The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-29 00:00:00

The London liberal papers are playing off their pert-
nesses against the landed proprietors of Ireland. Not
a post passes but they have something to say in con-
demnation of men with whom they have no other ac-
quaintance than what they glean from the columns of
their calumnious contemporaries on this side the chan-
nel. The Morning Chronicle, which is the most active
of the enemies of the Protestant proprietors, opens one
of its articles by the following reference to the tory
press :

"The Tory press is unanimous, or nearly so, upon the
necessity of a complete accordance, political and religious,
between tenants and their landlord. And there is a similar
agreement as to the means of producing this harmony. Its
terms are not to be dictated by a majority, in which case the
landlord might find his faith or faction outvoted ; nor by the
best qualified, for the tenant is sometimes both better in-
formed and more religious than his landlord, but simply by
the facts of proprietorship. Yes, it is decided by the Tory
journalists that one man is morally authorised in deciding
for another how he shall act as a citizen, and how he shall
think and speak of the infinite Deity, solely by his rental."
Where this is " decided" by the tory journalists, the
Chronicle would find it difficult to tell, but the whig
papers are invariably driven to misrepresent the rea-
sonings which they have been unable to refute. All
that the 66
tory journalists" contend for is, the right of
the landowner to let his land to what candidate he will,
and to give it to a Protestant rather than to a Romanist
if he be so disposed. And who to this 'right can
offer a rational objection ? Why, with two competi-
tors before him, is he to be restrained from selecting a
man with whom he has the prospect of peaceful and
harmonious.co-operation, and to be compelled to take
one with whom he can anticipate nothing but trouble
and contention ? Is he to allow his land to be made
the instrument of opposition and vexation to himself ?
and if not, why are "tory journalists" to be maligned
because they demand for him the liberty claimed by
the ministerial scribblers for themselves, and insist on
his right to dispose of his land without obstruction
from, or responsibility to, these self-elected censors ?
The truth is, the landlords of Ireland have given too
little reason for the outcry raised against them. They
have been too inattentive to the interests of the hum-
bler professors of their own faith. They have treated
them too frequently with coldness, indifference, and
neglect, and the holdings which they ought to have
occupied, have been given to less deserving and less
grateful hands. Had a wiser policy been pursued—
had a Protestant peasantry been encouraged, and had
the owners of property provided for the religious in-
struction of the dwellers on their estates, what a diffe-
rent aspect would Ireland now present !—how many
an apprehension would she have been spared, and how
many a convulsion would she have escaped, and how
amply would they have been repaid in her improved
condition and her increased security ! But unfortu-
nately the duty, for a duty it was, was forgotten-

opportunity was lnst, anil a Protestant was often re-
moved to make way for a Romanist. In time these
things begun to operate. 'The tree brought forth its
fruits, and bitter fruits they were, and in sorrow and
suffering were they eaten by those who planted it.
Well does the Dublin Statesman remark :
" Let those who rant about the people's rights, and the
cruelty of landlords, remember what reason the gentry of
Ireland have to trust a Roman Catholic tenantry—let them
remember, among a thousand others, the murder of Lord
Norbury, and its attendant cireumstances—let them recollect
that the Roman Catholic tenantry of that lamented noble-
man screened his murderer from the eye of justice ; and let
them honestly answer the question, whether they believe
that any Protestant tenantry in the world would have done
the like? Again we would refer them to Tipperary, and to
other southern counties, all in a state of chronic rebellion
against the rights of property, full from end to end of agra-
rian outrage. all arising out of a systematic resistance to the
claims of the landlord. These are facts, and the unavoid-
able consequences of establishing a tenantry who have
scarcely any affections in common with their landlord, and
scarcely any principles which are not hostile to his rights—
a tenantry who, rejecting the legitimate influence of the land-
lord, have substituted for it the absolute control of a med-
dling and turbulent hierarchy, rendering an implicit obe-
dience to the ' passive resistance' doctrines of the priest, or
to the still less equivocal mandates of the Ribbon Society."
Our contemporary might have enlarged his list. He
might have asked whether a Protestant tenantry, in-
structed as a Protestant tenantry ought to be, could
have been induced for years to wage a war of rebellion
against the law and of extermination against the
church ? Could they have been induced to imbrue
their hands in the blood of amiable and honourable
men ? Could they have been induced to shoot them
down at their doors and in their halls, while their un-
offending families were cast houseless and helpless on
the world ? Could they have been induced to commit
six or eight murders on one estate (Lord Lorton's, for
instance), without a single effort being made to bring
the murderers to justice ? No, we should have none
of these things had we been wise in time; and because,
here and there, a landlord instructed by sorrowful ex-
perience is endeavouring to repair the errors of the
past, he is held up to execration in the angry animad-
versions of the ministerial press ! We can only say
that we wish that press more frequent opportunities
for the display of its displeasure.
The Chronicle of Saturday asks :
" What is there, we should like to know, in the accident
of being born a landlord, that should qualify a man for the
*ideal and spiritual guidance of his fellow-creatures?
What is there, in that mere chance, to exalt his fiat above
the voice-of a nation ?"

Nothing in the "accident" of the birth, but much
i n the circumstances of the landlord, to render him a
mare competent judge of " political" measures, and to
gwe him a deeper interest in their peaceful and orderly
eisration, than the man who farms a few acres of his
estate.. As to " exalting his fiat above the voice of a
nation," this is mere nonsense, and that the Chronicle
*tight to know. The question is simply, whether, en-
entertaining certain opinions, and believing them to be
best and safest for the country, we should take care
that those whom we invest with a political privilege
are persons who support or persons who oppose them
—persons likely to unite with us in obtaining for them
a place in the government of the nation and the judg-
ment of the people, or persons likely to yield them-
eelves as unreasoning instruments to men who profess
opinions and are acted on by impulses in everything
the opposite of ours. This, divested' of misrepresen-
latioa and mysticism, is, we say, the question ; and
what rational man can hesitate as to the manner in
which it should
.be answered ? That the ministerial
papers feel the difficulties of their position, is obvious
from the pains which they take to misrepresent that of
their opponents, and to charge on it consequences for
which they are in no wayanswerable.Few landlords
will be so unwise as to claim the " political and spirit-
ual guidance of their fellow creatures ;" but it is in-
cumbent on every. landlord to • endeavour that,into
whatever hands it falls, that guidance shall be such as
his " fellow creatures " can safely follow.

" SETTLEMENT" OF THE EASTERN
QUESTION.
(From the Morning, Herald.)
We are assured by a correspondent, to whose com-
munications we have reason to attach entire credit, that
the position of affairs in the east has been the cause o

great uneasiness" to the representatives of the four
powers, now assembled in London. Lord Ponsonby
has been instructed, it is said, to " remonstrate" with
the Sultan on the impolicy of resisting the wishes of
his allies, in reference to the disposal of the pachalic of
Egypt•

"convention," we are further given to under-
stand, "does not quite approve of the guarantee given
by Commodore Napier, in the name of the four pow-
ers, on the subject of the hereditary possession of
Egypt. The English government thinks that such a
guarantee militates, in the first place, against the su-
premacy of the Sultan, and, in the second place,
against the integrity of the Turkish empire. Sir Ro-
bert Stopford has been, therefore, directed to commu-
nicate these things .to Mehemet Ali, and to declare, at
the same time, that the four powers are still unani-
mously disposed to recommend to the Sultan the ratifi-
cation of the terms enunciated by Commodore Na-
pier."

- This looks exceedingly like a "settlement" of the
Egyptian question !
The "obstinacy" of Mehemet Ali was the pretext
for forming the quintuple, now the quadruple, alliance.
The "obstinacy" of the Sultan bids fair to bring that
alliance to an untimely end.
The conduct of the "convention," and more especially,
of the English government, would appear, if our cor-
respondent be rightly informed, to be very much the
reverse of dignified. The "convention" does not
"quite approve of" the guarantee given by Commodore
Napier! The question, however, to be first determined,
is, we apprehend, not what the convention finds it con-
venient now to approve it—but whether Commodore
Napier was empowered to offer such a guarantee. If
he was not authorised to guarantee the hereditary pos-
session of Egypt to Mehemet Ali, then Commodore
Napier overstepped fearfully the limits of his duty, and
rendered himself liable to the severest censure—nay,
punishment. If, on the other hand, C°maw dore
Napier was empowered to treat with the Pacha on th
terms which he employed, how disgraceful must not
the conduct of the "convention" be pronounced to be!
The first, therefore, of the many questions to be

ie treated

is to follow

hat, we suspect

" adjusted" by the members of the " con
The Sultan does not act, except
with what he believes to be profitable advice.
the full benefit of that skill, which belongs
markable a degree to the diplomatists of Russia. TI
great northern power will not, in all probability, per-
mit the Sultan to he coerced ; nor will France, in all
probability, tamely submit to the deposition, in such
circumstances, of Mehemet Ali.

4. in accordan

He has

a so re-

The whole affair is full of perplexities. Nor will
the perplexities disappear, even if the Sultan should
graciously adopt the "recommendation" of the four

powers

THE YOUNG BLUE
BRITISI

NOSE

OR COLONI

NORTH. A

with English lace