The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-12-14 00:00:00

ALTAR DENUNCIATIONS,

(From the Cork Constitution.)
Our remarks on Tuesday on the speech of Priest Hughes
we concluded with these questions:—`• Is it any marvel
that murder is the pastime of the peasant ? And will any
sane man tell us that the Priests are blameless ?" After
what has recently occurred, few, we apprehend, will be
disposed to deem these questions so uncharitable as once
they might have thought them; but should there be one
still sceptical, let him read the following, which we take
from the Dublin Evening Herald:—
"We happen to know a very recent case of altar denun-
ciation, the particulars of which are now before the govern-
men, and will soon be, we trust, before the pubic. In this
instancethe ' Clerical instigator' is stated to have distinctly
indicated two individuals for assassination. This *as
done without any kind of reserve or mystification. He
simply stated what Ms line of conduct would have been
had he been placed in the shoes of the evicted tenant. His
language was exquisitely simple, and perfectly adapted to
the comprehension of his audience. 'He would have
taken,' he said, a loaded gun and done for the villain
that turned him out of his land.' To this was, a few days
subsequently, superadded language directly addressed to
the denounced individuals, and so frightfully menacing
that they are, we believe, immediately about to leave the
country—in the belief that by doing so they are consulting
their only chance of safety. It is, indeed, high time that
this priestly prerogative should be a little clipped."
Until the:exercise of it be prohibited, and the Pope's sub-
jects be stripped of the power of obeying it, by being de-
prived of the " gun" which they are ready to " load" for
any person " indicated" at the altar, the legislation which,
consumes so much time and temper will be of little
use. But it would be unconstitutional ! Unconstitutional
to wrest from a Priest the " prerogative" of preaching
murder and from his disciple the means of committing it I
Be it so, but the sooner both are put beyond the pale of
the Constitution—in short, hanged by the same halter,
the better for the country. Is there any rational Roman-
ist who will say us nay ?
In Tipperary, Father Laffari's county, they have got a
safe mode of carrying out the councils of priests of this
stamp. A man who has a grudge against another encloses
a sum of money to a club, whose members meet at " a
shibeen house,") by the way these " shibeen houses"
ought to be looked after, for many a murder is hatched in
them), and there sit in diabolical deliberation on the mea-
sures necessary for compassing the death of individuals
doomed by their atrocious law. There is a regular seas,
we are informed, and this scale is said to be well known
among the population. A Pound is stated to be the Price
of a caution or a threat, and on its receipt a " Notice" is
despatched that curdles the blood of the denounced.
Three Pounds are the." consideration" for a beating,
and for Five, the assassin is sent on his bloody mission,
and the victim is dogged until, unsuspecting and unpre-
pared, he drops dead under, perhaps, the aim of an eye
that ought to have looked on him with gratitude and
affection. This, we are told, is the system in Tipperary.