The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-10-24 00:00:00

IRISH MISCELLANY,

The Cork Examiner relates that a clergyman, who
lately visited Clonmel gaol, saw two of the state prisoners,
Messrs. M`Manus and Leyne, amusing themselves by
playing at marbles in the prison yard. _ _ _

On Tuesday the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and the
Countess of Clarendon received a numerous party at din-
ner at the Vice-Regal Lodge, Dublin, when Madlle.
Jenny Lind had the honour of being of the party.
Upwards of 400 men were disemployed on public works
in Galway on Saturday last—some 300 had been em-
ployed about the new barracks, and the remainder on the
Lough Corrib drainage. On Monday two carts laden
wiih oatmeal and corn were plundered at the market in
that town—rather an awkward commencement of the
winter quarter. _ _ _

His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant and the Countess
of Clarendon, accompanied by the Hon. Mr. Villiers, the
Hon. Capt. Ponsonby, and Mr. Corry Connellan, sailed
from Dublin on Friday for England. In the afternoon a
Privy Council assembled at the Castle, when Lords Jus-
tices were sworn in, to administer the affairs of the coun-
try in the absence of the Lord Lieutenant.

The Freeman's Journal of Monday says, " The, pre-
liminaries for the issue of the writ of error have been
perfected by Mr. O'Brien's legal advisers, and the ne-
cessary documents have been lodged in the proper quar-
ter for some days; but it is said the Irish law officers are
unwilling to let the writ issue. They have been silent all
through the pest week. There was a sort of tacit under-
standing that on Saturday the course of the Crown would
be determined. We waited for Saturday and still nothing
has been done."

Lord Clarendon has replied to a deputation, that no
definite answer can be given to any inquiry about Mr.
O'Brien's ultimate destiny until the termination of the
State Trials, but tlrit the merciful recommendation of the
jury will be taken into consideration.
Mr. Sergeant Howley has !peen sitting at Clonmel. and
has tried several prisoners for minor crimes connected
with the state prisoners. The two men who attacked Mr.
Bradshaw, the juryman. were sentenced to two months
imprisonment. Four men, for having ;pikes:in their pos-
session, were sentenced to the full punishment of the law,
two years imprisonment and hard labour. When the
sentence was pronounced the wives and families of the
prisoners screamed loudly. A woman was sentenced to
twelve months imprisonment for assaulting the nurse of
Mr. T. F. Meagher, who gave evidence against him ; and
another woman was sentenced to six months imprisonment
for assaulting another woman, a witness.
A GALLANT CLERGYMAN.—The Lord Lieutenant,
through his secretary, Mr. Redington, has addressed a
letter to the Rev. Wm. Hill, Mothill Globe, Waterford,
complimenting him on the gallant defence made by him
and his family against a numerous band of armed rebels,
on the evening of the 13th of September last, and their
discomfiture. The Rev. Gentleman, in his letter acknow-
leging the compliment says,—" I feel confident our de-
fence on that night has produced a salutary effect in this
neighbourhood. The rebels must have suffered much,
as we discharged between thirty and forty shots. each
cartridge containing nine heavy swan drops, blood being
seen in the vicinity of the house, and it being reported
in the neighbourhood that many were wounded."

LETTERS FROM Mr. DOHENY.-Mr. Doheny, writing
from Paris, to the editor of the Tipperary Vindicator,
says—" After the affair at Ballingarry, I remained for
five or six days on Slievenamon Mountain, determined,
at all events, not to be arrested alive. My adventures
even then, though personally interesting, shall not here
be alluded to. James Stevens, who was said to be dead
and buried, shared my risks, and now, thank God, shares
with me the hospitality of the French republic. May I
take this opportunity of offering public thanks to those
generous, devoted, and honest men who assisted me.
Any day for six weeks I could have been sold dearly by
hundreds of men on the very brink of st'irvation. Mr.y
God bless and save them."

ATTEMPT OF MR. C. G. DUFFY TO ESCAPE FROM
NEWGATE.—On Monday a discovery of a plan for the
escape of Mr. Charles Gavin Duffy from Newgate was
made by the authorities. He meditated an immediate es-
cape by cutting through the bars of his window, and by
means o: a rope laddea with which he had been provided,
descending to the street. There were found, ingeniously
concealed in his room and on his person, files, a glaziers's
diamond, a compact and most complete rope ladder, and
other appliances for effecting his object. The informa-
tion was communicated by a supposed friend of his own,
one of the tribe of informers who have been elbowing
each other in Colonel Browne's office from the beginning
of the late treasonable conspiracy. Mr. Duffy was in the
afternoon removed to another part of the gaol.
FAILURE OF A MEETING IN FAVOR OF SMITH O'BRIEN.
—The Mayor of Cork convened a meeting on Thursday,
in pursuance of a requisition signed by about 40 inhabit-
ants, to adopt a memorial to the government, praying
that the fatal sentence on Mr. Smith O'Brien might not
be carried out. At the appointed hour no one appeared
at the intended place of meeting—the Theatre ; and for
an hour after ten persons did not show themselves—in
fact there appeared to pervade all classes of inhabitants
the greatest carelessness on the subject. After a consider-
able delay it was evident the meeting would not increase
in number, and, fearing the smallness of the gathering
would have a worse effect than if no meeting had at all
been called, the Mayor took the chair, and on the motion
of the Rev. Dr. Burke, a Roman Catholic priest of the
town, the meeting was adjourned.
THE REBELS' ENJOYMENT.—A young man, whose
name. is said to be Kelly, a buyer In one of our large
wholesale establishments, is after returning from England,
where he had been actively engaged collecting subscrip-
tions for the defence of M'Manus. It is confidently
stated that Kelly was so successful as to receive as high a
figure as £5OO ! On his return from England last week
he visited the prisoner in Clonmel jail, when the sum thus
collected not only paid all expenses of his protracted and
expensive trial, but left him nearly £2OO for any purpose
to which he might deem it necessary to apply it. It is
also stated that Kelly, on his return to this city from
Clonmel, two or three days since, boasted that he had the
pleasure of dining in the jail with M'Manus, O'Donohue,
and some others of the rebels, where, though convicted,
they were in. the enjoyment of every luxury as regards
eating and drinking.— Cork paper.
CAUSE OF IRELAND'S DEGRADATION.—It has become
too much a habit of late years to cry down the connection
of Ireland's misery with her fearful superstition as the
mere dream of a set of ultra Irish Protestants. We there-
fore feel inclined to re-print an extract from a sermon
by probably the most eminent English Divine now living
—the Rev. Henry Melville on this very subject. He says,
" Ireland is still but a degraded and half-civilised territory,
and there is no bringing out a development of her inter-
nal resources, and violence is the atmosphere in which
her children live, and human life too often nothing but
their plaything. God forbid I should hesitate to state
that I believe the prevalence of the Roman Catholic reli-
gion lies at the root of all this wretchedness. There is
nothing of bigotry in affirming that it is the very genius
of this religion to keep a rude population stilt rude, just
because it keeps them still ignorant—and whilst the Irish
population continues unhumanised it must continue until
a moral influence has been introduced amongst its tribes,
the landlord will have his excuse for absenteeism, that
curse and drain of the land; and the capitalist will have
his excuse for not embarking his property in schemes for
the improvement of the country •, and ihus the springs of
national prosperity will remain choked and dried up ; and
all for want of that moral influence amongst the people,
which can only be produced by diffusing the knowledge of
the true religion of Jesus. It is because Ireland is morally
benighted, that she is physically degraded and the engines
which must be turned on her to raise her to her due rank in
the scale of nations are religious rather than political."

TRANSATLANTIC PACKET STATION.—TiIe Mayor of
Cork, Mr. Fagan, M.P., Mr. Verling, of Cove, and Mr.
Fitzgibbon, of the city of Cork, waited on the Lord-Lieu-
tenant, last week, to present an address which had been
adopted at a public meeting in that city, on the subject of
a transatlantic packet station. The Mayor read the ad-
dress. His Excellency said that it was a subject to which
he had given a good deal of attention, but he feared that
it would take some time to carry the project out. There
were several considerations involved in the matter.
There was first the matter of public finance, and then
came the consideration whether the contractor of packets
would consent to take in his passengers at Cove instead of
at Liverpool, and whether, after all the trouble, women
would come to embark and disembark and travel through
Ireland rather than at once take passage at Liverpool.
The saving of the sea voyage from Liverpool to Cork
could scarcely be thought a matter of much consideration.
The Mayor said that in that respect the saving of fuel
alone would enable the contractor to make such reduction
in the tonnage money as would be sufficient inducement,
in connection with a shorter sea voyage, to recommend to
those parties Cove as a station. Mr. Fagan said that it
was calculated that the money saving of fuel on the dou-
ble voyage to America and back would be £lOO sterling
between the consumption of Liverpool as a station and
Cove as a station, and supposing Cove being selected,
made a difference of three days in the double passage, that
would cause a diminution of nine guineas in the passage
money, while, from Liverpool, through Dublin to Cork,
the traveller could come and go back for less than £4,
being a saving of over £5 in the double voyage across the
Atlantic. His Excellency, after some further discussion,
said that he was going to London, and he would not fail
to bring before Lord Auckland, and the rest of the Ad-
miralty, the views of the memorialists.
MR. O'BRIEN'S REBELLIOUS TOUR. Some very
amusing incidents are current in respect to the proceed-
ings of Mr. Smith O'Brien during his rebel tour.
Throughout the memorable four days, his vanity was most
conspicuous in his anxiety to be surrounded by a body-
guard, and have armed sentinels about him. At Mullina-
hone he employed Orchard, who is now a State prisoner
awaiting his trial on a charge of high treason, to parade
up and down the house in which Mr. O'Brien lodged
during the night. Orchard having got a half-crown from
Mr. O'Brien, and the use of a gun for the time, played
the soldier as well as awkwardness of gait and raggedness
of clothes„w?uld permit, occasionally forsaking his post to
avail a. neighbouring public-house to swig off rapidly a
glass of whiskey, by which he succeeded in expending his
pay before ho performed his duty. But another guard
was kept up within the house, and Patrick O'Donohue
was ordered by the rebel leader to pace the hall of the
house while he slept. O'Donohue however tired on his
post and skulked off to bed. His absence being discovered
by Mr. O'Brien, who taxed him with dereliction of duty,
told him unless he carried out his orders with the strict-
ness of a military commander success could not follow,
and that if he had so neglected his duty in the army he
would be instantly shot. " Oh," replied O'Donohue,
shrugging his shoulders with a significant smile, " 'twould
be as well for me to be shot as stop up all night without a
few glasses of grog." A gentleman who visited Mr.
O'Brien within a few days was told by him that he might
expect to see him next March in his place in the House
of Commons, as he had no doubt of the result of the Writ
of Error. Some persons here allege that many of the
first lawyers in England have given it as their opinions
that the House of Lords will, upon appeal, decide against
the Crown.—Cork Constitution.