were levying contributions on all in whose dispositions they had ascertained charity and credulity to be united. Forty-one of them were arrested and brought before me, and I committed them for trial on charges of "conspiring to defraud, obtaining money under false pretences, and forgery at common law." They were, however, consigned to Newgate, exactly at the time when the State prosecutions against O'Connell had been commenced; and it was the received opinion in police quarters that they owed their escape--for they were not prosecuted--to a feeling on the part of the attorney-general of that period, that all his attention was demanded in bringing down the eagle, and that none of his energies could be spared to scatter a flock of kites. But they were not relinquished by the detectives, and were brought in detail under the castigation of the law until the confederacy was broken up. Their begging letters and petitions were addressed to all whom they considered likely to yield the slightest attention to their requests. These productions were termed in their slang "_Slums_." One impostor represented that she was a clergyman's widow, with four female children, the eldest only eleven years of age; that her pious, exemplary, and most affectionate partner had died of malignant fever, contracted whilst whispering the words of Christian consolation to the departing sinner, and imparting the joyful assurance, that the life flickering away, the socket glimmer of a mere earthly light, would be rekindled in a lamp of everlasting duration and unvarying brilliancy. That resigned to her suffering, and adoring the hand from which she had experienced chastening, she was not forbidden to hope that the blessed spirit of charity would be manifested in her relief, and in shielding her helpless, artless babes from the privations of distress in their infancy, and from the still more fearful danger of being, in advanced youth, exposed to the snares of sin and its depraving consequences. A contribution, however small, addressed to Mrs. ----, at No. -- Bridgefoot Street, Dublin, would, it was respectfully hoped, be accorded by Lord ----, or Mr. or Mrs. ----, whose well-known, though unostentatious benevolence, must plead the poor widow's apology for such an intrusion. Another was an unfortunate man, who for many years had earned a respectable livelihood as a commercial agent, and supported a numerous and interesting family by his industry and intelligence, but having unfortunately been in the County of Tipperary, when a contested election was in progress, he unguardedly expressed a wish for the success of the Conservative candidate, and although not a voter, he was set upon by a horde of savage ruffians, and beaten so as to produce paralysis of his lower extremities, and that now nothing remained for him but to entreat the humane consideration of one who could not, if the public testimony of his, or her generous disposition, was to be