The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-01-19 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE INSTIGATORS OF THE CANADIAN
- • REBELLION.:
• - -
(Prom the Morning Herald.)
Many persons have, since the receipt of the last ad-
vices from Canada, been asking each other this ques-
tion :—" If the leaders of the traitorous rebellion in
Cariada are to stiffer the' penalty of their crime, is it fit-
ting, or consistent with equal justice, that the persons at
honie who have been secretly prompting and counselling
;those rebels should escape without judicial notice or in-
-quirv?" If the advices we allude 'to are to be-credited,
-the traitorous designs of some at least of our home agi-
tators have not been confined to speeches made in and
'out of
_parliament, but consist also of written recommen-
dations to the -very• revolt which has since broken out. If
this be true, and that the letters of one or more of such
persons , have been found ticketed, and arranged in the
official Cabinet of the traitor Papineau, surely it behoves
governmentthe to look at home as well as abroad ; and
not to let •the instigators of treason walk about un-
scathied, while the traitors pay the forfeit of their crimes.
It is not imposSible, or at all improbable, btit that the
treason being nipped in the bud and defeated, as we
have now some reason to hope is the case, the instiga-
tors at home will abandon their dupes, and, in the lan-
guage of Sempronius, in Cato, exclaim—

"Villains, stand off! base grovelling worthless wretches,
Mongrels in faction, poor faint-hearted traitors!
Know—when such paltry slaves presume
To mix in treason, if the plot succeeds,
They're thrown neglected by; but if it fails,
They're sure to die like dogs."

Ent this stoicism, though it may very well suit the
cold-blooded heartlessness of the modern radical, will
rilet with no sympathy with a British or any other
Christian community. However the recent out-burst
in Canada may-end, there can be no doubt but that its
ramifications, both there and at home, must besought
out and fully investigated; and though we, in common
with the enlightened part of the community, have no
wish to see traitor's heads on Temple-bar, we do wish
that if treason, or traitorous designs, can 'be brought
borne to any persons here, hey will not he allowed to
escape from justice, but that the instigator of rebellion,
instead of being allowed to disseminate mischief in
safety, will find himself placed upon the same level with
the traitors themselves.

LORD DURHAM.
(From the
The Gazette of last night (as well as the debate in the
Howe of Commons) announces the appointment of Lord
Durham as Governor-General, Vice-Admiral, and Cap-
tain-General, &c., of her Majesty's provinces contigu •
ous to the continent of North America. We will not
quarrel with the multiplicity of the titles with which that
noble person is loaded : would they may turn to good!
We have no disrespect for Lnrd Durham : he is an ho •
pourable and right-minded British , nobleman. -We are
surprised that he has undertaken this difficult mission---
not that his lordship should shudder at the difficulty, but
that he should not consider what class 'of men he has to
please at home., Lord Durham and Joseph Home, for
example, can have no more sentiments in common than.
an angel and a Hottentot; and yet; if- his lordship gives.
Satisfaction, he must please Joseph Hume' and Mr. Grote,
cum multis aliis of that description. as well as Lords
Melbourne. and Johnny Russell, who are dependent. upon
Joseph and Grote for their existence as ministers. We
sincerely wish Lord Durham success in his mission : *e
certainly do not venture to predict it.

EXTINCTION OF TITHES--PERPETUITY OF

7. THE ALIAS. •
(From the Dublin Evening Mail.)'
When Mr. O'Connell talks popularly (as he did yes-
terday at the Corn Eichange) about the total abolition
and extinction of tithes, it is right that his audatory
shOuld be furnished with a glossary of his political lan-
guage, by reference to which they may discover the pre-
cise value of the terms which he employs ; for the popu-
larbr exoteric dialect has little or no coincidence with
the esoteric and recondite meaning of his. phraseology.
With a view, therefore, of simplifying the meaning of
this profound mystifier, we must turn from his oral to
his written traditions, and endeavour to elicit from the
latter the real amount and import of the former. In
the speech now before us, Mr. O'Connell insists upon
the total abolition and extinction of tithes for ever. In
his late letter to the clergy of the Established Church be
demands the commutation of tithes into a land tax. We
have now a clue, by means of this comparative induction
of terms—to the true .meaning of his popular vocabu-
lary—that abolition means commutation—and extinction,
perpetuity--that the words tithe and land tax are but
different names for the precise same fund ; and that a•
little hocus pocus—such as substituting the latter for the
fOrmer7—will fully answer the.purpose he hai in hand--
namely, to perpetuate the fund itself under such a name
that the payers thereof may conceive it totally extin-
guished. t •
For this purpose he calls upon the " people" of Ire-
land to petition parliament for a measure which it ,has
already become obvious that it must pass, with the con-
sent of all parties—namely, the commuting of tithes into
a land tax, or rent charge, or some alias equally 'conve-
nient and satisfactory. But he has not added, by way
of,explanation, that the very moment when tithes be-
come extinguished, the identical same amount—penny
for penny—pound for pound—cent. per cent.—will be-
come actually and bona fide due, under the more pleasing
but equally immitigable name of rent charge, land-tax,
or some of the other euphonious aliters that we have
already left to the lively imagination of the public. It
will so happen that when the occupier dreams, " good
easy man," that lie has completely got rid of his shilling
an acre, or his one-and-sixpence, due by contract to the
clerical incumbent of his parish, and, hugging himself
on his escape from the discharge of his honest obliga-
tions, he blesses the name of O'Connell for the success-
ful roguery—that a collector shall break through his vi-
sion of increasing wealth, and dispel his precipitate gra-
titude, by demanding the identical one shilling, or one-
and:sixpence per acre, as the case may be, which (as he
will be informed) is to he paid to the use and hehoof of
the said clerical incumbent—notwithstanding the aboli-
tion of 'tithe's! Nay, the awakened farmer will say to
himself—yea, lie will grumble it out to the collector—
that lie hadbetter and would rather have staid as he was;
for that under- the. commutation of tithes effected by
Lord Stanley he got an abatement at the rate of £l5
out of every hundred pounds of tithe due in the parish ;
but that under the total abolition and extinction of tithes
effected by O'Connell, he has his hundred pounds (or his
share of it) to pay in full—penny for penny—pound for
pound—cent. percent.—and besides found it easier to
deal with two landlords—to wit, the parson :tad the
squire—than
,to deal with one—to wit, an ecclesiastical
hoard, or a government commission—and then, if he do
not pitch Mr. O'Connell and his double dealing traffic in
unintelligible words, as far as David Garrick advised his
friend to pitch the guinea—(we use this circumlocution
for the sake of " ears polite")—we are utterly mistaken
as to the acuteness and irritability of the Irish imagina-
tion and the popular character.
The fact is, the tribute is a failure. Nothing more is
to he gotten from those of the lower order. That class
begin to find out that emancipation has done nothing to-
wards the improvement of their condition ; and that agi-
tation, with its concomitants, is rather an expensive
amusement. Hence Mr. O'Connell appeals to the sym-
pathy of the wealthy classes: hence his courting the pa-
tronage of the employers by denouncing the tradesmen.
employed ; and hence his subdolous intrigues to win the
confidence of the. established clergy and their communi-
cants, by realizing for ever the sources of their revenue,'
whilst he deceives the ignorant and credulous multitude
with the fallacious prospect of its utter extinction.—
'Twere a lucky hit for him, if, failing of the rent, he
cotald fall back upon the tithe, and extract from the
wealthy the tribute which the poor have ceased to ren-
der. He is evidently looking to receive rent from a
higher order. •