IRELAND.
The citizens of Dublin, headed by their Lord Mayor, held a meeting on Tuesday in the Music Hall, to consider the unparalleled depression of trade in the Irish capital. The requisition contained allusions to the famine and pestilence, against which no adequate measures had been taken by the Government; and resolutions echoing the terms of the requisition were unanimously adopted.
The Pilot of Dublin describes the increase of emigration: the account is but one sample of those to be found in every paper— "Every port is filled with mechanics, farmers, and labourers, eager to escape from this devoted island. The town of Dungarvan is about to lose every trades- man and mechanic that can scrape up enough to pay their passage. We are grieved to say, amongst the artisans of Dublin the greatest destitution prevails; and we have heard that a general meeting is to be held to petition Government to enable them to emigrate. As to the country, the farmers are selling out their interest in the land in great numbers. So far has this system proceeded in the counties of Kilkenny and Waterford, that we have been assured, on respectable authority, hundreds of farms will lie unfilled. The tide of emigration has not yet arrived at its full at this port; yet every appearance promises a greater drain of the population than ever before took place. The worst of it is, it is the producers of the wealth—the bone and sinew of the country—that are taking their depar- ture; leaving the mass of poverty behind, and the island a lazar-house."
The desire for some larger and more efficient plan of emigration, or even of colonization, extends. Here is a sample of the feeling, taken from the Dublin Evening Mail, an able Tory paper- " Two modes of disposing of the surplus population of the country are open to those who have the guidance of affairs. They must either take the course pointed out by the practice at all times of overpopulated countries—that of colonization— or they mast be prepared, sooner or later, to see famine reduce to its proper standard the number of the inhabitants of Ireland.
" We regret to perceive, from the announcement of Lord John Russell's deter- mination to reject the former alternative, that it appears to be the intention of her Majesty's Government to permit the population to be diminished by natural causes; but we trust the subject may be taken up by some one who more justly appre- ciattei the evils under which our country is labouring, and who will address him- self to removing the causes of those evils, instead of merely applying temporary and imperfect remedies to their immediate effects.
" The scheme, it is evident, must be on a gigantic scale; but we feel certain we maintain the true ipterests of England as well as of Ireland, when we say that a considerable present outlay, affording the certainty of placing Ireland at once in a position to help herself, would be better and more economical than a constant drain on the Imperial treasury for the relief of Irish distress, which must be the result of the proposed mode of dealing with the subject if persevered in."
A meeting of the Relief Committee of the diocese of Meath was held on Saturday; the Bishop acting as chairman. Resolutions were passed, ex- pressing gratitude to the Committee of the National Club and their con- tributors for their generous assistance, and also to the people of England for their Christian sympathy and liberal contributions towards alleviating, the sufferings of the destitute.
Similar resolutions have been adopted by the clergy of the diocese of Leighlin.
At a meeting of merchants, clergy, and magistrates of Waterford, last week, it was stated that " on some estates the agents were actually giving the poor miserable creatures N. each for tearing down, burping, or other- wise destroying their cabins, and thus sending them in droves into the towns and cities"; the migrants carrying with them fever and pestilence.
Among persons recently struck off the list of those who claimed help_ from the Kells Relief Committee was a gentleman's coachman.
At Monday's meeting in Conciliation Hall, the promised letter from Mr. O'Connell was not forthcoming; one from Mr. John doing duty in its stead.. It contained reassurances on the subject of his father's health. Rent, 271.
At the Tyrone Assizes, last week, William Loy and Jane Patterson were tried for the murder of James Patterson, in April 1841. The deceased, a youth, was step-son to the woman, Loy being his half-brother. At the death of the elder Patterson, the two prisoners wanted to dispose of a farm he held, but the son re- sisted this; a quarrel arose, the boy was strangled, and the body was hidden in a ditch: the farm was then sold, and the accused went to Glasgow to take ship for America; but before they could get away, the body of James was found, and they were arrested. The evidence was circumstantial, but strong; and the prisoners, were convicted, and sentenced to be hanged.
The Limerick Chronicle contains a brief account of a double murder, which was committed on Monday morning, on two officers employed in ministering to the relief of the people. " Between eight and nine o'clock, as Mr. Prim, Pay-clerk of the Board of Works, and a Police-constable, in a gig, were going to Tallow, to pay the work- men, they were assailed by five armed ruffians, who murdered Mr. Prim and the constable; not, however, without the latter firing, and killing one of the assailants, and badly wounding another. Immediately on the shots being fired, the horse rem off; and the money, which was deposited in the gig, was not plundered."
The Kilkenny Journal subsequently published a fuller account of the crime; the particulars varying in some measure from the first statement. The body of the Policeman was completely riddled with shots. Mr. Prim, it appears, shot one of the assailants; who was found, hard by, dangerously wounded. Four of the murderers were seen making off, bearing five guns and a bag of money, con- taining about 3001. in silver and copper. The prisoner "alleges that he was merely passing by at the time of the attack, and that one of the attacking party fired at him. We need scarcely say that this story is not believed. He is from Carrick, in the county of Tipperary; the place where, it is conjectured, all the assassins came from. There is one thing certain, that they were strangers; for Mr. Prim was universally and deservedly beloved by the people of the barony (Kens)."
By two fires which have occurred in Athlone, no fewer than twenty-eight cot- tages have been destroyed. The buildings and their contents were of little in trinsic value; but they sheltered nearly 250 poor people, who are now homeless.
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