publication, printed in 1799, from the pen of Henry MacDougall, M.A., and entitled Sketches of Irish Political Characters, mentions "the Sham's admission to the profession of attorney, in which his practice is too notorious to require statement", and adds: “His next step to wealth was in the establishment of a hazard table, which soon attracted a number of sharps, scamps, and flashmen; and they as soon attracted the attention of the Sham, ever on the watch to promote his own interest. The sharp was useful to cheat the unwary of their money, and keep it in circulation at his table. The scamp plundered on the road, visited the Corner House, and if taken up by the officers of justice, he seldom failed, for acquaintance' sake, to employ the owner in his capacity of solicitor. The flashman introduced him (Higgins) to the convenient matron, whom he seldom failed to lay under contributionthe price of protecting her in her profession". We further learn that the city magistrates were all afraid to interfere with Mr. Higgins and his delinquencies, lest a slanderous paragraph or lampoon from the arsenal of his press should overtake them. Ten years previous to the publication of the foregoing, the vigilant moralist, Magee, laboured to arouse the magistracy to a sense of their duty. "For fifteen years", we are told, "there has existed, under the eye of magistracy, in the very centre of the metropolis, at the corner of Crane Lane, in Essex Street, a notorious school of nocturnal study in the doctrine of chances; a school which affords to men of the town an ample source of ways and means in the pluckings of those unfledged green-horns who can be inveigled into the trap; which furnishes to the deluded apprentice a ready mart for the acquisi tion of experience, and the disposal of any loose cash that can be purloined from his master's till; which affords to the working artizan a weekly asylum for the reception of that stipend which honest industry should allot to the purchase of food for a wife and children; and which affords to the spendthrift shopkeeper a ready transfer office to make over the property of his creditors to the plunder of knaves and sharpers". Two months after we find addressed to the authorities a further appeal, occupying several columns, and to the same effect.† But the board of police was, in fact, eminently imbecile. Among a long series of resolutions adopted in August, 1789, by the gifted men who formed the Whig Club, we find: "The present extravagant, ineffectual, and unconstitutional police of the city of Dublin has been adopted, continued, and patronised by the influence of the present ministers of Ireland. All proceedings in parliament to remove the grievance, or censure the abuse, have been resisted and defeated by the same influence. The expediency of combating by corruption a constitutional majority in parliament has been publicly avowed, and the principle so avowed has been carried into execution". At last a committee was granted to inquire into the police, whose extravagance and inefficiency had now rendered them notoriously contemptible. They had long wallowed in indolent luxuriousness on the public money. Among their items of expense were: "For two inkstands for the police, £5 5s. 6d.; three penknives, £2 2s. 3d.; gilt-edged paper, £100; * Dublin Evening Post, No. 1782 Chambers' Dictionary, £11 7s. 6d.". Among their books was Beccaria on Crime, with a commentary from Voltaire.* A curious chapter might be written on the shortcomings of the Dublin police and magistracy, not only during the last, but even throughout a portion of the present century. If not too digressive, a glance at those shortcomings may amuse the reader. 66 During the existence of the Volunteers", observes the late Counsellor Walsh, a conservative writer of much accuracy, "gentlemen of that body for a time arranged among themselves to traverse the streets at night, to protect the peaceably disposed inhabitants, and men of the first rank in the kingdom thus voluntarily discharged the duties of watchmen. But the occupation assorted badly with the fiery spirits on whom it devolved, and the streets were soon again abandoned to their so-called legitimate guardians. In the day-time the streets were always wholly unprotected. The first appointment even of a permanent night-watch was in 1723, when an act was passed under which the different parishes were required to appoint 'honest men and good Protestants' to be night-watches. The utter inefficiency of the system must have been felt; and various improvements were from time to time attempted in it, every four or five years producing a new police act with how little success every one can judge, who remembers the tattered somnambulists who represented the 'good Protestant watchmen' a few years ago. Several attempts had also been made to establish an efficient civic magistracy, but with such small benefit that, until a comparatively recent period, a large portion of the magis* Grattan's Memoirs, v. iii. p. 456. terial duties within the city were performed by county magistrates, who had no legal authority whatever to act in them. An office was kept in the neighbourhood of Thomas Street by two gentlemen in the commission for the county, who made a yearly income by the fees; and the order to fire on the mob who murdered Lord Kilwarden, so late as 1803, was given by Mr. Bell, a magistrate of the county and not the city of Dublin. Another well-known member of the bench was Mr. Drury, who halted in his gait, and was called the lame justice'". On the occasion mentioned by Mr. Walsh, Drury retired for safety to the garret of his house in the Coombe, from whence, as Curran remarked, 'he played with considerable effect on the rioters with a large double-barrelled telescope. It is to be regretted, however, that irregularity and imbecility are not the worst charges to be brought against the justices of Dublin, even so late as fifty years ago. Frank Thorpe Porter, Esq., late police magistrate of Dublin, has preserved official tradition of some of his more fallible predecessors. Mr. Gonne having lost a valuable watch which he had long regarded as irretrievable, was urged by a private hint to remain at the outer door of the police office, and when the magistrate came out, to ask him, "What hour is it now exactly, your worship?" The "beak" took out a watch, and answered the question. Its appearance at once elicited from Gonne the longest oath ever heard before a justice. By -", he exclaimed, "that watch is mine!" 66 "Gonne obtained his watch", adds Mr. Porter, "and was with great difficulty prevented from bringing the transaction under the notice of the government. The system by which the worthy justice managed occasionally to possess himself of a valuable watch, or some other costly article, consisted in having two or three drawers wherein to keep the property found with highwaymen or thieves. If the prosecutor identified the delinquent, he was then shown the right drawer; but if he could not swear to the depredator's person, the wrong drawer was opened. The magistrate to whom this narrative refers was dismissed in a short time for attempting to embezzle fifty pounds"." * Before the establishment of the petty sessions system in Ireland, magistrates in the safe seclusion. of their closets were often betrayed into grossly disreputable acts. A parliamentary inquiry, in 1823, into the conduct of Sheriff Thorpe, exposed, in passing, much magisterial delinquency. Mr. Beecher said, "It was no uncommon thing, when a friend had incurred a penalty, to remit the fine, and to levy a penalty strictly against another merely because he was an object of dislike". Major Warburton proved that a female had been sent to America by a magistrate without any legal proceeding whatever. Major Wilcox established the fact that some justices of the peace were engaged in illicit distillation, and that they took presents and bribes, and bail when other magistrates refused; that they took cross-examinations where informations had been already taken by other magistrates. They issued warrants against the complaining party in the first instance, at the suggestion of the party complained against". It further appeared that some magistrates took fees in money, and not unfrequently rendered official services in considera 66 * Some notice of the embezzlements accomplished by Baron Power and Sir Jonah Barrington, both judges on the Irish bench, will be found in the appendix. |