The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-22 00:00:00

IRELAND.

DUBLIN, FRIDAY MORNING.
THE LANDLORD DEMONSTRATION. •
The Evening Post announces that a meeting of
the Provisional Committee was held yesterday at
the Rotunda to decide whether to hold or abandon
the meeting announced for the 27th. The Post—
and probably with some truth—says there was a
division in the camp, but in the end the " coercion"
party prevailed, and the demonstration is to be an
accomplished fact. These further revelations are
made by the old organ of the Irish Whigs :
"It appears that the meeting, although an-
nounced to be a general assemblage of landowners,
without exception, is to be a packed meeting. All
the arrangements have been made for this purpose,
and the price fixed for platform tickets is 55., andthe
body of the room 2s.,—the tickets to be given only
on application to the committee. We understand
that some hesitation was shown before giving a
ticket to an Irish M.P., well known to hold
liberal opinions. Under these circumstances, it
would be well for the Liberal party and the mode-
rate section of the landlords to consider whether
they should not, like .Mr. Tuite, of Senna, and Mr.
Bernal Osborne, al'ogether refrain from attending,
But, in that event, and perhaps in any event, ti
counter-meeting ought to be held without delay."
One of the most popular among the Irish nobility,
Viscount Monck, who held office in the late
Ministry, writes the following able reply to the
Downshire circular convening the meeting :--
" Charlesville, Enniskerry, Jan. 19.
" Gentlemen,—I have the honour to acknowledge
the receipt of your circular, inviting me to attend
a meeting in Dublin of the ' nobility, gentry, and
others interested in the peace and prosperity of Ire-
land,' with an accompanying paper, containing
matters proposed to be submitted' to the intended
meeting.
" Assuming that the contents of this paper indi-
cate the policy with those who convene the pro-
posed meeting mean to recommend for its adoption,
the only answer I can give to your invitation is to
say, that if I accept it, I must attend for the pur-
pose of protesting in the strongest manner against
what seems to me the unfounded and injurious im-
pression whichyour whole proceeding is calculated
to convey of the present state of the country.
" Judging from the extraordinary step of calling
a meeting of all those 'interested in the peace and
prosperity' of the country to deliberate 'ne quid
detrimenti respublica capiat,' as well as from the
contents of your paper, a stranger might imagine
that at the present time agrarian crime is rampant
and unpunished in Ireland, life and property en-
tirely insecure, and that we are living amid all the
horrors of a reign of terror.
" This statement of the present aspect of Irish
affairs would provoke a smile on the part of: those
acquainted with the real facts of the case, if the
expression of such views by a body like that which
you profess to represent, were not calculated to be
of most serious injury to the best interests of the
country, by misleading those who have not the
opportunity of personally investigating the matter
for themselves.
" But, perhaps, my impressions are as much too
cheerful as yours are too gloomy. Let us turn
from impressions to facts. It is but a few months

since it was the duty of almost every judge engaged
in the administration of criminal law in Ireland to
congratulate the authorities with whom they were
brought in contact in the course of their circuits on
the general peace and good order which prevailed
through the land. It is only a few days since Mr.
Sergeant Howley—one who never dealt very
gently with the state of Tipperary when the
country was really disturbed—took occasion to
felicitate that quondam focus of Irish agrarian out-
rage on the almost entire absence of crime, and
particularly of anything indicating the existence
of secret societies. Supported by such facts as
these, I must maintain that there is no ground for
such a wholesale indictment of the condition of
Ireland as that implied in your paper, and that it
is one which is most unjust to the people of Ire-
land to put forward.
" The foundation of your statement is a declara-
tion that 'impunity has, for many years, attended
the most atrocious agrarian crimes in this country.'
Now, this is one of those allegations which from
constant repetition has come to be accepted by most
persona as a truth ; but I venture, on the other
side, to assert, and any one may satisfy himself of
the truth of the matter by an analysis of the police
returns, that as large a proportion of agrarian
crimes is prosecuted to conviction as of any other
class of offences committed among us.
"That general impunity, or anything approaching
to general impunity, has ever attended such crimes
in Ireland, is notoriously contrary to fact. This
class of offences has been unhappily, in former
times, too prevalent in Ireland ; but a careful re-
ference to the statistics of the country will convince
any unprejudiced person that impunity has been at
all times the exception, not the rule, and that the
proportion of cases in which justice has failed from
the misconduct of jurors is very small indeed.
Within the last few years crime of all kinds has
rapidly declined in Ireland, and agrarian offences
have been no exception in this respect. There have
been, no doubt, from time to time, isolated cases of
this class of crime, but they have not generally
escaped punishment. I may mention the murder
of Mr. Ellis, in the county Tipperary, as a remark-
able instance of what I assert. I contend, therefore,
that there is nothing in the present state of crime
in Ireland which justifies you in calling upon Par-
liament to abrogate the first principle of trial by
jury—the right, namely, of every man to be tried
by his peers ; or which warrants you in holding
forth your country to the world as a place where
crime is unpunished, and life and property insecure.
" Your second declaration is with reference to
the *cent revival of Riband societies and other
illegal combinations.' I know not what evidence
on this point you are prepared to lay before the
meeting. My information on the subject is con-
fined to what has reached me, in common with the
rest of the public, through the newspapers, and the
conclusion I have arrived at is, that there is at
the present moment a temporary fermentation
amongthe discontented classes of the country, which
ought not to escape the observation of the authori-
ties, and should be dealt with by them with a firm
hand, but which, as regards any results that it is
capable of achieving, may be treated with the most
complete contempt.
" There is in almost all countries a portion of
the people which, either from natural temperament
or other causes, is disaffected to the Government
and desirous of change ; and that such a class—
rapidly, however, diminishing both in numbers and
in moral and intellectual weight—exists in Ireland,
no one can deny. The power of that class in Ire-
land was tried in 1848, under eircumstances most
favourable to its development, and the events of
that year, as it appears to me, justify Irish politi-
cians in excluding Irish rebellion from the cate-
gory of possible events. But all the information
which I have been able to glean from the news-
papers shows that political revolution, not agra-
rian outrage, is the end aimed at by these
societies, the members of ,which have been lately
arrested by the orders of the Government ; and, as ,
I have already endeavoured to show that for such
purposes they are entirely powerless, I think they
may be safely left to the ordinary operation of the
law, and that your case, in favour of unconstitu-
tionally stringent measures for Ireland, halts as
much when it rests on the presumed increase of
secret societies as when it seeks to maintain itself
on the imaginary impunity of agrarian crime.
" I have thus endeavoured, by showing the base-
lessness of the ground on which you have sought
my concurrence, to explain why I cannot join with
you in asking the Legislature, at a time when the
country is peaceful and prosperous beyond all
former example, to take away the constitutional
rights of the people.
" With respect to the remainder of your paper
there are some suggestions which appear to me
little better than truisms; those, for instance, with
reference to the appointment and qualifications of
stipendiary and county magistrates, and which, I
think, can have been introduced only for the purpose
of raising the inference that those intrusted with the
administration of public patronage in one case, and
the Lord Lieutenants of counties in the other, have
not performed their respective duties. As I am not
prepared to endorse such a charge I must decline
to accede to this part of your paper also. The ad-
ministration of the constabulary force I am quite
satisfied to leave in the hands of the Executive
Government, and, I trust, should the necessity arise,
we may in the middle of the nineteenth centory be
able to devise some better means for the repression
of murder than would be afforded by a recurrence
to the clumsy expedients of our Saxon ancestors.
‘f Ireland has for some years past been making
enormous strides in the direction of 'der, peace,
a:id prosperity. For the first time inwher history
all classes of her inhabitants are convinced by prac-
tical experience that they have an equal interest in
maintaining the laws, in supporting the existing
order of things, and in advancing the material
proqperity of their country. I think any man, or
body' of men, will incur a very great responsibility
who, under such circumstances, takes any step
which is calculated to suggest the idea that the
nobility and gentry' of Ireland have any interests
inconsistent with those of the great mass of the
people, or that they seek for their own caste any
-
privileges incompatible with the enjoyment by all
classes of their fellow-coUntrymen of the rights and

immunities of the constitution.—l have the honour
to be, gentlemen, your obedient servant,
" MONCK.
" The Lord George Hill, ) Hon. Sees."
" J. W. L. Naper, Esq.,
_ _

_ .
Lord Massareene and Ferrard, who holds strong
Conservative opinions, and is, in fact, a Grand
Master, or something of the kind, in the Orange
Society, has addressed a clever letter to the Duke
of Leinster, in which he also strongly expresses his
dissent from the propositions embodied in the
Downshire declaration, save and except the 9th
and 10th, those relating to the improvement of the
dwellings, &c., of the labouring classes.

THE NEW JUDGES.
Mr, Francis Fitzgerald, the new baron of the
Exchequer, is brother of the Bishop of Cork.
Although reputed to be a high Conservative, he has
never taken any
.active part in politics. He is a
supporter of Scriptural as opposed to the national
system of education, and he has, it is said, upon
more than one occasion refused promotion from the
former Government. His practice in equity has
been enormous, and his elevation to the bench will
necessarily throw a vast amount of business into
the hands of some of the more eminent among the
Chancery lawyers. Upon the occasion of the State
Trials in 1848 it may be recollected that at the
urgent solicitations of the friends of Mr Smith
O'Brien he took a brief on the part of that gentleman,
and his speech for the defence, though brief as com-
pared with the other monster orations of that
period, will be long remembered as a masterpiece
of forensic skill and impressive eloquence. He was
called to the bar in 1834, and is in the prime of
life.
Mr. Hayes, the new judge of the Queen's Bench,
is Mr. Fitzgerald's senior in standing by seven
years, having been called in 1827. He is said to be
a sound and judicious advocate of common law.
Mr. Hayes has fought the battles of his party long
and successfully in the courts of registry, and he
has won his spurs fairly and honestly. He appears
to be rather popular than otherwise with his poli-
tical opponents, and no one doubts but that he will
make a painstaking and impartial judge. He, too,
has made a speech that will not be readily forgotten
in the annals of criminal prosecutions. His address,
in reply to evidence for the defence, in the case of
Kirwan, the wife murdererpad well-nigh cut short
the earthly career of that notorious criminal. That
overwhelming argument cleared away all dcubts
created by the testimony of the medical gentlemen
who so zealously maintained the undoubted right
of doctors to differ upon every question of medical
jurisprudence which might be put to them.

METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS.

- -
The weekly meeting of the Metropolitan Board
of -Works was held yesterday, at Guildhall; Mr.
J. Thwaites in the chair.
The financial statement was presented, which
showed a total balance of £277,181 4s. id.

METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS.
A report was received from the Works and
General Purposes Committee referring to a memo-
vial from the Commissioners of the Sewers of the
City of London, requesting the board to contribute
to the cost of a proposed improvement in King
Edward-street, City, by the purchase of certain
houses there, at a cost of £1,579 17s. The com-
mittee reported that they were not prepared to
recommend the board to contribute to the cost of
such improvement.
After a long discussion, the recommendation of
the committee was agreed to, as was also another
to the same effect in reference to the purchase of
houses in Fetter-lane.