The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-10-12 00:00:00

STATE OF IRELAND

On Thursday last a great meeting of Tipperary magis-
trates was held at Cashel, to consider what should be
done in consequence of the dreadful mid-day murder of
the late IVIr. William Roe, noticed elsewhere. Viscount
Suirdale took the chair, and among those present were
Lord Hawarden, Sir John Fitzgerald, Lord Glengall,
vice Lieutenant of the county, &c. It appeared from the
statement of the noble chairman, that during the late
period of scarcity Mr. Roe established a soup kitchen,
which was conducted by his own sisters, who caught the
fever from the recipients of the bounty, but fortunately
recovered. In endeavouring to make his land productive,
Mr. Roe wished to obtain some from a tenant who did
not till it, and owed two years rent. This rent Mr. Roe
promised to forgive and offered him £lO in addition, and
to let him have the crops grown on one acre which he had
tilled if he would leave; but as he refused Mr. Roe was
then forced to eject him, and this man, the noble chair-
man said, it was almost certain was the miscreant who
committed the foul murder. The chairman then called
on the magistrates present to do all in their power to
perform their duties as landlords. The Earl of Glengall
made a most alarming statement as to the origin of this
diabolical deed. He said that "it appeared that a com-
bination had been formed by several of his tenants—that
a determination existed among them not to pay him large
arrears of rent which they owed. Some of the parties
met to consider what steps they should adopt to carry
out their infernal schemes. It was understood that it
absolutely became the subject of consideration among
those persons who met, whether Mr. Roe, or the gentle-
man who officiated as his agent, should be shot ! They
admitted in their hellish committee that Mr. Roe was an
excellent, extremely liberal, and generous gentleman,
and that it would be a pity to shoot him, and that it
would be better to shoot the agent ! But, hen the fel-
lows had fully discussed their machinations, they came
to the determination to shoot the landlord, whom, alas !
they did; The reason why they had selected the landlord
was this :—Mr. Roe's children were very young; if Mr.
Roe was dead, the property would be probably placed
under the Court of Chancery, and the consequence of
that would be that a receiver from the Court would be
appointed over it ; that the receiver, as was the general
custom in those cases, would pay little or no attention to
the interests of the minors ; that those scheming tenants
would be enabled to get a reduction in the rents, and
that, as it had often been the case when properties were
placed under the courts, the minors and widow would be
plundered of their only existence ! That they (the ma-
gistrates) believed to have been the infernal scheme con-

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A memorial to the Lord Lieutenant, setting forth these'
facts was agreed to, and calling on his Excellency to make
every effort to bring to• justice the perpetrators of the
murder, and to render life and property more secure. A
subscription was then entered into as a reward for the
conviction of the murderer.

We really never heard revealed a more dreadful state of
things than this meeting discloses. Much has been said
against the Irish landlords, but it seems that, let them
be as generous as they may, they cannot escape being the
assassin's mark ; in such a fearful state of degradation
is the Irish peasantry.