d as the acknowledged
sovereign of the people. Their hopes were high; and the deference for
royalty, so eminently characteristic of the Celt, had at last found an
opportunity of expressing itself. All that loyalty could do was done;
all that the warmest heart could say was said. The King appeared
impressed by demonstrations so entirely new to him; he wore a large
bunch of shamrocks constantly during his brief stay; but before the
shamrocks were faded, Irish wants and Irish loyalty were alike
forgotten.

In the year 1824 the subject of Irish disturbances was carefully
inquired into by Select Committees of both Houses of Parliament. Some
extracts from their reports will give the best and most correct idea of
the state of the country from the Union to the year 1834, when another
investigation was made. In 1807 the county Limerick was alarmingly
disturbed. In 1812 the counties of Tipperary, Waterford, Kilkenny,
Limerick, Westmeath, Roscommon, and the King's county, were the theatre
of the same sanguinary tumults. Limerick and Tipperary remained under
the Insurrection Act until 1818. In 1820 there were serious disturbances
in Galway, and in 1821, in Limerick.

These disturbances are thus accounted for Maxwell Blacker, Esq.,
Barrister, who was appointed to administer the Insurrection Act, in
1822, in the counties of Cork and Tipperary: "The immediate cause of the
disturbance I consider to be the great increase of population, and the
fall in the price of produce after the war; the consequence of which
was, that it was impossible to pay the rent or the tithes that had been
paid when the country was prosperous." Sir Matthew Barrington, Crown
Solicitor of the Munster Circuit for seventeen years, was asked: "Do you
attribute the inflammable state of the population to the state of misery
in which they generally are?" "I do, to a great extent; I seldom knew
any instance when there was sufficient employment for the people that
they were inclined to be disturbed; if they had plenty of work and
employment, they are generally peaceable." John Leslie Foster, Esq.,
M.P., in his examination, states: "I think the proximate cause [of the
disturbances] is the extreme physical misery of the peasantry, coupled
with their liability to be called upon for the payment of different
charges, which it is often perfectly impossible for them to meet."
Matthew Singleton, Esq., Chief Magistrate of Police in the Queen's
county, said, on his examination: