The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-02-01 00:00:00

TUESDAY 31ORNING, FEB. 1, 1853.

THE WEEK

THE long-continued wet weather has at length un-
dergone a favourable change, nearly the whole of
the past week having been dry, with occasional
frosts and promises of a seasonable fall of snow.
This has imparted a degree of freshness and activity
which has been quite a relief from the previous dul-
ness, although the week has not been fertile of in-
cident to form topics for general conversation. The
theatres, for the same reason, have been better fre-
quented, and the attractions of the various panto-
mimes have been brought more immediately within
the reach of the youthful population by Juvenile
eights, when, from the Christmas piece being played
first, the young holiday folks have been enabled to
return to their peaceful homes at a more reasonable
hour than ordinary. The series of concerts at the
Philharmonic-hall have also been more generally
appreciated, and the problem whether Liverpool
can support the performances of first-class music at
a low price for admission is about to receive a
favourable solution.

The important question of providing a landing-
stage for the accommodation of large sea-going
steamers was brought before the Dock Committee
at their meeting on Thursday. It is proposed that
the landing-stage, which will be of great length,
shall be placed opposite the Seacombe Basin, so as
to interfere as little as possible with the entrance to
George's Dock Basin. The increasing trade of the
port in this direction has long rendered such an ac-
commodation highly desirable, and as it has now
become a matter of necessity, it is satisfactory to be
able to state that it will shortly be carried into
erect. The report or toe lima of );/..., at. rth)l, Liu
the capsizing of the life-boat, led to the remark from
from the chairman, Mr. CHARLES TURNER, M.P.,
that several accidents had occurred with the same
kind of boat, which was similar to the one which

upset at Lytham.
At the meeting of the Health Committee, on
Thursday, a proposal was submitted for placing
sign-boards on the street lamp-posts, to serve as ad-
vertisements for the neighbouring shop-keepers
upon payment of a small rent. Such a plan would
no doubt diminish in a small degree the expense of
street-lighting. but it would be another among the
many means adopted of giving publicity to indivi-
dual requirements without the payment of adver-
tisement duty. No decision was, however, come to
on the subject. By the report of the medical officer
it appeared that the rate of mortality in Liverpool
during the previous week was unusually low for the
season; a circumstance the more gratifying, as
disease has lately been very prevalent in some
Localities.

The non-arrival of the steam-ship Asia until Wed-
nesday forenoon led to some apprehensions for her
safety, particularly as it was known that there had
been some violent storms in the Atlantic Ocean.
She, however, brought the news that she had been
detained two days beyond her appointed time of
starting, so that she justified her previous character
of being a good sea-boat. The new steam-ship
Arabia, belonging to the same line, which sailed
from this port on New-year's Day, put into Halifax
on the 13th short of coals, and arrived at New York
on the 16th of January.

The Select Vestry seem to have got into some
difficulty with reference to the appointment of an
architect and surveyor. It appears that the renu-
meration offered has been too low for a man of
sufficient experience and ability, and they are unwil-
ling to take one of a lower standard. After having
to resort to a casting vote, the Vestry resolved to
more for tenders for the surveyorship,
at a salary of £3OO a-year ; but perhaps it would
have been better to have fixed upon such an amount
of remuneration as would have induced a competent
man to undertake the duties of the office, or it may
be found that the expected saving is the worst
economy.

vertise one

Some little excitement has been occasioned by the
discovery of Ribbon Lodges in this town, as well as
in Manchester, Warrington, Glasgow, and other
places on this side of the Irish Channel. By the
documents which were found, it would appear that
the system had become a regularly organised con-
spiracy ; but, it is hoped, that the discovery being
promptly followed up, will lead to the effectual sup-
pression of this dangerous combination. Ireland
has suffered severely from secret societies, which
are prompted and encouraged by designing Romish
priests ; and it is full time that the strong arm of
of the law was interposed to crush such hotbeds of
treason and sedition.

MR. COBDEN has published some letters treating
of " 1793 and 1853." His object is to show that,
if we had not interfered with France in the first year,
the Republic would have died out ; that no war is
just, save a defensive war; and that the Duke of
Wellington was not the champion of liberty against
the despotism of Napoleon, but a very insignificant
aristocrat—by no means so great a man as Richard
Cobden !

LORD DRUMLANRIG AND MAJOR BERESFORD
have been carrying on a correspondence redolent of
gunpower. The noble lord on the Dumfries hust-
ings stated that Major Beresford had organised an
opposition to his election. The Major immediately
wrote to Lord Drumlanrig, reminding him that he
(the Major) had retired from all superintendence of
election business for some time; that the noble lord
ought to be cognizant of such a fact; and that it
was an impertinent act to state the contrary. Lord
Drumlanrig intimates that he is exceedingly sorry
if he has stated anything contrary to fact or painful
to the Major's feelings; and that, with regard to
any act of his being "impertinent," he is ready to
explain, or be otherwise responsible for the same,
should the Major require further "satisfaction"
than mere explanation. The ex-Secretary-at-War
pacifically accepts the explanation and therewith
the matter ends.

THE EARL OF CARLISLE.—That well-meaning,
good-natured, but not very wise nobleman, the
Earl of Carlisle, has at last found Popery too much
for him. Being but indifferently informed, he
readily gulped down, and has ever since stuck to,
the assurance given by the Papists, while in expec-
tation of the Emancipation Bill, that "the old prin-
ciples and codes of intolerance once attached to
their Church, had fallen into practical desuetude,
and were viewed by them with at least as much
abhorrence as by ourselves." Unwilling to give up
the amiable delusion under which he had so long
laboured, the noble Earl makes one more desperate
effort to get the English Papists to remonstrate
with the Pope (sic!) against the persecution in
If they do not respond to this appeal,
even the Earl of Carlisle has made up his mind
that there must be an end of the cry " Peace,
peace,' where there is no peace," and that " a more
obstinate and decisive conflict is at hand, than has
yet occurred in the world." We congratulate the
noble Earl on the discovery he has made; with a
little less conceit, and a little more reverence for
God's Word, he might long ago have come to this
very obvious conclusion.—John Bull.

Tuscany

THE CUBA QUESTION.—Mr. Everett's note on
the proposed Cuba convention has been published
in America, and found its way to England. It la-
bours under the common fault of American com-
position—excessive prolixity. It is a dissertation,
an essay, a lengthened historical prolusion, which
would have made the fortune of a magazine, and
contrasts oddly with Lord Malmesbury's slipshod
and hardly intelligible English. It was not neces-
sary, surely, in declining such a proposal as this, to
quote long and irrelevant passages from Washing-
ton and Jefferson to ''e a compendious but ela-
borate sketch of
yearly remittances
'Alnergicia%n history, to calculate the
sent home by immigrants from
Ireland, to enter•
Mexico, or to dwell 11 a defence of the annexation of
advantages such
the Union when Cuba shares a wistful air of self-
denial on the which will be reaped by
this side of the Atlantic we a similar fate. On
feel disposed to smile at
such phrases as " the irresistible currant
" the law of American growth, „ana of affairs,"
reading them in connexion with the a° an ; or,
afforded by General Cass's resolution, taketo
them
Inentary
somewhat amiss. Where does the laws'
What are the boundaries of its operation ? '4°4:
Everett clothes his doctrine (the old Monroe claim—
which Europe never has admitted, and never will)
inc vague and capacious generalities, whilst General
Cass will allow no limit short of the farthest
head.land of Cape Horn. Ifwhat . so, becomes of our
own West India islands ? But the key to all this
rhodomontade is that the • article is intended for
home consumption. A diplomatist bent on simply
returning a civil refusal might have done it in half-
a-dozen words. The proposal itself was essentially
unreasonable, and perpetual engagements of this
kind are generally worthless, and almost
always
unwie,—Gaurdian,

LOUIS NAPOLEON AND DONNA EUGENIA.—
Commodus repudiates Marcia, and espouses Eu•
genia of Iberia. He parts from the first with a
salute on each cheek, pats her illegitimate children
on the head, places a pension in their mother's
hands, and, wishing her " bon voyage," turns as
nimbly as though he were a score of years younger,
and offers his homage to the lady whom he (at least
he says so) " loves and reveres." The paper read
by Louis Napoleon to the wretched Senate, an-
nouncing his marriage, is perfectly characteristic of
the man. In the first place, he could not venture
to speak : his ability could go no further than to
read what be had been helped to put together by
some " Ready Letter-Writer" about the Court.
The phrases run glibly enough, and smack of a
certain independence. On closer examination, how-
ever, they are such as might drop from King Cam-
byses, Bobadil, and Jerry Sneak. Where they are
not braggart and insolent, they are mean and un-
true.—Church and State Gazette.

THE PEACE HUMBUG.—The effective force of
the prodigious army of France is undiminished,
notwithstanding a recent show of reduction. There
are at least twenty ships of war to be provided
with steam-engines and screws, approaching com-
pletion in the arsenals of that country. What
these great military and maritime forces are in-
tended for, is a secret at present locked up in the
breast of Napoleon 111. We shall probably know,
ere long, what this " dreadful note of preparation"
really means. Meantime, there is being held in
this town a " conference" of very wise gentlemen,
who have got it into their heads that their elo-
quence can prevent a devastating war. If war be
the game to be played by the new Emperor of
France, what is to stay him except the naval and
military powers of the other nations of Europe
Is it supposed that he will submit his ambitious
aims to the tame " arbitration" of a few men as-
sembled in this centre of that nation of weavers
and shopkeepers, so sneered at by his great uncle ?
—Manchester Courier.

ROMANIST INTOLERANCE.-IB reference to the
letters of Earl Carlisle on the subject of the Madiai
persecution, Mr. Chisholm Anstey has published a
species of rejoinder says, " I have read
with much interest Lord Carlisle's letter on
the case of the Madiais, and I heartily con-
cur with his Lordship in the opinion that, by the
conduct of the Roman Catholics of this country
with reference to that case, their own sincerity as
professing friends of religious equality will have to
he judged. I regret, therefore, to say, that there is
likely to be but one opinion as to the utter insincerity
and hollowness of all such pretences. No one who
has conversed much with English Catholics, at least
upon the case of the Madiais, can have failed to see
that amongst them the frienck of religious freedom are
miserably few, and that nearly every member of the
body is persuaded that, in countries professing the
Roman Catholic faith, it is the bounden duty of the
state to coerce heretics by temporal penalties, and, if
need be, TO EXTIRPATE THEM BY THE SWORD !"
It is only multiplying the evidence against Rome, to
which he professes to be a devoted adherent.

THE BISHOP OF SYDNEY.—AIong with car-
goes of precious metal growing continually larger,
Australia has lately sent us something better—a
man worth his weight in it—the good Bishop of
Sydney. The reception given to him on Friday in
that well-known first-floor in Pall-mall where the
venerable society personally resides, was a pictu-
resque incident, even in the hands of Sir R. Inglis,
and the Bishop of London. The man who went
out an archdeacon, the highest ecclesiastical officer
in the colony, returns a metropolitan—why not an
Archbishop ?—with jurisdiction over five sees. His
own speech was warm with simple and kindly
feeling, and his visit will prove useful, we trust, in
more ways than one. We need some such help to
realise the value of the present opportunity—the
opportunity of winning and keeping for the Church
all that we can of the tide of emigration that is
spreading itself over the hills and plains of the
Australian continent. How vast the spiritual har-
vest, the labourers how few! An active and a nu-
merous clergy are wanted in Australia now.—
Guardian.

ANOTHER MINISTERIAL. CHANGE.—Reports
are prevalent in London, to the effect that the Ca-
binet is about "to suffer a Whig change," but not
in anything very "rich or strange." The modifi-
cation will consist only of a large importation of the
old condemned materiel. It is admitted that Lord
J. Russell holds the Foreign seals only provision-
ally, and that at the commencement of the session
he will be succeeded in that office by the Earl of
Clarendon ! A strange choice for Protestant Eng-
land, in a Continental crisis like the present. But
what is to become of Lord J. Russell ? Oh ! his
lordship, of course, retains a seat in the Cabinet,
and as nothing better presents, it is presumed,
without office. Not so fast if you please—to be
without office is to be without salary, and it is per-
fectly well understood that his lordship can't afford
any such sacrifice. Rumour, however, has made a
different arrangement, and one more in harmony
with his known ambition and supposed necessities.
It is said, then, strange as it may appear, that Lord
Aberdeen's health will be made the excuse for his
retiring from office, to make way for Lord John
Russell, who haring thus prudently graduated his
approaches to the Premiership, will return to his
old position, with the acquiescence of, at least, the
corrupt portion of the Brigade.—Dublin Evening
Herald.

THE STEAM-SHIP FAITH reached London on Monday
last week, after a passage of seventy hours from dock to
dock, deducting stoppages. The weather was unusually
stormy, especially on Friday night, and, as the Faith was
fully laden with coals, an opportunity was offered to test
the qualities of the ship under trying circumstances. An
officer in her Majesty's navy, who was on board, states
that she behaved uncommonly well, and took the seas
with the greatest ease. Another naval gentleman who
was on board says that there were ample opportunities to
test the ship's qualities as a sea• boat, and that he was
never in a finer one. He says that, on the Friday morn-
ing, it commenced blowing from the northwest, and for
two days they had a hard gale, with a high sea. From
Holyhead to the Smalls the sea was on the beam, and yet
her motion was as easy as:possible, the vessel going along
at the rate of ten or eleven knots, and sometimes eleven
and a half knots, under double reefs. This, it will be
seen, is a favourable result, and one which promises that
the African Mail Line will consist of a superior class of
steam-ships. She left London, for Plymouth on Thursday,
with every berth filled, and a full cargo, and arrived at
the latter port on Saturday, in twenty-six hours from the
Downs. She took her departure from Plymouth, on her
first voyage, the same afternoon.
AMATEITR HANGING.—On Sunday, the day after the
execution of James Barbour, the inmates of the lunatic
ward at Sheffield workhouse conversed for some time on
the subject. Among them was George Palfrey, a white-
metal smith, who has been in the lunatic asylum in Wake-
field, and in the retreat ward at Sheffield, for about 30
years. He was in such a state of convalescence that he
was entrusted with the care of a patient who required fre-
quent attention. Palfrey's imagination appears to have
been inflamed by the conversation, and such was its effect
upon him that during Sunday night he slipped out of the
retreat-ward, and, having attached his neckerchief to a
beam in the privy, he placed his neck within the sling,
and, throwing himself off a slight elevation upon which
he was standing, hung suspended, with his feel just clear
of the floor, until life was extinct. In that posture the
dead body was found at an early hour on Monday. An
other instance of hanging is a still more singular one, and
is, to a great extent, involved in mystery. A boy aged 14,
named John Auty, son of a mason, who keeps a beer-house
in Kelham- street, London, opposite to the Kelham Grind-
ingwheel, was on Wednesday evening found hanged in a
garret in his father's house. He kept pigeons in the gar-
ret, and he had been robbed of two or three of his
feathered favourites by a prowling cat, which gained ad-
mission to the garret through a broken pane in the win-
dow. The boy had been heard to vow vengeance on the
marauder, and it appeared that on Wednesday afternoon
he had set about preparing a noose to fix within the
broken pane with the intention of catching the stealthy
visitor by the neck and causing it to effect its own stran-
gulation. It so happened that this design became the
instrument of his own destruction. On Wednesday
evening his absence created surprise, as he was a very
tractable boy, and of uniformly steady habits. As the
evening wore on his family became alarmed, and made
search for the lost one in every conceivable quarter, but
' all in vain. About eleven o'clock the distracted mother
sent one of her daughters to ascertain whether the boy
had slipt off to bed, and then it was that the girl discovered
his rigid and lifeless body, hanging from the ceiling in a
lumber-garret, on the same floor as his sleeping apart-
ment. The surrounding circumstances were such as to
render the mode of his death a matter of mystery, The
garret in which the body was found, and which was the
roosting-place of the pigeons, is a low confined apartment
with a sloping roof, along the centre of which, six or
a
from the floor, runs a joist. The boy was found
tohg
a seven
nailin feetbyin
piece of thick whipcord that was attached
the middle of the joist. His neck was not
in a noose,
but in a sling with a large knot at the end ; his
body was resting on the floor and his head raised only
two or three feet above
it.
n g
He had evidently fallen off
an old dressing-table and s
something on which he hadobrueeenotsbtearndluinmgb,
ears there were
and lying about the body. The most feasible conjecture
was, either that while preparing to fix the lower end of
article upon which
the cord as a noose to the window the
he was standing had slipped from under him, andthat,
s formed
when falling, his head had got within the sling by
the cord, or else that be had placed his head within the
of hanging, cord from a boyish desire to taste. for a moment the sen-
sationhad lost hit footign
liverance.
pe-
rished in a most
of the means of
mysterious self
strangulation
manner,
dd during ian
jerk
rtkh
at experiment,deprideprived
hihme
At any rate, he
during the process 4 considering that
rested on the floor, andhands were at
liberty, and might, under that both his
raulation his weight mainly
ordinary circumstances, have
been applied to the cord for the •
extrication of his head*