O N P E T I T I O N S R E L A T I N G T O L I M E R I C K T A X A T I O N . 73 / Do you not consider you may be doing the parties petitioning a very severe injury by suppressing their petitions ?— Yes, I would ifgotthem from the parties; they are handed to the mayor, liot to me. You appear to have concealed them ?— Oh, no. You state, that those petitions in no manner belong to your office ?— I conceive not. Then explain why you have retained the custody of them ?— It was a verv short time previous to the investigation of those claims I got the custody of those papers ; they were all brought to me by Murphy the high constable, with a variety of other papers, in a green bag; that is the way I got them, and I threw them into the bottom of my press. Did you ever look at them, to see what they were ?— I declare I might have looked into one or two. Can you give any satisfactory account to the Committee, why you did not hand them over to the proper persons for holding them?— That is the only account I can give of them. The Committee want to know why you retained possession of them ?— I did not conceive it was my duty to act upon them. That was a reason you should have given them up to whosoever duty it was ?— They are all papers of 1816, 1817, and 1818. Those petitions never had been laid before the committee, to examine the validity of their claims ?— I believe not. Whose duty is it to lay those petitions before the committtee, to examine into the validity of their claims?— I believe the mayor's ; he gets the custody of them, and he refers them to the committee. You got those petitions by accident, and intentionally you detained them ?— In- tentionally ! I do not recollect whether I did it intentionally or not; they staid in my press; I had no view in detaining them. Did you know what they were when you put them in your press ?— There were a variety of others brought to me. Did you know they were petitions ?— I did; I knew they were petitions for freedom. You did know they were petitions?— Yes; I never opened the bag till I was coming from Limerick, the other day; I was told they were petitions for freedom, but I never opened them till just before I came away, and my motive for doing so then, was in obedience to the order of this Committee; I was desired to make re- turns as to the petitions for freedom; I made a search then, and found this bag; I opened them, and got one of my clerks to arrange them and number them, and I returned them an account of the number of petitions I had in my possession. You never examined the bag till a few days before you came away?— No, never. You only knew from another they were in the bag?— Yes, they were mixed up together with other papers, informations, and recognizances; miscellaneous papers of that kind tied up. Papers belonging to your office ?— No, to the then mayor, Mr. Yereker; they remained in the custody of Murphy, from the time Mr. Yereker went out of office, till they came into mine. You were told by Murphy the bag contained papers not belonging to your office ?— Yes, I considered they did not belong to my office, except the informations ; I ge- nerally keep in my office all informations and records of that kind. They were all in a bag ?— Yes, mixed up together; and when I was making out the return, 1 separated them. Did you not acquaint any person belonging to the corporation with your possession of that bag ?— Indeed, I do not believe I did; it was very recently I got them, I be- lieve last October or November; it was immediately before the Committee sat, that Murphy brought me the bag, as I best recollect. When you got possession of the bag, did you know the contents of the bag?— I was told by Murphy, and I believed the fact to be so, that that bag contained petitions for freedom. Did you know that any of those petitions had ever been referred to the committee ? — I believed they never were. Did you know at that time ?— I believed that they never were submitted to the committee. 617. R Murphy