it a very dangerous one, but it was the sequel of the Pitt profusion.

5. Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne remedied the evil to some extent by copious creations. Sir R. Peel again in a quarter of a year's administration made three or four peers. When he returned to power in 1841 he came in as the champion of the cause of Protection, the cause most dear to the House of Lords, and had, therefore, no occasion to make peers.

6. There does not seem to me to be at present any occasion to make a considerable number of peers. But, though it may be very well for you, who have got a comfortable seat in a front row, to call out 'Shut the door, and don't let any more in,' it is not fair to the great body of English, Irish, and Scotch gentlemen to say that they shall ever be excluded from honours unless they command in a field of battle or distinguish themselves in the government of a colony. I will not notice your last hint about political 'subserviency further than to say that it has at all times been considered a virtue in England to act honestly in party connection and to preserve consistency upon public affairs. This is a long yarn, but you have brought it upon yourself.-Yours, J. RUSSELL.

The position of the Whigs was slightly strengthened by the general election of 1847, but they were still dependent on the support which continued to be extended to them by Sir Robert Peel. In ordinary circumstances the new Parliament would have hardly been summoned before the commencement of 1848; but in 1847 a financial crisis compelled the Ministry to call it together in November. Forced by the pressure in the City to authorise the Bank to infringe the provisions of the Act of 1844, it was compelled to ask Parliament to accord to its directors the indemnity which it promised to obtain for them. In the event, indeed, the mere knowledge that the Bank was authorised by the Government to infringe the law averted the necessity for infringing it. When it was once understood that the Bank was armed with exceptional resources for resisting the strain upon it, confidence returned; and, though a few men blamed the Government for suggesting or sanctioning a breach of the Act, and a few others found fault with them for not acting with more speed, most persons approved both the policy and the time at which it was adopted.

Thus, when Parliament met in November, the cause which had necessitated its assembling created little anxiety. But unfortunately a new demand had arisen for other legislation. 'The old eternal difficulty had recurred in Ireland. Famine had been followed by discontent, discontent had produced disorder, and the landlords who lived on their property, as well as those who had deserted their duty, were clamouring for coercion.' 1

Since his appointment Lord Clarendon had been in almost daily communication with the Prime Minister. His numerous letters from Ireland are still among the Russell papers. During the first few months of his Viceroyship they are chiefly occupied with the details of the battle which authority was waging against famine, and with projects for the improvement of the Irish soil. or of the Irish people; but in the latter half of October they drew attention to the difficulty of repressing disturbances.

In Clare and Limerick there have been several tumultuous assemblages. Mobs of 500 to 1000 persons, most of them armed, have gone to people's houses, and have carried off their corn and cattle, uprooted their crops (turnips, &c.), and threatened their lives. I communicated directly with Blakeney and MacGregor upon this, and told them that, at whatever cost, we must protect life and property; and I hope that to-day or to-morrow the whole of the disturbed districts will be militarily occupied. As far as possible I want to check the spirit of insubordination before the winter sets in, and to make the disaffected feel that the law is a reality. But crime and poverty are advancing upon us, and great exertions will be required in order not to be overwhelmed by them. They shall be made. I hope they may be successful. But I defy any one to tell now what will be the state of the country or what difficulties we shall have to contend with two months hence.

Five days later, on October 23, he wrote as follows:

Things are growing rapidly worse, and it would really seem as if all people combined to aggravate existing evils and to create fresh difficulties. Throughout Limerick and Clare and parts of Tipperary and King's County there is a savage spirit of disaffection and tumultuous assemblages of persons, the majority not in dis

This language is reproduced from a previous work.

tress, but having no other object than to plunder, and compel the resumption of public work. . . . Altogether I feel as if I was at the head of a provisional government in a half-conquered country.

On October 26, writing on other subjects, he added—

There are fresh murders every day, and from parts of the country the accounts of distress are really horrible;

and on October 30

The increase of crime and the frequency of murders are really frightful. The police and the military do what they can, but they are almost powerless where the whole population (¿.e. in the disturbed districts), either from sympathy or fear, are leagued for the protection of malefactors. An account came yesterday of a large gang with their faces blackened, and without shoes or stockings to prevent their approach being heard, having committed seventeen outrages upon dwellings in one night; and there is not the slightest clue to them, for one might as well try to catch so many devils. It is a curious thing that increased temperance is the cause of getting less information. People half drunk used to make partial revelations, and when sober and frightened at what they had done used to tell all.

I am proceeding with as much vigour as the law will permit, and hitherto with some success. There is, of course, great alarm in the public mind. I wish I dared suspend the Habeas Corpus,

or take up people on suspicion. I believe we must have some sort of Arms Bill, though different from any of the ineffectual measures that have hitherto been tried. MacGregor desires it; he reckons there are not so little as 300,000 stand of arms in the possession of the people. They fire at marks all day long; and, driving now through Tipperary or Limerick, one might think one was in England on the first of September.

Some days after this letter was written, Mr. Reeve, who had been staying with Lord Clarendon at Dublin, called at Pembroke Lodge, which on Sundays was always open to visitors, and, in the words of Lady John's diary

rather alarmed us by his account of Lord Clarendon's proposed measures to put a stop to the murders and disorders in Irelandall of the old and often-tried coercive and despotic kind, which do not even pretend to go to the root of the evil.

Lord John at once wrote to Lord Clarendon, who, replying on the 10th, said—

It was very

I am sorry that Reeve should have alarmed you. unnecessary, as the idea of taking any step beyond the law for the suppression of outrage without your consent would never have occurred to me at any time, much less just before the meeting of Parliament. But Reeve was naturally struck by the panic caused by Major Mahon's murder, by the notices of a similar fate that have been served upon other gentlemen (some of them . . . as good landlords as any in the world), and by the horrible system of intimidation that prevails. .

My great object and all my anxiety are to restore order by the law as it now stands; but if I find it insufficient, if the spirit of disaffection and insubordination spread, and the present anarchical tendencies increase, I must then ask for some extraordinary powers. I am as much averse to a Coercion Bill as you can be; for I know that by the time it is debated and mutilated in Parliament, and clamoured and written against here, it loses all moral force and is looked upon as a tyrannical abuse of power. I shall, therefore, never propose a Coercion Bill to you. If things become intolerably bad I believe that Parliament would more willingly grant, and I am sure that this country would more willingly submit to, a suspension of the Habeas Corpus-to be acted on under the strict responsibility of the Lord Lieutenant or the Government-than any of the old or cumbrous machinery of coercion to be set at work by the local magistracy.

Lord Clarendon went on to say that he would supplement this provision, (1) by imposing a fine, to be levied summarily on the district, and apply it to the relief of the murdered or robbed man's family, or to the payment of the force stationed in the district;' (2) by refusing arms to all except householders; (3) by requiring householders to take out a license for their use, and by registering them at the nearest police station; and (4) by 'penal clauses against going about at night in disguise or with blackened faces.'

On the day on which Lord Clarendon was thus writing to Lord John, Lord John was writing to Lord Clarendon :—

CHESHAM PLACE: November 10, 1847. MY DEAR CLARENDON,-I received yesterday your assurance'

that you would not do anything without the consent of the Cabinet.

You are entitled to receive from me in return the communication of my whole view of your present situation.

I am not averse to stringent measures if they can be made effectual for their immediate purpose, and at the same time a groundwork can be laid for permanent improvement.

I hold these two conditions inseparably connected. A mere suppression of the violent symptoms of a disease which has continued from 1760 to the present time is an aggravation rather than a cure of the organic disorder. It satisfies the landlord class, and they are thereby encouraged to worse atrocities than before. now let us take each subject in order.

But

1. An Act for keeping people at home at night is tyranny without purpose. An Act for restraining the use of arms could only be useful as a subsidiary measure. The suspension of the Ḥabeas Corpus Act used to be recommended by More O'Ferrall and others as an effective Coercion Act. The question is, would it be effectual? Sir Samuel Romilly in 1807 pointed out how inapplicable a measure intended to catch the heads of a rebellion was to a set of artisans who were not more the heads of a conspiracy than hundreds of their fellow-workmen. Is it different in Ireland? The evil is a social one, prompting the millions and their priests to hate, to denounce, and to slay the few who are their masters. Can you say that the arrest of any twenty or fifty or even a hundred of the leaders would paralyse the criminal conspiracy? Are these leaders known? Can Colonel MacGregor give a list of those men who planned the murder of Mr. Roe and Major Mahon? Is the defect one of legal evidence only? What has been the effect of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in former years? Upon this you might ask Lord Plunket, or if he is too infirm the Chancellor, Judge Perrin, or any other of the older Whigs. But at all events let us not take such a step in a hurry, or without having proved the efficacy of the law to the utmost.

2. Next as to the source of all this crime. It is plain that the multitude consider the landlords as enemies to be shot; the priests denounce them as heretics to be cursed; and the assassin, having public opinion and what he considers religion in his favour, has no remorse. The only fear he is likely to have-that of the gallows-is diminished by the general sympathy and overbalanced by the payment of a few pounds from the assassin club of the