The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-05-04 00:00:00

IRELAND.

THE POTATO CROP.—SO sanguine are farmers of the
success of the potato this year, that they are burning
beaten ground for the purpose of renewing the seed.
THE KILHAHE FARMERS suffered se7erely last week by
spontaneous combustion of the arid soil for miles, origi-
nating in a parched bog, the flames destroying crcps in
their course.

SMALL in- lIIMREES, &c.—There were eight O'Con-
nell's in Parliament together the last seven years, and
the number is now reduced to one, the eldest son of the
late Liberator..

BURNING A 13illEST'S HOUSE.—The Doily Eorprns
says—" It is with much concern that we have to state
that the house of the Rev. Mr. Hefferman, P.P., at
Clerihan, county, Tipperary, was malicious-1r set on fire
and burnt to the ground on Saturday night last, the rev.
gentleman himself narrowly escaping from, the flames.
It was done, it is understood, by a person whom he had
thrust out of the house in the early part of the same day."
AN IMPORTANT AsHREST OF A RIBAND LOOGF. has-been
made in the county; of Longford, which has long been
suspected of being the hotbed of the murderous system.
Two threatening notices of a violent character—one di-
rected to a neighbouring Protestant clergyman, and the
other to a farmer who had recently taken some land—
were found among the papers. One of the partrwas ac-
tually writing a third threatening notice when the police
surprised them.
THE REV. Samrm. HANNA, D.D., the venerable
senior minister of the Rosemary-street Piesbyterian
Church, Belfast, and one of the joint professors-of divi-
nity in the General Aseembly's college, died ow•Fiiday
evening week, in Londonderry, where he had! been so-
journing for some time in a declining state of health.
Dr. Hanna was the oldest minister of the Presbyterian
Church in Ireland, being, at the date of hii-decease,
upwards of eighty years of age.
DEATH FROM STAIWATION OF A Ttrru
from Diomolaed, New-
market, county Clare, was found on the footway on
Friday morning in a state of great exhaustion and seem-
ingly dying. On examining his person, a chelve on the
Provincial Bank in this city for £lOO, a sovereign, 83.,
and some pence were found. He was in a mos..: emaciated
condition, and it is conjectured that it was threugh weak-
ness from want of food lie died. Before his death Belli-
nan was raving about his money, demanding that he
should get it, and go home, though at the time he was
dying.—Limerick Examilaer.

THE GREAT NATIONAL EXHIBITION AT COaao.--The
building for this undertaking will occupy a site of upwards
of five acres in extent, and the whole will be sur-
rounded by a wall twenty feet high. The exhibition will
be confined exclusively-to Irish productions. Miclise, it
is said, has promised to paint an original picture for the
exhibition. Mr. C. P. Roney, the great railwaysdiplorna-
tist, is making arrangements with the different•railway
companies in England and Ireland. by which a . scale of
fares will be laid dowse to enable the humblest. mechanic
from remote parts of the country to visit Cork during the
exhibition. The gross-ansount collected for the exhibition
exceeds £15,000.

* THE CELTIC EXODCS.—The Cork Compliiution fur-
nishes some remarkable statistics, which pretty clearly
indicate that the emigration mania has in no wise dimi-
nished this year :—" The Jessy left Limerick,on Tuesday,
with 345 passengers;: the Anna Maria left Limerick the
same day with 92 ; the Jeannie Johnston left Tralee with
188 passengers for auebec ; and on the same day the
Brunswick set sail with 224 for New York; on Friday
the Emerald, of Wexford, carried above 200 to New
York, and 110 more set sail for the same place in the
Reliance, from Galway ; over 1,100 emigrants left Water.
ford in a single week, in the ships Mars,Orinoco, and
others ; and six other vessels are taking_ passengers to
sail direct from than port to their western destinations.
From the Parliamentary returns it appears that no less
than 7,129 emigrant vessels sailed from ports in the
United Kingdom within the last five years, which is at
the rate of 27 per week. The number of passengers who,
sailed in these 7,19 ships was 1,494,0443 which is at the•
rate of 5,743 per week.

CONFESSIONS, OF AN IRISH PRIESTI—The letter of
the Rev. Mr. Mullen has created a perfect ferment among
the Irish Roman Catholic clergy. His unsuspected tes—
timony to the wholesale abandonment of the Romish
faith by the thousands of the emigrants who have left
this country for life and " liberty"' on American sail,
has sounded the keynote of alarm from Carrickfergus- to
Kinsale. "On Sunday week," says a provincial paper,
" the Rev. Mr. Birmingham, P:13., of Borrisokane.
warned his congregation at mass against emigration to
America ; he read a letter from a Roman Catholic priest
living in New York, which stated that the Irish emigrants
of his persuasion were largely perverted to heresy and
infidelity. There is no doubt but that the release from
Irish Roman Catholic associations and kindred gives
many of them a more easy opportunity of following their
own judgments, and escaping from the mental thraldom
by which . they were enslaved under their priest-ruled
religion. No popular clamour or altar denunciations
against converts durst be attempted there—public opinion
so discountenances it or any other priestly terror. With
freedom of thought and action Protestantism must ex-
tend„ and these are the reasons which now rouse the
priests to oppose all sorts of emigration."