The Sun. — 1869-05-14 (London, England)

NEWS.  STATE OF =LAND. Quite a panic seems to prevail as to the state of Ireland. Lord Stanley said .the sense of insecurity there was never greater than at present. That, though open to question, was bad enough. But in being repeated over again, it has been transposed into a very different thing. The state of Ireland, say the alarmists, was never worse than at present. This is simply absurd. The sympathy of the people with crime, the amount of crime, and the general unquietness are alarming enough. But they have existed in much greater proportion in days that are past. Sanguine people thought the disestablishment of the Church would immediately put an end to bad feelings which have existed more or less for centuries. Sanguine people are generally the most frightened and now they are scared by the non-fulfilment of ill-grounded hopes. Yet it they will only turn to the statistics of crime for the last thirty years they will find a marked improvement. As the Dublin correspondent of the Times puts it : "What would be thought now if a return were furnished to the Government by the Lord-Lieutenant of the county of Tipperary stating that 556 murders had been perpetrated within two years and live mouths? That was a great increase compared with former years. It was regarded as highly satisfactory that in 1831 and 1832 the total number of homicides in Ireland did not exceed 458. If such figures appeared in our annual calendar now they would indicate a terrible increase of crime. Let the aggregate number of crimes committed in 1835, 1836, and subsequent years, as appearing in returns furnished to Parliament, be compared with the catalogue of the last assizes, and it will he seen how vast an improvement has been effected in the moral condition of the country. Scarcely a county was then exempt from murders and agrarian outrages of various kinds ; they are now confined almost exclusively to two counties. Tranquillity is now the general rule ;_ it was then the rare exception. Contrast the calendar for Tipperary at the last assizes, unsatisfactory as it was in some respects, and manifesting an increase of crime, with that for March 1837. At the last March Assizes there was one charge of murder ; in March 1837 the cases numbered 44."  Still the present state of things is opposed to prosperity, and, if possible, must be altered. It may, if measures be not taken, spread and become more serious. The budget of news for to-day, for instance, is by no means reassuring. We are told that two men named Murray have been arrested on suspicion of being accomplices in the murder of Mr. Anketell. Informations were sworn against them by a Mrs. Brown, who lodged in their house. She was hooted and threatened by a crowd in Mullingar, and the police have been obliged to remove her and her husband to Dublin for safety. The next item is of another attempted assassination. A mau named Brady, agent of Dr. Fitzpatrick, is stated to have been fired at near Virginia, county Cavan. Two persons were with him, who reported the occurrence. He was found lying insensible on the road, but is expected to recover. Then there is the item of stealing a revolver. Three men have been arrested on a charge of forcibly taking a revolver from Professor O'Leary, of Queen's College, Cork, on Sunday evening. There is a story of the arrest of a Ribandman.