The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-11-29 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 29, 1836.

We do not, at present, intend to enter upon any of
.he more important topics respecting Ireland, but to take
a brief review of a few questions, and advert to a few
facts, which are, at this moment, peculiarly interesting
to us; inasmuch as they afford very cleftr indications of
her political aspect as regards the future, rather than the
immediate welfare of England ;—the days of our children,
more than our own days. And this, we think, an exer-
cise of political wisdom, upon which depends, incom-
parably more, the permanence and good government of
states, than all the narrow circumscribed policy, which
exhausts itself upon passing events--the growth of em-
pire, and the stability of kingdoms, can only be success.
fully promoted by imitating the great processes of nature,
where the future oak, the giant of the forest, is nourished
and protected in the insignificant germ committed to the
ground, and the tender sapling that bends to the breeze.
It is to the neglect of this practical principle, that disor-
der creeps into states; and rebellion, overlooked in the
bubbling spring when it first bursts the soil, soon over-
flows the land, and sweeps away, with its devastating
waves, the accumulated labour of ages, into the oblivious
ocean, where they are lost for ever.
Though this is our present design, we purpose, shortly,
to devote our best exertions to develope the causes of
distress in Ireland, and to point out what appear to us
the most efficient remedies for it; and we shall then show
that Mr. O'Connell's plan for obtaining " justice to Ire-
land," is as fallacious as it is proclaimed by him to be
necessary ; as visionary in principle as it appears to be
wicked in design. There exists in Ireland a variety of
circurnstances;physical, moral, and accidental, which con-
spire to keep her low in the scale of nations, and which,
carefully examined in their complex and multiform in-
fluence upon each other, and, unitedly, upon the whole
country, will be found sufficient to explain why its statis-
tical history is so contemptible in the eyes of a political
economist. The clear exposition of these will serve to
lay bare her moral and political disease, and afford her
constitutional physicians, of which Mr. O'Connell, as-
suredly, is not one, the best chance of accomplishing a
cure, or at least an:alleviation. But these questions are
primarily of importance to Ireland, though England has,
doubtless, a deep interest in them. She is, and ever must
be, an important member of the British Empire, and can-
not suffer great excitement, or assume any new position,
without imparting some of its influence to the main body.
We have witnessed, and with no small concern, many
alarming movements in our Sister Isle, which, though
softened down in the sensations they produce here, mark
some vital derangement in that part of our political sys-
tem, which threatens disturbance to the whole constitu-
tion. Whether a stamp of the foot could, simultaneously,
arm Ireland in rebellion or not, we leave, for the present,
those to determine whose business it is to take care—"ne
respublica aliquod detrimenti caperet." Among other
ominous symptoms of disorder in that unquiet land, is the
elevation of Mr. O'Loghlen to the Puisne Judgeship of the
Court of Exchequer, Whether such an appointment
was compatible with the honour or the interest of that
gentleman, is a question of personal concern only ; and
he, doubtless, made his calculations, and balanced the
good and the evil, before he accepted it. But to Eng-
land there arises out of this exaltation, another train of
circumstancee, of vastly greater moment than personal
consideration—and this, we regret to say, has been almost
altogether overlooked by the British press. Mr. O'Logh-
len is a Catholic--a "triple alliance" in himself of Ca-
tholic, Radical, and Reformer—the very political Sphynx
of the nineteenth century—and the judicial bench has
received this mongrel character, this heterogeneal com-
pound of undefinable principles, to apply Protestant laws
to Roman Catholic as well as to Protestant subjects.
Whether his lordship's faith may not, sometimes, produce
an obliquity in his judgments we may well question; and
whether political prejudices, mingled with his faith, may

not, sometimes, render the stream of justice impure,
especially when the parties in litigation are of opposite

creeds, we may more than doubt. We can easily imagine,
with what mental casuistry he will have to contend, when-

ever a tithe question is brought before him. How would

he here dispose of a resistance to church rates ? What !
pay tithes to heretics, and to support a heretic church !

and what is less to be endured, to a Conservative clergy-

man ! ! But then his apologists will say, he is the minis-
ter of justice, and has no alternative—the ita dicit lex, is
the unbending rule of the judge. Still, is there no room
for "shuffling "—will every "action lie in its true nature"
before a jury for their consideration, and their verdict?
Is there no influence attached to the "summing-up" of

a judge ?—no heed given to the direction of the bench ?

evidence
s there no room for subtlety to comment upon

. _
—to vary the light and shade of testimony, so as to give
an entirely new effect to the picture—and, as all this may
be in exercise before a Run an Catholic jury, can we
th'nk they will leave the mind free, and the heart un-
moved, and the final judgment unsuspected ? Our pru-
dent ancestors thought otherwise, and to avoid " all ap-
pearance of evil," ani to keep the ermine pun), they
suffered not a judge to prosHe in a court in the county