"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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