erate attention of the proprietors land in Ireland will be called to this bject, and that they may be indu1 to make voluntary contributions the purpose of emigration, as a ref from those burdens which, though t legally imposed, are found practilly to press upon them from the surabundance of the pauper popula

n.

Your Committee at the same time e fully aware that neither the pashes in England or in Scotland, nor stricts or proprietors of land in Irend, will be induced to contribute for is purpose unless it can be demonrably shown that their interests, both neral and pecuniary, will be benefitby such contribution. Your Comittee have no hesitation in expressg their opinion, that the general teor of the evidence received by them stifies the expectation that such beefit will be therefrom derived. There is, however, one special point view with respect to Ireland, to which our Committee feel it necessary to ll the attention of the House; it is that a proprietor who is legally entitled eject a redundant pauper popution, which has been surreptitiously troduced into his property, but who, the same time that he feels that his wn interest and that of his family are aterially involved in the removal of is population, shrinks from the excise of his undoubted legal right, om his dread of the consequences hich must attach to them from their emoval. In such a state of circumstanes, which your Committee have reaon to believe is not of unfrequent ocurrence, they cannot but contemplate e public advantage that would be deved from enabling such a measure on me part of an individual to be carried to effect, to the mutual benefit of e party dispossessing and of the party ispossessed; and they entertain the most confident expectation that a care

ful examination into this part of the subject, on the part of the Irish pro prietors, will convince them that their own interests will be consulted by a contribution towards the expense of the emigration of such tenants.

With reference to this particular part of the subject, your Committee beg to advert to an Act passed in the present session, intituled, " An Act to amend the law of Ireland respecting the assignment and sub-letting of lands and tenements." This Act was specially founded upon the evidence taken before the Committees on the state of Ireland, and has met with the entire concurrence of both Houses of Parliament. It provides against the recurrence of the evil which has been described in the preceding paragraphs. But the House will not fail to remark, that all the advantages that may be derived from this Act will be diminished, if not rendered absolutely nugatory, unless a well-organized system of emigration should be established concurrently with the measure itself

With respect to the disposition of the tenantry ejected under such circumstances, your Committee have to observe, that the uniform testimony they have received from the evidence, from the petitions submitted to them, and from other sources of information, has induced them to believe that the knowledge, which is now generally disseminated, of the advantages which the emigrants of 1823 and 1825 have experienced, will be sufficient to induce not only any paupers who may be ejected under such circumstances, but all of the more destitute classes of the population in Ireland, to avail themselves with the utmost gratitude of any facilities which may be afforded for emigration. On this point your Committee beg to transcribe an extract from a letter addressed by Colonel Talbot, the founder of the Talbot settlement in Upper Canada, to a

10

member of your Committee, with respect to the emigration of 1823 and 1825. "I accompanied Sir Peregrine Maitland last winter on a tour of inspection to the new Irish emigrant settlements, about one hundred miles below York. I was anxious to see how they were getting on, and whether the scheme of transporting the poor of Ireland to this country was likely to prove beneficial or not, and was happy to find them doing admirably. These people were sent out last summer, about 2000 souls, and did not get on their land till late in November; all of them that I saw had snug log huts and had chopped each between three and four acres, and I have every reason to think that they will realize a comfortable independence, in the course of this year, and be of no further cost to the government; and it was satisfactory to hear them expressing their gratitude for what was done for them." To resort to the subject of the repayment, by the emigrants, of part of the expense incurred, your Committee are fully aware that such repayment could alone be made practicable under the circumstances of an adequate market being found for the increased productions of the colonies, arising from the cultivation of the land by each successive series of emigrants; they have therefore directed a very extensive examination into this particular branch of inquiry. The evidence of Mr Uniacke upon this subject, as connected with the fisheries, will be found to be very interesting and satisfactory.

Your Committee thought it of a paramount importance to inquire whether the result of emigration on an extended scale, carried into effect from year to year by fresh exportations of emigrants, would not involve a material diminution of the expense incurred in each successive year, with reference to the numbers emigrating: and whether, in point of fact, a well

organized system of emigration once established, would not carry itself on without extraneous assistance, or at least with assistance reduced to a very small amount, as compared with its original amount. Their inquiries, therefore, have been especially directed to this point; and it will be found that the general tenor of the evidence is in favour of the probability of a material diminution of expense in each successive year.

Your Committee being fully aware that one popular objection which is continually offered to any system of emigration on an extended scale, is the argument, that the benefit would be only temporary, and that the tem porary vacuum would be rapidly filled up, felt it necessary to direct their inquiries to the consideration of such collateral measures, both of a legisla tive and of a practical nature, as might be calculated to repress, if not to prevent, that tendency; they have therefore pursued their inquiries very extensively, and have been fortunate enough to collect very valuable evidence on this branch of the subject.

Your Committee were also aware that a popular objection exists to emigration, on the ground, that the numbers to be taken away for the purpose of producing any benefit, must be necessarily so great as to prevent the possibility of any practical measure sufficient for the purpose. Your Committee therefore (without expressing any opinion whatever on this point) have directed their inquiries to this in vestigation, as comprising an element of primary importance in the consideration of emigration as a national measure.

This part of the subject may be il lustrated by the following hypotheti cal statement. If a district be admitted to require only nine hundred labourers for its adequate cultivation, and if a thousand are found to exist

ere, who are all more or less emoyed, it is evident, whether the case supposed to happen in England or Ireland, that the fund for the reuneration of labour in that district divided among a thousand instead nine hundred persons: the conseuence may and probably will be, that he whole one thousand will receive ss than would be adequate to suport them, and that they may all preent an appearance of want and destution ; but if one hundred labourrs be removed from this district, and y that operation the supply of laour be proportioned to the real deand, the wages of labour will necesarily rise, and the condition of the emaining nine hundred may be maerially improved ; and what is of more nportance, the actual work executed y those nine hundred labourers, in heir improved condition, may and ill be equal, if not superior, to that hich was executed by the whole one housand in their state of comparativey unremunerated service. In illus ration of this subject, reference also may be made to the report, printed in 824, of the select committee appointd to inquire into the practice which revails in some parts of the country, of paying the wages of labour out of he poor-rates, &c. &c.

Your Committee observed in the eports of the committee appointed in 817, and 1819, to consider of the poor laws, that a strong opinion was expressed as to an extension, unlicensed by actual law, of the relief afforded to able-bodied paupers, under which nuch of the evils incident to the poor aw system have been considered to rise; and they thought it would be expedient to inquire in what manner and to what degree a well-organized system of emigration from England would facilitate the appropriation of the poor-rates according to their original application, as contended for by

those committees; and how far it might be found practicable to mortgage the poor-rates for the purpose of relieving the parishes from their superabundant population. They have therefore made particular inquiries on these points; and here they have again to revert to the valuable evidence of Mr Hodges, who has shown that voluntary efforts have already been made for this special purpose; that within his knowledge, parishes have furnish ed money from the poor-rates for the purpose of facilitating emigration; and that the emigrants, availing themselves of those facilities, had proceeded to the United States of America. Your Committee presume that it would be unnecessary to argue in fa vour of any determination of emigrants to our own colonies, provided it can be shown that the expense necessary to be incurred will not be so great as that which is necessary in their remo val to the United States.

An application was made to your Committee by the Colombian Agricultural Association, with reference to the subject of receiving emigrants. on the lands located to them in Colombia; and your Committee beg to refer to the evidence of Sir R. Wilson upon this point.

Your Committee beg also to inform the House, that during the course of their investigation, they received an application from Mr Chambers, a police magistrate, requesting to be examined upon the subject of that numerous class of persons in the metropolis chiefly under age, who being thrown upon the streets in perfect destitution soon resort to crimes for their support. A class so numerous, and whose case is so lamentable, deserves the attention of Parliament as one of those special cases which must be either left to the benevolence of charitable institutions, or of Parliament, to supply those funds for the first period of emi

gration, which (as already explained) the Committee are disposed to recommend should be furnished by the individuals specially benefited by the removal of the emigrants.

They would also beg to refer to the evidence of Mr Bodkin, the secretary of the Mendicity Society upon this subject.

It will be observed from the examination of the evidence, that in the event of any general measure of emigration being carried into effect, it has been suggested to the Committee, that several legislative measures might, under certain modifications, be introduced as auxiliaries to the object; such, for example, as to enable parishes in England to mortgage their poorrates for the purpose of forming a fund for the emigration of their poor; to enable tenants for life in Ireland and Scotland to change their estates for that object; to enable parishes in Ireland and Scotland to effect a similar change, subject to the consent of some definite proportion of the contributors; to provide some means for regulating the erection of cottages in those agricultural parishes where rates

may be mortgaged for the purposes of emigration; to establish a board of emigration, with protectors of emigrants; to hold a lien on the lands allotted to the emigrants as a security until the original debt be liquidated, such lien to be in the nature of a land tax, redeemable at any time at a certain rate of redemption; to legalize apprenticeships, in no case to exceed seven years, during which one-fourth of the wages received by the appren tice should be set apart by the master in liquidation of the expense incurred in the transport of the emigrant, such apprenticeships only to continue until that expense shall have been liquidated, and after that period the apprentice to be entirely free.

Your Committee beg finally to express their decided conviction, that the circulation of their report, and of the minutes of evidence, throughout the United Kingdom and the colonies, will enable any future committee to resume the subject, with the means of proposing measures sufficiently defi nite to justify their recommendation of them to the House for its adoption, 26th May 1826,

Case of the Comet.
HIGH COURT OF JUSTICIARY.
Bill of Suspension for Duncan
M'Innes.

Dec. 28, 1826. This day the Court met soon after nine o'clock, and this case having been called,

The Lord Advocate stated, that he was about to save the Court some trouble, by at once acknowledging that he did consider the proceedings in this case liable to an objection of a technical nature, as touching the mode of making up the Record, which would render it, in his opinion, not fitting for the public prosecutor to insist for a maintenance of the sentence against the prisoner. The libel set forth in the major proposition two crimes-the one culpable homicide-the other negligent steering of a steam-boat, by which lives

VOL. XIX. PART III.

were lost. Though these crimes were nearly of the same nature, yet the Prosecutor having set them forth as separate crimes, was bound to hold them as such ;—and the indictment proceeded to say, not that the pursuers were guilty of the said crimes, or one or other of them, but that they were

guilty of the said crime, actors, or art and part;" thus leaving it uncertain which of the two crimes so set forth the Prosecutor meant to charge them with. The experience of the Court made them inclined to adopt this course, that its only effect would be to relieve the prisoner of a part of the confinement to which he had been sentenced; and considering what this individual had personally suffered, from the danger to which his life had been exposed, in consequence of the negligence of which he had been guilty, and the feelings which he must ever experience from the loss of the valuable lives which occurred on that occasion, perhaps there was not much reason to re

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