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.
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