The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-11-22 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

Of all the speeches Mr. Daniel O'Connell has recently
delivered,:tbat We_publistied yesterday, relative to the in;
troduction of poor-laws into Irelands is perhaps the most
important, because the most characteristic of the intel-i
lect, tlie•acpliteinents, the morality, and the feelings of
the man. He threatens to
.favour us with, this speech,
acconvanjed bynotes, illustrations, If.lieshoold for
once keep his word, we think we may promise our read-
ers a more extraordinary specimen of foolery and, false-
' hood than has issued from the press of these realms since
flaniel cent forth his speech on the subject of the repeal
of the union. We are quite willing to
,wait the appear
ance of this rubbish in an authentic shape, before we
deal with it in detail. There are somepoints of the ora-,
tion, however; about which there can be no mistake, and
which are tot) remarkable for us to suffer to Pais.:without
comment new:
.Danieloylinittingwith a sigh that ". the, time is come,
when it is impossible to avoid doing something. for, the
Irish poor'," proceeds to state the amount of 'the some.
thing, he', thus driven, liaS made up hiSinind
to yield tO:lirs'naked.atfd, starving. felloW,COnntrymen.l
. ":1 go,",he says,:" to :extent—let the. absentees .he 4
taxed, and let the, aged, the infirm, the crippled, and diet
diseased, be provided for out of the resources of the soil.
' Further than this l (Daniel) will not go." Now, for an-
. abli-bodied beg.'nt like O'COndlll„,who with the great
.
er part of his family, all
,able-bodied ied also, are.supported
by public alms, to use this lanauage,•iS as brazen as. the.
Sentiment it conveys brutal." We have the report of
the Irish poor law commissioners, which fOrnislies over-
: Whelining evidence of fact,, that able-bodied labourers
of both sexes in Ireland daily perish. from insufficient
food, from want of clothing, •from exposure to cold and,
wet, against which their ragged, unthatched hovels
' ford them no shelter;—nay„ from actual starvation, lit-
ter- destitution.Of fodd of WhateVer kin. And yet ,tl;is
patriot,, thisfrieud of Iyeland,.this lover of his country,
this Grub-street panegyrist of the " finest pisantry,"
this dealer in worse,than-Cockney cant about green fields.
would leave the Irish to die the MOW but sure death that'
cold, and hnnge'r,.and nakednesSioflict,.uniess they hap
. pen to laboor under the additional afflictions of being,
aged,.infirm or crippled! Why, the leader of the most,
oncultivatedtrihe of savages would spit upon so cruel and
cOld• blooded at chorll- Oh that the Irish oor could
Made to tinck,rstand this bad-Hearted man They have‘
murdered, rsithey have plundered their neighbour;, they
have starved themselves to fill his begging-box; and see
the return: he makes them ! But he will tax the absen-
tees ! .-VittitiOus and just man ! By his accursed agita-
tion heitiiiders life and property, in all but. the protest-,
ant-peopled distrieta,losecure,-frives the ,rich and the
respectable out of the land; and then proposes to tax
them on account of their abience ! We dare say that
Daniel, for whom no
.falsehood is too desperate, would
insist that an absentee whOdrawS his own property from
the country is much more culpable than
,the mendicant.
agitator who, causing the absenteeism of others, stays
at home to levy contributions in the shape of tribute or,
alms upon the •propertiof others.
The.onlyreason this great Irish pauper assigns for.re
fuing assistance to tlie Anualler
,of hiiown fraternity,,un- •
lesathey happen to be diseased, crippled, or disabled by
old age, is, that any such assistance would lead to demo-
ralization. We suspect he Was thinking of himself wlien
lie cane to this Conelusinn, though he is content with
talking of the number of pregnant worne.n,..whe, accord
ing to the English
.poor law commissioners, were aceus-
tomed to appear every now and then at the altar, in some
parts Of this country, under the old poor law;sVstern. We.
have rePeatedly Shown;' first, that -the ritnntier of such
cases bas been gross),l emggerate.d art ~secondly,,trtat
tVey were attributable ,to the
_mal-administration, or ra- •
tiler to the violation, of the poor laws, and not to the
laws thernselvdi. We will not on .fflis`opeasion go into
that subject again. For the sake of the Argument, let
'the cases have, been as numerous as they would have been
ii tlaere had been a number of Daniel O'Connells in
every parish,-and all out women had been as frail as
Daniel tias found but too milk to 'be in another part of
the ernpire—eyen so the picture of 'English dernoraliza:-
thin would not be half so frightfol as that demo-
rali4a/itin which the
.report of the poor law commission,
ers for Ireland exhibits. There is no poor law in Ire-
there has been onein England. Yet in Ireland
infantidide, chpd-drOpping,-p'egnaticy before marriage,
And the false swearing of rapes in order to courpel mar-
:riage, are, according to the report of ,the Irish poor law
commissioners, Common offences in Ireland--cffericeS pre-
liaillng in that cotintry to" an extentliever heard of in
Great Britain. It is clear, therefore, that it iS the 'ab-
senc'e of a law for the relief ef. the poor, and not the en-
ecting.of such a law, that leads to demoralization. So
muchfor Daniel's argument.
We shall 'no doubt have occasion to revert to this
speech, and'we shall • Certainly repeatedly return to 'the
subject to which it relates. FOr the present, we have
only once more to direct public attention to the igno-
rance and bad-heartedness- of this political quack, this
thriving trader on the miseries or his felldw-countrymen,
who, perpetually calling for " justice to Ireland," has
refused, when put to the test, to consent that the coM-
MOnest offices of hninanitY shall be exercised towards
that portion of the Irish who have been declared, on of-
ficialsauthority, to be naked; houielessi, and 'starving!--
Times.

TIIE DECISIONS QF idiattlsTs.--The de-
cisiOn of the revising barristers on the claims of the mill-
owners to vote for the West-Riding will be read with no
small degree of amazement.' The unlearned reader will
be astonishedto 'Mid that the cases which last year were
decided to be bad are this year' pronounced to he good,
and that, too, by. twobe the barristers who last year con-
curred in their condemnation. The learned'reader will
open his eyes on hearing the law of Mr. Cottingharn
that a chattel interest is still a freehold interest, if the
subject matter out of which it issues is rateable and ca-
pable of qualifying'a member to sit in parliament—and
will stand aghast at Mr. Henry's legal distinction by
which real estate 'shall be converted into persOnalty
against the eipress declaration of the parties, and a chat-
tel interest shall confer a freehold vote—thus converting
real into personal in spite cif the owners, and reconvert-
ing personal into real in the teeth of the reform act. The
unlearned will, howeVer, see from this expose Of Mr.
Cottingham that he was last year in the gloridniruir)o-
rity of one, and bowed, though unconvinced.
this year reinforced by the accession of Mr. Henry, and
Mr. Henry and Mr.-Cottingbam counting two, and Mr.
Hildyard only one, "the ayes have it," and the Law is
changed ! It is very clear that the Revision Court is no
longer to be termed a judiciary' but 'a•-: 'legislative tri-
bunal, in which the majority lays down the law With the '
luMinohs enositiOn,, Sic volO, sic jubeo, stet pro ra-
tione voluntas." How long this absurdity is to last—
, how long the annual session of the revision parliament is
to enact new laws—to unsettle votes 'and give counte,
nand.e to illegal cli;lms—to add to the g * `. glorious On
pinky of the reform act, and prOvoke objec
and
tions disputes, perhaps our reforming ministers will,
when they have leisure, inform us.—Leeds