acres in extent, were let to several individuals, from two to one hundred, jointly. Every one of these tenants was responsible for the rent of all the rest, as well as for his own. They made a new division of the arable every year or two; but the pasture remained always undivided. They generally paid a rack-rent; and after they had built their huts without mortar, chimney, or window, all swore on registering their freeholds, to 40s. profit arising from a joint lease for one or more lives. uniform results of this system were, squalid beggary and extreme indolence; the necessary consequences of the industrious being liable to pay for the idle and profligate.

The

Being all bound for each other, to the whole extent of the reserved rent, the landlord could at any moment ruin any one though worth far more than his own proportion of rent, by distraining him for the rent of his co-lessees. Even where joint-tenants were in the best circumstances, much of their time was lost in watching the proper application of their common funds. They all attended, whenever money was to be received or paid for the general account. This system contributed also in another way, to the multiplication of a beggarly population; for as persons never value a common right like an individual one, joint-tenants readily admitted into their partnership all their sons and frequently their sons-in-law. These joint-tenancies were equally injurious to the interests of the landlord: but they afforded him an easy means of increasing the number of voters under his absolute control; since he could, without difficulty, have every male living on his estate registered as a free VOL. LXV.

holder. This electioneering influence was the bribe, which perpetuated so pernicious a mode of letting. To discourage, therefore, a practice productive of so much evil, an act was passed, providing that it should not be lawful for any person to register, or to vote at an election in respect of, any freehold under the yearly value of 201. held under a lease executed to any persons jointly, in common, or in partnership, after the 1st of July, 1823.

Ön the 25th of June, Mr. Brougham presented a petition, signed by two thousand Roman Catholics of Ireland, complaining of the unequal administration of justice in that part of the empire. On the following day, after having moved that the petition should be entered as read, he proceeded to the consideration of the complaint contained in it. The topics upon which he insisted were the composition of the magistracy

A

the selection of juries-and the conduct of Sheriffs and their deputies. On the latter subject, he reminded the House of a circumstance, which had occurred during the current session. gentleman of the name of Dillon M'Namara, an attorney of many years' standing, had been summoned upon the late inquiry into the conduct of the sheriff, and grand jury of Dublin; and, by way of discrediting his evidence, the following questions had been put to him," Did you not some years ago offer a bribe to a subsheriff of Dublin, if he would pack a jury to get off a client of yours, who was going to be tried for forgery?"-Answer, "Yes, I did.' "Did you pack the jury?"-Answer, No, I could not, because the panel was up at the castle. [F]

Did not the sub-sheriff, it would be asked, perhaps, indignantly reject the bribe? Did he not treat the offer, as every sub-sheriff in every county in England would treat it? Mr. M'Namara's answer as to that point made no mention of indignation. The questions went on-"Did not the sub-sheriff reject the bribe?" Answer. "He did not get the bribe." Mr. M'Namara would not say he rejected it. Question, "Why did he not get the bribe?"-Answer, "Because he did not do what I wanted him to do." This was not, Mr. Brougham submitted, exactly the kind of dialogue, which would have taken place between an attorney and a sub-sheriff in England, upon the subject of packing a jury. He would not say, that the man, who would pack one jury to acquit a prisoner of felony, would as readily pack another to convict a man of high treason, or of libel; but it would not be too much to suggest, that there was a point in money matters, to which, if the briber could manage to go, he might possibly find access to the ear of the sub-sheriff, even although he should wish to secure a conviction for an offence of that character. What would the House say to another practice, which he could prove by competent witnesses to exist in Dublin universally, of the sub-sheriff, whose duty it was to summon the juries, being in the habit of receiving from persons liable to serve, a fee of a guinea -a-year, to refrain from calling on them to perform that duty? So that those men, to whom it was convenient to pay a guinea a-year, did not serve on juries at all; while those, who could not afford to pay the guinea, were compelled to do double duty, and those, who wished

to serve, might, by not paying the guinea, serve more frequently than came to their turn. And this precious practice was not peculiar to Dublin; the provinces had the benefit of it as well as the capital, though the fee in country places was only half a guinea a year. Thus the superior classes, who were best calculated to act as jurymen, gave up, unless where they chose to act, the duty altogether; and it fell into the hands of persons who were less competent to the discharge of it, and more open to undue influence.

Another evil was, that the process of the law did not reach equally to all classes of persons. Where a man had money, he regularly bribed the sub-sheriff, as soon as that officer came into place, and agreed to pay him all fees upon writs out against him for debt, as if such writs were formally served, provided timely notice of the issuing of such writs were given him. To the poor man, of course, this indulgence did not extend: he was taken with all the rigour of the law, and full justice was executed upon him. Mr. Brougham said, that he could prove this at the bar; but, in fact, i had been proved within the last three days, before a committee above stairs. He would read a note to the House of the evidence upon the subject. It was an attorney of respectability who now spoke, giving his evidence on the 23rd of the present month. Question. "Do you regard the difficulty of obtaining money in Ireland after judgment, as one of the obstacles to English capital being carried to that country?” Answer. "Certainly I do; and it is one of the greatest evils we have to contend with." Question. "How

does it arise ?" Answer. "In the management of the office of Sheriff-there is no such thing as executing a writ, as you do it in England. I mean to confine this to executing it upon persons having the rank and means of gentlemen; and the city of Dublin and the county of Cork are exceptions to the rule. In other places it is the habit, upon the appointment of a sub-sheriff, that he gets notice that he will be paid his fees upon writs delivered, if he gives notice to the party that the writ is about to issue." Question. "Does this practice prevail generally?" Answer. "I understand it to prevail every where, except in Cork county and Dublin city." Now, what was the result of such a system? A man might have 20,000l. in the English funds, or in any invest ment which the law did not reach; he might be living in Ireland in the midst of luxury and magnificence; a hundred writs might be out against his person: but, so long as he could bribe the sheriff to give him notice in time, he might defy his creditor, and suffer him to starve. And the evidence, which he was quoting, did not stop at this point. Another question was, "Do you mean to say, then, that there is one practice for the higher orders in Ireland, and another for the lower?" The answer was, "Yes." Question. "Stricter in the one case than in the other?" Answer. "Certainly." Was not this what lord Redesdale had had in his eye, when he had said, "There is one law for the rich, and another for the poor-both equally ill-executed?" The evidence given by this man of practical knowledge and habits bore out, to the very letter, that which lord Redesdale had asserted.

After a severe invective against lord Norbury, and some remarks on the want of the same guarantees for judicial purity as were enjoyed in England, Mr. Brougham proceeded to impugn the three systems of the civil bills, the revenue boards, and the assistant barristers. For the civil-bill system it was scarce necessary to go beyond the records of the House. Act after act had been passed upon the subject, each admitting the faults or abuses let in by that which went before it. For the revenue boards, their whole construction carried abuse and mischief upon the face of it; the same individual adjudging forfeiture one moment, and claiming the benefit of it for his own advantage the next: and control over the liberties and properties of the king's subjects committed to the hands of men without a qualification which should fit them to exercise it. Mr. Brougham concluded by moving, that the petition should be referred to the grand committee for courts of justice.

Mr. Goulburn opposed this course. He said, that, when he looked at the charges contained in the petition and the want of facts to substantiate those charges, he could not give much credit to them. The pure administration of justice certainly ought to be the first object of the House; but if they were bound to guard against the corruption of it, they were equally bound to guard against exposing that administration to unjust suspicion. The grievance complained of had been divided into two branches-the one, that the law was unequal with regard to Protestants and Catholics; and the other, that the administration of that unequal law was corruptWas the first grievance applicable

to Ireland alone? Why a noble lord was just on the point of introducing a bill, the object of which was to confer on the English Catholics the same privileges as were possessed by Catholics in Ireland. The learned gentleman had charged the magistracy with being more or less corrupt. Mr. Goulburn stated generally his belief, that the administration of justice in Ireland was not chargeable with partiality or corruption; and declared, that he could not accede to a motion which was grounded on no statement of facts, which consisted in general assertion, and which, if encouraged by parliament now, might go to the extent of vilifying every character and the whole administration by general and declamatory abuse.

Several of the Irish members reprobated the petition in very strong language. Mr.Hutchinson thought, that the complaints of the petitioners were to be understood as referring principally to the situation in which they were placed in the city of Dublin, and not as alluding to other parts of Ireland. If the complaints were meant to be generally applicable, he and many other gentlemen could contradict them. The distribution of justice in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, was perfectly fair, and left the Catholics without cause of complaint. How could it be otherwise, when, in different counties, many of the grand jurors were Catholics? If this petition were understood to convey a complaint against the administration of justice generally-against the integrity of the bench as a bodyagainst grand and petty juries generally throughout the countryhe was prepared to negative the imputation; for, in the parts of

Ireland with which he was best acquainted, there was no ground for the accusation; nor did the Catholics there, to his knowledge, ever make or sanction it.

Mr. Daly could not assent to the proposed construction of this petition as applying only to the corporation of Dublin. On the contrary, he saw that it cast a general imputation upon the judges, the magistracy, the grand and petty juries, throughout Ireland. A charge so broad was an attack upon the Prostestants of the country, totally unfounded in every respect. Much as he contended for the justice and policy of the Catholic claims, yet he could not sacrifice to mean popularity his sense of the gross injustice of the charge conveyed in this petition. Not a single fact was stated in this petition, and every insinuation it conveyed was unfounded. He could say, as the representative of a large Catholic county, that he never sat upon a jury without finding a Catholic in the jury-box; and he had never, in a single instance, heard from any member of that religion a complaint of a mal-administration of justice; he had never heard from one of them even a whisper of corruption. He owed this statement to the character of his Protestant fellow-countrymen; and he owed also to the Catholics to deny their general participation in the statements of this petition. Not a single Catholic nobleman, member of a noble family, or baronet, had signed it. There was no signature to it of any of the great Catholic landed proprietors; nor even of any of the great Catholic merchants. Such a petition did not speak the sense of the Catholics of Ireland, nor did it contain a syllable of fact from the beginning to the end.

Mr. Hume directed part of his attention to the affairs of Ireland: but the schemes, which he proposed, were too extravagant to meet with any semblance of support. One of his plans was embodied in four resolutions, which he brought forward on the 4th of March. These resolutions were 1. That the property of the church of Ireland, at present in the possession of the bishops, the deans, and chapters of Ireland, is public property, under the control and at the disposal of the legislature, for the support of religion, and for such other purposes as parliament in its wisdom may deem beneficial to the community; due attention being always paid to the rights of every person now enjoying any part of that property: 2. That it is expedient to inquire whether the present church establishment of Ireland be not more than commensurate to the services to be performed, both as regards the number of persons employed and the incomes they receive; and, if so, whether a reduction of the same should not take place, with due regard to all existing interests: 3. That the peace and best interest of Ireland would be promoted by a commutation of tithes -those belonging to lay impropriators, as well as those in possession of the clergy-on such principles as shall be considered just and equitable towards the interests of the clergy and the present possessors, whether lay or clerical: 4. That a select committee be ap

pointed, to consider in what way the objects stated in those resolutions can be best carried into effect."

These resolutions, and the principles of spoliation with which Mr. Hume had prefaced them, were strongly opposed, particularly by Mr. Peel, and Mr. Plunkett. The latter gentleman declared, that he could not allow the resolutions of the hon. member to be offered to the consideration of the House, without expressing, in terms as strong as the English language could supply, or the rules of parliament would allow him to use, his sense of the folly and desperation of the measure which had been proposed, and without expressing the strongest reprobation of it which it was in his power to bestow. The plan of the hon. gentleman for governing the church of Ireland, if proper for that country, would be proper for England. If adopted by parliament, they would in effect declare, that the property of the hierarchy was public property, and was liable to be disposed of for purposes of religion, or for any other purposes. would prepare the way for the downfall of the hierarchy: that of the throne must follow; and this would, of course, involve the overthrow of the constitution. He was no advocate for the divine right or the sacredness of church property more than of any other kind of property. But he was an advocate for the sacredness of all property. He spoke language which came home to the breast of every Englishman, when he said, that the church of England was an integral part of the constitution, and could not be interfered with without interfering with the constitution. But the hon. gentleman said that parlia

This