IRELAND.
Three candidates are in the field for Belfast ; Mr. Emerson Tennent and Mr. William Gillilan Johnson, the late Tory Members, and Mr. D. R. Ross, the late Liberal candidate. Mr. Tennent refers to the recent explanation of his sentiments at the last election, boasts that Government have already made matter of enactment many measures of which he had approved in anticipation, and says that he can offer no stronger proof of his approbation of the general policy of the Admi- nistration than his having accepted office in connexion with it. Mr. Johnson has profited much by his brief Parliamentary experience : he says, " the political opinions expressed in my last address are, by the experience and information since acquired, still more firmly impressed on my mind." Mr. Ross falls in with two feelings of the day : he attri- butes the distress mainly to the "repressive system" of duties- " Sir Robert Peel's recent measures, though, in my opinion, not sufficiently bold and comprehensive, and exceedingly open to objection as regards the trade in the first necessary of life, (corn,) are deserving of praise as palliatives, and as introductory to a better system. Accordingly, though my attachment to the great principles which govern the Liberal party would cause me to watch the present Government with a distrustful eye, my vote shall never be withheld from the support of measures conducive to the real interests of the country, from whatever quarter they may proceed."
And he bids for support of Nonintrusionist and Dissenter- —
" Holding religious liberty to be the first and dearest of natural rights, and the power of a religious community to elect its own pastors as a most important function of that liberty, I am desirous of extending it to the Presbyterian body; and not to them alone, but to any other body that may hereafter lay claim to it."
Riots for food continue. At Ennis, on Tuesday, an attack was made on Mr. Bannatyne's flour-mills by a hungry multitude the military were called out, and two persons were shot in repelling the assailants. At Cork, on Saturday, three attacks were made by the populace on the potato-market—at ten in the morning, at noon, and at midnight ; but the. Mayor, who resisted the first attack in person, had the gates closed, and stationed a strong body of police to keep guard. In a letter to the Freeman's Journal, the Reverend Richard Henry, parish-priest of Islandeady, says that five hundred families had, on Monday, been subsisting for ten days on green cabbage-leaves, their only food.
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