The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-08-01 00:00:00

foreign corn could scarcely have produced to the
revenue much more than was realized under the
operation of the bill of last session. The sugar

duties, if we do not forget

were only estimated to

An additional

£600,000

And his Lordship
quite forgets, in his admiration of his own smothered
bantlings, to inform us in what way he would have
provided for the deficiency created by a reduction of
the entire tariff! We are reminded indeed that
increased consumption of all customable and excise-
able articles would have taken place ; but it is pal-
pable, from experience, that no such increase would
take place to the extent assumed, when it is from
those articles which are of greatest consumption
amongst the people, that the greatest reductions are
to occur !

With respect to the policy of Government towards
the repeal agitation in Ireland, and the Rebecca
agitation in Wales, we are compelled to express our
coincidence of opinion with his Lordship upon many
points, although we fear that his own house contains
a little too much glass to render a bout of stone-
throwing a very safe kind of amusement. Lord
John observes that

" There are two consequences, of which the house ought
not to lose sight. One was such as happened before in
Ireland, when, after political excitement and meetings,
those who attended the meetings began some local resis-
tance to the payment of some legal due. and thereby dis-
turbed the peace of the country, creating a necessity for
the intervention of the police and military force, which
again tended to increase outrage and crime; and this state
of things spreading over a large portion of the country,
produced a kind of anarchy in parts of Ireland. There
is another consequence, and it is that with which Mr.
O'Connell has threatened the Government and Parliament
of this country,—namely, that he will summon a conven-
tion in Dublin, which shall escape the penalties of the
Convention Act—which shall curiously and cautiously
evade the law, but which, sitting in Dublin, shall exercise
the power of representing the people of Ireland. Is the
Government prepared for such a case? If, as is very
likely, Mr. O'Connell does succeed, with his acuteness
and ability, in evading the letter of the law, will you al-
low this convention to go on, and the whole power of the
Government to be wrested. from the Lord-Lieutenant, sit-
ting helpless in the Castle at Dublin? (Hear, hear.)
Are you prepared to allow the government to be taken
from you, and to see in any emergency, suddenly startup,
beyond the regular order of things, the name and title,
as well as the authority and power of Government?"

We cordially agree with his Lordship that these
questions are eminently deserving of the considera-
tion of Sir Robert Peel's Government. The loyalty
of the empire requires assurance with respect to
them. But is Lord John Russell, who has half
hinted the legality of the repeal agitation—who has
declared that it is an agitation for the repeal of an
Act of Parliament only—the proper party to school the
Government of Sir Robert Peel ? Ought a states-
man, who in the Town-hall of Liverpool declared,
that midnight meetings of Chartists were to be tolera-
ted as constitutional, and whose pet magistrate John
Frost, is now expiating, in a penal colony, the crime
of rebellion stirred onwards by that speech—the
party to lecture Sir Robert Peel, and to tell him that
his dismissals of magistrates in Ireland are injudi-
cious, and tend only to aggravate ill feeling ? We
submit not. His Lordship may be of a contrary
opinion ; but we can tell him that the loyal and
well-disposed people of England and of Ireland look
upon his presumptuous and sedition-feeding con-
duct with reprobation and disgust.
But enough of so pitiful an exhibition of splenetic
absurdity. When the country is in want of the
splendid talents of Lord John Russell and his co-
adjutors, to restore its prosperity and revive its
strength, it will speak out without his Lordship's
prompting. It will, however, be long, we trust, before
such a consummation arrives.

The present session of Parliament is fast hastening
to a close ; and what a "beggarly account " of mea-
sures accomplished does it present to us, compared
with its long list of futile and abandoned efforts of
legislation ! What hopes dashed to the ground—
what confident anticipations unrealised—what bitter
disappointment gnawing the hearts of all who have
trusted in the power of a Conservative government
to ameliorate the social condition of the people, and
to guard from outrage the property, the industry,
and the cherished institutions and liberties of this
great empire ! With a Conservative majority in
Parliament, overwhelming in extent, and with every
disposition, on the part of the country, to support
the efforts of its Conservative representatives, and
the Conservative government of its choice; we are
compelled to deplore a greater destitution—not of
legislative energy perhaps, but —of legislative
achievement, than has marked any one year of
office, of any ministry within our recollection !

Why, we ask, should this be ? Why is the go-
vernment of Sir Robert Peel thus powerless to
effect the good which was the universal expectation
of the Conserva ive majority of the empire, upon
its accession to power ? Why has that government
been compelled to lay aside, one by one, and at
length to abandon, by wholesale, the best digested
and the most vitally important of its measures ?
We shall have pointed out to us, as the reason, the
obstructive efforts of the opposition in Parliament,
aided by the demonstrations of hostility to those
measures out of doors. We admit, in part, the
force of this plea Obstruction, in Parliament, has
never been more shamelessly and factiously dis-
played ; agitation, out of doors, has never been more
industriously carried on. Night after night of the
most valuable portion of the session has beet; occu-
pied' in obstructive debates—in talking against time
—in factious discussions upon questions already
determined, and in struggles for adjournments which
were known to lead only to further vain and unpro-
fitable, and almost interminable, TALK I And now,
it is unquestionable that many of the proposed mea-
sures of government are to be abandoned, not be-
cause any:great amount of opposition to them is an-
ticipated ; but because there is absolutely not time
remaining to permit of their passing undebated
through the necessa y stages of Parliament !

- -
We may be told also that a portion of the evil may
be laid at the doors of some Conservative members
of Parliament. Sir Robert Peel has been annoyed
and badgered in the course of many of his mea-
sures, by Conservatives quite as much as by Whigs
or Radicals; and nothing has so greatly weakened
his position, as the head of the great Conservative
party in the country, as opposition--pettish and
violent in its character—from such a quarter. But
such opposition, even, ought not, materially, to have
damaged the usefulness of a really strong govern-
ment. Besides this, we have to ask, from what
source did such opposition originate? Agricultural
members, of ultra views, distrusted the sincerity of
Sir Robert Peel's professions with respect to the
maintenance of agricultural interests. Church of
England members distrusted his professions, or
wanted assurance of , his determination to maintain
intact the national establishment. Protestant members
feared some fatal concession to agitation in Ireland.
They grieved over his hesitation to adopt prompt
measures to put down such agitation; and, recalling►
past concessions to mind, they had but too much
need to dread that such hesitation was the precursor
of further fatal yielding. The spirit to resist ob-
struction—the hearty will to stand by the govern-
ment in such resistance—were wanting; and that
government was left, palpably with the cold shoulder
-nrds it of a great number of those who ought

been i

1 to 1

ily, this state of

r. M'Neile or

things. We fear that the course pursued by Con-
servatives towards the government of Sir Robert
Peel, and by which that government has been so
greatly weakened in its position, is one of a fatal
tendency. But out of what has this defection
amongst the Conservative supporters of Sir Robert
Peel arisen ? Alas, alas ! we fear from the injudi-
cious course pursued by Sir Robert himself !
When has a heartiness in the cause of Conservatism
been displayed by his government? When has the
disposition to maintain the integrity of the Church,
of agricultut e, of the empire, been displayed by that
government ? Where has it been displayed ? We
look for it IN 'VAIN ! That fatal middle course—
;hat fatal steering between friends and opponents—
that fatal rejection of the sympathies of the former
to earn the praises of the latter a word, EXPE-
DIENCY—the rock upon which Sir Robert Peel has
once well-nigh shipwrecked his political character—
has been the bane of his government during the
present session—the fertile source of the distrust of
its friends, and the excited hopes of faction—the
cause, in fact, why, during this session at
least, we may fairly say that the substantial legisla-
tive care of Great Britain has been in the hands of
a revolutionary minority of its Parliament and its
People !

The cathedral city of Durham has earned for
itself during the past week, undying infamy and
ridicule. The very mention of its name must from
henceforth be the signal for contemptuous laughter
through the length and breadth of the empire. A.
city which has hitherto been associated in our minds
with all that is revered in religion and exalted in
learning—a cathedral and a collegiate city—must
from henceforth suggest only the idea of a commu-
nity of spiritless noodles, crawling under the dicta-
tion of a handful of " buttonless and unbaptised"
quakers. Sinbad, with the old man of the sea
clinging round his -shoulders, was but a prototype
of the constituency of Durham, rough-ridden by
the tribe of Jonathan and Aminadab. We shall
never see a Durham man without fancying that the
gaitered heel of some lank fellow in drab and brown
is digging away at his sides. The stranger passing
through its streets, in coach or curricle, chaise or
cab, will involuntarily, as he passes by its noble
abbey, glance up at its villanously cemented turrets
for the broad-brimmed beaver or the kersey shorts,
which we presume will be forthwith hoisted to mark
the subjection of the locality, over which it looks, to
the pious (?) disciples of George Fox. We shall
never even take a spoonful of Durham mustard to
our steak or joint without being tempted to ejacu-
late our contempt of the slaves who have sold their
beautiful and once-honoured city to the brawlers of
the League; and as the odour of quakeriz,m rises to
our sense, exclaiming with disgust,
" Give us an ounce of civet, good apothecary !"

In serious earnestness, we grieve over the humi-
liating position of Durham ; we grieve over the de-
secration of the city of " wood and water;" and
should not marvel much to hear of the blessed Saint
Cuthbert once more taking up his bones and ah-
sqatulating—as our Yankee friends would say—to
some more classic locality. Chowbent or Bullock-
smithy—were these enlightened places possessed of
the elective franchise—might have taken to them-
selves such a representative as John Bright.
Bolton or Stockport might fitly have taken its
members out of the counting-house of a Rochdale
cotton mill. But DURHAM !—that such a city,
with its host of intelligence, learning, wealth, birth,
family—that Durham should sink so low is to' us
both incomprehensible and deplorable. The Con-
servatives of the city should go in sackcloth, or
walk with peas in their shoes, until the next elec-
tion, to expiate their shame. The city coat of arms
should be supplied with " a quaker rampant" upon
its shield. A professorship of bottle-tumbling
should be founded in its university, for the special
benefit of anti-corn-law Acland. The recordership
should be offered to Mr. R. R. Moore; and a Back-
house or a Pease, with lawn sleeves to his brown
upper benjamin, should be installed into the seat of

a Maltby, a Van Mildert, and a Barrington ! No
profanation can be great r than that of being repre-
sented by A BRIGHT—no degradatfon greater than
that of being the first Conservative constituency
which has succumbed to the dictation of the Anti.
Corn-law League

A TOWN BLOTTED OUT I—On Sunday last—
dies infelix I—the people of this Protestant land
went to church or chapel, dined, supped, and re
tired to their beds, in happy ignorance that a
calamity almost irreparable had befallen the world.
On that day, from the Gurrane Race-course, two
miles from the town of Tuam—the episcopal seat
of " John Tuam," called by the vulgar " Bishop
11111ale"—a doom went forth ;—AHASCRAGH was
to be " blotted" out from the map of Ireland (')
and the names of its people—the euphonious names
of its Pats, its Murphys, its Terences, and Teagues
—were no more to be breathed amongst those of the
three millions whose shillings are to regenerate un-
happy Ireland.

The heartrending consummation of this dire
calamity has not yet reached us in all its details.
Whether the blotting process was accomplished by
day or by night, by fire or by earthquake;—whether
its people, each like another Marius amongst the
ruins of Carthage, are at this hour to be seen seated
upon the wreck of their mud hovels, bemoaning the
desolation before them, or are wandering around the
locality in which AHASCRAGH once stood, looking
in vain for the curling smoke of its chimnies, and
snuffing the air in vain for the scent of the "verdant
mud" of its gutters and dunghills, which have been
engulfed in earth, and, -
" Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
•
Left not a wreck behind!"
we know not. Journalism is silent upon the sub.
ject—struck dumb, no doubt, by the extent of the
calamity;—and we must content ourstives therefore
with recording AHASCRAGH'S doom, as it fell front
the lips of its mighty destroyer.
Here, then, it is, with its cause, as uttered on
Sunday last, at Tuam, by the
,Great Apostle of
Repeal—Daniel the First of Ireland I

" At Ahascragh they had_been guilty of treason to
Ireland. It appeared that triumphal arches bad been
erected there, which the poliee were sent by anaagistrate
to take down. The magistrate !night have been right he
wrong—but if wrong, the people were Sure of obtaining
redress. The, law was open to them, and he promised
them its protection; but, instead of looking for that pro-
tection, they violated the very fundamental' principle of
the Repeal Association. * * Instead of acting on that
wise and sacred principle, the traitor, of Ahascrao
pelted the police with stones, and one of the police was
injured. * • * Hit WOULD BLOT OUT AHASCRAGH
FROM THE MAP OF IRELAND. (!) He would not allow
one of the people there to be repeaters, or•their names to
appear on the books of the Repeal Association, for they
bad violated that beautiful principle of PEACE upon which
their great maiim of moral force was founded.'

ALAS FOR AHASCRAGH ! We pray that the
accomplishment of the doom, fulminated against
her by her stern judge, may not throw this ter.
restrial globe from its equipoise, or create confusion
in the celestial system.

THS MINSILE AND CAMPBELL CORRESPONDENCE.--
In our notice of this correspondence last week, we stated
our conviction that the letter dated the sth ult. to Mr.
M'Neile by Rector Campbell,—and which it was com-
plained by our cotemporaries, the Albion' and others,
ought to have been included with the letters first published
in the Courier,—had never been received by Mr. M'Neile.
From a letter, dated " Ballycastle, 24th July," addressed
to the Rev. Rector and site published by thst-gentleraan,
it will be seen that such was the case. Mr. M'Neile says,
of the letter in question :—" I never received it. if it
was sent to my house in Roscommon-street. as alleged in
the newspaper, doubtless it is there still. My letter to
you of the Ist was dated Belfast, and must have reached
you on the 3rd. If yours to me of the sth had been ad-
dressed to me in Belfast. I would have received it on the
7th. 1 waited till the 14th, and knowing that you were
way against it as best it
111 o! absetit fr.?.

home, 1 then concluded that you did not
o tue on the subject." A charitable per-

y suppr

other hono