HE fearful state of assassina

TH

tion and crime which had for some time past converted the southern counties of Ireland into an Aceldama (some of the more striking incidents of which are recorded in the Chronicle as they occurred) rendered an extraordinary degree of vigour on the part of the Executive desirable, as well for restoring confidence and security to the welldisposed, and to punish the perpetrators of these diabolical acts, as to teach the Irish people by examples too terrible to be mistaken, that the law cannot be invaded without risk, and that its punishments are not only certain but terrible. For this purpose, as the speedy punishment of offenders is ever the most effectual repression of crime, the Government directed a Special Commission to issue to try offenders in those districts in which the bonds of social order were most relaxed.

LIMERICK.

The Special Commission for the county of Limerick was opened by the Right Honourable Chief Justice Blackburne, and the Right Honourable Chief Baron Pigot, on the 4th January. A special jury consisting of some of the principal resident gentry of the county was summoned, and it is a proof of how much confidence was restored by the mere announcement of vigorous measures, that all these gentlemen attended without any exception.

After the Grand Jury were sworn,

The Chief Justice addressed them as follows:-" Gentlemen of the Grand Jury of the county of Limerick,-You are apprized by Her Majesty's Commission, and by the oath you have taken, that you are now about to perform your part in the administration of the criminal law of the country. Your duty, at all times of importance, must be regarded with peculiar interest and with deep anxiety at a crisis of great public danger. Her Majesty has called upon her subjects to assist in vindicating the violated laws of the land, and to be themselves the instruments of restoring to the country the blessings of order and tranquillity. That we are in such a crisis there is, unfortunately, no reason to doubt. The Legislature, by an Act of Parliament which has recently received the Royal Assent, and become the law of Ireland, contains a recital in these words :

Whereas, in consequence of the prevalence of crime and outrage in certain parts of Ireland, it is necessary to make provision for the better prevention thereof.' His Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant has, in the execution of the power committed to him by that Act, issued his proclamation, with the advice and assistance of the Privy Council, by which the whole of your county, together with very extensive districts in Ireland, is made subject to the provisions of

that Act, which are now binding upon every inhabitant, every inmate, and every stranger within its precincts. Her Majesty's Government, on full and mature consideration of the actual state of things, has issued a special Commission, in order that justice may be speedily administered, and that the urgency of the case may not be delayed till the ordinary period of administering the criminal law. This showed that great danger existed; and, unless this frightful calamity could be arrested, the very bonds of our social system would be dissolved. The principal object of the combination which exists is the destruction of the rights of the landlords, and, if it succeeds, the occupiers of land will become its proprietors. But the combination does

not confine itself to these classes. The peace and property of all individuals of all classes are indiscriminately assailed and plundered, and, if these practices be not ar rested and prevented, it is impossible to say there can exist in this country either the dominion of the law or the safety of person or property.

Gentlemen, according to my means of information, it does appear to me that the actual perpetrators of these outrages are comparatively limited in number, and I believe their spirit is as dastardly as their numbers are limited; and that it requires but a steady administration of the law and a decided opposition by those who value the safety of person and property, shortly and effectually to extinguish this evil. But we can form a very imperfect idea of the actual state of the country if we look merely to the number of those who are the actual disturbers of the public peace. Unfortunately, I

believe they are abetted by persons who hope to profit by their crimes, and I do believe, also, that a much larger number of persons connive at their crimes, either in the hope of benefiting in the common fund, or from actual apprehension and terror they forbear to give to the law that support and assistance which it is equally their duty and interest to afford, and that they actually contribute to a state of things which must end, in my apprehension, in their own subjugation to that tyranny, for I can call it by no other name, which covers the country, and which must involve all in common misery. But there is another class of persons who, though neither abetting nor conniving at these practices, appear to me not at such

a crisis to have remembered their bounden duty. I am afraid that such a state of things as we witness is a decisive proof of apathy and indifference on the part of a large class of Her Majesty's subjects from whom activity and support of the law might be fairly expected. Persons of that description are too apt to complain that the law and the Government have not afforded them all the assistance which it was the duty and in the power of both to afford. But they should recollect that, without the co-operation and assistance of Her Majesty's subjects, and which it is their own duty to give, the law must remain a dead letter, unexecuted and unequal to afford all that is expected in return for the protection which every man in his own sphere, and to the utmost of his influence, ought to give to the execution of the law, and that assistance to the preservation of the public peace. In considering how far that calamity

under which this country has by the Providence of God been lately placed may have been in any way the cause of these dreadful outrages, I am bound here to say that the patience, the fortitude, the enduring fortitude, with which the calamity has been submitted to and borne by a large part of our destitute poor, appears to have been in general in the highest degree exemplary, and I do not find in the calendar before me, nor, after the experience of the last two circuits, have I been able to find a single case in which destitution or distress arising from the visitation of God has in the remotest degree influenced this illegal confederacy, or stimulated any of those outrages. Gentlemen, the deplorable state of things which has obliged us to assemble has been ascribed to various causes of a social and political character. With the investigation of those causes, and with the reasonableness of these opinions, we have now nothing to do. We have no power to investigate; no power to redress. The only redress which this Court can administer is redress to the peaceable, the loyal, and industrious, by putting an end to the system by which they are held in thraldom, and by which their property is rendered insecure and their persons liable to be assailed in all directions.

"The law cannot tolerate its own violation. Wrongs there may be injuries and sufferings there may be-all forming a just ground for complaint; but it is perfectly plain that, however those sufferings may be aggravated, they never can be alleviated or redressed by a violation of the law. If there be any such who disseminate such an opinion, or who give advice in op

position to these simple truths, they incur in my mind a most serious responsibility; and in my opinion the responsibility and the danger of that advice are not the less pernicious when the crimes are stimulated by, and the criminal has the object of exciting the commiseration of the public, than if the violation of the law were in express terms inculcated by them."

The Chief Justice then called the attention of the Grand Jury to the laws relating to such offences now in operation-to the Whiteboy Acts, the Arms Acts, the Acts relating to accessories and to conspiracies to murder, and other sta tutes, and then proceeded :-"I have now called your attention to these several statutes, to show you what the crimes are, the punishments which attend them, and the means provided for preventing them. I have not myself the least doubt that the exercise of these powers will have the effect of restoring order and tranquillity. I speak from very good experience. This is not the first time that conflicts such as we now witness have taken place between incendiaries and the law of the land; but the result has always been the samethe law has ultimately triumphed, and their designs have been frustrated. What has happened before will happen again. The law is the same; nor is there less zeal or anxiety on the part of those who administer the law to give it effect. Can culprits who commit crimes hope for impunity when those who preceded them have become the victims of their own violation of the law? Every person who trusts to impunity will, sooner or later, find that he has become amenable to the law, and may find himself betrayed by his associates,

and that he has become the victim of the treachery of those in whom he has confided. It is now for you to proceed to the discharge of your duties, to the firm, faithful, and true discharge of which all hopes for the tranquillity of the country are directed. I trust that the result will be such as to realize those hopes, and that we shall eventually see the country arrested from dishonour, and our common nature freed from the disgrace of such atrocities."

January 5th.

William Ryan, alias Puck, one of the most notorious and ill-looking ruffians that ever disgraced this country, was placed at the bar, charged with the murder of a man named John Kelly, in the month of September last, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity.

The Court was crowded to the utmost possible extent, the culprit being known throughout the whole of the country as one of the worst desperadoes it ever produced.

The Attorney-General, in his address, said, the prisoner stood charged with the wilful and deliberate murder of an unoffending fellow-creature, without one particle of provocation, and almost without a motive. The prisoner and his father held land at Knocksantry, on the confines of this county, partly in Limerick and partly in Tipperary, in partnership with a person named Michael Kelly, as tenants to a Mr. Biggs. About twelve months since, Mr. Biggs thought it right to dispossess the Ryans, and wished Kelly, who was an industrious man, and punctual in his rent, to take the entire farm, as the Ryans, who held only some three or four acres, were not so punctual in their rent. Accordingly

Mr. Biggs dispossessed the Ryans, and immediately a hostile feeling sprang up between them and Kelly. A complete separation, a "cool," took place between them, and they passed without speaking to each other. On the 17th of September last, Michael Kelly was shot at and wounded, but not killed. A few days afterwards, the 22nd, John Kelly, the man who was murdered, and brother to Michael Kelly, the cotenant of the Ryans, was sitting at nightfall in his own house. There was a good fire in the kitchen, and the inmates of the house on that occasion were John Kelly, his wife, his nephew, a boy about fourteen or fifteen years of age, his niece, and a servant boy, also named Michael Kelly. About half an hour before the murder, the prisoner and another man, a stranger, were seen going in the direction of Kelly's house by a woman who knew the prisoner well. The prisoner was not armed, but the stranger carried a blunderbluss. When they first saw her, they separated, but after she had passed they joined again, and went towards Kelly's house. The persons in the house heard footsteps approaching, the dog outside began to bark, and they heard a man whistling as if to quiet him. It was then about seven in the evening, and almost immediately afterwards the door was opened, the prisoner came in, and, without opening his lips, levelled his piece at John Kelly, and shot him dead on the spot. Of the identity of the murderer there could be no doubt, for by the light of the fire he was recognised by every person then in the house. Immediately after the murder the prisoner decamped, and was not captured until the 14th of October.