The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-03-07 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

We had prepared some remarks on the subject of the trial
and verdict in the case of M`Nagliten, but are compelled
to withdraw them at a late hour.

ittbirpsol 'Ataaart.

TUESDAY MORAING, MARCH 7, 1843

We received last night Jamaica papers to the 3d ult.,
and the Guiana Herald of the 24th, 26th, and 2Sth
January. A summary of their contents will be found
in another column. The papers have been brought by
the West India Mail Packet The Forth, which arrived
at Southampton on Sunday night, having left St.
Thomas on the 7th ult. and Bermuda on the 16th. She
has brought 31 passengers, 400,000 dollars, and 227
serous of cochineal.

The gentlemen of the League appear to be just now
in an awful state of perturbation. They are haunted
with the fear of " a plot," hatching by somebody or
other—they forget to say who—against their maiden
reputation; and are elongating their ears, in the direc-
tion of Lancaster, with an earnestness and trepidation
which it is quite painful to contemplate. What Lan-
caster has to do with them and their agitation it is not
so easy to say. The Chartist O'Connor, and others,
it is true, are there, upon their trial; but what have
virtuous, patriotic, peaceful people, such as the mem-
bers of the League, to do with Feargus and his
satellites ?

" What's Hecuba to them or they to Hecuba ?"

The Attorney-General, too, is at Lancaster, and a host
of witnesses of, and actors in, the eventful scenes of
August last are there; but what have innocent people
to fear from these or any such circumstances ? The
Secretary of State for the Home Department has been
also subpcenaed, and actually attended for three days,
as a witness in the trials in question; but what has the
League to fear from Sir James Graham, or from the
witness for whose production it seems the right hon.
baronet was held as a kind of lien or pledge ? We are
really at a loss. The affair is far too mysterious for
our ingenuity to solve.

There is one thing, however, which strikes us very
forcibly. The Manchester Guardian of Wednesday
last first raised this novel cry of " Plot—plot," and
on Saturday vouchsafed us the information that up to
that date it had not exploded—a fact which we were
terfectly ready to believe, from the eminently tranquil
state of the atmosphere, and other circumstances of a
similar nature. Mr. Richard Cobden, too, on Wednes-
day last, at a meeting of Cockney philosophers, held
at the Crown-and-Anchor, in the Strand, raised the
same cry of " Plot" and " Conspiracy," and, in fact,
almost predicted that something shocking was about
to transpire, affecting most seriously the character of
the League, against which, however, his hearers were
resolutely to shut their ears. Now the thing which
strikes us forcibly, as we have above remarked, is this.
It is not usual for innocent men to say to their friends
or to the public, " You will shortly hear something
very dreadful against my character; but don't believe
it !" or, " That scoundrel C or D is to be tried this
assizes for burglary, and will very likely implicate me
as the receiver; but don't believe him !" Such is not
the usual course with innocent people—the innocent
are proverbially fearless ; and, with all due deference
to the superior acumen of the Manchester Guardian,
we must candidly confess that our impression of the
purity of the League body is by no means deepened
by the anxiety displayed to prepare the world for the
probable impeachment.

" The thief doth fear each bush an officer!"

We briefly referred in our last to the result of the
division upon Mr. Roebuck's motion, for a committee
to enquire into the origin and policy of the Affghan
war. We were not disappointed in that result. The
member for Bath, admitting the ability of his address
upon the subject, and the independence and manliness
of his general conduct in Parliament, was not the man
from whom such a motion might best have originated.
The ground which he took was far beneath the occa-
sion. What was, in every sense of the word, a
national crime of the deepest dye, descended, in hi.