The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-05-31 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 31, 1853.

THE WEEK.

THE Whitsun Holidays are over, but the resump-
tion of business, and the return to work, have not
added much to the news of the town, for Liverpool
is comparatively deserted. A considerable section
of its inhabitants are in London, in the all-absorb-
ing business of the Election Petition, which is now
before the Select Committee of the House of Com-

There have been a variety of reports cur-
rent as to the proceedings of the petitioners, and
the list of alleged bribed and bribers has undergone
much comment. Names have been inserted of
those who had little or nothing to do with the
election, and others have been omitted who took a
most active part in the canvass. It has been said
that the Radicals have been hard pressed for money,
and have been sending round the begging-box for
supplies. On Thursday some difficulty was expe-
rienced in getting off the witnesses, owing to their

mons.

nut being furnished with sufficient funds to pay
their expenses ; and other evident signs of weak-
ness are reported. A number of our townsmen
are also in Dublin, viewing the wonders of the

Great Industrial Exhibition, so that between the
counter attractions of London and Dublin, Liver-
pool is shorn of its fair proportions.
The arrival of the screw steam-ship Genova, from
the St. Lawrence, after a very brief passage, is a
very favourable opening of steam traffic between
this port and Canada. A new trade is also being
commenced with the Fresh waters of Canada, the
-Cherokee, under the command of Captain Gaskin,
through whose enterprise it has been undertaken,
having been despatched from Toronto to this port,
where he may shortly be expected. It will be seen
by a paragraph in another column that Captain
Gaskin was entertained by the authorities of Toronto
with a public banquet as a testimonial to his spirited
exertions.

Our neighbours at Birkenhead are in the heat of
a contested election, and indulging in all the humour
of personal squibs. It is not, however, all of so
innocent a character, for one elector complains that
after being ten months in Mr. Laird's employ, he
has been discharged, for no other fault than having
a Blue bill in his window. There are numerous
bets depending on the issue, and the latest odds are
against the Reds with few takers.

DUBLIN AND THE EXHIBITION.

SWIFT commences one of his ballads by saying—

O'Rourke's noble feast
It shall ne'er be forgot,
By those who were there
And by those who were not ;
and the quotation is singularly applicable to the Exhibi-
tion that is now going forward in Dublin. The novelty
of the scene, the size of the building compared with sur-
rounding ones, the extent and variety of its contents, the
steady and increasing influx of visitors, the throng and
bustle in the streets, the vivacity seen in every ccunte-
nance from a tide-waiter to the Lord-Lieutenant,--all
these give a present interest to the capital of the sister
island, that those who have known it in past years will
feel to be a most agreeable contrast.

There are few countries which hf;ve suffered so severely
as Ireland, for the sins of her own children and others ;
but the day of her tribulation seems past, and the period
of uninterrupted prosperity arrived. She has passed
through a furnace of affliction, but with manifest advan-
tage, in all that regards the physical condition of her
people, and, we hope, in the moral, too. The landed
aristocracy, to be found, in many instances, a succession
of hereditary bankrupts, have given place to a new and
vigorous race. The " free-trade in land," which was in-
troduced by the Encumbered Estates Bill, has swept off
the weak and irresolute from the cultivation of the soil,
and has placed the task in the hands of stronger and more
enterprising. Famine, pestilence, and emigration have
also done their work in relieving the country of a redun-
dant population that weighed it down ; and the work-
houses are, in a great measure, the receptacles for infir-
mity, youth, or old age merely ; though formerly the
able-bodied, also, were glad to find shelter there.
The intelligence of the people has more than kept pace
with the physical prosperity, for it had its beginning at a
much earlier date. One of the best worked societies in
the United Kingdom is the Sunday School Society, in
Ireland, which is spread like a network over the four
provinces. The Church Education Society treads in a
similar path; and so far as secular instruction goes, the
Irish national system is deserving of great praise. From
all of these, and from causes of a kindred sort, the intel-
lectual status of the country is rising ; and the Irish
peasant or small farmer will take the wind out of the sails
of an Englishman or Scotchman some ten years hence ;
indeed, if it were not for Connaught, he could do it
already. In the higher walks of learning, too, Irishmen
occupy the front ranks. The Earl of Rosse, whose family
changed the name of Bin to Parsonstown,—after outdoing
both the Herschels in his researches in the heavens, and
converting a tribe of Irish " bouchals" into the skilled
manufacturers of mathematical instruments, occupies a
fitting position as President of the Royal Society, in
London. He is not merely a patron of science, of peerage
rank, like the late Marquis of Northampton, but a
thorough working inquirer, who is prouder of his scientific
attainments than he Is of his coronet. In the kindred
realms of literature and archaeological learning we have
Lord Talbot de Malahide, whose Anglo-Norman lineage
can be traced for more than seven hundred years on Irish
soil. His magnificent baronial residence, within an hour's
drive of the city, is justly celebrated as one of the " lions,"
and the boundless liberality with which its ancient trea-
cures are thrown open to visitors, is an index of the
hospitable and friendly spirit still found in the country.
Lord Talbot, too, takes rank in England, as President of
the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. ,

Within the limits of the Circular Road, Dublin itself is
a little world of interest, no parallel to which can be found
on this side of the channel. The Chinese sometimes
divide the whole population of the world into " men,
women, and Chinese ;" and on the same principle we
have sometimes thought that they might be classified as
" men, women, and Dublin car-drivers." These last
constitute, as a naturalist would say, a genus by them-
selves, differing in habits, traditions, language, and men-
tal characteristics from any other class in existence.
Without the shameless rapacity of the Liverpool cabmen
(on those whom they know to be merely passing through),
or the bullying of the Londoners, they will manage now
and then to make an overcharge ; but their legal fare is
so paltry, that the rogues have got the knack of leaving
it to the " gentleman's honour entirely," and thus usually
net at least double what they are entitled to. But quer- i
relling with them is next to impossible in any case. They
possess an inexhaustible fund of good humour ; and an
unlucky wight finds the jokes rattled at his head like hail-
stones, so that he knows it is good policy to consent to
a compromise. Even an overcharge, however, is an
undercharge—though the expression looks like a bull—
for the Irish driver is at the same time a guide, and a
capital one he often is. It is true that he sometimes
runs upon his imagination when his facts run short, but
the entertainment never flags. In those portions of the
country which are not yet opened up by railways, as in
the south of Dublin and all Wicklow, the tourist must
trust himself to a vehicle of this description ; though some
of the learned at the British Association calculated that
the difficulty of holding on an Irish car was just equal to
the accommodation of transit ! When the visitors have
inspected the wonders of the Exhibition and the usual
attractions of the metropolis, they will find a trip to Bray,
Roundwood, or the Meeting of the Waters, such a treat
as is rarely to be met with.