FLETCHER, Judge. Charge of the Hon. Justice Fletcher, to the Grand Jury of the County of Wexford, at the Summer Assizes, 1814.

Third edition. Belfast: Printed by Hu. K. Gordon, Hamilton’s Court, 1814. pp. 35. Modern wrappers. A very good copy. Rare.
No Bath edition located in JISC.
Fletcher began his charge by congratulating the Grand Jury on their county’s appearing as peaceful, moral, and sociable as when he first knew it thirty years ago - and improved in wealth, population, and agriculture. He makes this point because descriptions of Wexford have been inaccurate and disturbing in the recent past. He has seen the lower orders annoyed by many causes, in county after county: “Seeing the same facts coming before him, judicially, time after time” in sixteen circuits, he can now publicly state that he has never found “any serious purpose, or settled scheme” of assailing the government or conspiring “with internal rebels, or foreign foes”. He outlines the deep-rooted causes that create the evils which really and truly exist. (1) The interaction of rising prices of land and rising profits from large farms. (2) The deluge of paper currency generating the new crime of forging bank-notes, and producing bank failures in every province. (3) A Magistracy over-active in some instances, and quite supine in others (i.e. winking at the armed bands of Orange Men and prosecuting the Ribbon Men). (4) ‘Illicit Distillation’, a source of the dreadful torrent of evils and crimes that has flowed upon our land.

[CAT 164]