would call the atention of the committee, was the taxation of bills; and he would confine this to a particular kind of cases on the law side of the Court of Exchequer. The old practice was, that the Chief Baron signed every bill of costs, when it was taxed by the court, and for this he received a fee. This had been shifted by the present Lord Chief Baron to a more early stage of the business-nay, to the very first stage of it, the signing of the writ; and thus, whether the case came to a decision or not, he was sure of his fee. There was thus a fee charged for signing a bill of costs; but the costs were wholly imaginary, and which might never have any existence whatever. The error in this case was, that the fees were at first allowed to be charged only upon the signing of bills of costs, after they had been made up and taxed: and that the fees were now exacted and paid when no bill of cost was in existence.

He

would allude to but one case more— the case of the English currency. He did not need to inform the House that this currency was more valuable than the Irish currency, by eight onethird per cent. The House was also, no doubt, aware, that in all contracts, except those in which English qurrency was expressly mentioned, payment was made in Irish currency. The court of Exchequer in Ireland consisted of three branches-revenue, equity, and law. In the revenue branch the fees are paid in Irish currency; but there are some cases in the law branch in which they are paid in English; still when these were objected to they were struck off, and this shewed that they had not been established by long practice. Now, if the present Chief Baron had wished to establish uniformity, he should have done it without altering the value of the fees; but instead of this,

he had caused the whole to be paid in English currency, and had done this not with any view to the benefit of the suitors, but had in some cases applied the difference to his own emolument.

The conduct of the Chief Baron was defended at full length by Colonel O'Grady. The charges professed to be founded upon the 9th report of the commissioners of inquiry into courts of justice; but it was equally true that the commissioners themselves, in the most pointed and solemn manner, had declined any intention of becoming the accusers of the Chief Baron. It remained, therefore, for the honourable member for Limerick to charge, and for the House to determine. The 9th report had been laid upon the table three years ago; but previous to that event, the honourable gentleman, as it were in a prophetic spirit, had moved for its immediate production. An investigation of its contents was instantly actively set on foot, and eleven resolutions, containing eight or nine charges, were founded upon it. These were examined by two successive committees, and the charges were reduced to three or four; and one of the hardships of which the Chief Baron had to complain was, that in proportion as the charges were lessened in number, like the books of the Sibyl, they were magnified by his enemies in value and importance; and whereas formerly eight or nine charges were embodied in eleven resolutions, on the present occasion only three or four charges were extended over no less than twelve resolutions. The charges were stated to be grounded upon the evidence appended to the report; but it was not to be forgotten, that the commissioners for the furtherance of their object, had the power of selecting the witnesses, of determining upon the ques

tions to be put to them, and of inserting just so much of their testimony as supported the point that was to be established. Yet it was upon this very appendix that the Chief Baron was obliged to rest his defence; and when it was remembered, that with this only he had been able to rebut so many of the original charges, without being able to examine or cross-examine a single witness, the wonder rather was, that he had been able to accomplish so much, rather than that he had not been able wholly to do away with the few remaining accusations. He would now shortly call the attention of the House to the circumstances attending the elevation of the Chief Baron to his present dignity. In the first place, he gave up an office of nearly double the emolument, and he succeeded Lord Avonmore, who, while he devoted the most anxious attention to the public interest, paid but very little regard to his own private concerns. He had thus allowed a system to prevail, which threw all the fees of the court into the utmost confusion. The declining health of Lord Avonmore had also occasioned a great arrear of business. Under such circumstances, the different arrangements were made by the present Chief Baron, which were now wrought up into a criminal charge. The Chief Baron, in fact, on coming into office, had been compelled to put both himself and his officers in possession of their legal rights-an arrangement necessarily attended with much trouble and difficulty. Still he had, in the end, accomplished his object; and Colonel O'Grady appealed to every gentleman conversant with the Irish courts, whether the measures which he adopted had not been attended with an increase of business at the bar of the Court of Exchequer? If the Chief Baron, un

der his arrangement, had taken some fees to which he was not entitled, he had lost, on the other hand, many to which his title was undoubted; and it was only asking common justice from the committee, to ask them to look at the whole of his conduct in office, and not at isolated parts of it. The first charge now relied upon by the honourable member for Limerick, was that as to the fees taken for signatures to the bills of costs. He was free to admit, that the spirit of the Chief Baron's order had not been sufficiently attended to upon that point, and that some small addition to his receipts might have been the consequence of that error; but the House would recollect, that there was no evidence-no point of evidence-that, before the appearance of the commissioners' report, the Chief Baron had been aware of such a fact. The commissioners distinctly declared in their report-no matter how far it might be legal for the officers of justice to create new feesthat the practice of so doing within the last hundred years had existed to a very considerable extent. And let it be recollected, that this inquiry went to facts which had taken place eighteen years since; that the public had no interest in it; and that no prospective advantage could be looked for to it. Let it be remembered, that these charges had been hung up over the Chief Baron for three sessions, new proof being in process of collection from day to day in support of them. Had the charges now brought forward been brought forward in Ireland, the character of the Chief Baron would have been his sufficient protection against them. As it was, he (Colonel O'Grady) could only entreat the House not lightly to cast a slur upon the administration of justice, especially in a country where the administration of

justice needed every protection which Parliament could afford it.

The Solicitor-General would ask the House, whether it was reasonable to expect that a judge, when appointed to his seat, should set about investigating, upon the instant, the origin of every fee which he took? Of course he would leave such a matter to his officers, and take probably the same sums which had been taken by those who sat before him. The charge, however, as to the fee for swearing the sheriff, was given up, and the next charge in the commissioners' report was declared by the committee to have originated in a clerical error; so here were four charges, and four of the gravest charges, in the report, which the honourable member for Limerick so much relied upon, entirely abandoned. If a case was made out against the Chief Baron, it was at the most only such a case as admitted of an answer; and therefore again he said, he would pass no vote of censure without the Chief Baron being fully heard.

Mr Peel could not altogether vindicate the Chief Baron; still he thought there was only proof of blameable neglect. So high a judge must either be dismissed or acquitted; he could not be partially degraded, without injury to the public. There appeared no proper mode of proceeding unless by impeachment, which was surely too strong for the offence; so that there seemed no alternative but to pass over the complaint altogether.

The consideration of the question was postponed, and the session soon after closed, without the affair being brought to any issue.

Ireland, during the rest of this year, continued still to be in a disturbed and unsatisfactory state. Scarcely anything presented itself which could come under the head of

insurrection; but a continued and systematic resistance to the laws, midnight assault, plunder, fire-raising, and other similar outrages, always prevailed. On the 3d May, an assault, almost in the form of war, was made upon Glanasheen, defended only by four of the police, notwithstanding whose efforts the village was set on fire in several places. Happily, the light of the flames alarmed and guided to the spot Lieutenant Lightbody of the 71st, who happened to be about two miles distant with a small detachment. Hastening to the spot, he fired, upon which the assailants fled in haste to the mountains, leaving several of their number killed and wounded.

Fairs, modes of commercial intercourse suited to a rude age, were one of the main rocks on which the peace of Ireland was split. In repairing to these scenes of mingled business, mirth, and turbulence, the Irish usually contemplated fighting quite as much as selling, and went fully ad utrumque parati. The most serious collision of this nature took place early in June, at the fair of Maghera, in the county of Derry, where the Ribbonmen, in greatly superior numbers, made an attack on the assembled Orange lodge. The whole day was spent amid a dreadful mixture of riot and conflict; and there were supposed to have been on both sides ten or twelve killed, and sixty or seventy wounded. The Ribbonmen, being in the streets, and fired at from the windows, suffered most severely, till, on the arrival of a military detachment, they were obliged to evacuate the place.

A peculiar dread prevailed at the approach of the 12th July, the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, and when the memory of William III. was celebrated by dressing his statue, and various festive proceed

ings. The Grand Lodge of Dublin, wishing to set an example of moderation, issued a proclamation to their brethren, inviting them to abstain from the obnoxious dressing, since it was considered, though without reason, by the Catholics, as an insulting triumph. The day, therefore, was merely spent by the lodges in inoffensive festivity, and though some local disorders took place, nothing occurred involving any general disturbance.

During the remaining part of the

year, the agitation continued, though happily, towards the close, with a sensible decline of its violence. The maintenance of a strict police, and the punishments which overtook the guilty-the conciliatory system pursued towards the body of the nation, and the gradual revival of industry— placed things in so mitigated a state, as to afford reasonable hope for the operation of the conciliating and improving arrangements adopted by the legislature and the government.