The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-08-05 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, A UG. 5, 1845.

Another destructive fire, following closely upon
the recent calamity which desolated the city of
Quebec, and converted one-third of its thriving
inhabitants into houseless wanderers, has just
visited that unfortunate locality. The bulk of the
city is now a mass of ruins ; its commerce sus-
pended, and another third of its population seeking
only where to find themselves a temporary shelter,
and with what means to pro ide, from day to day,
the means of allaying the wanti of life. Not less
than 19,000 persons, it is estimated, are direct
sufferers by this last calamity ; and when it is borne
in mind how many of these may have recently been
extending the hand of charity to those which the
previous one dispossessed of home and comfort—in
how many of its lately fertile sources the stream of
beneficence may now have been dried up—the
appeal to the sympathy of every Englishman,
especially, which the case of these our suffering
fellow-countrymen presents, is one which requires
to be promptly respo ded to. There can be no
delay here—no apathy. Not a mail should leave
our shores for Canada without bearing its quota of
relief.

We are glad to see that the legislature itself has
come forward at once with a vote of £20,000, for
the relief of the inhabitants. This contribution,
however, is but as a drop of water to allay the thirst
of thousands. Private liberality must be largely
called upon, if any thing effectual is to be achieved.
As a people the Canadians have claims upon us.
They are sprung from our blood. They speak our
language. They have gone out into the wilds as
settlers or as traders, to better, along with their own,
the condition of every British man whom they left
behind them ; and when such a calamity as this lays
its desolating hand upon a city, which has grown
up beneath their industry, and sweeps away the
fruits of years of patient striving, we are bound, out
of our affluence, to aid in restoring what years may
not enable any efforts of their own to restore.
Especially it is the duty of Liverpool to extend a
friendly hand in this labour. Liverpool has been
largely benefitted by the commerce of Canada; she
has been raised to her present position by her ad-
vantages, as the port of communication with the
Western World ; and by every moral tie, she is
called upon now to pay her debt. It is a just one.
We trust that we shall not be found backward
in such an effort—that the authorities of the town
will at once rally round them its wealth and its
enterprise, and take steps to raise a contribution
worthy of us. We are sure that our merchants
directly connected with Quebec will not be behind
the owners of traders in London, who have nobly
offered to carry out building materials, hardware,
clothing, bedding, &c., free of freight. And if such
be their liberality, many of whom must be extensive
sufferers themselves by this calamity, we are con-
fident that those merchants of Liverpool, who are
reaping large harvest' in other and more fortunate
markets, will not withhold their aid—will not do
less than our Canadian merchants. Meantime let
it be remembered that this claim upon our sympathy
is one which must be promptly answered. The
genial season of the year is rapidly passing by;
and our poor houseless fellow-countrymen must
not be left to encounter in their present state the
rigours of a transatlantic winter. Do the most for
them we can, their case must be hard enough. A
city cannot be built in a day. The comforts of a
substantial home cannot be restored at once—and
how many will never see them again I At least
let us strive to afford them materials for shelter
from the elements. Although we cannot do all,
let us do our best.

the approaching grand Orange demonstration,
to be held at Enniskillen, on the 12th inst., signi-
ficant enough in itself of the resolve of the protes-
tants of Ireland to meet treasonable agitation with
defensive agitation, is not an isolated or even a
hastily concerted movement. It is accompanied
with evidences, which ought to attract the earnest
attention of Covernment, of the determination of
the friends of the constitution and of the British
connexion in that country, to prepare thiemselves,
by organization, to repel coming assaults upon their
liberties, and, when the crisis comes, to battle for
their lives against the enfuriated efforts of those
who seek their extermination. Already the entire
province of Ulster—nay, the whole north of Ireland—
is alive with preparations, for clic revival, in its full
efficacy, of the Orange Institution. And this not
at the instance of the operative portion of the people
merely, or of the trading middle classes. Men of
standing and of character in the country are taking
a prominent position in the movement. Members
of the clergy, barristers, and the leading gentry, are
amongst those who urge it forward ; and a few
weeks hence Ireland will probably witness the re-
erection within her soil of that great national con-
federacy which was strong enough to protect her
Protestant Institutions, in past days of difficulty
and danger, and will Abe found, we trust, equally
strong in the present day.
Who can say that our fellow Protestants in Ire-
land are wrong in this course ? Who will not at
once accord their approbation to the gentry and
clergy who are now boldly coming forward to place
themselves in the van of resistance to aggression—
to take their stand, side by side, with their poor
persecuted brethren, in the struggle with which
they are menaced ? The Protestant gentry of
Ireland have too long submitted to be shot at from
behind hedges, or in their dwellings, by cowardly
assassins. They hays too long hung back from
the duties of their station—those of affording pro-
tection and countenance to their tenants and humble
dependants from the violence with which they have
been attacked—too long withheld their protection
from the wrecked cottages of their dependants,
or the lives of their tenants, menaced at fair or at
station, by the truculent associates of the Molly
Maguire, or the Ribbon Conspiracy. This state of
things must he stopped. And how is it to be
stopped? Why only by such a union as the Orange
body offers—only by a resolve that Protestants—
and every Orangeman is no more than a Protestant,
unless to be a good Protestant is not to be a Pro-
testant—will carry out with their arms what they
profess with their lips. Only by means of such
an association can Protestants hold their lives in
security. Men may cavil about a name, but the
object and the result ought to resolve all doubts.
Clear it is that the law—as administered by Sir
Robert Peel—will not protect the Protestants of
Ireland from aggression ; or from interference with
those liberties which the law recognises as the
birth-right of every British subject. The urgency
of the present crisis then solves all doubts which
might otherwise exist, as to the extent to which we
might forbear, in our protestation against the spirit
of-concession which now animates our legislators.
We cannot stand still in our Protestant osposition
to the injudicious designs of Popery. We must
progress or we must stay until the march of Popery
rolls over us. " Ptincipiis Insra" ought to be our
motto; we may forbear until forbearance is our ruin.

It is a melancholy spectacle to see men, who have
been left behind in the progress of human affairs, or
in the race of ambition, ever struggling to be what
they never can he—ever raring against those who
have outstripped them—instead of calmly resigning
themselves to the necessity of their position. Yet
how many of these unfortunates do we observe,
day by day, in every rank and in every pursuit of
life ! Lord Brougham, in his place in the House
of Lords, upon his favourite railway hobby—his
pet monomania—is such a man. The locomotive
and the train, viaducts and tunnels, cuttings and
embankments, have gone a-head, in spite of the
fears and the prophecies of timid old gentlemen
and elderly ladies ; and at this late time of day his
lordship is pertinaciously bent upon catching the
express with a donkey-cart, or bringing back the
good old times of the " heavy coach in six days
from York to London." Such men in our local
matters are our Blackburn:=, and other worthies of
their party. Municipal Whiggery is extinct. It
was tried in our Town Council and its Committees,
and rejected as presuming and incapable. Yet
these few stranded fish left by the waves, which
Lave swept over their race, still amuse us, from
time to time, with their ineffectual contortions, as
i to show the world that, though they cannot over-
take the waters, they can make puddles on the sand.
They were too small to mingle with their compa-
nions in the deeps; they are perseveringly large
and intrusive amongst the minnows and gudgeons
which haunt the shallows.

An extraordinary specimen of this tribe is to be
found in the Dock Committee, in the person of
Mr. Eyre Evans. A few years ago, in the heyday
of liberal supremacy, Mr. Evans was the Magnus
Apollo of this body. He was the terror of dock-