§ MR. WHITESIDEsaid, he rose to call attention to the circumstances connected with the assassination of Mr. Braddel, in July last, in the town of Tipperary. Mr. Braddel was the agent of an estate belonging to a gentlem n residing in England. On the estate was a man named Hayes, who acted as a bailiff. This person was therefore well known to the people in that quarter, and no great admiration was entertained for his character. A son of Hayes was tried for murder and acquitted. On the conclusion of the trial, Mr. Braddel told him that he must either send the son away or quit the estate. In July, Mr. Braddel went to Tipperary to collect the rents. While sitting in a room of his hotel, with a bailiff named Moore, to receive the tenants, Hayes entered and pressed him to accept his rent. Braddel refused to take it. Hayes asked him a second and a third time, and then discharged a pistol at his breast. Three shots were fired in an hotel in the middle of the day, in a town of 6,000 inhabitants, and containing innumerable police, and yet the assassin escaped. Mr. Braddel named the man, but he did not believe the wound to be mortal. He locked his desk and proceeded to another house, where he believed he should be safe. A man named Moore was present during the scene; and when asked why he did not secure the murderer, he said he tried to hold him but was afraid of him. The consequence was that fifteen minutes elapsed before the alarm was given, and the pursuit was unsuccessful. Hayes was an elderly man, his person was well known; and although his crime might have raised him in the estimation of some, he was before this event very unpopular. He may have caught a railway train and have proceeded to Waterford and Liverpool. There were 1,000 policemen in that division of the county, and he had heard that an investigation had taken place into the conduct of two of their body, on the ground that the man was not arrested when it was possible. He had heard that one or two men were dismissed on this ground. He did not believe there was a body of police superior to that in Ireland, They were steady and veracious witnesses, and they generally found out a criminal. This, however, was a very remarkable case. 1693 A strange story was current that Hayes was seen at Berehaven, and that he attempted to leave in a ship hound to America. The police were, however, on his track, and on pulling to the ship, it was said that Hayes was not on board and had been refused a passage. This was at a date long subsequent to the commission of the crime. Mr. Braddel lived forty minutes after receiving his wounds, but his thoughts ran nut so much upon his murderer as upon his wife and children, in whose favour he desired to make a codicil to his will. He male a dying declaration, but owing to the cause above mentioned it was not in due form. He (Mr. Whiteside) did not impute to any one engaged in the administration of the law in Ireland a lukewarmness in bringing so detestable an assassin to justice. There was, however, no proof that he had left the country, and he certainly had not yet been arrested. The police in this case had command of the electric telegraph: they had the means of communicating with the various harbours on the coast, and they had notice of the crime fifteen minutes after its perpetration. He wished, therefore, to receive from the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland some explanation of the conduct of the police and the Government in this matter.
§ MR. BAGWELLsaid, that the remarkable part of the case was that Hayes was well-known in the country, being a notorious character and greatly disliked from having been instrumental in carrying out a great number of ejectments. Yet the man walked out of the hotel and might have sunk into the earth for anything that had since been heard of him. One policeman was dismissed for not arresting him —not that he believed he actually saw Hayes, but that he failed to apprehend a man whom he thought to be the murderer. Tipperary was very centrally situated in regard to railways, and thus the murderer had many facilities for escape. He happened, however, to be at the time at Queenstown, which was the principal port of embarkation, and he was told, that although the murder was committed at noon on Wednesday, and telegraphic communication existed, it was not until noon on Friday that the police at Queenstown had information of the assassination. He believed that a ship sailed for America on Thursday, the day after the murder, but there was no one to stop the assassin. Hayes was known to have £37 in his 1694 pocket, and he might have escaped by this vessel. All parties in Ireland had been entreating the Government, but in vain, to alter the system of police in that country. Numerous petitions had been presented to that House complaining of the whole organization of the police. Crimes were committed, but they were not found out. One of the finest body of men in the world had been converted into indifferent soldiers and had policemen. Each policeman carried a rifle, which he could not use, and a sword bayonet a yard long, which got between his legs and threw him to the ground upon his attempting to run. The men were marched out at night in large bodies, and, encumbered as they were, could be heard a mile off. He trusted the Government would seriously consider the expediency of introducing some change into the organization of the police in Ireland. So long as they allowed the present system to continue, they would be morally guilty of all the murders perpetrated in that country.