The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-08-08 00:00:00

SPECIAL IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE.

The Toww-CLERK read the report of the Special Im-
provement Committee, which stated that, in compliance
with a request, the Borough Engineer and Surveyor had
forwarded the following letter, which the committee recom-
mended the Council to adopt :

Stn,—Having maturely considered the subject of the best
mode of improving the approaches to the town, we beg to re-
port the conclusion we have arrived at as follows, viz.
In a matter of such importance as the adjustment of leading
lines on which the future laying out of the land must be de-
pendant, we consider that it would he well to obtain ideas from
as many sources as possible. With this view we beg to pro-
pose that an outline Plan (the cost of which will not he more
than .'25 or 430) of the Borough and its environs,
with contour lines, should be prepared and lithographed,
and architects,engincers and others, invited to send suggestions as to the laying out of the whole district, offering for the best a
sum of Fifty Pounds, and for the second best Twenty-five
Pounds. As a guide to the competitors, we propose to discri-
minate on the Plan, by peculiar shading, the various classes of
property, in order that there may be as little interference as
possible with existing rights. We propose tostate in the adver-
tisement that the plan which mayreceive the premium may not
necessarily be adopted ; all that is required being the sugges-
tions of the competitors.
We are, Sir, your obedient servants,
For Mr. NEWLANDS and SELF,
JOHN WEIOHTMAN.

Upon the motion of Mr. EARLE, seconded by Mr. S.
HOLME, this report was adopted, and it was referred to
the committee to carry out.

MISCELLANECUS.
The Coroner's Account, amounting to £45 63. ed. was
referred to the Finance Committee for consideration and
payment.

. A
A letter from John Gibson, Esq., WA., requesting the
Council to receive a Bust of Her Majesty the Queen, was
read. The bust, preparatory to its being placed in St.
George's Hall, was ordered to be placed in the Town
Hall; and Mr. Gibson's letter was entered on the
minutes, and the thanks of the Council were tendered to

A letter from the Rev. John Barclay,-Vicar of Runcorn,
soliciting the aid of the Corporation towards re-building
the Parish Church of Runcorn, was read, and Mr. Bar-
clay is to be informed that:the Council have no powers to
comply with his request.
A memorial of Joseph Thomas, respecting his sign-
board ; a memorial of the inhabitants of Kirktiale, upon
the subject of the local rates ; and resolutions agreed to at
a public meeting of the ratepayers of West Derby, respect-
ing the paving and general rates of that ward, were all
read and referred.
The Council,. having disposed of all the business before
them, adjourned at a quarter to five o'clock.

A WOMAN KILLED BY HER EitISBAND.—On Sunday,
the neighbourhood of. Cow-heel-alley, St. Luke's,
Lon-
don, was thrown into a state of considerable ex-
citement in consequence of the following occurrence : —lt
appears that a man named William Merrick had been for
some time past residing with his wife, named Amelia
Merrick, in Maidenhead-court, Aldcrsgate-street. Owing
to their manner of living they frequently quarrelled, and
about two o'clock on Sunday Merrick met his unfortu-
nate wife in Cow-heel-alley, and having inquired the rea-
son of her not being at home cooking his dinner, he gave
her a blow under the left ear,-which knocked her to the
ground. In falling, her head came in contact with the
palings facing one of the tenements in the court. The
podi- woman died after making two or !nree convulsive
struggles. The husband, who obtains a living by jobbing
at the Post-office, was taken into custody. The only
excuse the man made for having struck and killed his
wife was, that she had been out spending his money at
the " tape shops" in Golden-lane, instead of cooking his
dinner.

Pious NEWSPAPERS.—Among the many changes
which the republic has produced in Pr.riiau manners,
that effected in the tone and habits of the lower classes,
by the inundation of these cheap prints,has been one of
the most striking. As those intended for the perusal of
the working classes exclusively, and written for party
purposes, to exercise an influence over the mind, and
prepare them for the approach of that milleniutn of the
new prophets of republicanism, which was so lately near
its fulfilment, popularly called the " Red Republic," or
in other terms, the republic of proscription, terror, and
blood,—are mostly at the price of one sou, and as none
exceed the price of two sew, or a penny, these new papers
easily fall into the hands of every good patriot, who de-
sires his own enlightenment for the good of Lis country.
The influence they exercised racy be seen in the late in-
surrection. Long before its outbreak they had contrived
to.work their will in souring that better spirit of decent
fraternity and conciliation, which marked the manners of
the Parisian ouvriers of the better class in• the first days
of the Rcvolution. What the soi-disant patriotic clubs,
and the pretended friends of the people, with tl:eir violent
declamation and denunciation of all that possessed, did
not effect, was done by the frantic ultra-republican jour-
nals, that laboured so assiduously to install into the hearts
of the lower classes their venom and their spite, and that
hot poison of hatred and suFpicion, that once admitted
into the body corporate, ran through every vein with the
maddest fever. • • What a wild delirium of carnage and
cruelty that fever produced, we have seen.—Bentley.

rbt Ettnrpool &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, AUG. 8, 1848.

. WHATEVER may be the issue of the present
crisis, the question will still remain to be answered
—What are we to do with Ireland ? Whatever
statesmen may assume the helm of government—
and that the present men hold it only on sufferance
is tolerably perceptible—they will still have before
them an Irish difficulty, rendered even more intense
and intricate than at any former period by recent
events, and the social disorganization which they
must inevitably produce. Yet, if men in high
places would allow the results of our legislation for
the past ten years to pass in panoramic review be-
fore them, and would examine carefully the drift of
each separate measure which we have passed for
that country, we feel satisfied that a large portion
of that difficulty would vanish, and the vista of a
future full of prosperity and peace open before
their eyes.
-• We have been misled all along, it is clear, on
two most important points with respect to Ireland.
We have, in the first place, miscalculated very
greatly the Protestant strength of that country, and
set down a minority, instead of a majority, amongst
its Roman Catholic population, as inimical to con-
stitutional rule and opposed to industrial progress.
We can now no longer hesitate upon this point.
Loyalty has been proved to be greatly in the as-
cendant, both in moral power and numerically.
Unmistakeable evidence has been afforded within
the last few weeks, that, bad the British govern-
ment adopted, years ago, a firm and decided atti-
tude ; had it not fondled with agitation, and placed
a bar upon loyalty ; had it not depressed the Pro-
testant spirit of the land, while it exalted popery to
office and immunity; the Gordian knot of the dif-
ficulty, which successive governments have been
endeavouring to untie, could by this time have been
out, and Ireland rendered the home of a happy and
a-thriving people, a source of strength instead of a
reproach to a great empire.
We have, in the next place, mistaken as the voice
of that portion of the people who have approached
us with their petitions and complaints, the voice of
a class of men in Ireland who have, in reality, very
little sympathy with them. We have mistaken
the clamour of the mere professional agitator for
that of millions fermenting with discontent ; and,
as a natural consequence, the concessions which we
have from time to time made to such clamour, have
failed utterly to produce any valuable practical re-
sult, or to mitigate at all the real evils which, with-
out doubt, are rife throughout that unhappy coun-
try. With the exception of a defective system of
Poor-law—which is nevertheless better than none
—can we point out one measure which has either
had for its object, or tended, to raise the condition
of the industrious masses of Ireland ? We cannot.
We have endeavoured, by municipal and other
acts, to strengthen the hands of liberalism in the
cities and boroughs of Ireland. We have founded
"Normal Schools of Agitation "—and her munici-
pal bodies have well earned the name. We have
sought by a long course of truckling legislation to
conciliate the priesthood of the Church of Rome in
Ireland; but we have literally done nothing to
reach, or even probe, the real source of Ireland's
sufferings—the penury of her small farmers and
her peasantry, and the absolute pauperism of a
large portion of her people—or to put a stop to the
wretched and oppressive agrarian system, by which
they are crushed hopeless to the earth, or driven to
become the reckless instruments of the incendiary
and the midnight legislator. We have placed
power and privileges in the hands of the petty half-
employed professional men, tradesmen, and shop-
ocracy, who abound throughout Ireland and form
the local cliques, through which the Romish priest-
hood work the machinery of encroachment upon
the Protestantism of Ireland, and by which they
hope, shred by shred, to strip away all communica-
tion with heretic England; and the result is before
us in the continual turmoil, the ceaseless imitation
of the horseleech—the cry of " give, give "—which
has risen louder and louder at every fresh conces-
sion. We have legislated, in fact, throughout the
last twenty years as if we really believed that Ire-
land was the oppressed, insulted, aggrieved country
which she delights to call herself; as if all her po-
verty, her squalidness, the laziness, filthiness, and
improvidence of her population, the longing of her
peasantry for blood, and their delight in deeds of
wild revenge was of our creating ; and all these
deep-seated, deeply-dyed blots upon her character as
a civilized country could be wiped out by a sop
thrown to her agitators, or an additional source of
triumph over " England's weakness" afforded to her
truculent priesthood.
The time for ceasing to follow this miserably
mistaken course has surely now come. We have
treated Ireland as a spoiled and tetchy child too
long; and we must now begin in earnest to govern
her. But how ?—on what principle ?—it will be
asked. We answer at once—on the same principle
which we apply to any other portion of her Majesty's
dominions. At the present moment, Ireland is in
the attitude of a sullen rebel, prepared to break out
into open outrage against the laws, so soon as the
power which restrains her is withdrawn. She must
be disarmed before that power can be withdrawn or
even weakened. She must be told that her griev-
ances, real or affected, will not be entertained at all
by the legislature, until she throws away everything
calculated to raise the impression that we concede
to fear what we should have denied to justice.
And, even when this is done, a very material dif-
ference must be made in our policy. It must, first,
be of a practical nature. We must listen to the
teaching of facts before our own eyes, with respect
to the evils to be remedied, and the measures re-
quired to remedy them ; and not to the insidious
suggestions of priestly coteries, municipal corpo-
rations, demagogues, or crotchetty experimentalists.
Ireland stands in need of boons of a very different
character to the extension of political rights, and
other boons of a similar character, claimed in her
• behalf, but not at her own instance. She wants
protection for her industry and encouragement to
her population to enter strenuously upon the task
of developing her hitherto only partially understood
resources. She wants the diffusion amongst that
' population of capital, of practical skill and enter-
prise in agricultural, mining, and other operations.
She wants, in fact, those aids by which only a people
can ever become great and prosperous, who have not
previously learnt habits of self-dependence ; and the
first step to place her in possession of those aids is
submission to the laws, and internal peace.
But the great truth which we must impress upon
the minds of Irishmen, by our future policy, is this
—that loyalty to the Sovereign and obedience to the
laws shall no longer operate against any portion of
our population, as a bar to the favourable notice of
the legislature, or of public opinion in this country.
We must no longer see the favours of the British
Government, and the sympathies of any respectable
portion of the nation, lavished upon the unruly and
disaffected, whilst merit equal, if not superior, pines
in the shade, or is repulsed as intrusive. It has
been too much the habit of even the Conservative
portion of the British people to regard the Protes-
tants of Ireland as entertaining uncharitable opi-
nions towards their Roman Catholic brethren ; as
disposed to cry "Wolf," when no wolf was near;
and they have been reprobated for preserving an
attitude of defence against the aggressions of Rome,
when the would-be wise and excessively " liberal"
amongst mankind conceived that the idea of such

aggression ought to be treated -as an absurdity.
They have also been vilified for clinging to the me-
mory of that glorious Revolution, by which the
family of her present Majesty were seated on the
throne of these realms; and of banding themselves
together legally for the maintenance of those prin-
ciples, and of their own religious liberties. We have
just seen sufficient to convince all reasonable men
that the Orange Protestants of Ireland have not
been warning us, for years past, of our danger
without sufficient warrant. Living in the midst of
a mass of disaffection, and mingling every day with
the myrmidons of Popery—taunted, pointed at,
threatened, cursed in muttered tones as they passed
to market, to fair, or to church each Sabbath day,
—these men felt, and felt keenly, that they were
safe only when united ; allowed to escape violence
only because when united they were strong. The
most bitter of their revilers will acknowledge that,
to the Orange Protestants of Ulster, and to the
spirit of loyalty, which they have succeeded in
keeping alive in the breasts of a large portion of
their fellow-countrymen, we are indebted for having
enabled the government, relying upon their aid and
that of the resident gentry and their well-affected
tenantry, to enter boldly upon the task of suppress-
ing a movement, which threatened to dismember
the empire, and to deluge Ireland in blood.