The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-07-22 00:00:00

THE MINISTRY.

From the Dublin Evening.
"Then comes the tug of war."
PERHAPS the better way of commencing a very brief
appeal that we are about to make to the Conservative
Members will be to show them the efforts that their
enemies, and the enemies of the country, are making to
rally their forces for the approaching contest, when the
point at issue will be nothing short of this—the con-
tinuance or subversion of the British Constitution :

Whitehall, July 16, 1836.
" most earnestly request your attendance in the
House of Commons on the Ist and 2d of August, when business
of great importance may be expected.
"`Your obedient servant,
"JOHN RUSSELL"

The foregoing circular has been addressed by the
Leader of the House of Commons to every supporter of
Government; while the Whig and Liberal press is loud
and unceasing in its call for the presence of members
representing its opinions.
Shall it be said, that, in this great, perhaps the last
struggle the Conservatives may have to make in the
cause of liberty and good government, they might have
won the battle had the strength of their party been in the
field ? No. We will not bring ourselves to imagine
that, on this momentous occasion, there will be a single
member absent from any other cause than such a visita-
tion of Providence as that before which all must bow. A
good muster and a good division, and the battle is won.

MURDER OF THE REV. MR. WALSH.

(From the Dublin Warder.)

The topic pressing most uporrour observation this week
is the trial at the Carlow assizes of the conspirators who
sought, by perjury, to swear away the life of an innocent
man—Mr. Archibald Sly. In all the course of actual or
imagined wickedness by-which the human character proxi-
mates, to the devilish, never has there occurred anything
more hideous and revolting than is disclosed by the evi-
dence on the trials of the blood-seeking perjurers, Corri-
gan, Doyle, and Flemming.
It will be recollected, at the time of priest Walsh's
death, how actively the rest of his fraternity laboured to
have it thought the effect of protestant enmity ; they did
not calculate on the difficulty of finding any but their own
slaves, to believe that protestants can be assassins. Per-
fiery, however, was more easily to be had as an instru-
ment of legal murder. It was a crime fashionable and
venial—the example of the Irish popish members made
it fashionable, the absolution of the priest made it venial,
and a system of elaborate well-studied perjury placed a
respectable and innocent protestant on his trial for life
and death. The pains taken to ensure the sacrifice saved
the doomed victim ; the thing was overdone, and besides
the internal evidence thus afforded of a deliberate conspi-
racy, and a schooled evidence well got by heart, Provi-
dence stretched forth its arm, and by a record of a con-
stabulary superior proved the constable Corrigan a per-
jurer. From the moment that Walsh became the victim
of habitual drunkenness and was found de"ad on the road,
a politico-popish conspiracy against the life of Mr. Sly,
because a protestant—perhaps not a compromising one—
was concocted, and acted upon. The day the account of
Walsh's death arrived in Dublin, a popish journal, in the
pay of government, placarded at its office—" The mur-
der of the Rev. Mr. Walsh, a Roman catholic clergyman,
by a gang of orangemen," or to that effect, and the next
day the same villainous and factious calumny was pla-
carded at the mob-assemblage in the Coburg Gardens,
and the calumny was echoed by the Popish press through.
out Ireland. It would appear as if the blood seeking
falsehood had gotten telegraphic currency. The perjury,
by which the conspiracy was sought to he supported, was
so manifest that Mr. Sly was honourably acquitted, and
of course it became the duty of the Law Officers of the
Crown to prosecute the perjurers. They were prosecuted
on Friday last week, and convicted without hesitation.
We must suppose that the necessary proof of conspiracy
was wanting, or that the indictment would have. been
laid for conspiring against the life of Mr Sly, the penally
for which would have been the death which they sought
to inflict upon him. The many assassinations which illus-
trated O'Connell's excitements of the rabble passions,
fall short- in turpitude to a murder in which the fiendish
di.scples of DenN's 7'heology would have involved, as
parties, Judge and Jurors, and all the sacred forms of
public justice.
Here is a true pict ore of Popish morals in Ireland.
Will our English brethren look upon it and learn their
duty? The Standard, with its accustomed justness of
thought and feeling, thus observes upon this trial :
" Let men remember, what a trial is; it is an investigation o
the truth, upon the best possible testimony, after along and in
dustrious research, and a careful elaboration on both sides. Now,
what is the truth inevitably deducible from the successive inves-
tigations and trials? is it not that there exists in Ireland, at
least, in Carlow, a numerous party not unconnected with the
priesthood, anxious and ever prompt to destroy the character of
the protestant population, even at the cost of perjury and murder,
blackened by the foulest ingratitude. The most striking and
the most instructive feature in the case is presented by the total
absence of personal motive of anv kind. None of the perjured
witnesses appears to have entertained the slightest feelings of
private malice—none of them by possibility can have any mo-
tive of personal gain in the destruction of the innocent man
whom they doomed to an ignominious death—nor does there
appear to have been any connection among them beyond their
common religion and their united submission to their priests.
How frightful the inference front such an anomaly in the social
state. Does not this potentous anomaly seem to prove the almost
infinite extent of a conspiracy against the honor of the pro-
testant religion, and the lives of Protestants, of which the four
convicted conspirators were but representatives sent on duty
pro hoc vice?"
From this reasoning it is to be inferred that thosp,
wretches, Corrigan, Doyle, and Flemming were unff&
the influence of a power which, in this unhappy country,
is paramount to the laws. Their conviction and pfinisii-
ment bear lightly on the public interests, compared with
the discovery and punishment of those "commanding
who set them on, and drilled them to the horrible
spirits"
abuse of the legal forms of justice. To find out these
would, indeed, .be a discovery of deep and momentous
value. The Kilkennq Moderator makes the following
observations among others :
" Doyle confessed hi, guilt, and declared that be was induced
to swear against Sly's life by two men, who, it appears, were in
turn employed by souse prieSts to bring anninm-ent man to an
ignominious end. Corrigan swore that he never thought of
giving evidence against Sty until he went to his Confession ' "
Doyle mentioned that he was first urged to the con-