IRELAND.
The O'Connor Don has been elected Member for Roscommon without opposition. He is fresh from the Court of Rome, where he recently ap- peared clad in the garb of Chamberlain to the Pope ; but he thoug,lit fit to repudiate on the hustings the dogmas orth. e so-called independent op- position. Nevertheless, he did not shrink from expressing his pro-Papal views. He said :—
" An objection has been raised to my address—I don't think in this county —because I have expressed sympathy with the Holy Father. That is an objection that never could have come from the men of Rosoommonand, therefore, it is one that I might very well pass over without notice. I sin- cerely think that the Holy Father should be left in possession of his do- minions. (Cheers.) I wish that he should be free from all foreign inter- vention, and I would even go so far as to say—using the words of a certain gentleman in this county—that he should be left perfectly at liberty 'to wallop his own niggers.' (Laughter and cheers.) I say so, -because I place implicit reliance upon the benevolence and kindness of one of the most pa- ternal rulera in Europe. (' Hear,' and cheers.) But even if I did not place that confidence and reliance upon the Pope, I should still, I think, adhere to that opinion, because, to tell you the truth, I believe that a little wallop- ing would do the said niggers no great harm." (Laughter.)
[This, it must be admitted, comes well from an Irishman, ever the first to complain of the operation of the law he lays down when it affects himself.]
The advocates of the "Revival" who contended that it had produced beneficial effects upon the morality of the Irish, have received some hard blows from a writer in the Northern Whig, who has based his arguments on naked facts and figures taken from the police. books. In Belfast, "the favoured scene of the revival excitement," there were fewer cases of drunkenness brought before the Magistrates in the year preceding the revival by 573, than in that when the religious excitement was at its hottest. In the five summer months of '58,—the revival months of 18.59, —the cases of drunkenness amounted to 1029, averaging 206 a month ; in the same five months of '59, they were 1411, giving an average per month of 282. The following figures show the ascending scale of in- toxication in the revival months :-1858—June, 152; July, 203; Au- gust, 215; September, 208; October, 25 L ; 1859—June, 260; July, 268; August, 293; September, 269; October, 321. On this showing, the Northern Whig remarks that, "as Revivalism grew hotter and ranker, so did drunkenness follow its example, and, with barometrical unerringness, mark the more or less density of our moral atmosphere."
The Earl of Carlisle has appointed Mr. Thomas Dillon Fitzgerald, mob-inspector of constabulary (first class), a resident Magistrate, to be stationed at Clifden, in the county of Galway.
In passing sentence upon one of three prisoners convicted of manslaughter at Cork, Mr. Justice Christian observed :—"The peasantry of this part of the country use towards each other deadly weapons with a ferocity such a is not to be surpassed by what takes ,place amongst the most savage tribes inhabiting any portion of the earth.' The three prisoners were severally arraigned for as many murders, but the Crown did not in any case press the capital charge. One was sentenced to four years' penal servitude, and each of the others to eight years.
Previous page
