led are determined
to co-operate with the government in any manner pointed out by her
majesty's ministers which may give the slightest hope of restoring
tranquillity in this distracted country." In the meantime the opposite
party made efforts of counteraction. Mr. O'Connell was indefatigable
in stirring up his Precursor Society and other similar machines of
agitation. Festivals were even held in honour of the demagogue; and at
one of these Mr. O'Connell actually asserted that the assassin of Lord
Norbury had left on the soil where he had posted himself, not the print
of a rustic brogue, but the impress of a well-made Dublin boot. By this
and other insinuations, indeed, the arch-agitator directed the minds of
the audience to the conclusion that the earl had met his death at the
hands of one bound to him by the nearest of natural ties--his son.

The state of Ireland being such, it naturally became a subject for
discussion in parliament. On the 7th of March Mr. Shaw moved for
returns of the number of committals, convictions, inquests, rewards, and
advertisements for the discovery of offenders in Ireland, from 1835 to
1839, in order to enable the house to form a judgment with regard to
the actual amount and increase of crime in that country. Lord Morpeth
expressed his satisfaction at the course Mr. Shaw had taken; instead of
appealing to parliament for a verdict of censure upon government, he had
simply moved for papers. There could be no objection to the issue of any
information respecting Lord Normanby's administration: he might, indeed,
move for returns applicable to a period beyond the last four years, in
the confidence that the late lord-lieutenant would have nothing to fear
from the comparison. Mr. Colquhoun endeavoured to show, from a long
enumeration of cases, that crime had been gaining ground under the
system of agitation which prevailed, and which was connived at by the
present government. Colonel Conolly, and Messrs. Villiers, Stuart,
Litton, and Emerson Tennent, all urged the same serious charge against
the Irish administration which had been made by preceding speakers, Mr.
O'Connell, after delivering a violent speech, in which he was constantly
interrupted, and in which he charged several members with coming to
parliament for the sole purpose of villifying their native land, moved
that after the word "Ireland" there be added the words, "also similar
returns for England, Wales, and Scotland." The last speaker on