IRELAND.

The Maynooth College Board recently applied to Sir Robert Peel for an increase of the grant of 30,000/. for building and repairs; the plans and es- timates of the architect, Mr. Pug,ha, needing a larger sum. Sir Robert, it is said, positively declined to ask Parliament for an increase; and the Board have therefore desired Mr. Pugin to make a corresponding reduction in his plans.

The following are the names included in the Commission appointed by Government to consider all matters relating to the failure of the potato crop in Ireland— The Right Honourable Edward Lucas, Chairman; Commissary-General Sir Randolph Routh; Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, R.E., Chairman of the Board of Public Works; Colonel M'Gregor, Inspector-General of Constabulary; Sir Janre Dombram, Inspector of the Coast Guard; E. Twisleton, Esq., Poor-law Commis- sioner; Theobald M`Kenna, Esq., Q.C., Assistant Under-Secretary; Professor Kane, Principal of the Cork College. Secretary of the Commission, Captain J.P. Kennedy.

The Commissioners held their first meeting at Dublin Castle on Friday. Circulars have been issued requesting information from the Lords-Lieu- tenants of counties and other local authorities.

The Times Commissioner reports on the potato disease, that the people generally will not take steps to counteract it, and that their obstinate apathy must have lamentable consequences-- "A simple plan of ventilation has been proposed, which is, I think, in the power of every peasant. It is to make an air-passage under the length of the potato- pit, and to have one or two vent-holes or chimnies on the surface * • • Now, this simple plan is within the reach of every peasant. It has been tried, and has been found to be perfectly effective. The diseased potatoes have been cured, and the sound ones kept sound by it. It is, however, of no use in the world telling the peasantry this. They are so ignorant and apathetic—so stupidly obstinate in their old ways—that they will persevere in their old plan of closing up the potato-pits with earth, and leaving the diseased potatoes to ferment and communicate their contagion to the sound ones, till the whole pit is one mass of rottenness; though you point out to them for a month the certain consequences of their adhering to their old rude and wasteful plan. They have been preached to, lectured to, in- structed by handbills from authority, told by newspapers for the last month, methods of preserving their potatoes; and in not one in a hundred instances has any one plan been attended to. The pits in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (and I saw some hundreds of them yesterday) are made as they always have been. Wherever the pits have been made on the old fashion, on opening them the pots toes have been found rotting. About Christmas the great bulk of these pits will be almost simultaneously opened, and it is nearly an ascertained certainty that the potatoes so pitted will then be destroyed. A sudden dismay and general panic will then be the result, unless prompt measures be taken to prevent such a cala- mity."

The people of Galway had manifested a disposition to riot, in order to pre- vent the exportation of grain. And the peasantry in other places showed no disposition to adopt any suggestion or make any effort to save their potatoes. The Times Commissioner notices, at Cork, a sign of reaction in the Tem- perance movement- ' There is a celebrated porter-brewery in the town, that of Messrs. Beamish and Crawford, which before Father Mathew's Temperance movement brewed 100,000 barrels a year. The Temperance movement at once reduced the quan- tity brewed to one-half. Its manufacture, however, has completely rallied again."

The Municipal elections of Ireland took place on Tuesday; but some days must elapse before all the accounts come in. In Dublin, all the Town-Councillors newly elected or refficeted were Repealers.

At the meeting of the Repeal Association, on Monday, Mr. O'Connell again alluded to mysterious placards which "somebody or other had been circulating among the peasantry in the North of Dublin, instigating them to assassinate their landlords. Two had actually been fixed on the walls of Conciliation Hall that morning. It appeared to him that the Detectives [Police] were engaged in getting up a case against the Repealers.

" Captain " Broderick moved the following resolution— "That the Parliamentary, Committee of this Association be instructed to con- sider and report whether the inquiries connected with legislation for Irish Rail- ways, which now take place in London before Committees of the House of Com- mons, may not hereafter be conducted in Dublin with great saving of expense to the country and to the parties concerned."

The number of Irish railways proposed to be constructed amounts to 112; and taking the average expense of obtaining an enactment for each at 8,0001., the sum thus expended for procuring liberty to undertake these works would amount to 896,0001.; every shilling of which would be expended in England: if the Govern- ment acceded to the proposition, the money would be spent in Dublin. Mr. Smith O'Brien seconded the resolution. It was supported by Mr. O'Connell; who endeavoured to prove that the interests of the Irish bar are identified with Repeal.

Mr. O'Connell attacked the Times Commissioner; a fellow hired to go round the island lying, who had bestowed the full measure of his vicious ingenuity on him—

Sergeant Jackson, in the House of Commons, had charged Mr. O'Connell with distraming in March for rent due in April: but that was proved to be an utter falsehood. He had always been the enemy of extortion. As to the state of Ca- hirciveen, he would toll the facts. In 1818 there were but four houses in Cahir- civeen and about twenty inhabitants, and only one of those houses had paid him rent: but at present there were 1,200 inhabitants in the town. He had created that town; it was the only town that had been created in Ireland since the Union. The Times Commissioner suggested that he was making a profit-rent—that was to say, that he paid a head-rent for Caliirciveen: but he did not pay one shilling head-rent for it. He paid a head-rent to the College of Dublin; but he paid that bead-rent before Cahirciveen was thought of, or a single house built upon it. A profit-rent meant two rents; and lie would be glad to know who the Caliirciveen tenants paid rent to except to him. What he alleged was, that the "gutter Commissioner" ought to have had the fairness to have told the truth, and the whole truth. If he had done so, he would have given to the public a truthful picture of Cahirciyeen. He would have told that it contained an excellent inn, with every requisite comfort, if not with every luxury; that it contained some excellent shops, and that it was a thriving and prosperous spot; and then, turning to him, (Mr. O'Connell) he would have told the world that it was he who gave a plot of land for the building of a parochial house, and that every shilling laid out on this building of the edifice came out of his pocket; that adjoining it was a glebe which was let by him at a rent comparatively quite in- considerable; that he gave an acre and a half of his land on fee-simple for ever for the National School of the parish, where from one hundred to three hundred boys were educated; that there was a spacious fever hospital in the town, and that he was the principal subscriber to it; that there was a dispensary there, and that it was he who had established it, and that he charged no rent for the house where it stood; that there was a convent there, with a school attached, where from one hundred to two hundred and fifty girls were educated; that he had given, free of rent, the garden belonging to that convent, and the spacious piece of ground in front; and, furthermore, that he had endowed it with in- terest which then bore equivalent to 60/. per anaum for perpetuity; that he bad subscribed 100/. to the quay of the town, and 125/. to the building of a bridge. All this the Times Commissioner must have known, and all this he ought to have told; but not one word of it had he mentioned. The fact was, that he was 4,000/. out of pocket by the town of Cabireireen; and he thanked God it was so. On the motion of Mr. O'Connell, the name of the Reverend Thaddeus O'Malley was removed from the list of members, that gentleman having stated that he did not belong to the Association; and Mr. Ray was in- structed to issue a circular to the Repeal Wardens, cautioning the people against violence, or anything tending to check the free circulation of pro- visions in Ireland. Mr. O'Brien exhorted the meeting to attend to the registries.

The rent for the week was 1581.

"The Prime Minister has declared," says the 'ration," by his amanuensis of the Morning Herald, that 'law must be vindicated and sedition crushed": these words the Nation construes to imply "threats of coercion"; and they supply the text for a very fierce essay, from which we cull some of the most piquant passages. "And so the brutal throats of the enemy's thirsty ;bloodhounds have opened to bay upon us again. Parliament, it seems, will meet a month before its usual

time,—not, we may be sure, with any object friendly to us,—not to expedite our railway business; for that, according to their stupid rules' cannot be considered before a certain day,—not to open the ports; a landlord Legislature cannot brook that,—no, but to consider whether the voice of Ireland may yet be safely choked, and her hands pinioned, and her opening eyes quenched in blood. Thus we inter- pret the language of Sir Robert Peel in the columns of the Morning Herald and Standard; the latter of which announces to us, as its view of the advantages of Irish railways, that every part of Ireland will soon be ' within six hours of the garrison of Dublin.' And be it so." • * [The writer declares that "ex- ternal violence, or insolent threats of such," will only give an impulse to "the cause."] "For actual measures of coercion, all Ireland laughs at that coward threat. The military uses (or abuses) of railways are tolerably well understood; but it might be useful to promulgate through the country, to be read by oil Repeal Wardens in their parishes, a few short and easy rules as to the mod‘; of dealing with railways in case of any enemy daring to make a hostile use of them. The bald Hollanders once prevented their country from being overrun by French armies by laying it under water: they opened the embankments, and admitted the sea! and in one day those fertile plains, with all their waving corn, were a portion of the stormy German Ocean. And railways, though inconceivably valuable to any people as high-ways of commerce, yet were better dispensed with for a time than allowed to become a means of transport for invading armies.

"A hint on this subject may be thought enough; but we see no objection to speaking plainly; and, therefore, we give a few practical views, which may be improved as engineers turn their attention to the subject. 'First, then, every railway within five miles of Dublin could in one night be totally cut off from the interior country. To lift a mile of rail, to fill a perch or two of any cutting or tunnel, to break down a piece of an embankment, seem obvious and easy enough. "Second, The materials of railways—good hammered iron and wooden sleepers —need we point out that such things may be of use in other lines than assisting locomotion.

"Third, Troops upon their march by rail might be conveniently met with in divers places. Hofer, with his Tyroliens, could hardly desire a deadlier ambush than the brinks of a deep cutting upon a railway. Imagine a few hundred men lying in wait upon such a spot, with masses of rock and trunks of trees ready to roll down—and a train or two advancing with a regiment of infantry—and the engine panting near and nearer, till the polished studs of brass on its front are distin- guishable, and its name may nearly be read: 'Now, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost !—now---' "But 'tis a dream. No enemy will dare put us to realize these scenes. Yet, let all understand what a railway may and what it may not do."

A father and son, Mr. Richard Battersby and the Reverend John C. Battersby, have been charged at Carrickfergus Petty-Sessions with systematically ill-treating the wife of the former for the last six years. The series of assaults, involving a grossly indecent kind of indignity committed by the son, were proved; mid the two gentlemen were fined, and bound over to keep the peace towards Mrs. Battersby.

The second of the assassins who attempted the life of Sir Francis Hopkins, near Mullingar, has been arrested.

The Westmeath Guardian makes the following statement of the facts relating to the connexion of Seery, the man first captured, with Sir Francis. " About four years ago, the prisoner Seery held near thirty acres of land under Sir Francis Hopkins but was largely in arrear of rent; Sir Francis went on the land and found it half waste, unstocked, and quite neglected; he represented to Seery the utter impossibility of his being able to pay rent from the manner in which he ma- naged the farm. Seery stated that he was unable to manage it for want of capital. Sir Francis suggested the propriety of his taking a smaller farm and offered to buy his interest in the one which he then held. Seery professed his willingness, and asked thirty guineas with an acquittance of arrears; which Sir Francis gave him. There was not an angry word; no notice to quit, no eject-. meat—quite a voluntary bargain. He asked Sir Francis to recommend him for some small farms which were vacant in the neighbourhood. Sir Francis did so; but on going to see some of them, Seery got a hint that he might prepare his coffin if he should take them. Latterly he has been complaining of his money becoming exhausted, and grumbling for having sold his farm to Sir Francis; although we should observe that Sir Francis could have sued him for the rent due, and also evicted hum for non-title. Sir Francis has not turned out a single tenant since he came to the county without giving full compensation; and the farm which he purchased from Seery he divided among the most deserving of the tenants on the same townland."

An attempted assassination and a murder are reported this week. Near Muck- lagh, in Cavan, APTeague, who is described as "an unoffending, well-conducted" young man, has been fired at from behind a hedge, on coming out of his house to ascertain whence some noise proceeded: fortunately, the assassins missed their aim.

A man has been murdered on the Moira Road. "It was supposed that a dreadful struggle must have taken place before the murder was accomplished, as deceased was a large anti powerful man; and that more than one or two persons i must have been engaged n it. The spot where the murdered man was found, and for several perches round, was covered with blood."

A very fatal accident happened in the Royal Canal, about seven miles from Dublin, on Tuesday. A canal-boat was on its way from Broadstone to Longford; and the steersman went below to dine, leaving a boy at the tiller. The young helmsman ran the boat aground; it capsized, and filled with water. Some pas- sengers in the fore-cabin were saved; but of thirty on board, seventeen are known to have perished.