatory harangue at a public meeting, disclaims the newspaper report of what he said.

The lull in the assassinations which we noticed last week has been brief.

The Tipperary Free Press records the murder of a farmer named St. John, near Lisnanirock. He was dragged out of a neighbour's house by four men, and killed. Another account, by the Kilkenny Moderator, gives a different version. " St. John and his younger brother held adjoining farms. They came to a mutual agreement to exchange their ground; and for this purpose the younger gave possession of his holding to the elder; but when he requested to get posses- sion of the other land in return, the latter refused to comply with the agreement, and alleged that, as the elder brother, he was entitled to the entire property. This

caused much between the parties; and on Saturday night last a party of men went to the house of the elder St. John, dragged his wife out of bed, and then seizing upon the man himself, ripped his body open and cut his head off! The savages then proceeded to bury the body in a dung-heap, and threw the head on the top of the heap."

According to the Limerick Reporter, Murphy, a farmer of Ballyvisteen, near Hospital, was shot dead in his own parlour, by a party of seven or eight men, on the evening of the 16th, and robbed of 801.

Another murder is reported in the Longford Journal. On the 15th, two pen- sioners, Samuel Wilkinson and William Carson, were shot at Balinaloe, by an armed party, who fired at them as they were sitting by the fire. Wilkinson died on the same evening; but the wounds received by Carson were not mortal. The supposed motive for the murder is, that on one occasion Wilkinson fired a shot to intimidate some persons who were beating his dog outside the house. The last reported outrage in North Tipperary is the attack on two men, James Maguire and John Minogue, both in the employ of Mr. P. O'Keefe, miller of Bal- lyartella. On the 14th, the men, returning to their work after the dinner-hour, were assailed by a party of three. Maguire was first attacked: the men heat him severely with sticks, leaving him insensible in the road. All this while, Minogue looked on without offering to assist his comrade. At length the assailants turned their attention to him: they told him to hold his head aside; and on his doing so they fired a charge of small shot, some grains of which lodged in hie face and neck. The ruffims then made off.

Threatening notices have been served on Mr. Cape! St. George, late High Sheriff of Fermanagh; who, during the famine and fever of last year, gave his time and money to works of charity. According to the Leinster Express, three letters were left under a stone at the hall-door of Bishop's Court, the seat of the Earl of Clonmel: one was addressed to Lord Clonmel, another to Lady Clonmel, and the third to the steward.

The Boyle Gazette announces that the example of Lord Crofton has been fol- lowed by the flight of another resident nobleman, Lord Clements; who was among the earliest in the field to aid in relieving the late distress by distributing food to the destitute. He has been driven away by threats against his life. Resistance to the payment of poor-rates continues general in Mare, as well as in Ferman Armagh, and Tyrone. In Down, Ibockite notices have made their appearance.