IRELAND.
The Earl of Clarendon held his first levee for the season on Wed- nesday. There was a very numerous attendance, notwithstanding some defections significant of the Lord-Lieutenant's loss of popularity in the Orange counties of the North.
The Irish papers contain voluminous reports of the speeches at the great Protectionist meeting in the Dublin Rotunda, of which the opening was mentioned in our last Postscript; and the Protectionist journals on both sides of the Channel describe the meeting as one of the most suc- cessful and important ever held in Dublin. We learn from the speech of Lord Glengall; that the meeting was the result of a requisition signed by "56 noblemen,' 26 baronets, 20 Members of Parliament, 117 Deputy- Lieutenants, 756 Magistrates, a considerable number of clergy, Roman Catholic and Protestant, an enormous number of merchants, &c., and a multitude of tenant-farmers." The actual attendance fell far short of this imposing array ; yet it was very numerous, and considerably influ- entiaL The noblemen present numbered a dozen, and included the Mar- quis of Drogheda, the Earls of Arundel, Bandon, and Glengall, Lords Clements, Castkmaine, Dunsany, Fitzgerald and Vesci, and Naas; the Baronets and the Members of Parliament were each some half a score more, and the professions furnished a thick crowd. The round room was of course crowded : "stewards with white wands, from the top of which fluttered white silk streamers inscribed with the word Protection,' were present to preserve order" ; but the proceedings were of themselves so orderly that no interference was necessary. The speeches were certainly dull. Lord Glengall moved the first resolution.
He declared, that though the first battle was lost, there were many cam- paigns, each numbering many contests, still to be fought, and then a glo- rious triumph would crown the struggle. A day of retribution would come. The yeomen farmers of England—the finest fellows upon earth—would meet their betrayers at the hustings,. drive them from the representation of their counties, and place men in their situations more worthy of trust. He could not doubt that the Queen would, when she received the petition of that great assemblage, and learned the sentiments of "the Irish people," give it every consideration in her power • and that her present advisers might ili- a very few months not be in ofdee. They are the weakest of the three parties in the state, and exist but by the unfortunate squabbles of the Irish. To be ready for the change, he counselled those Rresent to go home and "find out all favourable to the cause who could register, and force them up by all the most gentle means of persuasion." By those means they would return a hundred good men, who would compel a Minister to re- dress the grievances of the country—" what Minister could stand a hun- dred Irish Members pulling together ? " Their oppressors would soon learn that they could trample upon them no longer ; that if they did not redress their grievances they would redress them themselves ; in a word, that they, as their forefathers did in that famous year The words "too late" were ominous words in these times : it might occur that the people of Ire- land would deem their concessions too late ; and he now told the people of Ireland to remember what their forefathers did in 1782. (Great cheering.)
Mr. Butt made a speech which gave especial prominence to the Poor- law grievance ; admitting that his countrymen had not been unanimous on the question of protection ; but still refusing to despair, though the fatal curse of the land—" our own dissensions "—were once more in- volved. He rejected with passion the assumption that "because Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Cobden say no, that decides the question." He echoed the menace of Lord Glengall-
" I say for one, I will not submit to such slavery as that. (Great cheer- ing.) I am willing to live under the authority of the Queen, Lords, and Commons of the empire ; but if any man &us to tell me that the fiat of Mr. Cobden is to decide the fate of the industry of my fellow countrymen, rather than submit to this, I will take the cannon and put upon it what our ances- tors inscribed upon it in 1782." (Tremendous applause.)
Among the other speakers, were Mr. Heruy Grattan, Colonel Vtuide- leur, and Lord Clements, whose sympathy seemed especially engaged in those portions of the proceedings aimed directly against the Poor-law. The last resolution declared readiness to "assent to any well-considered measure that will really elevate the condition of the tenant-farmer and the labouring population "; desired "a full and impartial Parliamentary investigation into the relation between landlord and tenant " ; referred it to a Conmittee to prepare petitions in this sense to both Houses of Par- liament; and requested the same Committee, if the appeal for inquiry and redress be disregarded, to convene another meeting for petitioning the Queen to appeal to the sense of her people by a dissolution of the pre- sent Parliament.
The Dublin corresponcIent of the Horning Ohm-nick reports progress 'tinder the Encumbered Estates Act-
" On Saturday last, the number of petitions for the sale of estates amounted to 382. A number of private biddings—several from England, and one of them for a very large estate—have already been received by the Commis- sioners. I apprized you, some days since, that notices had been served in Chan- cery for the stoppage of proceedings in suits which had been in progress in that court, but which had been removed to the Encumbered Estates Commission by petition ; and once the absolute order for sale is pronounced, the party in- trusted with the carriage of the decree for sale is entitled to serve notice for the cessation of further litigation in the ordinary Equity Courts. On Satur- day last sixteen writs were thus suddenly stopped in Chancery; and it ap- pears that the number thus brought to a premature termination in that court, since the commencement of the Encumbered Estates Commission, exceeds one hundred. Notwithstanding, there is a long list of causes at present in both the Chancery and Rolls Court; owing; however, to peculiar and per- haps temporary circumstances."
The increasing resort to the summary process of the Encumbered Estates Act suggests to the Dublin Evening Mail a further moral, terrible to the lawyers who have so extravagantly fostered the abuses of delay and expense in the Court of Chancery.
"The game has been overplayed. For thirty-five years,' said one of the officials in the case of Mr. Guinness's purchase of the Blesinton estate, which we some time since made public, for thirty-five years we have been acting upon a system, the operation of which is in this case to multiply the necessary costs by nine—when one formal act, and one official fee, and one bill of costs, would satisfy all just requirements, there must be nine. I can remember that such has been the custom for thirty-five years. How can I change it ?' The change has been begun at last, and it assuredly will not be limited to dealings with encumbered estates.'
The Coroner's inquest held on the bodies of the twenty-seven persons who lost their lives by the falling-in of the floor of the workhouse at Killarney during a fire, has terminated in this verdict-
" That the deceased persons came by their death in consequence of the falling of a lobby or passage in the Brewery auxiliary workhouse in the town of Killarney, on The night of the 14th January, leading from the dormitories to the outside door, on which passage a number of pauper children had congregated for the purpose of gain- ing admission to the yard ; they being in a state of great excitement and alarm caused by the burning of the College auxiliary workhouse ; and a great number having fallen through said passages on each other, they were suffocated by accident and misfortune."
Twenty-four of the sufferers were young girls ; the other two were nurses.
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