The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-04-23 00:00:00

it were otherwise.

At the opening of a late assizes in Tipperary, there
were 498 prisoners in gaol, and of these seventy were
charged with murder ! Within three years and a half
there were committed in Ireland upwards of 600 mur-
ders and homicides, and of these the greater part went
unpunished, from the unwillingness, or fear, of parties

to prosecute. And with these facts staring us in the
face, are we to be told that there is no more crime in
Ireland than there is in England ? We have heard of
" enormous lying," but of nothing ever more enormous
than this—at least we think so ; but perhaps Mr.
Hurne's returns may disabuse us of our present im-

pression. Perhaps we may discover that we have

been under a mistake all this time, and that if a man
would live snug and secure, and free to do as he will
with his own, there is no place like Tipperary ; per-
haps so; but we are certainly rather sceptical on the
point.

As to the returns which Mr. Hume has moved for,
we set no value upon them; they will reveal nothing
on the most interesting and important part of the case.
The mere counting of crimes is an insufficient criterion
for determining the comparative state of the two coun-
tries. A murder is committed in Tipperary, and a si-
milar crime is committed in Lancashire, and a record
may be kept of all such offences ; but would an in-
spection of that record give us, at the end of a stated
period, any just idea of the state of society in each dis-
trict, or be conclusive as to the superiority of one or
the other in a moral or social point of view ? We need
scarcely answer this question in the negative. In Lan-
cashire the crime is the result of individual malice, or
perhaps part of the evil design of a gang consisting of
not more than two or three desperate characters whose
principal object is robbery; but in Tipperary it is the
index of a system—the offspring of a conspiracy—
whose ramifications are deep and extensive—which
pervades almost the entire country—comprehends in
its dark affiliation we know not whom nor how many—
and keeps the great mass of the population in subjec-
tion to a most foul and abominable tyranny. Now will
the returns called for by the member for Kilkenny take
any cognizance of this peculiar state of things ? and,
if they do not, how imperfect must be the light which
they will shed on the question which he raises on the
comparative state of crime in this country and in Ire-
land.

We have crime enough in this country—a great deal
too much—and often are we forced to blush for our
country that such deeds are done in it ; hut in Ireland
there is not only a fearful amount of actual crime, but,
what is worse, there is the " criminal sfate" also along
with it. In England crime is the exception to the
rule; in Ireland, or, we should say, some portions of
it, it is, we regret to observe, the rule itself. In a re-
tired part of the country a poor man is sitting at his
fireside with his family ; a felow walks in whom he
never saw before, and he is invited to sit down to par-
take of the evening meal ; hospitality is the familiar
virtue of every Irish cottage ; the fellow affects to light
his pipe, but takes an opportunity suddenly to turn
round, and slay his too confiding host in presence of
his wife and children. And why is this ? This mur-
derous and mysterious visitor is aThug," and the
victim of his barbarity is an individual who had ven-
tured to take, or to hold land, or do some act with re-
ference thereto,—or he was, perhaps, merely a Bible
reader—contrary to the laws of Thugs and Thuggery,
which alter not; he was consequently ordered to be
taken off; and the shrouded emissary who performed
the deed was simply the executive of the Thugs of that

412:Ti0t3 OM; glil

Wiley amirrit Tipporof

-aay, a person

ingly and alone in his own field; three ruffians steal
round a hedge, level their pieces deliberately at him,
and, having shot him dead, go off. What was the of-

is quite a young man, had not been obedient to the 4.e-

cret, agrarian laws of Thuggery, and it was nece

tier re-

cent case

party

tufnitig.to tht ht.iings of t.%1 wayd to, Vogel,

a eounto

id, vice versa, a COW,

to ugh

counter ward, you will lose both, when, by a judicious

:, you might have won both

by being more prudent on this point, have beaten us

perior men to theirs in every necessary qualification

Sympathy goes a ion

way in deciding a man's vote

is, we say, we

10 not mean to en