The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-02-23 00:00:00

cupidit

and we may apply the same rules in forming our esti
{hate of the one which we do in judging the other
As it is with individuals, so is it with nations.

Now war is a dreadful evil, and a war wantonly and
unjustly commenced is a national crime of the deepest
dye. Are the United States of America ignorant of
these positions, or, knowing them, do they not confess
their truth ? What interest of theirs would it serve,
or rather, which of their interests would it not be most
injurious to ? We hear every day that the world has
grown more enlightened, more intellectual—and on all
sides, war is, (speculatively at least) repudiated as a
barbarian ; and yet the vastly, the pre-eminently en-
lightened citizens of the American States, lagging woe-
fully behind on this point, talk lightly of engaging in a
war with England, make sport of its prospective hor-
rors—of the suffering and woe, the waste and carnage
that must follow in its train—and all this upon no bet-
ter ground, and for no better cause, or causes, than
those which they are now able to allege. In the case
of an individual, we would attribute conduct that might
be deemed analogous, to the obvious truth that such
an individual was not under the guidance of principles
that we could recognise as either pure, or efficacious;
and we draw the same conclusion of a State, more par-
ticularly when that State acknowledges no religious
principle to which we can refer as the standard of its
actions. The Americans talk of their governing ma-
chinery as the " model" republic ; but the nations of
the earth, it is to be hoped, will desire to see a little
more of its performance before they take it as an ex-
ample for imitation. It is a boast of their "model"
that it possesses' neither King nor Church; but they
should not omit to tell us that it has in their place
Lynch law, slavery, and fanaticism in abundance. As
to the rest, we can judge for ourselves. An Esta-
blished Church, we conceive, would have been no bad
security for the better faith, and honest dealing, in ge-
neral, of the Americans, and we even suspect that they
will yet find its absence the sorest loss of all, because
that of all others the most difficult, if not absolutely
impossible to be hereafter supplied. As to a King—
they may easily convert their President into one when-
ever they please—and, perhaps, to preveipt a " repeal"
of some of their " unions"—and a dismemberment of
the confederation, they may find it necessary to do so
at no distant day.

There appear to be others who, like her Majesty's
Attorney-General, consider the practice of duelling

necessary " to maintain a man's reputation as an
officer and a gentleman." In a metropolitan contem-
porary of Friday, we find the following :

" DUEL.—Yesterday a hostile meeting took place between
Colonel Patterson, of the East India service, and Robert
Mark Marsden, Esq., of Park-lodge, Regent's-park. The
parties met in a field at the back of the Eyre Arms Tavern,
at day-break, and exchanged shots without effect. The se-
conds then interfered, and endeavoured to reconcile the
gentlemen ; but not succeeding, the parties were again placed
on the ground. At the second
.fire the ball from Mr. Mars.
den's pistol took effect on the right wrist of the gallant Co-
lonel, which was severely shattered. The affair then termi-
nated."
We cannot wonder at such results as these if the
doctrines laid down by the chief law-officer of the
crown are practically established. The speech of that
functionary is perhaps one of the most disgraceful
effusions which ever fell from the lips of any man in a
•

similar position—characterised from first to last by the
most abject truckling to vicious custom, and the most
reckless disregard of all moral and religious principle.
The majesty of the law is throughout made subservient
to the distempered and diseased practice of society. A
crime which the legislature, of which that very Attor-
ney-General forms a leading member, but three short
years ago made penal, and defined to be murder, in all
but its successful completion, is declared to be attended
with no moral turpitude, the accused, in committing
that crime, having only complied with what is deemed'
necessary by the usages of society t The only objeo
of Lord Cardigan, we are told, in wantonly breaking
the law and risking his own life and that of his oppo-

nent, was to maintain his reputation as an officer and
a gentleman ; and under these circumstances it would
have been considered, if death had ensued, A GREAT
CALAMITY, AND NOT A GREAT CRIME !

When sentiments such as these are found issuing
from the lips of the government prosecutor, and when,
in addition, the whole of his address in laying down
the abstract law of the,case is couched in a strain of
apology for the crime which that law is designed to
check, it is scarcely too much to suppose that the law-
officer who professes such tenderness with respect to
the degree of "moral turpitude" which attaches to the
prisoner, would willingly lessen the degree of danger
which at the same time attaches to him. Let the At-
torney-General say what he will, a crime is not divested
of its inherent moral turpitude by the frequency or
impunity with which it is committed ; nor does crime
cease to he crime, when the criminal is countenanced
by the usages of society.
Another just cause of complaint against the law-
officers of the crown is the egregious bungling which
has been manifested in proving the technical require-
ments of the law. As we have said already, the pri-
soner's counsel was justified in availing himself of the
point of law which was raised on the trial, but the
break-down on the part of the government prosecutor
would disgrace any common country i.ttorney's clerk
of two years' standing; and yet Sir John Campbell is
her Majesty's Attorney-General !

The following letter on this part of the subject ap-
peared in the Times of Saturday :
" Sir,—The Attorney• General, in his opening speech upon
the trial of the Earl of Cardigan, alleged as a reason for the
non-attendance of Captain Tuckett, that certain ulterior pro-
ceedings might still be taken against him ;—meaning, I sup-
pose, that it would be fruitless to have attempted to make
him a witness, by which course he must have criminated
himself.

" Did it really escape this learned functionary's penetration,
that if Captain Tuckett's attendance had been enforced, the
case against the Earl of Cardigan would have been made out
without examining Captain Tuckett at all? The witness
Dann would have proved him to have been the person fired
at. The witness who deposed to his name would have tes-
tified to its being rightly laid in the indictment.

" As the Attorney-Geaeral did not suggest that Captain
Tuckett's attendance could not be procured, must the pub-
lic consider this as an intentional oversight on the part of the
officers of the crown, or a blunder of a piece with that of
Monmouth, into which the lowest Old Bailey practitioner
would not have fallen ?"

Coupling this feat of Sir John Campbell with ano-
ther similar one (which, however, was not quite suc-
cessful) in the case of John Frost, the public are a
little inclined to think that that great legal functionary
exercises quite as much jesuitry ays legal acumen in the
discharge of his public duties as her Majesty's chief
law-adviser. It was undoubtedly an object to save the
life of the Newport draper, the " old correspondent"
of Lord John Russell ; the only object of allowing
James Thomas Earl of Cardigan to slip through the
meshes of the judicial net was to raise an outcry against
" his order"; and both schemes have alike signally
failed.

It is not surprising that in. Liverpool, in whose popu-
lation there is so large an admixture of strangers, the
pro-popery Irish should be numerous enough to form
a party, and that they should even venture to exhibit
in one of our public squares, when there is an object
so interesting to them at stake, as the passing of Lord
Morpeth's registration bill; but it is really lamentable
to perceive Englishmen who call themselves Protes-
tants, and members of Old England's national church,
mixing themselves up with their proceedings, and
giving them all the support in their power—so.true is
it, that party, like misery, makes strange bed-fellows.
These English gentlemen, unfortunately allow them-
selves to be called Liberals, and under that title receive.
compliments and flattery very soothing perhaps to their
vanity, and persuasive to a mistaken ambition, but not
at all evidential of the correctness of their perception,
or the soundness of their principles. There is but one
excuse to be made for such conduct, whicli would be
otherwise criminal in the highest degree, and that is,
that the parties really do not know what the y.are about.
The adoption of the Clayton-square pf;tition by a
few Protestants of Liverpool is just a proof of the
Lengths
_to which men may be led when of we they de,.

vitae from tlio otraight lint of comb:tem, That cbort

composition, which now lays before us,

is just, in our mind, one unbroken tissue of false as-
sumptions and misrepresentations, and so little scru •
pulous as to facts or truth, that no man, with a mind
unclouded by Popish delusion, who paused for a mo-

ment to consider its several clauses, could, as a Pro-
testant, conscientiously put his name to it; or if, with
a full knowledge of the consequences, he did so,—why
then we have no doubt the same individual would to-
morrow put his name to a petition praying that Popery
might be made the established church of Ireland, and
restored as soon as possible in England.
True, the question is only about a registration bill,
and a £5 franchise, in name; but consequentially, and
in substance, and in its most important aspect, it is
a question turning upon the vital point of Popery
against Protestantism. The Liberals complain that
Conservatives are too fond of treating Irish questions
as if they all involved, and were quite inseparable from,
the interests of religion ; and they have reason, for the
procedure must he highly incovenient to them. Leave
out the part of Hamlet, and doubtless they would get
through the play to admiration.. Say nothing about
Popery and the priests, and, to a certainty, they must
appear irresistible orators either in Clayton-square or
the Town-hall. Let us apply the principle to the peti-
tion which last week received such numerous signatures
by anticipation from all the sweepings of our cellars,
quays, ships, and docks,—from the lame, blind, and
halt, the very old, and the very young, and as many
as were willing, whether they could or could not write.
The petition asserts that the provisions of Lord Mor-
peth's bill are " calculated, in the opinion of the peti-
tioners, to give a sound constituency to Ireland." But
what is a " sound" constituency in their apprehension
of the term ? Are we to make no inquiry as to the
religion of the new constituency, or the vast accession
of power which Popery Would deriVe from the enfran-
chisement of this new race of electors—the £5 house-
holders ? Oh, not aword upon that subject, say the
gentlemen o‘Clayton-square ; there you become illibe-
ral ; we never trouble ourselves upon that point at all.
We mean sound and secular principles only. But even
there, good Sirs, you are most grossly mistaken. Only
think of the secular independence of " Michael Cas-
sidy"—with his £5 domicile cut out of the turf bog—
rated, indeed, but paying no rates whatever to the poor,
the parson, or any body else—a character so admirably
and so truly described by Mr. MReile, with his usual
f6licity of illustration, in his speech at the Amphitheatre
on Friday. Michael Cassidy may stand as the repre-
sentative of the family; and we ask, can there he a
more rank orheedless assertion, than to say that the
taking into the electoral body of a multitude of that
elms would be to convert the whole into a "sound
constituency ?" Why, apart from all religious con-
siderations, and viewed merely and purely as a temporal

and political concern, there never was anything more
absurd and monstrous than to say that a provision of
this sort would impart soundness to the constituency of