fect; for while it recognises the fact, that the
action of the ordinary laws is inadequate to cope with the difficulties
and the dangers of the emergency, it stops far short of the limits which
would ensure its utility. It suspends the constitution, and incurs the
odium which must ever attach to the violation of popular rights, without
affording much hope of its being able to attain those results which
alone can render such a proceeding justifiable. The perpetrator of crime
is by it to be subjected to pains and penalties; while he who instigates
him to the commission of it, is to be left in the full enjoyment of the
liberty of action: the peasant is to be confined to his dwelling at
night, but the demagogue may hold his monster meetings by day, when the
law enacted "for the preservation of life and property" will be derided
and denounced, and his misguided followers taught how to violate its
provisions with safety, and to defeat its objects with success. But the
principal defect of the bill is, that it does not enact a law, under
which immediate and summary justice could be administered and the very
terror of which would go far to check the commission of crime, by
depriving the guilty of all hope of escape from the partisanship or the
fear of their judges.

In their speeches on Lord St Germains' bill, both the Home Secretary and
Mr O'Connell congratulated themselves that there was nothing of a
sectarian or political character in the Irish outrages, that the lives
and properties of Roman Catholics and Repealers were as much sought
after, as were those of persons who differed from them in doctrines and
opinions; yet this we consider the very worst feature in the case, for
it exhibits a loosening of those ties which bind society together, and
shows evidently enough that spoliation, and not redress, is the object
of the people in the disturbed districts. Mr Sidney Herbert tells us,
"men were there under the dominion of a power more irresponsible than
any of the powers conferred by this bill--a power exercised by persons
unseen, and for causes unknown, and exercised, too, in a manner not to
be foreseen, which no conduct, no character however excellent, no
virtue, no station, could avert." And it is while society is in such a
state, that persons are to be found ranting about the violation of the
constitution, and refusing to protect the lives of the virtuous and the
innocent, lest in their endeavours to do so they should intre