an 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 portion of
the tenantry were Roman Catholics, and they had long been complaining
that they were forced to pay for the support of the Protestant clergyman
of their parish, whose ministrations they could not attend, as well as
for the maintenance of their own priest, whose livelihood depended on
their contributions. According to strict political economy, there could
be no doubt that the burden of the tithe fell, not on the tenant, but on
the landlord, in the calculation of whose rent the amount of tithe to
which each holding was liable was always taken into consideration; and
that being the true doctrine, it was equally plain that in reality the
Protestant clergy were paid, not by Roman Catholics, but by Protestants,
since it was no