acres for the use of the mayor and other civil officers.  That was either true or false.  If true, by what right did they recall the grant, and re-possess themselves of those lands?  By the articles they were bound to make quays, which were not made.  They were bound to give bog and mountain for the city common, which they never gave.  The corporation had a tract called the sheriffs mountain, but the city was robbed of it by her cruel stepmother, the Irish Society.  The society was bound to give 200 acres for a free school, and if this had been done Derry might have had a rich foundation, rivalling Westminster or the Charter School.  Mr. Hamilton, conservative as he is, with the heart of a true Irishman, indignantly asks, ’Why is this national grievance and insult continued for the profit of no one?  Their very name is an insult and a mockery—­The Governor and Assistants, London, of the New Plantation in Ulster!  What do they govern?  They don’t govern us in any sense of the word.  They merely hold our property in a dead grip, without any profit to themselves, and to our great disadvantage.’

The city is overwhelmed with debt—­debt for the new quays, debt for the new bridge, debt for the public works of the corporation, which has struggled to improve the city under the incubus of this alien power, contending with debt, want of tenure, and other difficulties, which would all have been avoided if the city had the lands which these Londoners hold in their possession and use as their own pleasure dictates, half the revenues being spent in the management.

Mr. William Hazlett, a magistrate of Derry, one of its ablest and most respected citizens, stated that from 1818 to 1847 the expenses of management were 60 per cent.  The royal commissioners set it down thus—­Total expenditure, 219,898 l.; management, 133,912 l.  The law expenses were, during the same period, 40,000 l.  ’This item of itself,’ says Mr. Hazlett, ’must be considered an intolerable grievance, for it was laid out for the oppression of the people who should have benefited by the funds so squandered in opposing the very parties who supplied the money, with which they were themselves harassed.  If a tenant applies for a lease, and the society consents to grant one, it is so hampered with obstructive clauses that his solicitor objects to his signing it, and says that from its nature it could not be made a negotiable instrument on which to raise money.  The tenant remonstrates, but the reply of the city is—­“That is our form of lease; you must comply with it or want!” If you go to law with them, they may take you into Chancery, and fight you with your own money.’