IRELAND.

The Pilot gives a synopsis of the information on the potato d'seese re- ceived by the " Mansionhouse Committee" in Dublin; which we quote, with some curtailment— The following will show the proportion of communications from each of five classes of correspondents. From Protestant clergymen, 197; from Catholic clergy- men, 143; from Presbyterian clergymen, 30; from Deputy Lieutenants, &c., 107; from Poor-law Guardians, 12; these make 493; leaving 7 out of 500, which are not precise enough to admit of a satisfactory classification with the rest. In each of the 493 letters an opinion is given on these points--1. Whether the produce of the potato is above the average; 2. whether it is an average produce; 3. whether it is under the average. The great majority of the writers believe the produce to be an average, or above it. There are 68 who think it is under the average.

With respect to the extent of loss, the estimates are of a fourfold character, ranging from less than a third to over one-half-

1. Those who calculate on alms of less than a third are 158 2. Those who think the loss is fully a third are 135 3. Those who believe that one-half are destroyed are 134 4. Those who apprehend a destruction of snore than one-half are • • • • 40 As to the chance of saving the residue, there is a great diversity of opinion. Of those who are decided in their judgment the numbers are nearly equal; but we regret to observe that the majority of this class think that the crop cannot be saved—

I. The writers who give no opinion are 216

2. Those who think that the crop may be saved are 101

3. Those who think that It cannot be saved 118

We draw the following general inferences from this analysis,—first, that there is more than an average produce; secondly, that the loss is not quite equal to a third; and thirdly, that the chances are more in favour of a saving of the residue than against,—though this cannot be deduced from the data without sup- Posing that those who give no opinion one way or another would on better infor- mation or inriry side with those whose hopes are strongest. In the subjoined table, the counties are placed in the rank which they appear to hold with reference to the degree in winch the disease has been prevalent, as far as that can be inferred from the apprehensions evinced by the various writers-

Munster—Waterford, Clam, Kerry, Tipperary, Cork.

Ulster—Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, Derry, Down, Cavan, Antrim. Lei:later—Kildare, Queen's County, Louth, Wexford, Longford, King's County, Wick- low, Kilkenny, Dublin, Westmeath, Meath. Connaught—Galway, Roscommon, Sligo.

It is remarkable that the Protestant clergymen take, in general, a more favour- able view of things than the Catholics. The Protestant clergymen who think the residue will be saved are 53, but the Catholics are only 15. Those of the former elass who estimate the loss at one-half are 13, but those of the latter are 18.

The Repeal Association met as usual on Monday; and the proceedings Were fully of the usual desultory character. Mr. O'Connell did not ne- glect to make early and due allusion to the death of Mr. Hely Hutchinson. Mr. Smith O'Brien took Lord John Russell's Anti-Corn-law letter for bis text; and warned the people of Ireland, that an attempt would be tilde by the Whig party to induce the Irish to forego the agitation for repeal of the Union and merge it in that for repeal of the Corn-laws. To his the meeting responded with cries of" Never, never I" War with /Tunica was Mr. O'Brien's next subject: he professed to contemplate it with great repugnance: he had no objection to England's sending out her

own troops to fight in America, but he objected to her sending Irishmen out: the Irish, however, did not desire to transfer their own land to Ame- rica or France, but what they required was, to obtain "Ireland for the Irish."

Mr. O'Connell's chief subject of animadversion—he declared that he had done with the " gutter Commissioner" of the Times—was the Morning Chronicle, for advocating a statue to Cromwell. He also alluded to the address by the Magistrates of Tipperary; who had called on Government to introduce coercion into the country; promising that he himself should call on the Government to enact a measure of coercion which would compel the landlords to do justice to their tenants. On the next day of meeting, it was his intention to call the attention of the Association to the present state of Ireland, in its relations both domestic and foreign.

The rent for the week [including 1001. from Halifax] was 262/.

The Times Commissioner, writing from Waterford, on the 29th Novem- ber, replies to Mr. O'Connell's defence and counter attack, about the state of the tenantry on his property. It will be remembered that Mr. O'Connell's defence regarded the town of Ca- hirciveen: this, says the Commissioner, was an artifice; and to show that it is, he quotes all that was said, in the original statement, about that town—" The wretched-looking town of Cahireiveen, its dirty unpaved streets, and old hat- mended windows, reminds me of another subject," namely, that Mr. O'Connell is the lessee of the town, " and sublets it at a profit-rent as a middleman"; and the writer proceeded then to describe the condition of the tenantry on other parts of Mr. O'Connell's estate. These three lines were positively every syllable about Cahirciveen; as the published letter will prove. 'Upon that text Mr. O'Connell entered into " a statement about convent-building, priest-paying, fever-hospitals, butter-markets, not exacting rent for a churchyard, the excellence of the inn there, and a vast deal more all ending in self-laudation."

" Without entering into a detailed examination of his statements, nine-tenths of which are pure moonshine—in fact, utterly false—what answer, I ask, did he give to the charge of having within a mile of his own house the most wretched and squalid and pauperized tenantry in all Ireland ? Not one word of answer did he give. Brazen as he is, he had not brass enough for that. In fact, he occu- pied his auditory with every topic but the charge against him. And yet they could not see his evasion. I will not, however, stoop to bandy talk with this man. I came not here to humbug the English people; and I shall at once take a course which every Englishman and every honest Irishman will say is a fair course. I offer to appoint six gentlemen, whom I will select from different parts of Ireland ; Mr. O'Connell, if he dare, may do the same: I will proceed with them, in ten days, or whenever he pleases, to Cahirciveen: I will show them, and him too, if he chooses to come, its dilapidation—its filth: I will show them the inn of which he has said so much, and which (because of the civility of its landlord to me) I unwillingly say, that with one exception it is the very worst that I have been in in the United Kingdom: I will take them to his estate under Mr. Ilartop, in the hills behind Water- ville, from which, as a middleman, he derives a profit-rent of one-third of his in- come, and about which, in his laboured defence, he has not said one word: I will show them his tenants living there in a state of neglected wretchedness such as none would believe who did not see it, in huts not weather-proof, badly roofed, often with sods, without chimnies or windows, and with literally an iron pot and a turf-basket as their only furniture; the beds, usually a heap of stones, covered with turf and heather; the tables, the turf-basket bottom upwards; the mud- floor their scat. They shall see the multiplied pauperism, the infinite subdivision of land, the utter neglect and misery of the people, left there in a state of nature, untaught, unheeded, to multiply in misery as they list. These poor people must be of necessity removed when the lease is out by Mr. Hartop; who will then get all the odium of the misery which this middleman's neglect has created.'They shall hear from the months of these poor people—this middleman's tenant farmers!—that they are in the habit of migrating to Cork, to Limerick, and to Waterford, in the potato season, in order to earn enough at potato-digging, in competition with the poor peasantry of those counties, to pay this midelkinan's rent. I will take them to Darrynane Beg, and let them look for themselves through the hovels there. They shall for themselves hear the stories about 'Old Huntingcap,' as O'Connell's father was called,—about whom I do not wish to say one word; and they will judge of the weight to be attached to his brag about his ancestr y! Before Old Huntingeap's time, they were 'unknown to fame: They shall hear for themselves, too, the stories about his morality, of which he makes so perpetual a boast. They shall hear, too, from a dozen witnesses, who saw his tenant's cattle impounded and sold for rent but a month due, that Ser- geant Jackson's charge against him, on whatever testimony founded, was true."

The Commissioner avers that the Repeal Agitation itself is kept up by a species of terrorism-

" The respectable men of his own party, who are estimable men, because they conscientiously entertain the principles they hold, believing them to be for the benefit of the country, are constrained by a kind of mob-law imposed on them by the worthless, to support this man in all his vagaries through thick and thin; and, whilst in their hearts condemning his mischievous course, are obliged to aid him. In Cork I heard of instances of gentlemen subscribing to his' tribute,' as he calls it, to save appearances with the mob, and who do not hesitate in private to express their conviction that the greatest drawback on the prosperity and advance of Ireland, in misdirecting the energies of her people, is the political agitation

which this man foments. The priesthood, many of whom are highlyestimable men, in like manner generally deplore the mischief he causes: but, dependent upon the good-will of their parishioners, they are often compelled, contrary to their better sense, to bow before the mob outcry got up by the most worthless scamps in their parishes, and to add to the seeming popularity of this schemer. The whole scheming structure is hollow. It only wants one good battering to tumble to pieces."

As a specimen of the manner in which "any man who dares to state the truth," is attacked in Ireland, the Commissioner cites the subjoined letter from the Munster Chronicle— "'TO THE EDITOR OF THE /MEEHAN'S JOTHLWAL.

" beg leave through you to ask that very self-sufficient personage The Timm Commissioner, a single question—one frequently asked by Irish recruits In answer to impertinent jibes and insults from their English fellow soldiers—viz, "I say, Jack, how old were you when your mother was married ?"

I am, &e. &c. "I. D. S.'"

"I beg to assure this gentleman," says the Commissioner, "that if he will ±1- your me with his name, I will travel to his lodgings to give him a thrashing; a punishment which his 'Irish recruit' would be certain to get if he knew no better than to ask such a question, and which the son of every gentleman will be ready to favour him with if he is man enough to publish his name."

It is reported that Government intend to issue a Special Commission to try the persons charged with attempting the life of Sir Francis Hopkins.

The Magistrates for the North Riding of Tipperary have issued an address to the British public— They describe the state of the district where persons are murdered, as Mr. Clarke was, in noon-day, and the peasantry make no effort to arrest the murderer. "Do we," they ask, " therefore infer that universal sympathy exists among the lower classes in this country with the perpetrators of such deeds? Surely not. In most cases it is the established system of intimidation to which this fearful cha- racteristic is owing. Euglishmen living in a country where such acts are held in abhorrence, and the whole community armed as one man against the murderer, can have no idea of the terrible influence which the constant dread of impending awasination exercises over the mind. The Irish peasant occupies a thatched cabin, in most cases with a frail and ill-fastened door; and, without the probabi- lity of escape, he and his family are exposed, during the long nights of winter, to the vengeance of the ruffians against whose laws he may have offended. To have appeared as a public prosecutor is almost certain death. Those who do come for- ward are induced by hope of reward and promises of protection. They are obliged to leave home, and country, and friends; and the penalty of their offence is often visited even upon the relatives they leave behind. Such are the fruits of a long- continued system of terror and assassination." The Magistrates have sent an address, they say, to the Lord Lieutenant, calling for Government intervention; but they have not received an answer. "The measures which we especially recom- mend are as follows,—first, that a modified insurrection-act be placed on the sta- tute-book, to be resorted to by Government only in the ease of any particular barony of a county, which shall appear to the Lord-Lieutenant and Privy Council to require the same; and secondly, the creation of a law imposing a fine on any district where a murder, or attempt to murder, shall have occurred, the proceeds to be paid over to the family of the injured party. The insurrection-act to which we refer would empower the authorities to enter all houses by night. Persons absent from their homes, or strangers discovered in houses not their usual places of residence, would be obliged to account for themselves, and, failing to do so satis- factorily, might be brought before a military tribunal or a special commission, and subjected to a severe punishment. Such a measure would at least afford se- curity during the night to the houses of the humbler classes; who might then be induced with less reluctance to come forward as witnesses in a coed of justice. The bad characters, most of whom are well known to the Police, would soon be espelhd from the country; and detection would be more likely to follow the com- mission of the crime ot murder, inasmuch as the perpetrators of such acts are usually strangers who come from a distance." The Magistrates intimate that they make this appeal "in the sanguine hope that we have not in vain addressed this remonstrance to the British public, and that the majority of our representatives, of all shades of political opinion, may be prepared to advocate in Parliament the cause of true freedom, and fearlessly stand forward in defence of the outraged rights of humanity."

Costelloe, a tenant of Mr. Persse, of Moyada Castle, in Galway, and rent- Warner to that gentleman, has been shot dead at his supper-table. He was eating with his family, when some unknown ass.ssin fired through the window, with so true an aim that Costelloe was a corpse in half an hour. The man had been wit- ness in a criminal trial, and had besides been concerned in a recent distraint for rent.