The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-01-16 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

~~ ~~~

M 3. OASTLEtt AND TIIK MERCO,I7'S LAST SLANDERS.—After
having fired his poisonous ,rrows in the dark for weeks, and,
like a bush-fighter, when attacked, dying from shelter to
shelter. and iron' cli,r4e to charge, our contemporary con-
descended, on Friday last, to give us an idea what was the
real matter to which he had referred, as connected with
Messrs. Rawson Cousin, and Clayton, and Mr. Oastler; and
added, from his private storehouse of malignity, another
charge, aboat some mill of Mr. Thornhill's at Brighouse. A
letter from Mr. Oastler, in reply to these detailed slanders,
will be found in another column ; and to that we refer our
readers. In the meantime let us see what is the Mercury's
position in this affair. He challenged us originally to write
to Messrs. Rawson and Co. about some discreditable circum-
stances within their knowledge, affecting the character of
111 r. Oastler. - At first we did not feel called upon to do so;
but nearly a fortnight ago we wrote to these gentlemen, and,
as we expected, we have, to this moment, received no answer!
The Mercury. therefore, must now, unless he wishes to be
branded as a deliberate libeller, and his statements as forge-
ries, himself prove the truth of those statements, and bring
forward their author. In tne meantime, let not the Mercury's
discreditable animus he lost sight of. These charges were
made by him for the purpose of crushing a political opponent,
of whose person he knows nothing, but whose sufferings in a
debtor's prison are sweet objects of contemplation to so " libe-
ral" a mind !
Pray will our good Mercury tell us whether, in truth, any Re-
porter at that time or now connected with his paper, reported
the speech of Mr. Oastler, to which he at first referred, or
whether his assertion, like his cowardly insinuations, were
borrowed from Manchester. We have some curiosity on this
subject, for if we remember right, about the time of these
charges being made—and especially that affecting Messrs.
Rawson and Co.,—the Anti Corn Law League had a meeting
in this Town, Verbum sap !
We have received from George Beley, Esq., of this town:—
For Oastler Liberation Fund
Relief of Messrs. Branckers' Men 0 0
And for the former fund Cs 6d from W.M.
QLbe '4l lb •
et Daiol k)tanDarb.

addition of nearly £7OOO to our last half-year's
amount of dock-rates, as compared with that of the
corresponding six months of the year preceding;
and taking into consideration, as well, the effects of
improvements to be made in internal navigation, we
may fairly look forward to a vast increase of the de-
mands of commerce upon us, to take place within a
very few years.
To meet these, we have many conflicting proposi.
Lions. Dock warehouses are the nostrums of one
party ; the conversion of our outward basins, and
our dock-yards, &c., into docks, is the suggestion of
another; whilst a third, supported by a majority in
the Dock Committee, boldly propose the purchase of
the Harrington Company's property, its conver-
sion into wet docks, and the formation of a large
steatn dock at the north extremity of the existing
Dock Estate, with a dock for coasters, having a
communication with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.
From the opinions expressed above, the public will
have no difficulty in arriving at a knowledge which
of these propositions we advocate. The large mea-
sure is that which the Dock Committee should re-
solve boldly to grapple with. Of its details, which
we recently laid before our readers, we of course can
say nothing. But its main features are ably con-
ceived; and their adoption, we are confident, would
serve materially to advance the interests of the port.
To a discussion of the question, as regards these
various plans, we shall address ourelves in our next
publication. In the meantime, in order to direct
our readers to an attentive consideration of our

position, we may point out to their notice a few
facts. The existing want of dock room is not de-
nied ; but it is said that the opening of the Albert
Dock will fill up this deficiency. In part, perhaps,
it may do so. But two years must elapse, in all
probability, before that dock can be opened ; and
then. e have the declaration of the Dock Surveyor
that the trade of that dock will be one peculiar to
itself. It will not accommodate the timber trade of
the port, which is sustaining. fr,m the effect partly

of the new tar „, gigantic increase. And within
th.o two years, the increase of our general trade
will have outrun the amount of additional dock faci-
lities thus afforded. We must go to parliament now
for increased dock-room somewhere, either north
or south ; and when we have seen, from expe-
rience, the encroachments made upon our privileges,
during past applications to parliament, it is surely
better to approach that tribunal for a bold and am-

ple measure at once, than to throw ourselves open,
by fresh applications, every session or two, to
the onslaughts of the opponents of our local
prosperity. Besides, docks, it must be remem-

bered, are not the work of a day ; nor are
acts of parliament got in a day. The act for
the Albert Dock, which cannot be opened until

1846, was first applied for in 1839; and either of
:he proposed docks, north or south, will occupy, at
he least, four years in construction, during which

time the Albert, with its warehouses, can do little
more than merely stave off the pressing difficulties,
under which we are labouring. Despatch and de-
termination are therefore earnestly required, to avert
consequences which, in our present position, threaten
serious and permanent injury to our port.

Well ! the great "AGGREGATE MEETING" of

the Catholics of Ireland has taken place—the meet-
ing which we were taught to look forward to as W
another monster Mullaghmast or Tara Hill. And
where, does the English reader imagine—upon what
vast plain, or lofty mountain—did this aggregate
assembly thunder forth its denunciations against
the proceedings of the Irish Government ? The
meeting was held in the Music Hall, Abbey-street„
Dublin !—a place which, notwithstanding the enor-
mous gift of exaggeration possessed by the Repeal
press, is only estimated by its reporters as capable
of containing 3,500 persons I As well might any
one of our annual Protestant meetings in the Liver-
pool Amphitheatre, have been styled an " aggregate
meeting" of the Protestants of Great Britain, as this
wretched affair have been designated in terms so
pompous and inflated.
But if in numbers it was a miserable abortion,
compared with the past gatherings of the Repeal
faction, its object and its proceedings were perfectly
contemptible, and even farcical. This aggregate of
the Catholics of Ireland—these representatives of
the unanimous feeling of the nation—met to protest
against the iniquity, on the part of the Crown,. of
striking off every pledged repealer from a jury panel,
before whom is about to be tried the legality or ille-
gality of the proceedings of an association, of which
they themselves are members, and of proceedings to
which they were, in all probability, parties ! How
reasonable the complaint ! How exquisite the judg-
ment of men who could imagine that the law-officers
of the Crown, at a crisis so threatening as the pre-
sent, would hesitate to use firmly all the powers
which the law has placed in their hands, to secure

an honest verdict !—and this, too, while the tra-
versers themselves had equal powers, and exercised
them throughout against those jurymen supposed
to be hostile to the agitation sought to be put down.
The Crown struck out twelve jury men, eleven of
whom were Roman Catholics, and, we believe,
known repealers. The traversers struck out twelve
names, the whole of whom were known Protestants
and loyalists. Surely, then there is little cause of
complaint on either side !
The Aggregate Meeting, however, complains of

the course thus taken by the Government advisers,
as (save the mark !) an insult to the Catholics of
Ireland—a declaration that they are not to be trusted
upon their oaths as jurymen !—and this, too, in the
face of the attempts, openly made by the Repeal
body in Dublin, to swamp the jury panel with their
own creatures, and their chuckling boasts that,
with a single Roman Catholic on the jury, a verdict
for the Crown could not be had ! Call it perjury,
or what you will, which, assize after assize, procures
the acquittal of offenders against the law in Ire.
land—which enables murderers and felons to walk
free; in the teeth of evidence the most conclusive as
to their guilt—there is scarcely a sane man in that
country who does not know that the admission of
two or three Roman Catholics and repeal jurymen,
to sit in judgment upon O'Connell and his fellow-
traitors, would have enabled them to have defied the
law,defied justice, and laughed at the clearest evidence
of crime which could have been brought against
them. And more than that, there is not a conscien-
tious Roman Catholic juryman, whose name has

been struck off the panel, who does not in his secret