The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1824-06-18 00:00:00

statutes. • Such resocrces are in their very nature tempo-
rary. They,piay answer the purpose. till the proper remedy
vined, but to have recourse to them as the remedy
is an error,which uo somitl Statesman can fall irto with his
eyes open. It may be, that in the vreseut efill:3 of
in Ireland you can do nothing frdhont the Insurrection
.let ; but to expect to tin every thing relit it—no man
in power, giving his understanding fair play, can
so impose upon himself. 11.1iile the n,ass of legal
disabilities which gall and afflict the Catholics are suffered
to remain, how can you hope to cure the hostility nivel dis-
affection that grow out of them ? You Lrep up the causes
(fence, and provide an Insurrection Act to keep down
the consequences! Nothing but absolute insanity can
excuse such a course of proceeding. Give the Catholic his
constitutional rights as a British suture', and if after that
he does not give you, in teturn, a etnistitutional obedience
to the laws, punish him as he will well deserve, and as
your own conscience then may well approve and justify.
But do not excite him to take part in the troubles of his
country, and then punish the rebellious feelings you pro-
' yoke. To do so is not humane, nor generous, nor just. Is
' Ireland to look forward, in its endless generations, to the
continuance of the convulsions which have so long and so
grievously afflicted it ? Look steadily at the state of this,
line and fertile country, and reflect on its condition at this
enlightened era, and after a lapse of six centuries of civil
government ! Can proof beyond this be wanted to show
i that the purposes of civil government have been perverted?
Ireland, happily for itself and the United Empire, has at
I present a Lord Lieutenant nest disposed to yield to this
perversion ; happily, too, there are several members of
great weight awl lead iu the Cabinet, who fully concur
with his Excellency in carrying the spirit of the
Constitution into the Sister Kingdom, and in making
the public force effectual to the maintenance of public
order, as combined with the political existence of its
Catholic subjects, and the fair enjoyment of their
natural and motel/ rights. The public conduct of Loan
IVELLESItY has throughout evinced, that his anxiety
is not merely to govern in Ireland, but to govern
well, and in the spirit of equal justice. In reading
the following evidence given before the Committee, we
paused—as the reader will do—to reflect on the practical
benefits which would long since have arisen to that ill-
fated country, had former Loan-LIEUTEN•NTS been go-'i
verned by the same spirit, and guided by the same views—

Whenever any doubt has arisen in point of law, have yon
found an anxious desire on the part of the Lord Lieutenant to give
the benefit of it to the prisoner ?—Afoet andoarbiedly. In tug case
it was agaismi my opinion. I reported the cue to his Excellency
after the trial. The Attorney-General for Ireland was not there
at the time, and I consulted the Solicitor-General upon it; and I
reported to his Excellency, that the Solicitor-General concurred
with me, that it came within the Act of Parliament. I saw his
Excellency shady afterwlards. Ile told me hr had pardoned him.
I told his Excellency I regretted it very much ; that ho was an
' extremely bad member of society, that be had made an attempt to
murder a near neighbour just before.

" Probably his Excellency might have a constitutional Adis'',
that bad character ought not to convict a man of a aims, As facts
not coming strictly within the Act' Yes. exactly so. His Excd-
lency said—' His being a bad character would not justify his con-
viction; and in which I dare say theSolicitor-Uencral and you are
right ; but it comes so close to a case of acquittal, and the Act ism
penal, I thiak it would be improper to let the sonviction stand.'"
It la 'refreshing to observe authority thusexereised—to
observe it exercised in the /Sighed quarter, to controul what-
ever would lead to injustice even towards the lowest and
!tint protected individual. There is a yowler means of re-
form open to Ireland :--remove gradually, and by a mild
and generous system, thee* legal diashititiniPhich destroy
the bond of civil union—which embitter private society
—which divide the interest, of public men—and which
split the kingdom into parties, ready everywhere for con-
tention, and ripe at all times for,hostility. To the means
most effectual to this end, it has been the earnest aim of
Loan WILLCSI.ZY to give effect ; and the success which
his perseverance—in spite of all counteraction—has al-
ready obtained, will draw upon him the blcming of his
own day, and of posterity.

Two series of papers, on the subject of the slave trade,
have, within a few days, been laid on the tables of bout
Houses of Parliament. The first series of these impor-
tant papers comprises the correspondence of Mr. Secretary
Canning during the last year and the present with Sir
William A'Court, the British Ambassador at Madrid ;
with Mr. li'ard and Sir Edward Thornton, at Lisbon ;
with Sir Charles Stuart, our ambassador at Paris ; with
the Earl of Clancarty, at the Court of the Netherlands ;
besides that with Mr. Chamberlain, the Consul-General at
Rio Janeiro, and of Mr. Stratford Canning, the British
Ambassador at Washington, which includes the interesting
correspondence between the latter and Mr. Quincy Adams,
the American Secretary of State, ou the proposition of the
mutual right of aearclt by hoth nations, and the resolution
subsequently adopted to make the traffic in slaves piracy.
The second aeries of these papers comprises the coalman'.
cations of Mr. Canning with Messrs. Gregory and Fits.
'gerald, the British Commissioners at Sierra Leone, respect.
ing the continuance of this nefarious barter by the subjects,
of Spain, l'ortugal, and the Netherlands, with the Right
Honourable Secretary's correspondence with the British
Commissioners at the llavannah, Rio de Janeiro, and 941=
rinam. This voluminous eJrrespondence with our Ambas-
sadors at almost every Court in Europe, and with the
Commissioners and Consuls of Great Britain throughout'
one half of the globe, thews the unwearied efforts made by
Mr. Causing to extinguish, by all the power and influence
or Great Britain, the remnant of this infernal traffic still
preserved by the different powers of Europe. The atten-
tion of the Right Honourable Secretary to this important
subject Las been ceaseless. Amid the multiplied con-
cerns of his high station, the sacred rights of hu-
manity have never one moment been forgotten ; they
have always been uppermost in his mind. Loud and repeated
complaints have long been made, of the way in which
France, Spain, and Portugal, disregarding the solemn
treaties they had respectively signed for the extinction
of the trade 'in inhuman victims, still suffered this
iniquitous traffic to be sanctioned by their flags, and
Africa to be desolated by the inhuman barter. We
find accordingly Sir Charles Stuart, in May 1t4.23, remon-
strating strongly with M. Chateaubriand on this out-
rageous violation of the rights of humanity, and laying
before him unanswerable documents from the British Go-

rernor of Sierra Leone, with the deposition of an Eu-
ropean inhabitant of that settlement, spewing—" That

the trade was them carried on to a greater extent than
at any former period—that no less than fourteen
French vessels had completed cargoes of slaves at the
Gaines within the short space of four months—that
every port along the coast, not actually in the possession
of treat Britain, was frequented by vessels under
French colours, employed in this trade; and that their
undertakings were encouraged by the natives, under the
pet suasion that the trade was lawful, because the respect
due to the flag of France, caused the British cruisers to
allow it to be carried on with impunity," A subsequent
digpa:ch from Mr. Smectary Canning to bir Charles