The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-03-22 00:00:00

LIBERATION OF THE MADIAI.

IT was announced by Lord JOHN RUSSELL, in
the House of Commons on Friday, that a telegraphic
despatch had been received that day with the intel-
ligence that the GRAND DUKE of TUSCANY had
liberated the MADIAI, who had left that country in
a ship for Marseilles. The intelligence is gratifying
as far as concerns the individuals thus rescued from
the lingering death to which they were consigned
for receiving the "glad tidings of salvation, which
should be to all people," and the act of tardy grace
was no doubt owing to the judicious remonstrance
of the British Minister; but it does not remove one
iota of the stain upon the petty tyrant who inflicted
the punishment, nor does it palliate in the slightest
degree the condemnation, which will remain an in-
delible proof of the bitter intolerance of the Romish
Church, whenever she has the power to put into
exercise her unchanging spirit of demoniac cruelty
and oppression. Those who clamour for religious
liberty, should remember, that Rome allows no
liberty to read the Holy Scriptures.

PRESIDENT PIERCE'S INAUGURAL
ADDRESS.

THE inaugural address of General PIERCE,
the new President of the United States of America,
which was delivered on the opening day, the 4th of
March, has at least the merit of declaring, though
in courtly phrases, the leading points of the policy
which is to guide his government. It is said to
have been received with vociferous applause, and to
have given general satisfaction on that side the
Atlantic ; but this will not necessarily ensure it fa-
vour on our side. The discussion with reference to
the acquisition of the island of Cuba,—bearing in
mind the buccaneering expeditions from New
Orleans, and the refusal of America to join in the
treaty offered by Great Britain and France to secure
the possession of Cuba to Spain,—has thrown strong
suspicion upon the model republic with reference to
her ulterior designs upon that island, and this is in
no way removed by the cautious language of Presi-
dent PIERCE. He says : "It is not to be disguised
that our attitude as a nation, and our position on
the globe, render the acquisition of certain posses-
sions, not within our jurisdiction, eminently impor-
tant for our protection, if not in the future, essen-
tial for the preservation of the rights of commerce
and the peace of the world. Should they be ob-
tained, it will be through no grasping spirit, but
with a view to obvious national interest, and se-
curity, and in a manner entirely consistent with the
strictest observance of national faith," We may
pass over the observation about national faith, as
mere words of course, and learn from this admis-
sion, that, under her new President, America will
not long want a decent pretext for robbing the pros-
trate kingdom of Spain of almost her only colony.
The new President, after asserting the rights of his
countrymen both at home and abroad, and his de-
termination to maintain those rights "upon every
sea, and on every soil," founds upon it a claim
which may fairly be called in question. He says :
" It can hardly be necessary to re-affirm a principle
which should now be regarded as fundamental.
The rights, security, and repose, of this Confederacy
reject the idea of interference or colonization on
this side of the ocean by any foreign power, beyond
present jurisdiction, as utterly inadmissible." We
can have no wish to interfere with any territory
which claims the protection of the stripes and stars,
hut this manifest dictation to the whole of the vast
continent of the two Americas is a bombastic as-
sumption, which we can by no means admit.
Upon the vexed question of Slavery and the
maintenance of the fugitive Slave law, the new Pre-
sident shows himself to be the tool of the slave-
holders of the south. He certainly does not men-
tion the obnoxious word in his opening address,
but he blandly speaks of the "involuntary servi-
tude"—a mild phrase for such inhuman tyranny
and cruelty, in a land of professing liberty—which
exists in different States of this confederation, as re-
cognised by the constitution, and believes that the
States wherein it exists are entitled to efficient re.
media to enforce the constitutional provisions. He
goes further, and holds that the laws of 1850,
which he says are commonly called the "compromise
measures," but which are better known as the
fugitive slave laws, are strictly constitutional, and
to be unhesitatingly carried into effect. This must
be an American opinion of their Constitution which
declares all men to be free and equal, and a conve-
nient forgetfulness of the fact that the positive
illegality of Slavery was only prevented from being
declared by Congress, by the accidental absence of
one member, who was necessary to make a consti-
tutional majority. The best friends and the warm-
est advocates of Ameriean institutions will not deny
that their greatest blot, and the one which falsifies
all their professions of justice and freedom, is that
hideous system of Slavery which prevails in the
Southern States. It is the worm which preys upon
the vitals of the model Republic, the source of
never-ceasing anxiety, and one which must sooner

or later prove the means of her destruction, to a
fa more frightful extent than even the wildest
theories of the ultra-democrats in the North. The
new Government commences under Southern aus-
pices, but a sense of the enormities there perpe-
trated has been awakened, the spirit of opposition is
aroused, and it may require far more than the ephe-
meral popularity of President PIERCE to preser►e
much longer a union between the extravagance of