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and having long witnessed the unceasing but ineffectual exertions on the part of many of the magistrates in the most disturbed parts of those counties, I determined to accede to their application, and with the advice of the Privy Council, subjected the contiguous districts of the two counties to the operation of the insurrection act, by a proclamation, which bears date the 24th of November.

In the course of the present year, the insurrection act has not been enforced in any new instance. In the month of March, in consequence of a memorial from 27 magistrates of the county of Louth, a special magistrate, with 50 constables, was appointed, for the purpose of assisting them to maintain the peace in four baronies (*) of that county.

Various acts of outrage were committed in these baronies about this period. In the course of one week 11 houses in the neighbourhood of Dundalk were plundered of arms. The house and offices of a farmer, who had prosecuted some persons by whom he had been robbed and nearly murdered, were wilfully set on fire and consumed A party of armed persons, reported to be not less than 200 in number, attacked the house of another individual, and entered it, after meeting with considerable resistance; after wounding very severely the owner and two other inhabitants of the house, they compelled him to deliver his arms, and to take an

(*) Upper and Lower Dundalk, Ardee, and Louth.

oath that he would give up his farm.

In the month of April in the present year, a similar police establishment was also appointed in three baronies (†) of the county of Clare, on a representation received from 20 magistrates of that county. For a considerable time past, certain districts in that county had been in an unsettled state; but in the course of the preceding year I had been informed by the magistrates, that the examples made under the insurrection act in the counties of Tipperary and Limerick, had produced a very beneficial effect in the county of Clare. In the months, however, of February and March of the present year, offences of the same general character with those which I have before described were very frequently committed. Nightly meetings of large numbers of the lower orders took place in one district, in the course of the month of March, several houses were wilfully burned, and threatening notices were posted up, directed against the letting of lands to others than the old proprietors, and against the payment of rents, except under certain prescribed regulations.

:

I have enumerated all the several instances in which I have, with the advice of the Privy Council, enforced the provisions of either of those acts of the Legislature which passed in the session of 1814. It will appear, from the detail into which I have entered, that the insurrection act

(+) Clonderlan, Ibrachan, and Moyarta.

has

has been enforced in the county of Limerick, the county of the city of Limerick, in several baronies of the county of Tipperary, two baronies of the county of Westmeath, and in a district of the King's county: and that in certain districts of three counties, Tipperary, Louth, and Clare, speciał magistrates and constables have been placed, having the ordinary powers given to civil offi~ cers, and the expences consequent on their appointment being levied from the district within which they act.

I shall now state to your Lordship the general result of the measures which have been thus adopted for the preservation of the public peace, in aid of the ordinary operation of the law; and it gives me great satisfaction to be enabled to assure you, that tranquillity has been completely restored in some of the districts which were the seat of disturb ance; and that in three of those districts in which the insurrection act was enforced in the course of last year, it has, in consequence of the improved state of them, been withdrawn since the commencement of the present year.

In the month of February last, I received from the magistrates of the King's county a memorial, expressing their acknowledgments for the additional powers which had been given to them under the insurrection act, and for the judicious distribution of the military force; stating the good effect to the peace of the county which had resulted from those measures, and giving their opinion, that the additional powers entrusted to them might be safely withdrawn.

From the magistrates of the city of Limerick, assembled at an extraordinary sessions of the peace on the 15th day of April last, a memorial was transmitted, stating their opinion that the circumıstances which induced them to apply for the provisions of the 54th of the King to be put in force in the county of the city of Limerick no longer existed.

I have also received a memorial from the magistrates of the county of Westmeath, assembled at a special session of the peace held last month, expressing the deep sense which they entertain of the benefit which their county has experienced from the measures which had been adopted; attributing the tranquillity they now enjoy to the successful operations of the provisions of the insurrection act; and adding their wish, that the powers with which it invested them might be withdrawn, and the ordinary course of law restored.

I gave immediate effect to their several applications, and the proclamations enforcing the insurrection act in certain districts of the county of Westmeath, King's county, and the county of the city of Limerick, have been severally revoked by the Privy Council. The only counties, therefore, in which that act now remains in operation are the counties of Tipperary and Limerick.

I have annexed to this dispatch a report of the proceedings of the special commission held for the county and city of Limerick in the month of November, 1815, and in the county of Tipperary in the month of February 1816; and a return of persons tried at the

special

special session under the insurrection act, for offences against the provisions of that act. I have added also a statement of the proceedings at the several assizes in the years 1813, 1814, and 1815, and Lent assizes of the year 1816, so far as relates to committals and convictions for criminal acts connected with the disturbance of the public peace in the following counties; Westmeath, Tipperary, Limerick, King's county, Queen's county, Longford, Louth, Clare, Roscommon and Waterford.

There may appear to your Lordship a great disparity in some cases between the number of committals and the number of convictions: and persons unacquainted with the internal state of this country may infer that committals too frequently take place without sufficient evidence of guilt against the parties apprehended. No such conclusions, however (I mean so far as relates to the general practice of the magistracy to commit suspected persons on slight and insufficient ground) ought to be drawn. The frequent instances which have come to my knowledge, wherein prosecutors and witnesses have been intimidated by the menaces of the friends of the parties deposed against; the experience I have had of the danger to which they, and even their relations, are exposed; of the necessity which in almost every case occurs, that they should quit the place of their birth and residence; of the odium which universally attaches to the name of an informer; compel me to consider the disproportion between the number of committals and convictions in many districts,

rather as a proof of the disordered state of society, and of the impediments in the way of the administration of justice, than as a proof of undue precipitancy on the part of the magistracy, in committing on the suspicion of criminality. I may be allowed here to add, that the danger attendant on the giving of information or evidence was so notorious, and so much impeded the conviction of the guilty at no remote period, that the Legislature found it necessary, with the view of deterring from the murder of witnesses, and of preventing the impunity of the parties against whom those witnesses had deposed, to enact, that if any person having given information upon oath of any offence against the laws should be murdered, or forcibly carried away before the trial of the person deposed against, such information on oath should be admitted as evidence on the trial.

It has been necessary in the disturbed counties (in most instances of persons having given information on oath, or intending to give evidence upon trial) on account of the serious danger to which such persons are exposed, to remove them to places of secuity previous to the trials, and ultimately to provide for their removal from their usual abodes. In many cases the witnesses for the crown have, at their own request, been kept a considerable period, previously to the trial, in the gaol of the county, as affording them the best means of protection; in other cases they have been protected in barracks, or brought to Dublin, where however, occasionally, they have not

been

been safe from the hostility of the friends of the parties apprehended.

I have not thought it necessary to mention the numerous applications which have been, and continue to be made, for military assistance in aid of the civil power, by magistrates and others. I never recommend the commander of the forces to accede to those applications, without the strongest evidence of their necessity; and in almost every case, the military officer in command of the district from which the requisition proceeds, is directed to inquire personally into the grounds on which it is made. I ought not, however, to omit to mention, that a very considerable military force is employed in giving assistance to the officers of revenue in the suppression of illicit distillation, which prevails to a great extent in several of the northern and western counties of this kingdom. In consequence of an order of the House of Commons, made in the month of February in the present year, a return has been made of the troops at that time employed on this service, which I have annexed to this dispatch, and which will give full information with respect to the number of men employed, the detachments into which they are divided, and the stations at which they are placed.

I am with great truth and regard, my lord, your lordship's most obedient humble servant,

(Signed)

WHITWORTH.

The Viscount Sidmouth, &c. VOL. LVIII.

Address of the Corporation of London to the Prince Regent, delivered December 9, 1816; with the Answer of his Royal Highness. To His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Regent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The humble Address and Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the City of London, in Common Council assembled.

May it please your Royal
Highness,

We, his Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the city of London in Common Council assembled, humbly approach your Royal Highness to represent our national sufferings and grievances, and respectfully to suggest the adoption of measures which we conceive to be indispensably necessary for the safety, the quiet, and prosperity of the realm.

We forbear to enter into details of the afflicting scenes of priva tions and sufferings that everywhere exist: the distress and misery which for so many years has been progressively accumulating has at length become insupportable-it is no longer partially felt nor limited to one portion of the empire: the commercial, the manufacturing, and the agricultural interests are equally sinking under its irresistible pressure, and it has become impossible to find employment for a large mass of the population, much less to bear up against our present enormous burdens.

We beg to impress upon your Royal Highness, that our present 2 E complicated

complicated evils have not arisen from a mere transition from war to peace, nor from any sudden or accidental causes; neither can they be removed by any partial or temporary expedients.

tion and the declared sense of the nation, affording another melancholy proof of the corrupt state of the representation, in addition to those facts so often stated, and offered to be proved at the bar of the House of Commons, in a petition presented in 1793 by the Hon. Charles, now Lord Grey, whereby it appeared that the great body of the people were excluded from all share in the election of members, and that the majority of that Hon. House were returned by the proprietors of rotten boroughs, the influence of the Treasury, and a few powerful families.

We can, Sir, no longer support

Our grievances are the natural effect of rash and ruinous wars, unjustly commenced, and pertinaciously persisted in, when no rational object was to be obtainedof immense subsidies to foreign Powers to defend their own territories, or to commit aggressions on those of their neighbours-of a delusive paper currency-of an unconstitutional and unprecedented military force in time of peace -of the unexampled and increas-ing magnitude of the civil-list-out of our dilapidated resources of the enormous sums paid for an overwhelming load of taxaunmerited pensions and sinecures, tion, and we humbly submit to and of a long course of the most your Royal Highness, that nolavish and improvident expendi- thing but a reformation of these ture of the public money through- abuses, and restoring to the peʊout every branch of the Govern- ple their just and constitutional ment, all arising from the corrupt right in the election of Members and inadequate state of the repre- of Parliament, can afford a secusentation of the people in Parlia- rity against their recurrence— ment, whereby all constitutional calm the apprehensions of the control over the servants of the people-allay their irritated feelCrown has been lost, and Parlia- ings-and prevent those misforments have become subservient tunes in which the nation must to the will of Ministers. inevitably be involved by an obstinate and infatuated adherence to the present system of corruption and extravagance.

We cannot forbear expressing our grief and disappointment, that, notwithstanding your Royal Highness's gracious recommendation of economy at the opening of the last sessions of Parliament, your ministers should have been found opposing every proposition for lessening the national expenditure, and that they should have been able to obtain majorities to support and sanction their conduct in defiance of your Royal Highness's recommenda

We therefore humbly pray your Royal Highness to assemble Par-liament as early as possible, and that you will be graciously pleased to recommend to their immediate consideration these important matters, and the adoption of measures for abolishing all useless places, pensions, and sinecures for the reduction of our present enormous military establishment

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