The Sun.
London, England, 1822-03-08 00:00:00

[MORNING lIERALD.I

The Insurrection Act has commenced opera-
tion in Ireland, but has yet made no impression
upon the outrages there. The system of crime
and plunder has even become more. organized,
relentless, and daring. In open day dwellings
are seen in a state of conflagration, and the per-
petrators, with incredible hardihood, remain on
the spot to witness the progress of destruction
until the military and police are within sight of
them, when they effect their escape. Of late,
it is observed that not only do the banditti take
arms, but provisions and live cattle, which are
conveyed to the mountains or other places of
their concealment : yet the proceedings against
them are such as one would suppose must strike
them with terror and dismay. In the county
of Cork several executions have just taken
place, under circumstances which present a
striking picture of human desolation. Not
a man appears as a spectator—but the wo-
men of the lower order, for miles round, attend
in great numbers, and from the less controllable
feeling and the sense of impunity of the sex, pre-
sent a scene of agony and rage which exceeds
imagination. The Insurrection Act too works in
Limerick with a " cutting and slashing" vigour,
which shows that those who are administering it
construe the spirit of its provisions with unscru-
pulous liberality. Of seventeen prisoners, thir-
teen have been found guilty. Some of those con-
victed had strong circumstances against them.

The circumstances proved against others as
the ground of conviction were of a levity
to make an English Magistrate stare—and
others again are sentenced to seven years' I
transportation beyond the seas, as " idle and
disorderly," merely because they were found
at some short distance from their cabins,
alone and unarmed, after the curfew hour of the
Insurrection Act—that is, after nightfall. One
man who was tried as " an idle and disorderly
person," upon the simple and solitary fact of
being found after dark, unarmed and alone, some
hundred yards from his dwelling, met the charge
by producing the most respectable witnesses of
his having passed a life of the strictest good con-
duct, moral and political. Serjeant Torrens, how-
ever who seems to have taken a lead in the
proceedings, maintained that he was still " idle
and disorderly " in the sense of this Act.—
Our readers, we are sure, will not suppose it
possible that Parliament would consign to trans-
portation beyond the seas a man chargeable only
with the malum prohibitum of being out of his
dwelling after dark, in consequence of some
innocent circumstance of urgency, or necessity,
or even negligence, where there appeared no-
thing else to attach to him a criminal purpose.
It is true the man was acquitted upon another
ground ; but it was in announcing to him his

acquittal that the Sergeant gave this exposition
"of idle and disorderly." In order to pre-
vent any misunderstanding, we should men-
tion that it is of a Sergeant at Law we speak.
The ambiguity of the style and title might lead
the unwary into attributing this interpretation to
the rigorous notions of duty and obedience, which
might be derived from a too exclusive familiarity
with that formidable emblem of power and pu-
nishment—the halberd. The execution of the
law is marked by corresponding dispatch. The
convicts are taken from the bar, some marched
on foot and manacled, others tied down on carts,
and escorted to Cork, where they are put on
board the hulks to be conveyed to New South
Wales.