IRISH LOCAL DI e STURBANCES, AND THE IRISH CHURCH.

MR. Lawn's treatise on the first of these important subjects con- tains the results of a very wide and attentive course of reading on Irish affairs, both as regards the past and the present time. The subject of his investigation is judiciously divided~ and arranged with order; the evidence by which he supports his views is clearly marshalled, and prefaced and interspersed with apt observations; his tone is calm and impartial ; his conclusions are sound, his suggestions sensible. These last, however, have no peculiar novelty; and owe what VI eight they possess to the mass of has, that have established their necessity, rather than to the arguments by which they are supported, or the vigour which they are urged. In a literary point of view, too, these facts are presented in a ful- ness of detail which somewhat overlays the subject—they are more adapted for the inquirer than the reader.

The main object of Mr. LEWIS is to show that Irish local dis- turbances originate neither in political nor in religious feelings, (although one or both may occasionally be, or appear to be, en- grafted upon them); but arose, and have been continued to this time, entirely from the pressure of distress. In order more clearly to establish his views, and more completely to exhaust the subject, he begins by tracing the history of these disturbances from their first outbreak in 1760 down to our own day : he next investigates their causes, their character, and the objects with which they were undertaken, and the means employed to render them effectual : he then enumerates the evil effects they produce; and finally brings forward his remedies. During this extensive survey, he proves,by adducing the testimony of contemporary writers, of public or official characters or of evidence delivered before Parliamentary Committees, that the disturbers have never aimed at any political changes, or discovered any particular dissatisfaction with the ruling power, but have been excited to violence by the pressure of poverty and the prospect of starvation. Ile also shows that rent at the outset seemed the principal object of their hatred, till the land- lords and farmers diverted it to tithes; since which, it has extended to the holding of land, and to interference with the employment of labourers. In the various disturbances springing out of these objects, Catholics have suffered equally with Protestants; the dues to the parish priest were in the early stages as much a matter of complaint and regulation as the tithes of the minister of the Establishment. In the time of their greatest violence, residents not connected with land were perfectly safe both in their persons and property, as were also strangers and travellers; the crimes of the Irish peasantry not having for their object any individual gratification, but being intended to produce a moral effect upon the neighbourhood, as well as the person selected for vengeance, and to operate with the force and sanction of a legal execution. Hence he concludes, that mere political measures, however useful in allaying the heats which have arisen during so long a period of constant hostility to the law, or which have been fomented by designing persons, will have no effect in suppressing agrarian insurrection, as thLy have had no effect in producing it. The Irish peasantry are really, though not legally, in a state of vil- leinage : incapable of earning wages to support themselves, they cling with desperate tenacity to a piece of ground whose crop will at least secure them from starvation ; this spot is continually- subdivided to meet their increasing numbers; all attempts at improvement on the part of the landlord are impo,sible, as he cannot venture to lay out capital with such a class of tenants; and if be dispossess them, ho "exposes the ejected parties to the risk of starvation, and the new tenant to the risk of being murdered by the Whiteboys."

What is a landlord under these circumstances to do? Either he must sur- render to the evil, which will inevitably go on increasing, or he must set about clearing his estate, in outer to consolidate the holdings. Now there are only two ways in which a landlord can set about clearing an estate : he may buy out the tenants, and furnish them with the means of emigration,—an expense which few persons are able to incur ; or he may forcibly eject them and throw down their cabins, and thus produce the mischief already explained.

The consequence of this crossing of interests is, that the system is at a dead lock ; no individual can by his unassisted energy hope to extricate himself from its shackles; and the evil is constantly progressive, enlarging itself by its own action and cleating the necessity for its own continuance. There seems uo hope that the society will, by its spontaneous efforts, work out a cure; so far from it, that the rapid and inevitable tendency is from bad to worse. The law alone can furnish a remedy ; by its assistance alone can the transition of the peasantry from the cottier to the labourer state be effected. What is wanted is to give the peasant some third alternative besides land and starvation, by which he may be induced to relax that desperate grasp with which he clings to his potato-ground. This alternative (as it seems to me) can alone be furnished by

& LEGAL PROVISION FOR THE POOR.

Having reached this conclusion, Mr. LEWIS proceeds ably to combat the objections that have been urged to a Poor-law, and to advocate what we believe is as essential to tranquillize Ireland as a legal claim against death by famine—au 'extensive system of Emigration managed by the Government. Of the various sections into which Mr. LEWIS'S book is divided, the closest and most interesting, in a literary point of view, is the bistorical narrative of the earlier local disturbances. They are spread over too large a space to allow of extracts with advantage; but a chronological view of the whole, drawn up from the data of our author, with the names in which the disturbers rejoiced and the objects they proposed, may be of some interest.

1761. First insurrection in the South by Catholics. The insurgents were called Whiteboys, from the white shirts which they wore over their clothes, and Levellers, because one of their principal objects was to level the fences of newly-enclosed waste land. " They were occasioned," says Dr. Curry, " by the tyranny. and rapacity of their -landlords. These landlords had set their lands to cottiers far above their value, and, to lighten their burden, had allowed commonage to their tenants. Afterwards, in despite of all equity, contrary to all compacts, the landlords enclosed those commons, and precluded their un- happy tenants from the only means of making their bargains tolerable. An- other cause of these people's discontents' was the cruel exactions of tithe- mongers : these harpies squeezed out the very vitals of the people, and by pro- cess, citation, and sequestration, dragged from them the little which the land- lord had left them." ' 1764. Insurrection in Ulster, by Protestant peasantry, who were called Oahboys. " The first object of these insurgents was to produce a more equal distribution of the burden of maintaining the roads ; the second, to deprive the clergy of a portion of their tithe ; the third, to regulate the price of land, *racially of peat-bogs." 1772. Hearts of Steel. The origin of this outbreak in Ulster bail

s re-

semblance to the risings in the South. An estate in the county of Antrim' a part of the vast possessions of an absentee nobleman, the Marquis of Donegal,

was proposed, when its leases had expired, to be let only to those who could pay large fines ; and the agent of the Marquis was said to have exacted extra- vagant fees on his own account also. Numbers of the former tenants, neither

able to pay the fines nor the rents demanded by those who, on payment of fines and fees, took leases over them, were dispossessed of their tenements, and left

without means of subsistence. *

To rescue one of the number confined on a charge of felony in Belfast, some thousands of peasants, who neither before nor after took any part in the insur- rection, marched with the Steelmen into the town, and received the prisoner frog the military guard ; the officers of which were fortunately persuaded by a respectable physician to his liberation, to prevent the ruinous consequences of a desperate battle. The association of the Steelmen extended into the neigh- bouring counties, augmented by distressed or discontented peasants, who were not affected immediately by the original grievance.

1783. Peep or Break-of-day-Boys were Protestants, whose motives were political and religious. They derived their name from the time of flay when their visits we made ; their object was to search fur arms; the houses of Catholics were alone subject to their depredations; and in 1795, or soon afterwards, they changed their appellation from Peep-of-dad.Boys to Orange-Boys or Orange men (fit beginning, fit end). The Catholics, on the other hand, organized themselves under the name of Defenders ; and during a series of years many violent conflicts took place between the two parties, who were sometimes en- gaged to the extent even of thousands of armed men. The combats of these factions began in the county of Armagh, whence they spread to the neighbour- ing districts. * • The Defenders having originally been (as their name pm- ported) a defensive, soon became an aggressive body : they extended their rami- fications to counties where there were no strong bodies of l'rotestants to alarm them ; and in many cases they became mere gangs of robbers, breaking into and plundering houses, and committing other outrages. * • At length the Defenders were partially dissolved, and partly absorbed into the body of United Irishmen, till they were finally lost in the more important movements which gave rise to the Rebellion of 1798; since which time, their society has been re- vived under the name of Ribbonmen.

For the next ten years, or thereabouts, the disturbances were chiefly connected with the Rebellion.

In 1806, the Thrashers of Connaught sprang up ; who had two principal-oh- jects in view—the regr.lation of the parson's tithes and of the priest's dues. According to the then Attorney-General, " the pretext upon which these illegal confederacies is framed, is a repugnance to the payments in support of the legal establishment of the church of the country, and also of the fees which have been usually paid, without any law to enforce them, to the clergymen of the Catholic persuasion. The mode taken to accomplish this object has been by assembling themselves at night in disguise, sometimes with antis, going to the houses of such persons as refuse to associate themselves in their body, and, if necessary for their purpose, breaking open the houses of those persons and robbing them of their property ; inflicting torture upon those who become objects of their enmity; and, if necessary for the final completion of their designs, if any person be honest or bold enough to give information against them, the business which began in lawless combination is consummated by murder.

" The first object of the association (says Mr. Dennis Browne, at Castlebar) was the reduction of tithes and priests' dues ; when it travelled into this part (Mayo), it assumed that and also another shape—that of attacking the wages of weavers and other artificers, and lattaly farmers. In different stages of its progress it professed different objects ; all kinds of payments, whether of tithes, industry labour, or farming ; assemblies of people collected in disguise, and wearing badges and armed, appeared in different parts of the country."

When the notices. posted up were pulled down, the insurgents "adopted another mode of exciting disturbances, by delivering messages in the chapels, threatening the priests, and calling upon the congregation, that if they did not lower their dues, avoid the payment of tithes, and alter the wages of labourers, the Threshers would visit them ; and that de priests might have their coffins prepared, and that the flesh would be torn off their bones." Several witnesses deposed to the delivery of these messages. One states—" He went to mass, and after Mr. Nolan came out to shake the holy water among the people there assem- bled, the prisoner said to the priest, that he was sworn to come to him ; and told hint that he should marry persons for half-a-guinea, baptize for nineteen pence halfpenny, read mass for thirteen pence, and at any house to which he came to confession, if he got hay and oats fur his horse, to take it, but if not, to go away on pain of suffering for it." Another witness gives a similar ac- count. "When the prayers were over at mass, and the priest was shaking the holy water, the prisoner said he was sent with a message against his will to the priest. He said he was ordered to tell him not to charge more than half-a- guinea for a marriage, thirteen pence for mass, and nineteen pence halfpenny for christening. He said he should lower his fees; and, sinking his voice, said, if not, to have his coffin convenient.'" After 1306, the Insurrections were so frequent as to be matter of notoriety; and the Catholic clergy, who had hitherto sided with the Government, and even excommunicated whole districts to sup- port the powers that be, seem to have grown wiser in a worldly sense, under the threat of having their " coffins convenient," and more or less to have sided with or at least not to have opposed their flocks. As a complete view of the subject, it may however be as well to state, that in 1807, 1811, 1812, 1815, 1817, 1818, 1820, and 1821, partial or general disturbances have arisen, sometimes re- quirinr," particular districts to be placed under the Insurrection Act. From that period down to the last year, the general impres- sion of the insurrections, and of the abortive attempts of Lords GREY and STANLEY to suppress them by force, must be fresh in the recollection of our readers. This notice has hitherto been confined to the Irish Dis- turbances. The investigations of Mr. LEWIS into the statistics of

the Irish Church question are equally curious, but of course more limited and more accessible. His plan is one of questionable soundness. Its principle is to endow all creeds, paying Catholics, Presbyterians, and other Dissenters, if not wholly yet partially. If we clearly understand his meaning, the fund whence these pay- ments should be made would be a grant of public money.. The

principle on which he rests his doctrine, is founded on the argu- ment of HUME, that it is politio " to bribe the indolence- of our spi- ritual guides," in order to prevent them from infusing even into the true religion "a strong mixture of superstition,, folly,_ and de. lusion :" an argument, in a religious point of view, certainly con- trary to the directions of the gospel, and disposed of by Amig SMITH in a satisfactory WONT SO far as, folicy is. corige.reied,