The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-02 00:00:00

LAW AND POLICE

THE ATTEMPT TO MURDER AT ISLINGTON.—WiIIiam
Ballisat, the shoemaker charged with attempting to
murder his father, at Islington, on Saturday last, was
again brought before the magistrates at the Clerkenwell
Police-court. Some additional evidence was given, and
the prisoner was eommitted for trial. A short time after-
wards a gentlemanly-looking man, said to be a relative,
informed Mr. Cooke (although no member of the family
examined as a witness gave the slightest hint of such a
thing) that the prisoner had been under treatment for in-

sanity, and was no doubt at the present time suffer-
ing from disease of the brain. The worthy magistrate ad-
vised him to have the medical man who attended the
prisoner at that time, and other witnesses of the fact,
ready on the trial at the Central Criminal Court, which he
undertook should be done.

INTIMIDATING WITNESSES. -At Bow-street, George
Britten Bristowe was charged with attempting to intimi-
date George Day, to prevent him from giving evidence at
the last 01(1 Bailey Sessions, on the prosecution of one
George Gould, alias Bristowe, for obtaining goods by false
pretences. Gould, it seemed, was the father of present
prisoner, and was convicted at the last 011 Bailey Ses-
sions for obtaining goods under false pretences, and sen-
tenced to five years' penal servitude. Prisoner, meeting
complainant, began to abuse him, and said that if he gave
evidence against his (prisoner's) father, he would kick his
(the complainant's) ---inside out. The prisoner was
committed for trial.

ROBBERY OP DRAPERY GOODS ON THE MIDLAND RAIL-
WAY.—At the Leicestershire Quarter' s=essions yesterday
the trials were concluded of the prisoners charged with
stealing drapery goods while in course of transit by the
Midland Railway Company. Property to the value of
several thousands of pounds had been stolen, and conside-
rable difficulty seems to have been experienced in tracing
the thieves. The prisoners were tried in three groups. In
the first there were Thomas Jackson, pointsman, Dennis
Parkins, foreman shunter —both of Syston Junction—who
were charged with stealing; and Henry Martin, beerhouse-
keeper, Silsby, charged with feloniously receiving the
stolen goods. Parkins was allowed to turn Queen's evi-
dence. Jackson pleaded guilty, and he, as well as a plate-
layer named Underwood, appeared in the witness-box
against Martin. To this man's house a large quantity of
property had been conveyed ; and he had redistributed it
amongst the villagers. Martin and Jackson were each
sentenced to five years' penal servitude. Two other pri-
soners who were tried in succession, on charges arising
out of the same series of robberies, were acquitted.
THE CLERKENWELL EXPLOSION FUND.—On Wed•
nesday the Lord Mayor took occasion on the bench
to make a statement respecting the sums expended on the
relief of the distress occasioned by the Fenian outrage at
Clerkenwell. The committee, it appears, have distributed
£1,500 for the alleviation of the immediate sufferings of
the injured, and £3,000 towards replacing the furniture
and tools destroyed. His lordship made an appeal for
further contributions, mentioning, as a sample of the cases
to be dealt with, that of a family of four children, one of
whom was totally and the other three partially deprived
of sight.

DARING HOUSE ROBBERY. - Christian Miller, 29,
Thomas Seabrook, 63, furniture dealer, of Lull-street,
Ratcliff, and John Boswell, of Church-road, Stepney,
were brought up at the Thames Police-court, charged with
stealing a quantity of furniture, valued in all at £3OO, the
property of Mr. W. Stainsby, tailor, Heath-street. Mil-
ler, who is a foreigner, lodged with Mr. Stainsby and his
wife. The latter were left in charge of the house while
Stainsby and his wife went into the country. Soon after
they had gone Miller went to the shop of Seabrook, and
said that he wanted to sell all his goods. Seabrook went to
the house of Mr. Stainsby, where Miller met him, and,
after inspecting the furniture, Seabrook agreed to pay £9
for the whole, £3 down on account. The articles sold
embraced everything in the house. Mr. Stainsby stated
that the goods actually cost him upwards of £3OO. The
prisoners were all committed for trial, but the magistrate
said he would take bail for Seabrook and Boswell.

THE FAMINE IN NORTHERN RUSSIA. A
Letter on the above subject, from Mr. Charles Renny
her Aajesty's Consul at Archangel, is published in the
Times. Mr. Benny states that to all appearance it is per-
fectly impossible to avert starvation from a large propor-
tion of the population. " Bread is now at three times its
usual price, and before long money may not buy it, as
supplies of flour are running short, and more is not ob-
tainable nearer than Viatka, a distance of 1,000 vents.
To bring a sufficient quantity thence by land, putting cost
entirely out of the question, is hardly feasible ; and were
it brought, the bulk of the population is without the
means of buying it. Even now there are instances of
death from hunger, and numbers are already so com-
pletely destitute that their existence can be reckoned
by days. Measures have been and are being taken,
both by Government and private persons, to supply
the people with food ; but the want is becoming so
general that the limited local means, even with the
assistance of Government, cannot cope with it."
Mr. Renny suggests that subscriptions should be raised in
London. He says :—" With the sum subscribed I pur-
pose to buy rye flour in Viatka, deliverable here by winter
roads, and to distribute the Fame, with the co-operation of
others, to the absolutely needy in this neighbourhood.
For the town itself local means may prove sufficient."
THE QUEEN'S NEW YEAR'S GIFTS.-011 Wed-
nesday morning, between nine and ten o'clock, the annual
ceremony of presenting her Majesty's New Year's gifts to
the poor of Windsor took place in the market beneath the
Guildhall. The gifts consisted of meat and coals, the
latter being delivered at the homes of the families, while
the beef was delivered to the recipients from the butchers'
tables in the market. On this occasion the mayor of
Windsor, Mr. J. W. Wellman, the Rev. H. J. Ellison,
the Rev. Mr. Thompson, and other clergy, were present
at the distributor during which the bells of the Chapel
Royal of St. George and St. John's Church rang merrily.
The poor of Windsor entitled to the gifts included 351
families ; the parish of Holy Trinity, 193 ; and that of
Clewer, 219; giving a total of 768 persons. These families
were divided into five classes, of which the first received a
piece of beef weighing 71b. ; those of the second, 61b. ; third,
lb ; fourth, 41b. ; and the fifth, 31b. The weight of the beef
thus given by the Queen was 3,1191 b. It was of splendid
quality, and was supplied by Messrs. Bedborough, Cope-
land, and Hughes, of Windsor. Its value was £97 9s. 41d.
Mr. Heale, who represented Mr. Cullen, the clerk of the
kitchen at Windsor Castle, was present for the Queen. Ftft y-
nine tons of coal, supplied by Mr. Little, her Majesty's
coal merchant, were distributed at the homes of these
families in quantities of 3 cwt., 2i cwt., 2 cwt., 16 cwt.,
and lcwt. The value of the coals was £73 9s. 4id., so
that the total value of the Queen's gifts was 2170 183. 9d.
Her Majesty also gave £lOO to the Royal Clothing Club
at Windsor,

RsECLARATION OF ME ROMAN'

CA7 HOLIC CLERGY.

DUBLIN, Wednesday.
The following is the text of the Roman Catholic
anifesto
We, the undersigned Roman Catholic clergy-
merrlbelieve that we have arrived at an epoch of great
trial and some danger, and that it is due to the
people, the Government, and our own position
frankly to expose some of the evils under which Ire-
land labc.urs, and the remedy which, in the presence
of God, -we believe to be the most efficacious, if not
the only o ne, to give peace, security, and progress
to the coua'try.
" We belong to no party in the State within or
without the Constitution. We have no alliance
with Whig, Tory, or Radical. We have laboured,
many of us, and some of us incurred considerable
odium in our endeavours to preserve public order,
and thus we have given a pledge that we are de-
voted to the interests of peace. In reflecting upon
the present position of the nation, then, and offer-
ing our honest counsel, we have no impulse to
embarrass or to patronise any party, and no object
but to perform our duty to religion and the people,
with whom we are, and have ever been, perfectly
identified.
" It would be an error and a crime to say that
the disaffection of this country is not deep-seated
and extensive. Deplorable as such a fact may be,
no one who knows the country can truthfully deny
it. Generally a blank hopelessness pervades the
mind of the population, a dark brooding all the
worse because every day growing in intelligence.
This hopelessness operates in two or three direc-
tions, and in every one of them is equally danger-
ous. Taking the form of emigration, it becomes a
longing and a resolve to come back,' taking the
form of conspiracy, it is ever on the watch for its
opportunity; and, taking the form of Fenianistn,
it becomes reckless very often and regardless of
consequences, making danger at home and inviting
evil from abroad.
" We need not say that we know the people of
Ireland well. They are emphatically our own'
people. We have their confidence, and know their
great virtues, as well as what failings fall to their
share; and we solemnly declare that one of the
most imminent dangers of the movement of this
generation is the magnanimous spirit of self-sacri-
fice which has animated the mass of those who
think of risking their lives or spending them in even
a hopeless contest. 'That they cannot be worse,'
that ' there is no hope for the country,' and that
''tis as good to die' are the sentiments and ethics
which poverty and degradation have taught, and
which are frequently repeated by American success
and daring.
" In one word, as an eminent prelate, a man even
singularly distinguished for his devotion to English
institutions, has recently said---' If the Grand Turk
came to this country and proffered a fair chance of
expelling English power, every man, woman, and
child would follow him to the field.'
" We deprecate the continuance of this state of
things—equally injurious to the spiritual interests
I of our flecks and the social and commercial inte-
rests of Ireland. We come before the country and
the Government believing that the difficulty is not
yet insoluble, though we think it may be rapidly
approaching that state of hopelessness. We appeal
I to the common sense and highest interest of these
three kingdoms patiently to hear and judge; and
should we fail in averting a dire catastrophe we
shall have the consolation of remembering that we
have done our duty.
" Without any affectation of confidence, we do
think that the English people—the great body of
that nation—would be inclined not only to justice,
but generosity, were they sufficiently well informed.
To these we most especially appeal ; and we shall
feel surprised if, having duly considered the condi-
tion and claims of this country, they will for ever
leave their own at the command of foreign nations
sooner than reverse the policy of ruin.
" What, then, arc the roots of the wide-spread
and growing evil—an evil i❑ whose deepening sha-
dow society is every day growing more uneasy, and
the foreign relations of England every day growing
less honourable ?

" Firstly, we answer, and we declare the root,
source, life, and strength of all misery to be in the
ignorance, poverty, and degradation of Ireland ;
and in the reversal of all three—every one—in the
establishment of intelligence, national wealth, and
national dignity, or in commencing to establish
them, is to be found the only security for peace,and
the only security against continual danger and final
catastrophe.
" Let us look back a little. From the year 1698
to the year 1782 learning was under the ban of law
in Ireland ; no one could learn the alphabet without
violating the statute. That is, for three generations
all that time no one could acquire the elements of
wealth, dignity, or civilisation in Ireland. The po-
sitive effects in brutalising the population may be
easily estimated; the negative effects which left
them behind every other people are equally clear.
In the face of such facts—the facts of having drive❑
a whole people back upon the road of progress, and
of having made it impossible for them to come up
to the progressing intelligence of the peoples who
have centuries the start of them—what will jus-
tice do to repair the wrong? We think it suffi-
ciently evident that justice will, by every means,
commence to restore equality--equality in intelli-
gence.

And when we speak of equality of intelli-
gence' we are not to be understood to mean solely
equality of facilities for obtaining primary and col-
legiate instruction—primary and collegiate instruc-
tion for those who carry the brand of the laws by
which Government for a hundred years degraded
them. 'We mean much more. 'We mean the intel-
ligence in scientific agriculture— intelligence in
skilled workmanship—intelligence in domestic eco-
nomy—intelligence in the employment of capital—
intelligence in those things which are auxiliaries to
public wealth and the accompaniments of civilisa-
tion. All these were taken away from the Irish
race, and as a race they are still deprived of them,
and by their loss are to a considerable extent the
people which the world beholds nearly the first in
capacity and the last in wretchedness that blots the
globe. All these must be restored, because all these
are necessary to raise up Ireland to the equality
from which the laws have thrown her down, to re-
store to her the competence of which the lawn de-
prived her, and if they be not given back the misery
which recruits the ranks of disaffection must con-
tinue to the end.

"If it be said that the Irish race are already on
an equality with those who for 100 years were
made their masters, there is most evidently an
error, and a grave one. To assert that two men
are placed on an equality for rifle competition, one
of whom you have taught, and the other of whom
you have never permitted to handle a gun, would
be unwise, and tend to discredit the speaker's sense
of justice; yet the assertion would not be more
viclent than to say that the Irish race are on an
equality in the race for national wealth with the
English settlers here, or the English and Scotch be-
yond the Channel.

" Every one who has travelled in America and
Australia will recognise the truth .of Irish ignorance
at home and Irish capacity abroad. Comparing
population with population and position with posi-
tion on landing, we know that the ascent in the
gradations of labour, from small to large commerce,
and from the lowest to the lurches;rluks of intellec-
tual and professional eminence, illastrates that once
the Irish race know their way, and are allowed to
travel, they are not behind ariy they meet on the
road. In Ireland there are litany miserable who
would be miserable anywhe re, but there are great
numbers who are miserable only because, through
one cause or another, the 'zurse of the penal laws
hangs heavily around then,

" Secondly, the povert y of the Irish race has been
directly produced by the. goverronent of the country.
We do not speak of t'a& confiscations of the lands
which took the mean, of living out of the hands of
the natives, and haft them pmniless in so many
eases, nor of the r ossession of nine tenths of Ireland
by absentees wh,o spend its produce beyond the
seas, although we believe that drain upon this
country rises pap,rly to five millions annually ; nor

of the abstraction of all the savings of our farmers
to swell the means of English and Scotch enterprise
(occasioned by the ignorance before mentioned);
nor of the singular arrangement by which Ireland

pays an interest on 600 millions of debt which she

never contracted ; we do not speak of all or any of
these inflictions which so severely deal with our
capital now—we speak of the laws which were
framed and put into operation with the direct aim
and object of pauperising, casting forth, and re-
ducing to a ' state of nature' the whole native popu-
lation of this country.

" We pray it be remembered that, frightful as is
the picture of the Penal Laws, of which Burke says
that it was a system as well fitted for the oppres-
sion, impoverishment, and degradation of a people,
and the debasement in them of human nature itself,
as ever proceeded from the perverse ingenuity of
man'—yet was this terrible system only the sequel
of another system, bloody as it was unjust, and pro-
tracted as it was powerful. For 400 years and more
the ' Irish enemy' might be shot down as the raven-
ing wolf ; and even had he bound himself in alle-
giance to England, his murder was punishable only
by a small fine of one mark. The result of 430
years of such a system left the native population,
we may well infer, not abundantly supplied with
the wealth which helps and rewards progress, even
though the said population may have had fourscore
years to breathe. Yet it was in such circumstances
that the elaboration of the organised process of ex-
termination, called the Penal Laws, began.
" Let it not be supposed that we dwell upon these
topics with pleasure or hate ; far from us be the
thought of triumph or vindictiveness. We recur to
them for reasons the importance of which statesmen
ought to understand and estimate. From those
springs of bitterness the waters which have destroyed
the social happiness of Ireland, and swept away her
national wealth, have flowed forth, and it is in
utterly stopping them up and sealing them for ever
that we are to look for the peaceful regeneration of
the laud which is dear to us all.

," For three generations, then, every means of
acquisition was by the laws of the land snatched
from the native race.

"1. Confusion was sought to be introduced into
every family by law.

" 2. All the professions were closed to people o
be old faith by law.

"3. The ownership of land and the holding by
[ease forbidden by law.

" 4. All political power, position, and advantage,
even to the office of common bellman, were forbid.
den them by law.

" 5. All the handicrafts, even to the humble pur-
suit of the artificer, were impossible to them by
1--

Law.

"And thus for the long period to which we have
more than once directed attention the intellectual,
social, and moral condition of this country had been
so low, degrading, and debased—ignorance and in-
capacity had so paralysed the minds of the whole
people of Ireland—that we may well feel astonished
at the bound which in 80 years has brought them
from the rudeness of a barbarism inflicted by law
to the condition in which we find them, sad a con-
dition as that is, looking at the condition of Great
Britain, with which she legally forms one kingdom.
" And now we beg the most earnest attention to
what follows.
" The Irish people did, indeed, in the year 1772
commence to regain their position, not the l osition
they should have had, but the possibility of begin-
ning to aim at it. In rags and ignorance, it may be
said, they began the up-hill road to wealth and
intelligence in 1772 ; but before their faculties had
been unbound, before their eyes were allowed to see
or their hands to work, the employment of them
bscame useless. The facts are very instructive, and
shed light upon the duty of legislation.
" Unfortunately for Ireland, a party that could
not live without ascendancy sold the liberty and
wealth of their country for thepleasure of oppress-
ing their neighbours; and hence the resumption of
industrial right was not much advantage to the
long-oppressed population.
" The governing country had grown passionately
jealous of the activity and success of the small
minority whom she permitted to aggrandise them-
selves. The export of cattle was not allowed, lest
it should lessen the value of English laud. Then
the export of wool was forbidden, unless under
great restrictions and only to a few places. The
export of cloth was then prohibited, and almost
every kind of import, too, unless the cargo was first
discharged in England. A King promising from
his throne to discourage the woollen manufacture
in Ireland,' and essay after essay showing how to
utilise Ireland for English wealth, without seeming
to deem it worth a thought whether Ireland de-
cayed to ruin or not, are the singular phenomena
of English rule and Irish subjection, from the reign
of James I. till the year 1782. Thus it came to
pass that those we call the native population found
no country before them in 1772, when they were
allowed some of the privileges of Irishmen. A Par-
liament that, to retain the enjoyment of its projti-
dices, took every loyal message as law, sold their
best interests for the pride of ascendancy, and
brought Ireland to the verge of bankruptcy.
" The year of Free Trade' Caine with England's
necessity,' alas ! apparently always Ireland's op-
portunity.' In the history of mankind such na-
tional progress is not recorded as that which
brightens the annals of Ireland from 1782 to the
year of the Union. With the consciousness of
power there came an exhibition of independence
which was fatal—lreland lost her Parliament. It
can be no harm to say that England thought the
advantage of extinguishing our Legislature a great
one, for she paid £1,420,000 to the parties in the
country who gave her the key to Irish resources
and the control of Irish liberty.
"Thus, from the very beginning of English rule,
the Irish population may be said to have been im-
poverished by law.
" From the English invasion to the Reformation
the Irish enemy' was impoverished by law.
" From the Reformation to the reign of James I.
the Irish Catholics were impoverished by law.
" From the reign of James I. until the year 1782
the Irish Catholics were not only impoverished, but
the very possibility of acquiring either knowledge
or wealth was taken from them by law.
" And when the Irish Catholics were allowed to
raise their heads and look around they found every
species of commerce by which they might ever grow
into a knowledge of the very process of acquisition
—they found them all destroyed by law.
" Thus, under the reign of an ignorance hardly
shaken by a few years' freedom ; without the op-
portunity of seeing or knowing anything but the
rough work of the field, the coarser species of
artisanship, or the humbler classes of trade pur.
suits—thus at the Union the Catholics of Ireland
were thrown upon agriculture ;'exclusively for sub-
sistence. No freedom availed them any longer.
They had little capital—very little, of course—
they had lost all the skilled workmanship ; they had
lost all the knowledge ; they had lost almost the
taste for anything beyond the wretched field which
they dug, or the beasts which they reared. Burke's
philosophy was illustrated in them, and if, per-
chance, a spasmodic effort from time to time pro-
duced any species of industry now monopolised by
English manufacturers, the poverty of the Irish-
man soon succumbed under the weight of the Eng-
lishman's power, who sold at less than the cost till
he had made the Irishman bankrupt.
" There is no use in saying to such a man that
he is frea to run the race of manly competition with
the Englishman, unless, ind?ed, such freedom be
understood in the sense that an invalid rising from
the bed of infirmity is ' free' to enter the lists with
the athlete. Ile is free, but the use of his freedom
would be his destruction. Ireland is free to fight
her competitors with the antecedent condition of
being killed inevitably in the battle; on the land,
then, and on the land alone, the Irishman was
driven for subsistence. Without much capital,
without much knowledge, without any security for
what he might invest iu the land, without sym-
pathy, as a rule, from those to whom far over the
sea he sent the produce of his sweat and anxiety,
the normal condition of Ireland, the condition re-
sultant from law, was a condition of necessary
poverty and debasement.
f` So we were in 1846, when the fannAl turned

UARY 2, lq 8

the island into a graveyard ; normal poverty—pro-
duced by law—was no match for the blight which
withered our fields and gave a whole kingdom no
choice but flight, mendicancy, or death.
" England could purchase in any or every market
in such a contingency. So could France. So could
almost any country ; because every country but our
own has something to live upon besides the price of
the produce of the soil. We had nothing, because
law bad utterly swept everything that in our trial
could sustain us ; and thus it happened that we lost
two millions of our people by death and emigration,
and gained many lessons that nowadays produce
their fruits in thoughts and aspirations which bode
some trouble to the empire.
" For a long period the real causes of Irish
wretchedness were not known, and when they were
known the traditional ' debasement' of soul wrought
by slavery was inaccessible to the spirit of self-vin-
dication.
" All this has been changed. The national schools
should have been a forbidden tree if Government
intended for ever to make the resources of the na-
tion inaccessible to the people, for it is difficult to
associate denationalisation and poverty with a know-
ledge of right and of history. Education has been
the tree of knowledge of good and evil,' and the
Irish have largely partaken of the kind which they
have been able to obtain.
" The normal causes of poverty are this year as
active as in years past. Nothing is done to develope
the resources which we have, or to introduce new
ones to aid our insufficiency. On the contrary, the
people are flying away, and the land rapidly going
out of cultivation. The 'stock'—the beef, mutton,
and bacon which feed the English manufacturing
districts are more largely produced ; but the
eople are driven away, ' going with a vengeance.'
We do not assert that this state of things is the re-
sult of a designed policy at this moment ; but we
can well see that many are led to that conclusion ;
and the effect of all—whether we admit the convic-
tion of a hostile policy, or the conviction of the ad-
ministrative incapacity in the rulers of Great Britain,
or of a combination of them all—as the impulses of
the national mind of Ireland, we feel confident that
disaffection has never been so widespread and so de-
termined as it is this year 1867.
" We need not say that this disaffection is home
and foreign ; abroad it is downright war, and at
home is partly sympathy and partly conspiracy
—but nearly universal.
" There is no doubt that the foreign element
must always depend upon the life derived from
home—hostility to Government. Take away the
appui that Irish American Fenianism finds in Irish
disaffection here in Ireland, and you at once and
for ever remove the pica and the danger of foreign

nterference.
" Without a removal of the combustible matter
u this country, a spark at any moment may spread
a devouring conflagration.
" And what is more, if the co-operating causes
be not removed from Ireland, there never more can
be peace or security in these kingdoms.
"Let it be remembered that the idea of coming
and seizing Ireland is now the idea of millions.
Remember that the young hear and receive it as
they grow up, and that their pride, interest, and
chivalry are all stirred actively by the thought.
Remember that the facilities of learning the use of
arms, and of gathering material means, make the
idea to them very much more than merely possible.
We behold in the movement the elements of per-
petuity, which, however inefficacious for accom-
plishing their object, will be always efficacious for
producing disquiet. A never-ending perturb..ition,
or a settlement of the Irish question, is the very
least that is inevitable.
" More than this, there is a state of things at
home which statesmanship should not tolerate for a
moment. This country always looking for a change,
thinking any change whatever a chance to be
prayed for and seized upon, any enemy of Eng-
land becomes by the fact of such enmity a friend to
Ireland ; Ireland ever ready to condemn or mis-
understand or oppose the views of the Imperial
Government, on the principle of an antagonism,
whose mission is active resistance to a changeless
foe—all is injurious to Imperial influence every-
where, and, however long it may have to wait, will
find its hour of retaliation at last. We think our-
selves no enemies of tile commonwcalih by seeking
to preserve it from such trials as are shadowed forth
in the state of affairs just described.
" All Europe knows those difficulties to which we
allude, and America is every thy acting upon them.
How can any Government vindicate its honour or
guard its interests in such a state of things? The
experience of the last two years proves that, were
England at war with any European Power to-mor-
row, that Power would be able to fling a brigade of
fifty or sixty thousand drilled and armed Irishmen
into the field ; perhaps into this country ; and then
what could restrain the Irish population, enraged,
poverty-stricken, and hopeless, as they are.
" Again, we declare that the only hope of peace,
order, progress, and at last real union, is in tran-
quillizing Ireland.
" And we solemnly declare that the only
means
of effectually tranquillizing Ireland is by a restora-
tion of her Nationality.
" General legislation by the Parliament of Great
Britain will never be equal to the task of teaching,
cherishing, developing, and raising Ireland.
" Political economy will never do for a country
like Ireland any more than the ordinary food of
health would do for the weak and sickly. The most
exceptional legislation must be employed, the mi-
nutest knowledge must b.) obtained, the most per-
severing local inquiry must be instituted, and a full,
heart- whole, and we would say exclusive atten-
tion, province by province, must be directed to
discover and remedy Ireland's wants ; and these
things an English Parliament cannot perform.
" An English Parliament has already too much
to occupy it ; an English Parliament will always
proceed by fixed principles applicable only to orga-
nised communities, and they will not do for Ireland;
an English Parliament will have to command a com-
bination of parties who know little of Ireland, and
cannot understand the necessity of entirely excep-
tional legislation--a thing absolutely essential to
Ireland. And, above all, such a Parliament will
never satisfy the yearnings of a whole people, whose
intellects and whose hearts combine in the cry for
nationality.
" A land tenure will accomplish something ; re-
moval of the Protestant ascendancy, by placing the
Protestant Church in the same position before the
State as the Catholic Church, will accomplish much;
equality in education and the removal of the ano-
maly of giving a freedom of education on the
condition of people giving up freedom, will do its
share, and we will hail any and all of them with
thankfulness ; but we feel bound to say that when
all of them have been granted, safety from foreign
danger, perfect development of home resources, and
we repeat, above all, the heart of this country w;11
require Nationality.
" Give Ireland her own Legislature, and the Go-
vernment of her own resources—Nationality, and
her federal amity will be a tower of strength to the
empire. The country and the people will have
mno-
thing to complain of any more —they will be them-
selves responsible for their own condition ; conspi-
racies at home will have nothing to plot about, and
conspiracies abroad can promise nothing which Ire-
land would not be ready to reject and resist. Eng-
land will then be united to us by our best interests,
and will be the protector of our most valued privi-
leges, and the miserable conflicts of centuries shall
have an end.
" We conclude, then,
" Firstly—That Ireland is poor and helpless, not
by any fault of the Irish race, but by the force and
fault of English legislation.

" Secondly—That the said English legislation
exercised its power not only in pauperising Ireland
for a season, but in destroying nearly all the sources
of Irish national wealth, and thus making poverty
a permanent condition of the country.
" Thirdly—That the danger to public order, both
at home and abroad, has been produced by said
poverty and degradation.
" Fonrt hly—That the very nature of the remedies
required to make Ireland rich and contented renders
it impossible for a British Parliament to adopt and
apply them ; and, besides that, home aspirations

and the plea for Irish intervention from abroad can
never be met unless by restoring Ireland her na-
tionality—re-establishing the Sovereign and the
Lords and Commons of Ireland.

" Before the face of Ireland and the whole world
we make this declaration—in the interests of Heaven
and earth, the present and future. With the
thoughtful men who sway the destinies of these
kingdoms we leave the issue ; but our own honour
and conscience required that we should tell the
truth and nothing but the truth, in the face of
eventualities of which a Christian clergy should not
desire to take the regponsibility. We have dis-
charged our duty, and on the statesmanship of
England now rests the deeply important issue.
Given this 23d day of December, 1867.
"R. B. O'Brien, D.D., " John Hayes, D.D., C.C.,
V.G., Dean of Lime- Newcastle.
rick. "John O'Sullivan, C.C.,
"James Synan, P.P., Newcastle.
V.G., Shavagolden. " John Irwin, C.C., Cool-
- " Daniel O'Connor, D.U. cappa.
P.P., Ardagh. " Luke Gleeson, C.C.,
" James Hickey, P.P., Glynn.
Askeaton• "John Morgan, C.C.,
"John Clifford, P.P., Castlernahon.
Monegay. " Michael Mahone, C.C.,
"John Welsh, 2.P., Limerick.
Temple of Glantine. "T. Ryan, C.C., Ardagh.
"E. Costello, P.P., "T. Benson, C.C., Pat-
Stonehall. rick's Well.
" Martin Ryan, Admi- "E. Connery, C.C., Sha-
nistrator, Athray. nagolden.
" Luke Hanrahan, P.P., "M. Fitzgerald, C.C., As-
Castlemahon. keaton.
" N.B.—The members of the Committee will re-
ceive names, or lists of names, until the Ist day of
February, 1868."