=Source.=--_The Political Life of Sir Robert Peel_, by Thomas
Doubleday. London, 1856. Vol. I. pp. 169-172.
In the course of a debate on the army estimates in February, 1816,
the Irish Secretary entered into the following extraordinary
details on the employment of the soldiery in Ireland in the
suppression of illicit distillation, as well as of insurrectionary
movements in the wilder districts of Ireland:
"It must not be forgotten (said Mr. Peel) that the employment
of a military force in Ireland, under existing circumstances,
is calculated to save the government of that country from the
necessity of recurring to those measures of civil rigour which
parliament had sanctioned with its approbation. In some districts,
where the military was not employed, they had been compelled to
suspend trial by jury, under the operation of the Insurrection Act;
but every one would allow that it was better to deter from the
commission of crime than to transport for it. If they could succeed
in deterring these, there was not the necessity to proclaim certain
districts. What he asserted was no visionary speculation. Events,
such as he now described, were passing at that moment. The Act to
which he alluded had been applied to several baronies in Tipperary,
upon the unanimous application of forty of the magistrates. He
believed he was right in saying the unanimous application. In some
cases, indeed, it had been refused; but he knew as a fact, that
not less than seventy-six magistrates of that county, united for
the paramount object of maintaining the public peace, had applied
to government for the application of that bill. A similar course
had been pursued in the county of Westmeath. It was proposed
in some counties to remove the soldiers; but the answer was by
the magistrates, 'If you remove the troops you must give us the
Insurrection Act, as it will be impossible to do without it.' Even
on constitutional grounds, therefore, and as calculated to prevent
a recurrence to these really severe measures, he would venture to
appeal to the House for its approbation of the alternative of
employing the military to aid the civil power. With respect to
its employment in another way, by doing the duty of custom-house
officers, he wished to observe that this system had prevailed
in Ireland at least as far back as in 1799. At that period, a
regulation for the employment of a military force in that service
was adopted. It was stated to be imperatively necessary for the
suppression of illicit distillation; and it was further ordered,
that any officer hesitating to employ his men on that service
should be brought to a court-martial for disobedience of orders.
He stated that, to prove the propriety of a remark made at the
commencement of his address, that even if it should be thought that
the introduction of a military force was a vicious practice, it
was at all events unavoidable without the accomplishment of other
essential reforms.
"He should now state the extent to which the military arm had been
so employed, and in order also to show that it had not been the
policy of one single government merely, he should mention that, in
1806, under the government of the honourable gentlemen opposite,
448 military parties were employed in detecting and frustrating the
practice of illicit distillation; in 1807 there were 598 military
parties; in 1808 there were 431; in later periods still more; and
in the half-year ending the 31st December, 1815, there were 1889.
No one, he presumed, would deny that the morals and habits of the
lower classes were not only corrupted by the dreadful extent to
which that illicit distillation was carried, but that the laws
of the country were violated, and that the revenue was greatly
diminished by it. In order that the House might be enabled to judge
of the character of those who carried on those practices, as well
as of the danger attending their detection or apprehension, he
would mention one circumstance that came within his own knowledge.
In a district in the north-west of Ireland well known to the
gentlemen of that country as one where illicit distillation is
carried on to an enormous excess, frequent seizures were made by
parties of twenty to forty men, who generally had to risk an actual
engagement with the offenders. In one instance he recollected the
soldiers were fired at, and no less than two hundred rounds of
musketry were discharged in their own defence. They succeeded in
their seizures, however, but on their return were again attacked,
their seizures taken from them, and they themselves obliged to seek
shelter in a house on the road, where they maintained a contest
with the assailants till they were relieved by two hundred men who
were marched to their assistance. Such occurrences sufficiently
showed the necessity of employing a military force, but he would
again guard against its being supposed that he considered these
temporary remedies as at all calculated to afford any permanent
relief. He was as fully convinced of their inadequacy in that
respect as any honourable member could be; but whilst that
disposition to turbulence existed, would it be contended that the
crimes connected with it ought to go unpunished? Would it be said
that desperate bands that roamed about the country at night ought
to remain unmolested?
"Perhaps it would be said that the course of policy hitherto
pursued in Ireland was a bad one. Let that be granted, then, for
the sake of argument; still, was it possible to remove the evils of
that bad and imperfect policy in an hour--or by the 25th of April?
Would it be possible, even to gentlemen opposite, to change on a
sudden the whole habits and manners of so large a class of the
community, and to introduce, as by magic, a radical and effectual
reform? It was utterly impossible. He was perfectly satisfied of
the inefficiency of these temporary remedies, but meanwhile the
hand of the robber must be arrested, or else the whole frame of
civilized society must be now dissolved, and a residence in Ireland
be rendered absolutely impracticable. He was of opinion that good
might be done in that country by a reformation of the police, and
he should prefer an army of police if he might so call it, to a
military army. He deeply regretted the very imperfect character
of the police in Ireland. Since he had the honour of filling
the station he occupied, he had turned much of his attention
to the subject of police, and proposed alterations which the
House had sanctioned. Real, substantial, and permanent reform,
however, amongst the lower classes, could be looked for only from
the general diffusion of knowledge, and from enlightening their
minds. From such sources of reform he anticipated the grandest
and the noblest results. (Hear, hear, hear.) He could state it as
a fact within his own knowledge, that the greatest eagerness for
instruction prevailed amongst the lower classes. It was the duty
of every one, even in these times of economy, not to obstruct the
progress or the limits of education, which ought to be as widely as
possible diffused. It would be infinitely better for Ireland and
for this country to have a well instructed and enlightened Catholic
population than an ignorant and a bigoted one!"
Hansard's _Debates_, Vol. XXXII. pp. 926, 1816.