8 APRIL 1882, Page 1

Mr. Gorst on Tuesday raised an important debate. He called

attention to the increase of unpunished crime in Ireland, and though he made the usual mistake of counting threatening letters as crimes—they vary from notices of murder to practical jokes—he made out an appalling case. He quoted exclusively from the speeches of the Judges in Assize, and showed that in Clare, Leitrim, Tipperary, Westmeath, King's County, Sligo, Queen's County, Cork, Mayo, and Galway there was, on the Judges' testimony, a great increase of crime, with an almost total impossibility of obtaining verdicts, the jury disagree- ing. Some of the cases were most horrible, one old man in particular, in Clare, having been half-roasted for assisting a boycotted man to get in his crop. The record showed an almost total failure of justice, and was admitted by Mr. Gladstone to be most grave, though he thought the language of Mr. Gorst and the Judges as to threatening letters to be in part exaggerated. He did not "think that, on the whole, the character of the outrages had been mitigated," and saw evidence that behind those who committed them stood "some higher influence." A fee of 100 guineas had been con- tributed from the funds of the Land League for the defence of one of the "Captains Moonlight."