REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS. 13 



litico-religious parties, each regarding the other with jea- 

 lousy and animosity, it was extremely difficult to find per- 

 sons who would be able, even if they were desirous, to di- 

 vest themselves of every partial feeling, nurtured as they 

 had been in an anti-social state. And even when persons 

 should have been found who really were themselves thus 

 impartial, there was still a danger that they would be sus- 

 pected of partaking of the prejudices with which their re- 

 latives, friends and connexions were known to be imbued. 

 On the other hand, to have left the Inquiry to those who 

 were foreign to the country, would have been to entrust it 

 to persons ignorant of its peculiar social construction ; of 

 the peculiar habits and feelings of its people ; of the pe- 

 culiar idioms of its language ; and, consequently, to those 

 who would be incapable of guarding against imposition in 

 the receipt of evidence, and against giving offence to those 

 from whom they received it. The only mode of combining 

 the national knowledge possessed by the one with the im- 

 partiality almost certain in the other, appeared to be by 

 joining in the Inquiry a native of Great Britain with a re- 

 sident native of Ireland. 



In order to reap the fullest advantage possible from such 

 an arrangement, we required that all evidence should be 

 taken in the joint presence of the Irish and English As- 

 sistant Commissioners ; and we have in a few instances 

 been compelled to reject evidence which, through accident, 

 had not been thus taken. We likewise empowered either 

 Assistant Commissioner to invite the presence of any per- 

 son whose evidence might appear to him individually to 

 be important, and to put any question he might think per- 

 tinent to the Inquiry. 



In preparing instructions for the Assistant Commis- 



