in the class of offences that
acknowledges to some extent the power and influence of the law, namely,
in threatening letters and notices, while the amount of open and actual
crime is greater than it was in the former period, showing that there is
an increased confidence in impunity, and that menace has given place to
the deed. Within not more than ten days from the time that I am now
speaking, not less than four examples of midnight invasion of houses in
this county have occurred, accompanied with all the usual incidents of
disguises and arms, and the firing of shots, and violence threatened or
committed; in one instance the outrage having been committed upon the
residence of a magistrate of this county, a man living with his family
in his home, in the supposed delusive security of domestic life, of law,
and respect for social station; and in another instance committed upon a
humble man, and encountered, I am glad to say, in that instance, with a
brave resistance, giving an example of courage which, if it were widely
imitated, many of the evils that this country suffers from would no
longer exist.

'I need not dwell upon the most aggravated instance of all which this
calendar of crime presents--one that is quite recent, and within the
memory of you all--the murder of Cornelius Murphy, a humble man, but one
enjoying apparently the confidence and respect of all his neighbours,
who had done no harm to any person, who was not conscious of any
offence, whose house was invaded at a still early hour of the evening,
and before the daylight had departed, by a band of men that is shown to
have traversed a considerable distance of country, giving opportunities
of recognition to many, and with hardly the pretext of an offence on his
part, and in reality with the object of private plunder or private
hostility--one of those motives that always take advantage of a state of
disturbance in order to gratify private ends--slain in his own house in
the presence of his own family. Certain persons, it would appear, have
been arrested on a charge of complicity with this crime, and it may be
that this cruel and wicked crime may be the means of discovering other
crimes, and of leading in the end to the detection, if not to the
conviction, of persons who have been connected in them, and those who
rest in the supposed confidence of impunity may find the spell broken,
may find the light of information to reach them, and may find in the end
that th