§ Viscount Morpethrose to move for leave to bring in a Bill for the better prevention, and for the speedier punishment of, offences endangering the public peace in Ireland. He said, that the history of the Coercion Bill, of the causes from which it arose, and of the provisions which it contained, were too fresh in the recollection of the House, and of a nature too painful to be dwelt upon on the present occasion. Of course, any law of that character could only be justified by an assumed necessity; and, if his Majesty's Government believed that the ingredients of that necessity had either partially disappeared, or been considerably modified, it would naturally follow that, in their opinion, the law itself—if the state of affairs did not permit them entirely to dispense with it—ought, at least, to be freed of every harsh feature which could be spared, and to be limited to the still remaining exigency. It was by such a feeling that his Majesty's Government had been actuated in bringing forward the measure which he was about to submit to the notice of the House. They were glad to think that the state of Ireland was so far improved, and was so far improving as to relieve them from the 1327 necessity of proposing a continuance of the Act, commonly called the Coercion Act, while at the same time they could not flatter themselves that it was yet such as to give cause for dispensing with the propriety of retaining some safeguard beyond the ordinary reach of the law and the constitution, for the sole object of affording protection to the peaceable, unoffending, and helpless part of the community. With respect to the present state of Ireland, as regarded the commission of outrage and the maintenance of the public peace, he certainly regretted to find, on comparing the returns which were submitted of the number of outrages, that there had not been a decrease—indeed he was sorry to be obliged to admit, that there had been some increase in the total number of outrages committed during the last year beyond the total number of those committed during the year preceding—that is to say, an increase of those reported in 1834 over those reported in 1833; and in the last three months that had elapsed in the present year over the corresponding period of the last year. But he was most happy to state, as a strong counteracting circumstance, that those offences which might be classed as partaking of a political or insurrectionary nature, had materially decreased; and also, that there had been a decrease in the number of all offences of a more serious and violent character. Indeed, a great portion of the increase might be referred to the head of common assaults—to riots committed at fairs, under the influence, he had no doubt, of a too general use of whiskey; but, at the same time he was compelled to state, that they had been frequently attended with circumstances of so violent and exaggerated a nature as to evince, on the part of those who committed them, a most lamentable recklessness as to the value of human blood. He thought that there were also reasons to believe that a large amount of the prædial and agrarian disturbances, which were to be still traced in some parts of Ireland, found its exciting cause, though certainly not its justification, in the severe state of distress and destitution which prevailed in many of those districts, and in the desperate struggle for maintaining and regaining the possession of land which had uniformly taken place there; while at the same time it would be conceded, that that distress and the contention could only be aggravated if the Government failed to take all the means of preventing its continuance which they thought to be within 1328 their power. He felt, However, that he should be giving a juster idea of the present state of Ireland if, instead of confining himself to merely mentioning whether there had been an increase or decrease in the total number of outrages committed—a species of information which, from the variety of circumstances under which their commission took place, must necessarily lead to vague and fallacious calculations—he were to read to the House, in the first place some observations of the Inspectors-general of Police, which were appended to their Monthly Reports for May and June, 1835, and which contained the result of their experience in a very short summary. The noble Lord proceeded to read the following extracts from the Reports of the Inspectors-general of the several provinces of Ireland:—