The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-03-24 00:00:00

terial phalanx will not be permitted to walk off
, without having first sustained some stunning and
damaging blows. What the result may be, of course,
it is difficult to predict. If, however, Lord Stanley,
as we anticipate from his keen perception of the
spirit of the times, should meet the ministry with a
moderate compromise between extreme protection
and the present measure, it is not at all unlikely that
he may carry the majority with him. The result of
obstinate resistance, on the part of the ministry, to
such a settlement of the question must be a dissolu-
tion ; and however much such consummation is to
be deplored at the present moment, when the com-
merce and credit of the country are in a most dan-
gerous and precarious position, the blame must be
upon the head of those, whose rash and unasked for
measures have brought it upon our heads. We
durst risk any reputation we may have for discern-
ment upon the fact that what Lord Stanley is pre-
pared to propose, as a substitute for the ministerial
measures, would, if brought forward at the com-
mencement of the session, before the public mind
had been excited by the announcement of their more
imposing policy, have satisfied the country. Sir
Robert Peel, however, is enamoured of the coup
d'etat ; and if, in this instance, he has overrated his
power and the forbearance of those great interests,
against whom his favourite strategy has been di-
rected, he has only done what greater men upon other
fields have done before him; and, like them, he
must pay the penalty of his rashness.

The ministerial standard of the value of human life
in Ireland, as compared with that of other commodi-
ties, appears singularly low—so low that,like the agri-
culture and industry of the nation, it is judged un-
worthy of being protected. A fortnight ago she heard
the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, remarkino-
how "lamentable" it was that the progress of the
" great measure" should be interrupted by a discus-
sion about a " workhouse squabble,"—the investiga-
tion of such "squabble" involving, however, no less
important a matter than the question whether the
paupers in the workhouses of Great Britain were to
be reduced below the condition of beasts, and allowed
to feed upon the pickings of putrid bones. This week
we have it laid down, by the Premier himself, as a
matter affording "deep regret" to him, that the
same " great measure" must he retarded, for a few
days, to enable the House to read for a first time
only, after which it is to be shelved until a more
convenient season, a Bill which has already passed
the House of Lords, having no less important an
object in view than the prevention of the crime of
assassination in Ireland, and the rescue of that un-
happy country from a state bordering upon anarchy.
Lest the incredulous readers should imagine that we
are misrepresenting the Right Hon. Baronet, we
give his ipsissinza verba :
" On these grounds"—the anxiety of speculators and
others to have the Corn Bill passed, and grain taken out
of bond at once under the low duty—" I am most anxious
to proceed with the utmost expedition, consistent with
due deliberation, with the Corn Bill—(cheers)—and it
certainly is my intention to permit no ordinary business
of the Government to interfere with the progress of that
measure. But then we are in this position with respect to
a bill of very great importance sent down from the Lords—
a bill, the introduction of which nothing could justify but
an urgent necessity, in the opinion of the Government,
that some extraordinary measure is demanded by the state
of Ireland. If we take no step whatever with regard to
that measure until the Corn Bill is disposed of, I appre-
hend it might be impossible to read it even a first time till
after Easter, and I think it would be a most unusual
course to postpone for so long a period any decision what-
ever with regard to an important bill sent down to us from
the other house of Parliament. (Hear, hear.) I am,
therefore, compelled to take this course, and I take it
with great regret:—After the second reading of the Corn
Bill, I think it would be right that the house should have
the opportunity of expressing an opinion on the first read-
ing qf the bill for preventing assassination in Ireland;
but I should not propose that any other stage of that bill
should interfere with the Corn Bill. I propose, therefore,
to fix the first reading of the bill for the prevention of

assassination in Ireland for Friday next. It is possible
that the debate on the second reading of the Corn Bill
might terminate on Thursday; if not—if the anticipation
of my noble friend (Lord G. Bentinck), that it would be
prolonged to Friday, then certainly to terminate—(hear,
hear)—be realised, I should propose that the continued
debate on the Corn Bill should have precedence on that
day, and take the Irish bill on Monday following. Think-
ing it at least possible that the adjourned debate may ter-
minate on Thursday, I shall fix the Irish bill for Friday,
on the und,Tstanding that it shall not interfere with the
second reading of the Corn Bill."

The pocket question first; protection to life is
only secondary in ministerial estimation. A. week's
inconvenience to the holders of a million quarters of
bonded wheat is a calamity by all means to be
avoided ; but three millions of loyal and industrious
men, women, and children, in Ireland, crying for
protection from the bludgeons or the bullets of a
confederation of assassins, must wait the perfect
convenience of Parliament !

Let us see what was the state of things in that
country at the time when Sir Pobert Peel was thus
adroitly playing the game of Daniel O'Connell and
other apologists of Irish turbulence and opponents
of measures for its repression. At Ennis, in the
county of Clare, a most exemplary magistrate, Mr.
Pierce Carrick, had just been shot, for no crime
which even repeal morality could suggest. And from
Thurles. in Tipperary, a Roman Catholic gentle-
man, and a friend of Daniel O'Connell, has addressed
that arch mendicant and impostor, beseeching him,
" as he valued the peace of Ireland, to give up his
opposition to the principle of the Bill about to be
introduced into the House of Commons for the pro-
tection of life." The circumstances upon which this
gentleman grounds his appeal, are so affectingly
stated, and so forcibly illustrative of the present dis-
organised condition of the country, that we cannot
resist the temptation of giving them in full :

" I am not" says the writer, " a tyrant landlord who
asks you to do so. lam a friend to popular rights, and
so far back as the year 1828, when you called me to the
chair of the Catholic Association, to the present time, I
have been one of your humble but strenuous supporters.
I have given more employment than any man of my
means in Ireland. I never did anything in my life that
could call forth the odium of the lawless, or the revenge
of the assassin, unless that I assisted in endeavouring to
bring the murderers of Mr. Milo Bourke, late of Spring-
field, and Mr. Andrew Bourke, late of Greentawn, to
justice. These two inoffensive gentlemen were murdered
for no other reaso7:, but b= .cause their lives were in leases
of land. They were brothers and uncles of mine. I lost
£3OO a-year by the murder of Mr. Milo Bourke ; and
Mr. Bourke, of the Shelbourne Hotel, to whom the pro-
perty of his brother Milo reverted, has been obliged to
sell it for one-tenth of its value, because he did not like
cominr, to this country to receive his rents. Since that
period there have been ten malicious injuries done to my
property, and two attempts made on my life. I shall not
trouble you with a detailed account of all, but merely
state what occurred on the 7th of March. instant. About
eleven o'clock on the night of that day, while my wife, one
child, and myself, were in my parlour, nine bullets, from
a blunderbuss, were discharged into the window ; three
bullets were lodged in the shutters, and one struck the
fender round which we were sitting ; the other five bullets
bit the wall outside. All my family, consisting of ten
children, and five servants, were in the same room, et
night prayers, a few minutes bejore the shot was fired, so
that the assassin did not care whether lie killed one per-
son or seventeen. He who attempted this wholesale mas-
sacre is well known, although he cannot at present be
brought to justice. It is but fair to state that suspicion
of this crime is not attached to any of the murderers of
Meyers. Bourke. The murderers of Milo Bourke con-
sisted of five persons, drawn by ballot, out of 24 under
tenants. Two of them came by untimely deaths; one
was transported for another crime, and two of them re-
• main in the count, y, now 15 years, well known, but could
never be convicted. One of the deceased murderers was
himself murderer!, lest he might give evidence against the
rest. Such is a short outline of the deplorable state of
things in this county. While lam writing, my courageous
but broken-hearted wife, with her ten helpless and inno-
cent children, are assisting each other in barricading the
windows of an upper room, to protect us from the deadly
attack of the midnight assassin, who, we hove reason to
think, is nut far distant from us. As you love Ireland—
as you hate injustice—as you abhor outrage and crime—l
beseech you, I implore of you. I call on you as a duty you
owe your country, to assist Government in accelerating
the bill for the protection of life through the House of
Commons, of which yon are so distinguished a member."
Alas ! whilst this persecuted gentleman was thus
appealing to a heartless and selfish demagogue for
the cessation of his obstructive efforts, directed
against a Bill "for the prevention of assassination,"
the Prime Minister of a Christian country was him-
self rendering that appeal a vain one, and setting
down human life as of less value in the eyes of the
English people than the saving of a few shillings
upon a quarter of wheat !

The facts brought before the public in the charge
of the Recorder at the March Sessions, of which we
gave an accurate report in our last publication, are
calculated to attract serious attention to the state of
crime within our borough. The number of persons
tried and convicted at Sessions appears to have de-
creased during the five years from 1841 to 1845,
from 613 in 1841 and 702 in 1842 to 443 in 1845.
Perhaps we may safely follow Sir James Graham,
in attributing this decrease to the increased pros-
perity of the country during the last three years ;
for we certainly cannot attribute it to any laxity of
the police force or of our local magistracy. The
number of persons charged with felony, and brought
before the magistrates, in the four years from 1842