The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-03-05 00:00:00

THE CARLOW trEC.TION-61,0R10U

TRIUMPH.

(Franz Me;ThibliZzEvefzin:q Mail.)
The 'Clare election Was 'an important event in its day : it
mainly'contributed 'to the carrying of the relief bill. Now,
the relief bill, is itself, might have been comparatively no-
thing ;in its consequence it was everything: The presence
of ii?,n or twenty Romanists in the lower house, provided (!)
they kept their oaths, and abstained from attempts upon the
constitution, might, perhaps, have been no great matter of
practiCal censure, one way or the other, however it Might be
deplored as an infringement on the constitutidn.:- hut. i'liotild
these men, breaking through every ObligatiOnOilignolO', and
every sanction of religious erlgagententft, _be, enabled to turn
their privileges to the acquisitien. such pOwer as would
give the Popish party in tlrks 'Country an Absolute ascendancy
in church and 'state, then, indeed, the relief bill, which con-
ferred these'abuied privileges, must be spoken of in history 1
as the inosefital measure ever passed by the British senate,
andtlie event Which led to its enactment would be handed
'dOwn t+d the latest posterity as an event of the most surpris-
ing importance in the history of these countries. They have I
gone a considerable length, and the relief bill has tiMady a
weight of blame to bear which is nearly as Vetch as it'ean i
carry; but there is still vastly more t he gained than has
been yet accomplished, before the objects ddritenit4ited icy
the perfidious Irish Rrxn triiats, when they heckne parties to
that bill, could be at all considered as or realized.
We say,, then; that.nny'et!ent Whlch Will stop them in their
career orperjury 'and "spoliation; is a greater event than that
wlAtla Only enabled them to show, in a comparatively small
way, how cles*rately faithless and ambitious they all along
have been, arrest of Guy Fawkes was a greater event
than the hiring out to him of the vaults of the Parliament
House. By the Clare election we put Guy and his friends
in a position to show plainly what they meant to do. Their
designs are now evident : you may count each separate bar-
rel of gunpowder with which they purpose blowing up our
Protestant church and monarchy. By the Carlow election
we have arrested them. We protest we think the blow has
been struck. The election of Mr. Bruen has, we seriously
consider, snatched the slow-match out of the hand of the
arch-conspirator, and saved the country. It was the 'only
place where ministers themselves thought they had the least
chance of success. They dare not innke an appeal to the na-
tion anywhere else.' It.wat the pocket-borough of their pa-
tron: a note to " dear Fitzgerald was all that was necessary.
Doctor 'Maellale'could return a cow-boy for Mayo ; but for
Carlo*, 'town or county, it needed but a note from the pa-
Irtin to make his horse their representative in parliament.
The person whom he last sent over : is not his a case in
point ? Does not the whole transaction realize the picture
drawn by Juvenal of another scene of profligacy not less dis.
gusting ?
" Jam fas est, admitte viros ;

Ille jubet sumpta juvenem properare cinineha';
Si nihil est, Judteis incurritur ; abstuleris -speed
Judiei ? reniet conductus tausidicus hic si
guttritur, et desnntitohaes ; nulla mora per ipsum
Quominus imprisito Catherlagh submittat asello."
The writ bas issued • hear your lord's command ;
sehd you Mister &hill purse in hand ;
The purse runs dry ; well, here's my friend the Jew :
Raphael's a Shylock ; Lawyer Maule may do ;
Maule has turned judge ; we're at a desperate pass ;
Well, dear Fitzgerald, then—elect my ass !
It was their stronghold, their citadel, their insulin tiventium,
where a Whig could never die. And here. they have been
beaten ; beaten by those on whose neck they had hoped to
place the heel of their ascendancy before another year;
beaten by one who did not even condescend to meet thein in
a canvass ; beaten by the bona.fide and legitiinate power bf
united and indignant and volunteering Protestants, whO here,
as everywhere throughout the kihOona, had hitherto been
unsuccessful only by reason of distrust in their own prodi-
gious and accumulating strength. If they have been beaten
in CarloW-, hoW Will it be with them in the boroughs and
cohnties which they fled to Carlow to avoid ? If Bruen have
a majority of four, what majority will West and Hamilton
have ? If O'Connell's ministry have been defeated under
the nose of Father Maher, how will it be with them when
they come before the face of the insulted and excited Pro-
testant people of Britain ? The blow has been struck. The
career of perjury and plunder is arrested. The Clare elec-
tion shall no longer be heard of. The •fame of the Carlow
election of 1839 has cast its infamous notoriety into the
shade. The gentlemen of Carlow have gained a place in
British history—their town a niche in the temple of the con-
stitution.

Never was any proceeding more happily conceived—never
was any measure more triumphantly executed. The Carlow
liberals—the priests, Tom Haughton, and others of the gang
—must excuse us, but we never enloyed'a more hearty laugh
than that which we, have enjoyed at their expense. Why,
sirs, the chair, with its rebel decoratio,ns' was actually pre-
pared—the dinner was a-cooking, and the whiskey-punch
a-brewing—the indenture, with the return of Mr. Gisborne,
positively engrossed and sealed—when, behold, a second
candidate, never before heard of, is put in nomination, and
triumphantly returned !
Afor' gad, this is one of the best jokes of the present cen-
tury ; and the Irish, a laughter-loving people, are too fond
of a joke to blame us for laughing at them although they are
the sufferers.

The following is the final state of the poll :
Bruen 167
Gisborne
Gross majority for Bruen

THE CONSPIRACY.

(From the Dublin Evening Mail)
Three Ribbonmen were indicted at the Drogheda assizes
for the publication of seditious papers, and a conspiracy to
utter the same. In consequence of the disagreement of the jury,
the prisoners have been admitted to bail, and are to be tried
again at the next assizes. Of men in their circumstances
we shall not pronounce an opinion ; but as to the conspiracy
of which they are alleged to be members, there cannot be a
doubt of its existence upon any reasonable mind. The papers,
found upon their persons, and otherwise in their possession,
are!, genuine documents—admitted by the prisoners them-
selves to have been in their possession when taken : and the
treason of them is too manifest to be questioned. The tra-
versers called no witnesses for their defence, and their only
attempt at a vindication of themselves appears to have been
a pretext set forward by one of them when under examina-
tion at the head police office in Dublin, about this time
twelve months, that theirs was a sham conspiracy quoad Irish
affairs, and meant for nothing more than a diversion in favour
of the Canadian rebels (then in arms.) But the documents
found in their possession carry the conspiracy back two yeArs
at least before the outbreak of the Canadian revolt—a fact
which nullifies the pretence, even were it not criminal and
seditious in a very high degree ; and if with this latter date,
1836, we couple the acknowledgment of Mr. O'Connell, that,
at or about that period, he himself was aware of the existence
of forty-two Ribbon lodges,in the county of Meath alone
(Navan, where the first of these conspirators was arrested in
the course of distributing his proclamations, being a princi-
pal town in that county,) no man in his senses can hesitate
to infer the existence of a wide spread and long-continued
conspiracy with a view to shake off the British connection and
authority ; and that the revolt in Canada furnished what was
conceived by the leaders to be a favourable opportunity of
carrying the design into effect. The proclamation of 1838
runs in the following terms :
" IRISHMEN !—You all know the sanguinary, despotic
system by which we are governed. You have read the laws
lately proclaimed by William Lyon M ' Kenzie to the op-
pressed and persecuted people of Canada. They have FOUR-
TEEN MILLIONS or ACRES—SO HAVE We—imitate their glo-
rious example. Make haste—arise—arise—arise !! ! This
is the last expedient.
The pregnant allusion to the acres in this document goes a
great length in connecting this branch of the Ribbon conspi-
racy with what Mr. O'Connell loves to distinguish as the
predial, or " agrarian" conspiracy in Tipperary, the King's
County, &c., to which so many valuable lives have been al-
ready sacrificed. We have invariably maintained that the
existing conspiracy, under every phrase and development it
assumes, or by vihatever name its manifestation is known, is
a political conspiracy, universally diffused for the same
purposes ; and when we recognised it in any quarter, as an
" agrarian" conspiracy, we did so_expressly in the sense of an

agrarian conspiracy—as exemplified in the history of ancient
Rome—being a political conspiracy, involving a revolution in
the government of the country. And when we are reminded by
the ribbon proclamation now before us, of " the laws proclaim-
ed by William Lyon Mackenzie," and that these laws contem-
plated, amongst other things, " the restitution to the natives of
Lower Canada [French Papists] of the crown lands, the
clergy reserves, and the lands allotted to British companies
and settlers"—we are further confirmed as to the nature of
the conspiracy in Ireland, and recognise, in its meditated
restoration to the aboriginal natives [lrish Papists] of the
forfeited estates, its " agrarian" character, whilst its con-
templated separhtion from the British dominions concentrates
its political nature—the one being inextricably involved with
the other.

Were we required to trace backward the existence of the
conspiracy and to show the universality of its extent, we
should not hesitate to step back from 1836 to 1833, when the
progress of the blessed turf—" the sacred fire." as it was
called—took place in Ireland. From one end of the country
to the other—through every province, county, barOny, parish,
and townland in the island—nay, to the door of every indi-
vidual house, this sacred fire—a lighted sod of turf—was car-
ried, in the brief space of a summer's night, and by an agency
so mysterious, as to baffle hitherto all research. In the alarm
of a midnight attack, and under the dreadful impression of
the sudden outbreak of a universal plague, in one place, or
of towns and cities consumed by fire sent down from heaven,
in another, the startled inhabitants were roused from their
beds and ordered to their devotions—the formulae of which
were prescribed from the Romish ritual. 'This event—which
has never yet received the attention and scrutiny which it
merits—could not possibly have had its simultaneous execu-
tion, except through the agency of a conspiracy as univer-
sally diffused as the population of the country itself. The
mysterious fidelity with which the preparations were kept
secret, and which has baffled all subsequent inquiry as to its
execution, cannot be other than the result of a spiritual in-
fluence over the fanaticism of an ignoiant and devoted com-
munity. The religious nature of the pledges, and certifi-
cates of admission into the conspiracy, brought under the
cognizance of the court at Drogheda furnishes no mean evi-
dence of a connection, if not an identity,, of discipline and
purpose in the two cases ; and seems to us to warrant a call
for a solemn inquiry into the whole of the existing conspi-
racy, under whatever name, or in whatever shape, it may be
developed in any part of the country.
Pray would not a Parliamentary Committee have the power
of examining upon oath the parish priests of Ireland touching
the mysterious occurrence to which we have alluded ? The
inquiry need not, of necessity, involve matters connected
with the confessional. And if not, we see no reason why
loyal subjects, as the priests are presumed to be—should have
any objection to throw light on the subject.
We throw out this suggestion for the discretion of our
conservative friends in parliament.
The crown did not challenge at Drogheda ; and possibly
some member of the jury who voted against a conviction
was himself of the initiated in the hellish and mysterious
rites of ribbonism. We recommend this case, and its at-
tendant circumstances to the especial consideration of our
able and excellent cotemporary, the Standard.

SUBMARINE VOLCANO.—On the 27th September, the
ship Claudine, from Havre, being on the open sea, in 31 41
north lat., and 41 30 west long., her crew felt a severe shock
of earthquake, which lasted three quarters of an hour, by
which the ship was violently agitated ; two others less strong
then succeeded, interrupted by smaller shocks at intervals
of from five to six seconds, frequently repeated. The noise
accompanying each resembled that of thunder. The wea-
ther was fine and clear, and the sea tranquil, which did not
appear to receive any peculiar impression. On the 9th of
the following October, three small shocks were again felt at
two in the afternoon, in 27 37 west long.
VERY WOODEN.—There was a drunken pantomimist of
the name of Wood, who was once attached to Manly's com-
pany. This fellow wished to appear in a speaking part, and
at a very short notice found himself entrusted with the cha-
racter of Orano, in the play of Pizarro. This gentleman has
to deliver an account of Alonzo's deportment in the battle
field, and of his final capture by the Spaniard—Sheridan's
words bothered poor Wood, who, at the time appointed, mar-
vellously distempered with drink and fright, delivered himself
in choice, cockney vernacular, of the following condensed
report

` I seed him up—and I—l—saw'd him down,
And then—l—l—saw'd him taken prisoner.'
" Did ye, by Jabers ?" roared Manly from the back of the
boxes, " then I'll saw you off, Misther Wood, as a useless
log, Misther Wood. Come round here for your week's
salary, Misther Wood, and then cut your stick, Misther
Wood."