The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-11-14 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

•
brought to justice, but that all rebels are not brought to I
justice ; that the worst class of -rebels are spared at the
expense of sacrificing those who are not the worst. If
such gross partiality be chargeable upon the Whig Go- I
vernment, they, not we, are the parties open to the suspi-
cion of " desiring immunity to rebels, and encouragement
to rebellion." But is not this partiality chargeable upon
the Government that prosecuted Mr. Meagher, and let
priest Fitzgerald and priest Mackey go free ; that is now
seeking to prosecute Mr. Duffy, for a letter far less atro-
ciously criminal than that which it has overlooked when
published by priest Hughes or priest Kenyon ? Surely
we may condemn partiality in the punishment of crimi-
nals without being exposed to the suspicion of " desiring
immunity to crime," and " encouragement" to it. " En-
couragement" ! Why, notoriously the highest encou-
ragement to crime is such partiality. How often has it
been said that the certainty, not the severity, of punish-
ment is the great sanction of penal law. What, then, is
the worth of penal laws when whole classes are exempted
from their operatien ? Are not they who make the ex-
emption the persons really guilty of the encouragement
to violate them ?—London Standard.

ENDOWMENT OF THE ROMISH PRIESTHOOD.—The
following, from a dissenting publication, is tolerably
strong :—" We think we know the British character and
the strength of the British conscience on the subject,
perhaps as well as does Lord John Russell. And we
frankly tell him that if our estimate approach the truth,
there is no form or degree of constitutional hostility that
would not be brought to bear against such a measure.
He was given to understand that opposition from that
quarter is not to be trifled with, by, what he saw of it
when the augmentation of the Maynooth endowment was
under discussion. But he may rest assured that what
had then to be resisted was feeble compared with what
he would have to encounter in proposing to establish'
the Roman Catholic Church. All persons, in whatever
sect, who are opposed to establishments' in general,
would of course be opposed to him ; and it would con-
found us if there were one true-hearted Protestant in the
empire who would not join in the antagonism. Come
when or from what quarter it might, and terminate as it
might, either in securing or withholding the endowment,
one effect of the struggle would be to forward, in a de-
gree hardly conceivable, the ' voluntary principle,' and
thereby to shake the foundation on which the English
`establishment' now rests complacent, because secure.
And if our rulers think that by the scheme alluded to
they could quiet Ireland, let them know that it would
produce a movement throughout Great Britain, by out-
raging the sacred convictions and moral feelings of her
sons, which—though it assumed no form that would re-
quire troops to suppress, or allow of being disposed of by
a special commission'—they would find as much more
serious to deal with than what has disturbed them there,
as are the unbroken heavings of the Atlantic or the Pa-
cific compared with the rippling of an inland lake."—
British Quarterly Review.