IRELAND.
The Lord-Lieutenant and Lady Clarendon have returned to Dublin, from Killarney. " It is reported, probably with some truth," says the Times correspondent, "that Lord Clarendon is to be Chancellor of the Queen's College, Cork, which his Excellency will formally open in person on the 15th of the ensuing month."
The Limerick Chronicle states, that " many of the Roman Catholic clergy of this county warned their flocks from the altar, on Sunday last, against being entrapped into secret societies."
There has been no repetition of the Cappoquin disturbances, nor any attempt at similar outbreak in any other place. The whole neighbourhood of Cappoquin has been especially surcharged with constabulary, and the military garrisons of Clonmel and Carrick-on-Snir have been increased. The feverish disposition of the peasantry is indicated by the receipt at the police and military stations of countless reports of " meetings," and " at- tacks" fictitiously proposed or falsely related as fact. The affair at Cappoquin resulted in two deaths: one peasant was killed on the spot, as we last week stated, and he has been identified; a policeman who was wounded has since died. He identified several of the attacking party, who have been arrested: his depositions were taken on oath and signed before his death. The Government vigorously prosecutes inqairy, and is said to have obtained information implicating parties of re- spectable condition, though the mob who actually attacked the police sta- tion is described as being entirely of the lowest class.
The practice of stealing crops is maintained by the tenants in the South- west, and gives rise to constant frays. On Thursday week, one of these rencontres terminated in the death of a young man named Gleeson, son of tenant who endeavoured by force to carry a crop away from a detaining bailiff. The death, however, was immediately caused by the explosion of a gun, and may have been unintentional.
Mr. Poulett Scrope has been making a "tour in England, Scotland, and Ireland, with a view to the inquiry whether our labouring population be really redundant "; and has communicated notes of his progress to the Morning Chronicle. Letter IV., dated from Castle Comb, on the 22d in- stant, contributes information regarding "Government works" commenced during the famine and now abandoned before they are complete, and on the working of the "workhouse relief test."
On the first point—" Owing to the generally level character of the country, and the slight fall of the natural watercourses, it [arterial drainage] is almost every- where a necessary preliminary to field-drainage; which, from the general moist- ure of the climate and the retentive character of the soil, is usually indispensable to improved cultivation. Here and there you pass over some of the main drains which have been opened by the Board of Works within the last year or two, and where these occur thorough drainage seems to be generally in progress in their vicinity. It is impossible to avoid regretting that this was not thekind of public works selected generally for execution in 1846-7, in place of the comparatively useless road-works, many of which, indeed, were worse than useless, as spoiling good land to no purpose. Miles of unfinished 'Board of Works Roads' are occa- sionally seen, blocked up with a wall across either end !—a memorial of the un- wise waste of immense funds, which, by a more judicious application, might have been made to open up the natural resources of the country, for the future mainte- nance of its population."
On the other point he gives actual experiences. " The Limerick Workhouse, together with its auxiliary houses, is fitted to receive upwards of 5,800, or, in round numbers, nearly 6,000 inmates. The time of my visit being the commence- ment of the harvest, large reductions were making in the number of paupers re- lieved both in and out of the workhouse. A week or two previously, they had stood at 5,600 in the house, and 12,000 on the out-door relief list. Of the first number, 3,145 were ablebodied adults! Out of these, probably near one-half were adult males, capable of working for their livelihood on active out-door labour. And how are they occupied in the workhouse? My visit happened to be made at a rather late hour in the afternoon. It was, however, only six o'clock of a fine summer's day ; yet I found the men and grown lads already getting into bed, evi- dently for want of something to do, and to pass the time away, if possible, in sleep, till six o'clock the next morning. Had they been at hard work during the day? By no means It saves trouble to officials, no doubt, to he possessed of what they think a simple, infallible, self-acting test. It is so easy to answer all de- mands for relief with' ''Come into the house.' If they refuse, there is an end: whether they live or die, relief has been offered them. All responsibility thence- forth rests onthemselvea. If they accept in numbers beyond what the workhouse will hold, what so easy as to hire additional houses? In the union of Ennisty- MN, at a few miles distance from the central workhouse in the town of that name, I passed through Miltown-Malby; where an enormous range of build- ing, erected some years ago as a grand boarding-house and hotel for sea- bathers, is occupied as an auxiliary workhouse. A mile or two further on, I came to Lahinch, another bathing-place. Being in search of a lodging, I directed my steps to the largest and best-looking house in the place: it was to use as an auxiliary workhouse. I went to"the next best house: it was applied to the sine purpose. To a third house: the fame. Literally, all the best 1101150 iu the dis- trict are filled with paupers, and mostly with male adults; the women and amt dren being relieved out-of-doors, the men alone being locked up, positively to pre- vent their doing any work!"
Mr. W. Beers, the Justice of the Peace who distinguished himself at Dolly's Brae, has seized his pen and written a letter, intended "to disprove the base falsehoods and malignant calumnies with which it is attempted to damage the character of our brethren and injure our cause." A single ex- tract will give an idea of his success in the proposed ends- " I ask you, could anything be more monstrous, anything more insulting, any- thing more audacious, than that companies of prowling rebels to the Queen and to the Government of the country should prepare themselves for slaughter, armed with what the felon Mitchel used to call 'the queen of weapons,' viz. the pike, of Scullabogue memory—with muskets also, and scithes, and other deadly weapons; and that these murderers should thus, armed to the teeth, lie in wait till the Orangemen, who were quietly and inoffensively returning home in procession, had nearly all passed on, and that then this body of Popish miscreants should pour a murderous volley on their ranks from behind the ditches and hiding-places; and that after they were effectually routed, with the loss of several of their men, by the small band of Orangemen whom they attempted to massacre—that then the fault should be laid at the door of the Orangemen, who were the as- sailed, instead of on the Ribandmen, who were the assailers, because the former had the manliness, and the courage, and the sturdy Protestant spirit, as well as correct and loyal feeling, to celebrate the mercies of the Lord to the British nation in time past, and to avow their determination to cherish till death those blood-sealed principles of civil and religious liberty which the bravery and devotion of their fathers won for them; and to deprive them of which efforts are being daily made by foes both to the Qaeen's throne and the Queen's religion?"
The Nation has completed its recantation of the Young Irelandism of 1848, by fully acknowledging the power and labouring to propitiate the influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood. In an article headed " What will the priests do? " the editor thus makes confession- " The Irish priesthood have long held in their hands the soul of Celtic Ireland. For a period of at least sixty years they have, as a body, been in a position to feel and to regulate every throb of the inmost heart of this country. Look at the ob- solete agitation system. O'Connell, no doubt, was a tremendous intellect—a man with dragon's feet, and well formed to hurl mountains at, and, if he but used his power and opportunities aright, to dethrone, the deified tyranny that made the people its footstool. But without the priests, O'Connell's strength would have been as singed flax. They were unto him the real sinews of his fifty years' war. They worked with him in every capacity—they were his field-marshals and his taxgatherers. The priests were the men who carried the popular elections— prompted the people to vote for God and their country, as the phrase went—in spite of bent brows and impending ejectments, issued proclamations for the con- vention of monster meetings from their parish pulpits; and, more than all, they were the men who weddedreligion to agitation, and thereby infused a charmed life into the latter. We have heard it said that the political power of the eccle- siastical body in Ireland was buried with the great Agitator; that between the sun and the lesser bodies which sustained him in his career of might there existed a mutual and necessary dependence, which rendered it impossible for the one to travel in their ancient paths after the other had been blotted from the heavens. We believe this opinion to be absolutely unfounded. If the last few years have wrought any change in the relations between the people and their priests, it has been but to strengthen and increase the ascendancy of the latter. * • * 111.1••• "A large class of persons in this country are deeply impressed with the con. viction, that if the Confederates had had only steel and fire to encounter in '48 we, would ere now have had an end of foreign rule and social misery. If the priests suppressed the insurrection, we cannot refuse to admit that the Confede- rate leaders had themselves largely to blame. They excited a profound jealousy of their ultimate designs among the clergy by indiscreet writings and speeches, which to men who did not know them, and who had been systematically preiu: diced against them, meant many things they were never intended to mean. They were guilty in this of a fatal error, for which they have paid a terrible penalty, Perhaps Thomas Meagher and the Nation were the chief sinners in this respect. If so, let it be known that they saw their error and admitted it. In the last con- versation between Mr. Duffy and Mr. Meagher, in Richmond Prison, the former said, 'Yon and I committed a blockhead blunder, my friend; we arrayed against us the most vital institution of Irish Ireland, by mere folly. O'Connell told the priests we were their enemies; and, as if to confirm this calumny, we uttered and published many things absolutely certain to be misunderstood by them. And be_ hold the result—an attempt to raise the country without their help; a project as feasible as raising the Scottish Highlands a hundred years ago without the Scot- tish chiefs.' True, true,' rejoined Meagher; it was a great error—one to be avoided again. Any future movement must be based more largely on the religion, the sympathies, the old traditions of Ireland; for if our country is to have a new birth to liberty, she must this time be baptised in the old holy well.' "
The friends and family of John Mitchel have, we are informed, received notifi- cation from the English Government, to the effect, that the Government having taken into consideration the condition of John Mitchees health, have granted free leave and liberty to go wheresoever he pleases, subject to no restraint, with the exception that he shall not return to or settle in any portion or colony in the United Kingdom. He proposes, we are told, to proceed to Germany, for the par- pose of trying the effect of the spas in the restoration of his health. His wife and family still remain in this country. The children, who are under the care of the Reverend John Kenyon, P.P., Templederry, will leave to join their father as soon as he shall be settled in any eligible locality.—Limerick Examiner.
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