anomaly,” or, as it might rather have been called, a novelty in the constitution, does not seem an insuperable objection, unless it were also inconsistent or at variance with the fundamental principles of the constitution, and that can hardly be alleged in this instance.  It is true that local management, whether its range were wide or narrow, whether covering the business of a county or limited to a single parish, had been the general rule; but, like every other arrangement for the conduct of affairs of any kind, that local management was inherently subject to the supreme authority and interference of Parliament.  Nor, as the maintenance of this Parliamentary authority, as the supreme referee in the last resource, was provided for by the subordination of the commissioners for the approval of their regulations to the Secretary of State, does it seem that the arrangement now proposed and adopted can be said to have been inconsistent with constitutional principle.  And the necessity for some change of that nature was clearly made out by the abuses which, undeniably, had been suffered to grow up under the old system.

If the habitual condition of the Irish peasant were to be taken into account, it would be correct to say that there was less distress at this time in England than in Ireland; but there was still greater discontent, and infinitely more of dangerous disturbance.  Catholic Emancipation had stimulated the agitators, not pacified them; they regarded it as a triumph over the English government; and, being so, as at once a reason for demanding, and a means of extorting, farther concessions.  But this notion of theirs, when inculcated on the peasantry, bore terrible fruit, in such an increase of crime as had probably never been known in any country in the world.  In the provinces of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught murders, deeds of arson, and rapine were of far more than daily occurrence.[232] Lord Althorp asserted in the House of Commons that more lives had been sacrificed in Ireland by murder in the preceding year than in one of Wellington’s victories.  And what was, if possible, a still worse symptom of the disposition of the common people, was exhibited in the impossibility of bringing the criminals, even when well known, to justice.  Jurors held back from the assizes, witnesses who had seen murders committed refused to give evidence.  The Roman Catholic prelates, and the higher class of the Roman Catholic clergy—­most of whom, greatly to their credit, exerted themselves to check this fearful progress of wickedness—­found their denunciations unheeded; while O’Connell, in his place in the House of Commons, used language which to an ignorant and ferocious peasantry looked almost like a justification of it, affirming it to be caused wholly by the “unjust and ruinous policy of the government” in refusing to abolish tithes.  It was not the first time that the existence of tithe had been alleged as an Irish grievance.  In the three southern provinces by far the greater