the roads. They apprehend, as their faithful representative, Mr. Martin, the Union-maker, is absent on his parEamentary duties; that a proper investigation cannot take place, as no man is so well qualified to satisfy the Judges on the business, except the Rev. Mr. Russell is obliged to be proxy for his friend on the important occasion. The Judges, it is expected, will cause an inquiry, and order a remedy for the dangerous damp of the prison, and to chastise Fitzsimons the gaoler, for the unlawful exclusion of visitors to theit friends, without ast order from a Magistrate.

BANKING AND PAMINE IN
GALWAY.

These two creatures of eternal war flourish to great extent in this wretch ed town. The facility by which Bankers can obtain an influence in the markets, by their ready paper; and the underhand dealings they have in mer. cantile houses, have so raised the price of the necessaries of life, that the poor, no longer able to purchase, have left the monopolizers without any domes tic competitors. The consequences are, the warehouses are filled with every species of food, for the purposes of exportation; and every day the meagre and naked, though industrious poor, witness the produce of the country, and what God and nature intended for their use, shipped away for the comfort and convenience of strangers, To such a melancholy extremity has the export of provisions been carried, that it now extends to eggs; and at this hour, Appleyard of Limerick, has regrators and agents buying up all that can be obtained, and numbers of people employed buttering the eggs to prepare them for exportation. Such are among the numberless evils which the authors of the union, the advocates for war, and the banking system have occasioned, and now seriously threaten the extinction of the lower ranks. These awful calamities which starve and threaten to anni

hilate the best order of men in any state-the industrious, are not the effects of political parties, they are com mitted by all parties among the rich. Martins have given us an union to eacrease the political influence of strangers over our trade, our people, and our industry, and Ffrench's make bank paper to govern our markets; the destruction of our independence has flung us into the hands of foreigners, and the banking system make us strangers to the produce of our fields; between the two operating causes we must dieappear, and the soldier, the banker, and the herdsman, will be the only human inhabitants in the country.

BROGUES.

Mr. Martin's numerous tenants whe inhabit his vast estates in Cunnemara, are in great spirits at the hopes of a new election for a representative in the English parliament. All the poor crea tures expect by the event is, that the heads of each family will get a pair of new brogues, a bounty their benevolent landlord allows every seven-years, to equip them to make a becoming ap pearance at the hustings; some stories go so far as to say, that a shirt will be added in with the brogues to every freeholder. We hope the innovation of linen will not be of any bad consequences, as some danger might be apprehended to the state, if this part of the starved Irishry should take a liking to clothes, from the taste an incautious bounty might unhappily introduce.

GALWAY PHILOSOPHY. The well-reared and tasteful foxhunting gentry in the county have been enticed into a study of the higher branches of science, by a wonderful philosophical emigrant from Ulster, settled in Galway. This unparallelled genius, who in himself unites the mathematical comprehension of a Newton, the chemical ingenuity of a Kirwan, the refined taste of a Winkleman, and who really constitutes a national institute in

his

his proper person, is named John Phil lips, and in his own elegant manner of description, calls himself in an advertisement, two and twenty feet long, "An Engineer, Surveyor, and Improver," and offers his services to su perintend every species of improvement in draining lands, irrigating, building docks, fortifications, removing dung hills, elevating sentry boxes, and other useful and national objects; his charges are so moderate as ten guineas a week. To give a just idea of his astonishing merits, we extract the following beautiful and explicit passage from his advertisement which is highly applauded by the landed gentlemen in Galway. "He humbly hopes, will be deemed very moderate indeed, when compared to the fixed rates of 100 guineas per month! or 5 gumeas per day? which is usually paid by gentlemen in the im. proving of lands, to the most illiterate English or Scotchman; who from the low station of common barrowmen or clumsy day labourers at public works, start (by intuition) into fine artists, or famous engineers, although scarcely able to scrawl their names!! and for want of the aid of science and genius, are as unqualified for removing local obstructions in fortification, hydraulics, or planning improvements as a barbering bleeder is for analizing the physical causes and effects of the perristaltic motions of the blood in animated bodies." From this sample our readers may judge of the sublime ideas of the fox-hunters who patronize this secondhand high Germar. doctor.

IRISH TREASON AGAINST MR.

PERCEVAL.

A very dangerous and alarming spirit of treason and impiety was happily detected in the month of May, in the town of Ross, by the vigilance of two gentlemen, a Mr. Shanahan, clerk to the mail coach, and Mr. Murray, an eminent huxterman, which they communicated in due time to Mr. O'Brien, deputy Sovereign of Ross, to prevent FOR JULY, 1812, VOL. V:

the contagion spreading. Mr. O'Brien, as all Magistrates would do on cases of emergency, in which the public safety is deeply involved, summoned all the neighbouring Magistrates to a general council, and laid before them minutes of the informations and depositions of the two statesmen, by which it appears that Mr. Mulgrew, on the arrival of the news in Ross that Mr. Perceval was shot, was heard to express the following words," that he, Mr. Mulgrew, was glad such a rascal as Mr. Perceval was shot; that Mr. Perceval was a Methodistical intolerant bigot. The assembly were sensibly affected at the impiety and treason of the accused, and for some minutes were not able to utter a word. However, after taking a little refreshment, they came to their speeches, and una voce, declared their deliberations and advice should be submitted to the Government, before any measures were adopted to protect the town, with the exception of a large blanket perpendicularly suspended on the bridge, to prevent the treason extending to the county of Waterford. The dispatches were forwarded to the Castle, under an escort of two yeomen, and a boy with a trumpet in his hand, but we have not heard when our paper was going to press, that any an. swer had yet arrived to the anxious Magistrates.

contrary to law, would be as unnecessary as it would be criminal. We are not complaining of the power of the law, nor of its passiveness, because we know it does not, in our days, sanction murder; but we are obliged to insist, that the exclusion of Catholics from the Corporations and the Magistracy, contribute to the perversion of the trial by Jury. A very small part of the Irish Community is of the privileged faith, and that party is the only one that furnishes Juries; and so difficult is it to complete a pannel, on many occasions, that we have known it to be a fact, frequently in our recollection, that men who could not read were im pannelled, while the most enlightened and educated Catholic was declared unfit, or, as many of our advocates in Parliament have expressed it, not qualified, from our want of intimacy with the character of a free Government. The trial of a man of the name of Silk, on Wednesday, the 24th of June, will be a lasting evidence of our ill temper towards murder, and a support of the observations we have been making on the carelessness of one part of a certain body for our complaints, as another part of it express industry for our extinction.

It appeared, on the evidence of three persons, that Silk, the prisoner, had entered a public tap-room, in South Anne-street, on the 22d of March last, where the deceased person of the name of McCormick, was sitting, at the fire, drinking porter; that Silk, in an arrogant manner, desired the deceased to rise up from his seat, that the prisoner might sit in his place. The deceased, who had an infant child between his legs, not differing very much from the manner any human being would feel at such language, refused to rise, say ing "He would not be bullied as the young lad was the other day;" upon which the prisoner very deliberately drew out a pistol, and, after much examination of its condition, went over to a table, and, from a hom, primed

the pan, let down the hammer, raised the cock, and presented the weapon of death to the poor man, who remained sitting, and fired the contents into his body, which killed him on the spot. The accuracy of this statement was not doubted by the Court or Jury, nor was there one word of evidence produced for the prisoner to invalidate it. The only doubt attempted to be set up against the evidences for the prosecution who were present at the transaction, were the testimonies of Admiral Packenham, Mr. Bourne, proprietor of the mail coach, in whose service the prisoner was at the time of the murder, and a Mr. Whitby, a Magistrate of the county of Meath, who, at the time the murder was committed, were at least forty miles distant from it! And yet their evidence had such an effect on the consciences of the Jurors, that they acquitted Silk, and by their decision told the evidences, who saw the shooting, that they were not believed on their oaths.

We are aware of the servibility that is familiar to ignorant minds, and we observe every day what sacrifices such people will make to fawn on power, and what little regard the loss of a Papist is treated with, when men of a certain description are called on to exercise a monopoly of justice as they have of power. Admiral Packenham, Mr. Bourne, and Mr. Whitby, spoke in a very feeling manner of the humane attention the prisoner invariably showed while in the services of those gentlemen, towards their horses and dogs, that they never knew him, in any instance, to behave unbecoming an excellent, sober, and attentive groom. These testimonies, by such authorities, so honourable to the horsemanity of the prisoner, made a most serious and deep impression on the Jury; and, after due deliberation, they were pleased to acquit the prisoner of wilful murder, on the excellence of his stable reputa tion.

We

We have always understood that character had no credit in a Court, but in cases where any doubt was entertained of the guilt of the accused. The case of Silk could not, in any manner, come under this construction, as his guilt and intention to murder, without a provocation, were proved without any contradiction.

We are not afraid to assert, that a monopoly of power, that extends to every part of our civil and political institutions, and that is attended with so much ignorance and servility, with such apathy for the sufferings of the most numerous and brave part of the Irish nation, must, if persisted in, be fatal to the integrity of the empire. Allegiance, so much called for, cannot exist contrary to the value which a man is to expect in the return; if his life or property are sported with, he will not, he cannot, consider himself bound to the spoiler or the murderer; if he had any allegiance, he will transfer it to those who will promise him security, in the exasperation of his feelings, for a less valuable equivalent; he may ask nothing higher or more durable than revenge; the brave man is transformed into a monster, and society is to begin again on the ruins of order, and from the tumults of civil strife.

The acquittal of Silk, and the frequent murders committed daily by the Orangemen, must have a very serious effect upon the unhappy Catholics, when they observe, that a great man's interference, and an ignorant Jury, will dare to excuse a most wanton, unprovoked, and premeditated murder, committed in the day-light, in the centre of this populous city.

The Catholics heretofore were in the habit of flying from the muskets of their murderers, for the security which the seat of government hereto fore afforded; but the late murder of the boy Byrne in Aungier-street, that of M'Cormick in South Anne-street, and latterly of the boy Murphy in Mass-lane, have so hurt the reputation

of Dublin, as a place of refuge, that they are almost tempted to resign them. selves to the mercy of their murdering neighbours in the several districts, and not be at the expense of travelling to Dublin, where shooting would be aggravated by the high charges incurred by the journey.

We will dismiss this chapter on shooting by giving a list of the Jury: we are not acquainted with their occupations in life, because, though we know the character and rank of every decent man in the city, who is in the habit of being on Juries, we could not discover any more of those men, than that there was not one Catholic among them.

STOMACH INSURRECTIONS. The newspapers continue to report some trifling acts some trifling acts of disturbance amongst the starving manufacturers in various parts of England; but from the silence of the legislature, and the inertness of the executive, it appears to us, nothing of a serious nature is to be apprehended; as we said before when we heard of the uneasiness of the magnanimous, well read, preaching Britons, they are not capable of any other op position than that of a stomach rebellion, what an Irishman calls a ruction.

The difference of character in the two nations, may be discovered even in their respective oppositions to the law; an Irishman is led into acts of insubordination by reflection, by a manly intelligence, the result of inquiry, reading and comparisons; the Englishman, without any mental acquirements, higher than what the making of nails or mouse-traps require, cannot be moved into any armed exertion, but by the reasoning of his belly; his cupboard

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