The state of Ireland continues to furnish the daily newspapers
'with their chief topics of discussion. The question is, whether the quantity of crime has not been diminished since Lord MULGRAVE vent to Dublin Castle. The official returns exhibit a consider- able decrease : but, say the Tory journalists, these returns are not to be trusted—they are got up to suit the purposes of the O'CoN- siELL-ridden Government; Colonel SHAW KENNEDY, under whose sanction they are published, is deluded; in point of fact, there are hundreds of offences which never find their way into official papers, and if we bad a true account of the unrecorded crime, it would appear that Lord MULGRAVE and Lord MORPETH are a curse to the country. There is no reply to such statements as these, except that they rest upon the assertions of partisans ; and a more wearisome controversy than that carried on, day after day, in the London papers on this subject, it would be difficult to conceive. It seems, however, to answer party purposes. The Tories !re aware that a greater amount of English prejudice can be set ri motion on Irish subjects than on any other, and that they can- rot do Lord MELBOURNE greater injury than by perpetually con. sleeting his name with that of geom.:ELL, and representing his Irish Administration as abetting desperate attacks on the lives and property of the Protestants. The Whigs have such a dread of committing themselves with the Radicals on English ques- tions, and are so much at fault as to the policy of the Ministers Whose organs they profess to be, that they are driven to bandy worn-out arguments with their opponents on matters which they ought to know it were better for the Whigs to keep as much as possible out of sight and out of mind. The question on which the Government is weakest is the Church question, forming a Principal part of every Irish topic ; and yet even Lord Dun HAM is so injudicious as to proclaim it the main question which Ministers have to grapple. So it would be, if they had the power
and inclination to grapple it in reality, and settle it outright : but they have neither, and the question, as they deal with it, is rather falling back than gaining ground. Suppose they should refuse, after all, to touch it this session?
