The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1859-10-25 00:00:00

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J1..111.61181' AND MURDER.— A MU named Kearns,
who had been discharged from Mayo prison after an
incarceration of seven month, for an aggravated assault,
beard sonic unpleasant rumours about Ids wife while in
prison; whereupon, on returning home, he attacked
her with a hatchet ' • and the servant girl coming to her
relief was assaulted in the same brutal manner. The
madman then hung himself. The women did not die
immediately. but it appears that there is no possibility
of their recovery.
Till LION OP ST. JAILATH'S.—Dr. M'Hale has
addressed a letter to Lord Palmerston, in wl.ich he says
that the Roman Catholics of Ireland revere the Roman
Pontiff "a. the successor of St. Peter and the Vicar of
Christ on earth, and will therefore chow themselves
ready nit only to defend his spiritual authority over the
entre world, but likewise to assert his temporal as well
iss Ilia spiritual power throughout the range 1 his own
dominions. They look upon that temporal power, full,
entire, and uncontrolled, to be essential to the free
exercise of his spiritual authority ; nor shall they ever
be content to see the 'tidy Father placed in a subor-
dinate and independent ismition that could create a sus-
picion that hia acts for regulating the spiritual interests
of the Church might be elicited or controlled by the
pre-secular power. —Archbishop M'Hale has received
a sympathetic letter from Mr. O'Brien, admirably
calculated to increase (if that be possible) the sectarian
hatred which animates the two religious (?) parties in
the notorious diocese of noun.

CRIME IN TlPPKllART.—.lccurdinf to the competent
authority ttf Mr. Scrjeant Howley, crime is again slightly
in the ascendant in the South Riding of Tipperary.
The revival, however, is not traceable to the old cause—
disputes about land, but originate in the alarming spread
of intemperance. In hia charge on Thursday to the
quarter sessions grand jury of Clonntel the learned gen-
tleman said :—" The number of cases on the calendar,
gentlemen, is rather numerous. There are 19 cases, in
which ati persons stand charged. lam sorry to observe,
gentlemen, that there are three or four cases of violent
amanita upon the calendar; and, there is, I regret to
say, an increase in the number of Cafes of that descrip-
tion to be tried at Thuries also. Latterly, gentlemen,
such offences as those to which I now allude were be-
coming very rare upon the calendar, and those violent
assaults with stones and sticks, inflicting injury upon
each other, were almost disappearing. I must say,
however, that there is a tendency to recur to those old
violent attacks upon each other, and I have been
anxion. to consider and to discover what might be the
probable cause of such attacks—such violation of the
law. Certainly, from all the inquiries that I can make,
I don't refer them to anything like the existence of
those old feuds that once disgraced the county. Most
of those cases appear to be the result of a sudden rising
up of parties haviag merely disagreed among them-
selves, ant' then having recourse to violent means for
revenging themselves upon the persons whom they
thought had offended them. Gentlemen, lam bound to
say those cases would not, I think, have arisen had it
not been for the influence which drinking to excess
always exercises. Intemperance appears to me to be
the lamentable cause of the greater number of cases of
violation against the law at present; as far, at least, as
regards offences against the person. The truth is,
gentlemen, titers is no security for the lives of those
persons when they rise up, one against the other, while
their heads, dispositions, and character are actually de-
prived of reason, through intoxication and from drinking
to excess."