§ Mr. Shawpresented a Petition to which he begged to call the especial attention of the House. The petition he said was from the freeholders of the county of Meath, and was most numerously and respectably signed. The character and station of the petitioners were in themselves enough to entitle them to the serious attention of the House, but the facts which they detailed, and the system of outrage which they complained of, were still more worthy of solemn consideration. The petition complained of an evil that was unhappily too often experienced in Ireland—the intimidation, the coercion, and the improper interference of the Catholic Priests at elections—a system that, if tolerated by the Government of the country, whose duty it should be, as its interests palpably was, to arrest the progress of clandestine revolution which was creeping on under the mantle of the Priesthood—would subvert all freedom of election, without which Parliament itself was a nullity—would untwist all ties of social union, and scatter throughout the country the seeds of animosity, dissension, and sedition. If these turbulent Ecclesiastics were suffered thus to awaken prejudices which had long slept, and to infuse new and pernicious animosities into the susceptible minds of the peasantry, there could be no security or 183 hope that they would cling to the obligations that they before so ardently and faithfully cherished. There was no social or natural tie that these Priests, aided and abetted by the mob leaders, did not dissever. Brother was set against brother, father against son, neighbour against neighbour, and friend against friend. In the county of Meath, and unhappily in other parts of Ireland, this interference of the Popish Priests was pushed to its full height. The Priests not alone harangued their ignorant and credulous auditory from the altar, but harangued them in the open streets; nay more, mixed with them in their private walks, and laboured to sway the electors. Their chief aim appeared to be, as their boast indeed was, to detach the tenants from their landlords, and crush all the moral influence, save their own, which was brought to bear on the people. In their chapels they inculcated these principles of insubordination against the authority of the landlords. They went to the market-places and the cross-roads, and stopped the voters, to make them hear the anathemas that they fulminated against the infidel recusant that would dare gainsay the direction of the Priests, as the agents—the consecrated agents—of the Church, denouncing those who would vote for the Saxon Conservatives. The grand aim of all these schemes was to rouse the spirit of the tenantry in hostility against the landlords—to dissever all obligations between them. This hatred of the peasantry against the gentry was inculcated by the Priests under the penalties of temporal and eternal punishment, conflagration, houghing, or death; or, if that had not sufficient effect, damnation in the next life. The Priests were attended by supernumerary satellites well known in Ireland as street agents, fellows who went about to drag the electors, amidst the cheers and jeers of the mob, to the poll. There were two Priests pre-eminently active at the late election in Meath, whose conduct undoubtedly deserved serious investigation—Father Chute and Father Bourke. These worthy ministers of peace were not content with agitating and disturbing the districts they had the spiritual guidance of, but they went about exciting the flame of confusion throughout the whole country. From the altar and from public rostra they addressed the people, and whetted them to htostility against the gentry of the country. He would quote two samples of the rhetoric, the poisonous and seditious rhetoric, used by these worthies. Father 184 Chute said, in alluding to a distinguished and amiable country gentleman, a member of the Grand Jury of the county, an improving landlord, "I know I shall outlive him; and when he his dead, you and I, my boys, will go and spit on his fœtid carcass." But this was not all Father Bourke, not to be outdone by Father Chute, told his auditory during the election that "they should get a coffin, throw a pall over it, and get four stout fellows under it, one at each corner, representing four leading gentlemen of the county, and, after taking the coffin in funeral procession through the town, to throw it into the river, as a symbol of the fate that should await the rural tyrants." It was not merely these denunciatory menaces that were objectionable. Gangs of men, headed by the Priests, went about at night through the county, dragging voters from their homes, and compelling them to vote for the Radical candidates. The hon. Member moved that the petitition be referred to the Intimidation Committee.
§ Petition referred to the Committee.