The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-07-04 00:00:00

under which Great Britain is sleeping, un

mscious of the storm

ef-t is gathering, or p

ly, to descend in ruin

,on her head

When, we ask, will that weak and timorous policy
ie laid aside which hesitates to put down, at once,

n agitation so fiercel

issue is so clearly t

agitation whose
foreseen ? When will the
nitted to know the fact that

British nation be 1

law are more powerful in

nd than art

)gue or his priestly aux

'--for what

w e are wait-

ent to strike th

mad as to imagin

ast cour

r can ever

lie agitation of repeal

le cannot if he would' He is chained to it. Like
he German student, be is hunted by the monster
his own creation. He must go on with it, though

t lead to the scaffold or the gallows,—though he
Fnows it to lead to the desolation of that land

hich Ile profess

) love so well ! To an issue—

a trial of strength between the powers of the law
and the passions of the people of Ireland—it must
rome at last; and we are waiting,—blindly, timidly,

—until the time approaches, or is
recipitated upon us, when the power of the con-

V waitir

titution and the law can only be vindicated by the

word or a

bayonet

This is, unquestionably, the position and the po-
licy of the conservative government of this country
in the present imminent crisis of affairs in Ireland.
We might have crushed this agitation in the egg.
We might crush it, at more hazard and with greater
difficulty, even now. But we are hanging back until
our opponent shall he full grown, fully armed, and,
perhaps, aided by confederates in the struggle We
are hesitating to put forth our energies, until a period
arrive when their exertion must be destructive and
fatal to Ireland, and at the same time weakening in
effect, and full of peril and disaster, to Great Britain
herself !

We may be told that the first step made to put
down the repeal agitation will be the signal for the
commencement of a fierce and bloody insurrection in
that unhappy land. So threatens the arch traitor,
Daniel O'Connell. So howl, in echo, the priesthood
of Ireland. So proclaim the sympathizers of the
American continent and of France. But do they
offer us an alternative less dangerous, short of con-
cession to the most violent and insolent of their de-
mands ? Glance, for a moment, at the language in
which they paint the future position of Great Britain
and Ireland. Take, as a specimen of their feeling.
the following which fell from the lips of a priest, the
Rev. Mr. Murray, at a recent repeal gathering in the
county, of Cork :

" Suppose England to-morrow at war with France or
Russia, a circumstance not perhaps so unlikely or remote
as may appear to some (hear, hear), and that their grand
differences were to be decided on the banks of the Rhine
or the Danube, would they not rejoice at the blindness
which should retain one of the armies of England at so
great a distance from the theatre of war, and would not
the disaffection of Ireland be to them a subsidy of 6,000
men? It is not wisdom, then, on the part of England not
to reconcile Ireland, her right arm, and her most faithful
and powerful ally. It would be better to be wise in time
—concessions may come too late."

They would betray us in our extremity. They would
deliver us up, bound and shorn of our strength and
union, into the hands of the first foreign power,
which might be willing, in return, to aid the esta-

nt of a popish supremacy in their own land