could find no purchasers;
and the protestant clergy, who had acted on the whole with great
forbearance, were reduced to extremities of privations. Five of the
police were shot dead on one occasion; on another, twelve who were
escorting a tithe-proctor were massacred in cold blood. A large number
of rioters were killed in encounters with the police, which sometimes
assumed the form of pitched battles and closely resembled civil war.
Special commissions were sent down into certain districts, and a few
executions took place, but in most cases Irish juries proved as
regardless of their oaths as they ever have on trials of prisoners for
popular crimes. O'Connell, and even Sheil, tacitly countenanced these
lawless proceedings, and openly palliated them in the house of commons.

The whig government, engaged in a life-and-death contest with the
English borough-mongers, hesitated to crush the Irish insurgents by
military force, or to initiate a sweeping reform of the Irish Church.
Early in 1832, however, committees of both houses reported in favour of
giving the clergy temporary relief out of public funds, and of
ultimately commuting tithes into a charge upon the land. A preliminary
bill for the former purpose was promptly carried by Stanley, and made
the government responsible for recovering the arrears. The committee,
pursuing their inquiries, produced fuller reports, and again recommended
a complete extinction of tithes in Ireland. But the method proposed and
embodied in three bills introduced by Stanley in the same year, was too
complicated to serve as a permanent settlement, and was denounced as
illusory by the Irish members. The first bill was, in fact, a compulsory
extension of acts already passed in 1822 and 1823, the former of which
had permitted the tithe-owner to lease the tithe to the landlord, while
the latter permitted the tithe-owner and tithe-payers of each parish to
arrange a composition. Unfortunately, the act of 1823 had provided that
the payment in commutation of tithe should be distributed over
grass-lands hitherto tithe-free in Ireland as well as over land hitherto
liable to tithe. The act was in consequence unpopular with a section of
farmers, while at the same time the bishops resented the commutation, as
likely to diminish the value of beneficies. But in spite of this
opposition the act of 1823 had been widely adopted. Stanley's bill to
render such commutations compulsory passed, but his other two bills,