The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-04-21 00:00:00

LORD STANLEY'S REGISTRATION BILL.

(From the Dublin Evening Mail.)
Surely the eyes of the nation must by this time be opened
to the purely partisan character of the opposition given to
Lord Stanley's bill. If there were no press to record the
acts of a government or the declarations of public men, it
might be supposed that ministers and their allies had either
forgotten their former doings, or trusted to the forgetfulness
of the nation. But with these records staring them in the
face, what a front of impudence they must possess to come
before the country claiming credit for honesty, consistency,
disinterestedness, and every other whig virtue, yet voting
and speaking directly in the teeth of votes given and speeches
made by themselves on the selfsame subject, over and over
again, within the last five years.
In August, 1835, the House of Commons, led by these
very opponents of Lord Stanley's measure, passed a bill
identical with it, as far as it goes. That bill embodied all
that the• present bill contains. It was unpalatable to the
conservative body solely, because, in addition to all this, it
contained other clauses which they deemed objectionable.
But on that occasion, and on three several occasions since,
when her Majesty's ministers have brought forward similar
measures, every clause contained in Lord Stanley's present
bill received the highest whig sanction,—ay, and what is
more, the highest radical, and the highest Popish sanction.
In particular, the yearly renewal, and the final appeal to the
judges, met with the warmest approbation of Mr. O'Connell.
Hear him :

" It certainly is most advisable to make the registry con-
clusive for a year, and not leave it in the power of commit-
tees of this house to determine upon the validity of votes
as they please, or as it may suit them—sometimes one way
and sometimes anotherforgetting altogether the solemn
sanction under which their decisions are made. This will,
however, be put an end to by a final appeal as to the right to
vote to THE JUDGES. I trust the bill will be permitted to
go into committee. It is a measure calculated to save the
expense and inconvenience of scrutinising votes before an
election committee. The principle of the bill has been ap-
proved of by gentlemen at both sides of the house."
Where was your "bag" then, Mr. Maguire? You never
dreamt of shaking the fox of Darrynane over Kingstown
Pier, though the scent of an annual revision and appeal to
the judges has been breast high after him, in every cover he
has frequented these last tire years. Your bag then went the
rounds with the wallet itself, and if any hunger-pinched
peasant hesitated whether be should hand his penny or his
halfpenny to the potato-dealer to purchase food for his
children, or to the rank mendicant in whose odour of annual
revisions and appeals to the judges you then rejoiced, there
was no man readier than yourself to exhort him to a pa-
triotic starvation for the sake of the vast advantages your
common country would derive from an annual settlement of
the registry, and from a final appeal to the judges. Is not
Mr. O'Connell struggling for your rights? Is not Mr.
O'Connell sustaining the first English ministry that ever
showed a disposition to serve Ireland? Has he not sacrificed
ten thousand a year clear income to devote himself to the
amelioration of your condition? See here the boon he and'
her Majesty's ministers are preparing for you—au annual
settlement of the registries, a conclusive mode of appeal—au
inestimable benefit surely to the poor voter !!
There was no talk then of three millions of teetotallers;to
resist this atrocious measure. No, the millions. were ex-
horted to be meek as church mice, lest any exhibition of
popular excitement might furnish an argument to the tories
against this "healing measure" of annual registry,. revises,
and conclusive appeas to the judges !
It is in vain for the government press to endeavour to dis-
guise it. There are the newspapers of the day : there is the
Mirror of Parliament ; there are the printed papers and
votes of the house, and turn to which of them you please,
there is the damning fact that her Majesty's- ministers, and
Mr. O'Connell, and his whole party, in 1835, and three
times since, supported and urged forward a measure contain-
ing provisions absolutely identical with those which they now,
out of mere personal hostility to Lord Stanley, and hate anti
fear of his party, resist unyuibus et pedibus. What can be
more disgraceful to a government than such a plea from its
advocate as this, put forward by the Morning Chronicle of
Monday :
" The very fact that Lord Stanley•was the father of the
bill should have mustered the representatives of the Irish
people in all their force to expose and to defeat it."
And this is from a print which pretends to discuss political
questions philosophically and upon their-merits. And what
is the excuse ?—why this, forsooth—
" Mark the language of the Dublin Evening Mail, the
most influential and intelligent of the Irish tory journals.
The Irish reform bill was a revolution. This bill' reforms
the reform bill."
The bill will reform the reform bill ; and if the reforin bill
need reform in its details—and that of Lord Stanley while
affecting such reform preserves the principle to the letter,
why should it not ? If the reform bill which this yob,. advo-
cate of ministers is so eager to reform in other respettiS have.
in some of its clauses, and their mode of operation, been so
constructed as to leave open a wide door too-perjury and mis-
representation in Ireland, why should it not be reformed
in that respect as well as in its other provisions, which this
very journal of the government is so eager to have amended,
and extended, and reformed ?

Let every thing that is wrong be reformed, say we. Is
perjury right? , Is falsification right ? is the polling of dead
men right? Let the Morning Chronicle shew that ; and it
may then object to reforming these abuses of the Irish re-
form bill. Is it denied that the Irish reform bill requires
alteration ? Mr. O'Connell, in the commencement of his
speech yesterday, speaks as follows :
" The situation of Lord Stanley is one of considerable ad-
vantage ; there is no denying it. The evils of the reform
bill, which, there is no doubt, are many, give him great ad-
vantages. There were many evils connected with the regis-
try, and attempts had been made front time to time to abolish
some of those evils by the government. One of these bills
got through the House of Commons."
This, we consider, settles the question.
But really it is only with Mr. O'Oonnell and his clique,
whose very existence devends upon agitation, that this bill
is exciting any ferment. There is not a conscientious, or a
well-thinking, or a sound-judging person in Ireland who is
not aware of, and who does not deplore, the flagrant villai-
nies to which the present mode of registry gives rise, and
which it tends to encourage. We perceive that even in
Mayo, the high sheriff has refused to convene a meeting of
his bailiwick for the purpose of petitioning against it, as will
be seen by the following, from the Mayo Constitution :--
" It seems (says our cotemporary) that certain worthies
who have been manufacturing a requisition to call a meeting,
for the purpose of petitioning against Lord Stanley's bill,
have had the impudence to ask the high sheriff, Colonel
Gore, to convene a meeting for them. Really this is a piece
of presumption whose parallel we have not seen for some
time. For what did the requisitionists take the high sheriff?
Or what has he done that they should expect him to aid in
upholding fraud and perjury ? What an opinion they must
have had of this gentleman, to think that he would comply
with their request—and assist them in their good work. But
be has undeceived them—if they ever once imagined that
he would be their tool ; he has refused to convene a meeting
—or to give his assent to the bad and infamous practices
which are sought, so much against the faction's wish to be
prevented. No matter—the ' county will meet.' Aye will
it—the priests and their allies will get together—publish re-
solutions and a petition—and say, or swear, if you like, they
were all agreed to at a county meeting, numerous and re-
spectable. But will the country—will the legislature—be
deceived? No, indeed, the trick has been too often ex-
posed—it is too stale."