atrocious cruelties practised in the insurrections | but of good coal, cheaply raised; an article in which (in spite of papers in the Irish Transactions) they are lamentably inferior to the English.

of the common people-and their proneness to insurrection. The lower Irish live in a state of greater wretchedness than any other people in Europe, inhabiting so fine a soil and climate. Another consequence from some of the It is difficult, often impossible, to execute the causes we have stated, is the extreme idleness processes of law. In cases where gentlemen of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the are concerned, it is often not even attempted. value of which the Irish seem to have so little The conduct of under-sheriffs is often very cor- notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, daurupt. We are afraid the magistracy of Ireland dle, stare, gape, and do any thing but strive and is very inferior to that of this country; the spirit wrestle with the task before them. The most of jobbing and bribery is very widely diffused, ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman and upon occasions when the utmost purity pre- ploughing.-A gigantic figure-a seven foot vails in the sister kingdom. Military force is machine for turning potatoes into human nanecessary all over the country, and often for the ture, wrapt up in an immense great coat, and most common and just operations of govern- urging on two starved ponies, with dreadful imment. The behaviour of the higher to the lower precations, and uplifted shillala. The Irish crow orders is much less gentle and decent than in discerns a coming perquisite, and is not inattenEngland. Blows from superiors to inferiors tive to the proceedings of the steeds. The furare more frequent, and the punishment for such row which is to be the depository of the future aggression more doubtful. The word gentleman crop, is not unlike, either in depth or regularity, seems, in Ireland, to put an end to most pro- to those domestic furrows which the nails of the cesses of law. Arrest a gentleman!!!!-take meek and much-injured wife plough, in some out a warrant against a gentleman-are modes family quarrel, upon the cheeks of the deserv of operation not very common in the adminis- edly punished husband. The weeds seem to tration of Irish justice. If a man strikes the fall contentedly, knowing that they have fulmeanest peasant in England, he is either knock-filled their destiny, and left behind them, for the ed down in his turn, or immediately taken before a magistrate. It is impossible to live in Ireland without perceiving the various points in which it is inferior in civilization. Want of unity in feeling and interest among the people,-irritability, violence and revenge,-want of comfort and cleanliness in the lower orders,-habitualary or original, which will long present a powdisobedience to the law,-want of confidence in magistrates,-corruption, venality, the perpetual necessity of recurring to military force, -all carry back the observer to that remote and early condition of mankind, which an Englishman can learn only in the pages of the antiquary or the historian. We do not draw this picture for censure but for truth. We admire the Irish, -feel the most sincere pity for the state of Ire. land, and think the conduct of the English to that country to have been a system of atrocious cruelty and contemptible meanness. With such a climate, such a soil and such a people, the inferiority of Ireland to the rest of Europe is directly chargeable to the long wickedness of the English government.

A direct consequence of the present uncivilized state of Ireland, is that very little English capital travels there. The man who deals in steam-engines and warps and woofs, is naturally alarmed by Peep-of-Day Boys, and nocturnal Carders; his object is to buy and sell as quicklly and quietly as he can; and he will naturally bear high taxes and rivalry in England, or emigrate to any part of the Continent, or to America, rather than plunge into the tumult of Irish politics and passions. There is nothing which Ireland wants more than large manufacturing towns to take off its superfluous population. But internal peace must come first, and then the arts of peace will follow. The foreign manufacturer will hardly think of embarking his capital where he cannot be sure that his existence is safe. Another check to the manufacturing greatness of Ireland, is the scarcity-not of coal

The difficulty often is to catch the sheriff.

resurrection of the ensuing spring, an abundant and healthy progeny. The whole is a scene of idleness, laziness and poverty, of which it is impossible, in this active and enterprising country, to form the most distant conception; but strongly indicative of habits, whether second

erful impediment to the improvement of Ireland.

The Irish character contributes something to retard the improvements of that country. The Irishman has many good qualities: he is brave witty, generous, eloquent, hospitable and open hearted; but he is vain, ostentatious, extravagant, and fond of display-light in counseldeficient in perseverance-without skill in private or public economy-an enjoyer, not an acquirer-one who despises the slow and patient virtues-who wants the superstructure without the foundation-the result without the previous operation-the oak without the acorn and the three hundred years of expectation. The Irish are irascible, prone to debt and to fight, and very impatient of the restraints of law. Such a people are not likely to keep their eyes steadily upon the main chance, like the Scotch or the Dutch. England strove very hard, at one period, to compel the Scotch to pay a double church;--but Sawney took his pen and ink; and finding what a sum it amounted to, became furious, and drew his sword. God forbid the Irishman should do the same! the remedy, now, would be worse than the disease; but if the oppressions of England had been more steadily resisted a century ago, Ireland would not have been the scene of poverty, misery and distress which it now is.

The Catholic religion, among other causes, contributes to the backwardness and barbarism of Ireland. Its debasing superstition, childish ceremonies, and the profound submission to the priesthood which it teaches, all tend to darken men's minds, to impede the progress of knowledge and inquiry, and to prevent Ireland from becoming as free, as powerful, and as rich as

the sister kingdom. Though sincere friends to Catholic emancipation, we are no advocates for the Catholic religion. We should be very glad to see a general conversion to Protestantism among the Irish; but we do not think that violence, privations and incapacities are the proper methods of making proselytes.

treatment, and then more rich, more comfortable, and more civilized; and the horrid spectacle of folly and tyranny which it at present exhibits, may in time be removed from the eyes of Europe.

There are two eminent Irishmen now in the House of Commons, Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning, who will subscribe to the justness of Such, then, is Ireland, at this period,-a land every syllable we have said upon this subject; more barbarous than the rest of Europe, because and who have it in their power, by making it it has been worse treated and more cruelly op- the condition of their remaining in office, to pressed. Many of the incapacities and priva- liberate their native country and raise it to its tions to which the Catholics were exposed, have just rank among the nations of the earth. Yet been removed by law; but, in such instances, the court buys them over, year after year, by they are still incapacitated and deprived by cus- the pomp and perquisites of office, and year tom. Many cruel and oppressive laws are still after year they come into the House of Comenforced against them. A ninth part of the mons, feeling deeply and describing powerfully, population engrosses all the honours of the the injuries of five millions of their countrymen, country; the other nine pay a tenth of the pro--and continue members of a government that duct of the earth for the support of a religion in inflicts those evils, under the pitiful delusion which they do not believe. There is little capi- that it is not a cabinet question, as if the tal in the country. The great and rich men scratchings and quarrellings of kings and are called by business, or allured by pleasure, queens could alone cement politicians together into England; their estates are given up to fac- in indissoluble unity, while the fate and fortune tors, and the utmost farthing of rent extorted of one-third of the empire might be complimentfrom the poor, who, if they give up the land, ed away from one minister to another, without cannot get employment in manufactures, or the smallest breach in their cabinet alliance. regular employment in husbandry. The com- Politicians, at least honest politicians, should be mon people use a sort of food so very cheap, very flexible and accommodating in little things, that they can rear families, who cannot procure very rigid and inflexible in great things. And employment, and who have little more of the is this not a great thing? Who has painted it comforts of life than food. The Irish are light-in finer and more commanding eloquence than minded-want of employment has made them idle-they are irritable and brave-have a keen remembrance of the past wrongs they have suffered, and the present wrongs they are suffering from England. The consequence of all this is, eternal riot and insurrection, a whole army of soldiers in time of profound peace, and general rebellion whenever England is busy with other enemies, or off her guard! And thus it will be while the same causes continue to operate, for ages to come,-and worse and worse as the rapidly increasing population of the Catholics becomes more and more nume

rous.

You

Mr. Canning? Who has taken a more sensible
and statesmanlike view of our miserable and
cruel policy than Lord Castlereagh?
would think, to hear them, that the same planet
could not contain them and the oppressors of
their country,-perhaps not the same solar
system. Yet for money, claret and patronage,
they lend their countenance, assistance and
friendship, to the ministers who are the stern
and inflexible enemies to the emancipation of
Ireland!

Thank God that all is not profligacy and corruption in the history of that devoted peopleand that the name of Irishman does not always The remedies are, time and justice; and that carry with it the idea of the oppressor or the justice consists in repealing all laws which oppressed-the plunderer or the plundered-the make any distinction between the two religions; tyrant or the slave. Great men hallow a whole in placing over the government of Ireland, not people and lift up all who live in their time. the stupid, amiable, and insignificant noblemen What Irishman does not feel proud that he has who have too often been sent there, but men lived in the days of GRATTAN? who has not who feel deeply the wrongs of Ireland, and who turned to him for comfort, from the false friends have an ardent wish to heal them; who will and open enemies of Ireland? who did not retake care that Catholics, when eligible, shall be member him in the days of its burnings and elected; who will share the patronage of Ire- wastings and murders? No government ever Jand proportionally among the two parties, and dismayed him-the world could not bribe him give to just and liberal laws the same vigour of he thought only of Ireland-lived for no other execution which has hitherto been reserved only for decrees of tyranny, and the enactments of oppression. The injustice and hardship of supporting two churches must be put out of sight, if it cannot or ought not to be cured. The political economist, the moralist and the satirist, must combine to teach moderation and superintendence to the great Irish proprietors. Public talk and clamour may do something for the poor Irish, as it did for the slaves in the West Indies. Ireland will become more quiet under such

object-dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence. He was so born and so gifted, that poetry, forensic skill, elegant literature and all the highest attainments of human genius, were within his reach; but he thought the noblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and free; and in that straight line he went on for fifty years, without one side-look, without one yielding thought, without one motive in his heart which he might not have laid open to the view of God and man. He is gone!-but there is not a single day of his honest life of which every g. d

Irishman would not be more proud, than of the the annual deserters and betrayers of their nawhole political existence of his countrymen- tive land.

SPRING-GUNS.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1821.]

We utterly disclaim all hostility to the game laws in general. Game ought to belong to those who feed it. All the landowners in England are fairly entitled to all the game in England. These laws are constructed upon a basis of substantial justice; but there is a great deal of absurdity and tyranny mingled with them, and a perpetual and vehement desire on the part of the country gentlemen to push the provisions of these laws up to the highest point of tyrannical severity.

WHEN Lord Dacre (then Mr. Brand) brought | defeat the depredations of the poacher, is by setinto the House of Commons his bill for the ting spring-guns to murder any person who amendment of the game laws, a system of comes within their reach; and it is to this last greater mercy and humanity was in vain re- new feature in the supposed game laws, to which, commended to that popular branch of the legis- on the present occasion, we intend principally lature. The interests of humanity, and the inte- to confine our notice. rests of the lord of the manor, were not, however, opposed to each other; nor any attempt made to deny the superior importance of the last. No such bold or alarming topics were agitated; but it was contended that, if laws were less ferocious, there would be more partridges-if the lower orders of mankind were not torn from their families and banished to Botany Bay, hares and pheasants would be increased in number, or, at least, not diminished. It is not, however, till after long experience that mankind ever think of recurring to humane expedients for effecting their objects. The rulers who ride the people never think of coaxing and petting till they have worn out the lashes of their whips, and broken the rowels of their spurs. The legislators of the trigger replied, that two laws had lately passed which would answer their purpose of preserving game: the one, an act for transporting men found with arms in their hands for the purposes of killing game in the night; the other, an act for rendering the buyers of the game equally guilty with the seller, and for involving both in the same penalty. Three seasons have elapsed since the last of these laws was passed; and we appeal to the experience of all the great towns in England, whether the difficulty of procuring game is in the slightest degree increased? -whether hares, partridges and pheasants are not purchased with as much facility as before the passing this act?-whether the price of such unlawful commodities is even in the slightest degree increased? Let the Assize and Sessions' calendars bear witness, whether the law for transporting poachers has not had the most direct tendency to encourage brutal assaults and ferocious murders. There is hardly now a jail-to keep his word, and shoot through the head delivery in which some gamekeeper has not murdered a poacher-or some poacher a gamekeeper. If the question concerned the payment of five pounds, a poacher would hardly risk his life rather than be taken; but when he is to go to Botany Bay for seven years, he summons together his brother poachers-they get brave from rum, numbers and despair-and a bloody battle ensues.

"Is it lawful to put to death by a spring-gun, or any other machine, an unqualified person trespassing upon your woods or fields in pursuit of game, and who has received due notice of your intention, and of the risk to which he is exposed?" This, we think, is stating the question as fairly as can be stated. We purposely exclude gardens, orchards and all contiguity to the dwelling house. We exclude, also, all felonious intention on the part of the deceased. The object of his expedition shall be proved to be game; and the notice he received of his danger shall be allowed to be as complete as possible. It must also be part of the case, that the spring-gun was placed there for the express purpose of defending the game, by killing or wounding the poacher, or spreading terror, or doing any thing that a reasonable man ought to know would happen from such a proceeding.

Suppose any gentleman were to give notice that all other persons must abstain from his manors; that he himself and his servants paraded the woods and fields with loaded pistols and blunderbusses, and would shoot any body who fired at a partridge; and suppose he were

some rash trespasser who defied this bravado, and was determined to have his sport:-Is there any doubt that he would be guilty of murder? We suppose no resistance on the part of the trespasser; but that, the moment he passes the line of demarcation with his dogs and gun, he is shot dead by the proprietor of the land from behind a tree. If this is not murder, what is murder? We will make the case a little better for the homicide squire. It shall be night; the poacher, an unqualified person, steps over the line of demarcation with his nets and snares, and is instantly shot through the head by the

the glass or the spikes; for a trespasser may not believe in the notice which he receives, or he may think he shall see a gun, and so avoid it, or that he may have the good luck to avoid it, if he does not see it; whereas, of the presence of the glass or the spikes he can have no doubt; and he has no hope of placing his hand in any spot where they are not. In the one case, he cuts his fingers upon full and perfect notice, the notice of his own senses; in the other case, he loses his life after a notice which | he may disbelieve, and by an engine which he may hope to escape.

and a few come, then he must mean to shoot | plain, in the case of the guns, as the sight of those few. He who believes his gun will never be called upon to do its duty, need set no gun, and trust to rumour of their being set, or being loaded for his protection. Against the gun and the powder we have no complaint; they are perfectly fair and admissible: our quarrel is with the bullets. He who sets a loaded gun, means that it should go off if it is touched. But what signifies the mere empty wish that there may be no mischief, when I perform an action which my common sense tells me may produce the worst mischief? If I hear a great noise in the street, and fire a bullet to keep people quiet, I may not, perhaps, have intended Mr. Justice Bailey observes, in the same case, to kill; I may have wished to have produced that it is not an indictable offence to set springquiet by mere terror, and I may have expressed guns: perhaps not. It is not an indictable offence a strong hope that my object has been effected to go about with a loaded pistol, intending to shoot without the destruction of human life. Still I any body who grins at you; but if you do it, you have done that which every man of sound in-are hanged; many inchoate acts are innocent, tellect knows is likely to kill; and if any one the consummation of which is a capital offence. falls from my act, I am guilty of murder.- This is not a case where the motto applies "Further," (says Lord Coke,) "if there be an of Volenti non fit injuria. The man does not evil intent, though that intent extendeth not to will to be hurt, but he wills to get the game; death, it is murder. Thus, if a man, knowing and, with that rash confidence natural to many that many people are in the street, throw a characters, believes he shall avoid the evil and stone over the wall, intending only to frighten gain the good. On the contrary, it is a case them, or to give them a little hurt, and there- which exactly arranges itself under the maxim, upon one is killed-this is murder-for he had Quando aliquid prohibetur ex directo, prohibetur an ill intent; though that intent extended not to et per obliquum. Give what notice he may, the death, and though he knew not the party slain." proprietor cannot lawfully shoot a trespasser (3 Inst. 57.) If a man is not mad, he must be (who neither runs nor resists) with a loaded presumed to foresee common consequences if pistol;-he cannot do it ex directo;-how then he puts a bullet into a spring gun-he may be can he do it per obliquum, by arranging on the supposed to foresee that it will kill any poacher ground the pistol which commits the murder? who touches the wire-and to that consequence Mr. Justice Best delivers the following opinhe must stand. We do not suppose all pre-ion. His lordship concluded as follows:servers of game to be so bloodily inclined that "This case has been discussed at the bar, as they would prefer the death of a poacher to if these engines were exclusively resorted to his staying away. Their object is to preserve for the protection of game; but I consider them game; they have no objection to preserve the as lawfully applicable to the protection of every lives of their fellow-creatures, also, if both can species of property against unlawful trespassexist at the same time; if not, the least worthy ers. But if even they might not lawfully be of God's creatures must fall-the rustic without used for the protection of game, I, for one, a soul-not the Christian partridge-not the should be extremely glad to adopt such means, immortal pheasant-not the rational woodcock, if they were found sufficient for that purpose; or the accountable hare. because I think it a great object that gentlemen The chief justice quotes the instance of should have a temptation to reside in the counglass and spikes fixed upon walls. He cannot try, amongst their neighbours and tenantry, mean to infer from this, because the law con- whose interests must be materially advanced by nives at the infliction of such small punish- such a circumstance. The links of society are ments for the protection of property, that it thereby better preserved, and the mutual advandoes allow, or ought to allow, proprietors to tage and dependence of the higher and lower proceed to the punishment of death. Small classes of society, existing between each other, means of annoying trespassers may be con- more beneficially maintained. We have seen, sistently admitted by the law, though more in a neighbouring country, the baneful consesevere ones are forbidden, and ought to be for- quences of the non-residence of the landed bidden; unless it follows, that what is good in gentry; and in an ingenious work, lately pubany degree, is good in the highest degree. You lished by a foreigner, we learn the fatal effects may correct a servant boy with a switch; but of a like system on the Continent. By preservif you bruise him sorely, you are to be indicteding game, gentlemen are tempted to reside in -if you kill him, you are hanged. A blacksmith corrected his servant with a bar of iron; the boy died, and the blacksmith was executed. (Grey's Case, Kel. 64, 65.) A woman kicked and stamped on the belly of her child-she was found guilty of murder. (1 East, P. C. 261.) Si immoderate suo jure utatur, tunc reus homicidii sit. There is, besides, this additional difference in the two cases put by the chief justice, that no publication of notices can be so

the country; and, considering that the diversion of the field is the only one of which they can partake on the estates, I am of opinion that, for the purpose I have stated, it is of essential importance that this species of property should be inviolably protected."

If this speech of Mr. Justice Best is correctly reported, it follows, that a man may put his fellow-creatures to death for any infringement of his property-for picking the sloes and black