The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-07-25 00:00:00

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TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 25, 1848.

WE have been requested to warn the Conser-
vatives of a snare which it is said is being laid for
them in anticipation of the approaching municipal
election in November. The Reform party arc
already taking advantage of the Water question,
with a view to eject several supporters of the Pike
scheme from the Council on that occasion, and to
elect others of their own party. If this be so, is it
not desirable that we should at once be ready with
well qualified gentlemen from our own ranks, who
are able and willing to advocate the most econo-
mical plan of confining ourselves, at present at
least, to the local resources for our water supply ?
We now merely throw out the hint. We may
have lomething more to say on the subject by and
bye.

WE were extremely surprised to hear yesterday
that it is the intention to stop the working of the
engine at the Soho-street Water-works, for several
weeks, with a view to the repair of the machinery ;
more especially when we are assured that the repairs
could all be readily effected during the night, and
the daily supply of water thus continued to the
inhabitants as at present. This is of considerable
importance, as we believe that several hundred
thousand gallons are pumped daily from the well
n Soh o-street, and the stoppage of this water for
a day will cause serious inconvenience to the rate-
payers.

THE Parliamentary session of 1848 may now be
regarded as nearly at its close, so far at least as the
business of legislation is concerned. We have an
arrear of routine business, of which the passing of
the estimates is the most important, sufficient to
occupy the attention of members for as long a pe-
riod as a House can he induced to sit; and the
sacrifice of Bills, in esse and in posse, must be tre-
mendous. And what has been the result of all
these months of long debates and late sittings—for
Mr. Brotherton has been in abeyance all the session?
What are the distinguishing measures—which is
the measure of the session ? There is no such
measure. The time of Parliament has been frittered
away without any useful legislative result at all.
A contemporary—the Manchester Guardian—w
observe, attempts to throw the blame for this non
legislation upon the Protectionist party; and seems
particularly to deplore the sad fact, that "the pro-
posal for the Repeal of the Navigation Laws has
not yet assumed the form of a bill; the most im-
portant portion of the Trish Encumbered Estates
Bill is still undiscussed in either House ; not a sin-
gle clause of the Irish Franchise Bill has been con-
sidered ; the Bill for the alteration of the Parlia-
mentary Oaths exists only in the imagination of the
Premier (1); and some minor Government measures
have made no more satisfactory progress." Our
contemporary is conveniently oblivious, however, as
to the circumstances attending some of these hills.
Take the first mentioned—the Repeal of the Navi-
gation Laws—it was not until Government had
been badgered from all sides of the House that the
country was allowed to know what were their real
opinions on the subject, although it was one of the
most important of those mentioned in the Speech
from the Throne, and although its settlement was
alleged to be one of the conditions upon which our
colonists were willing to accede to the Ministerial
propositions with respect to the Sugar duties.
There are not wanting people who suspect, with no
slight warrant, that Lord John Russell never in-
tended, in bringing forward his motion, any thing
more than a mere demonstration ; and that if Par-
iament should sit for six more months to come, no
bill embodying the propositions contained in that
motion would he laid upon the table. The war-
rant
to which we refer, is the more ultra Free Trade
views upon the question expressed by Mr. W. E,
Gladstone and a section of the Peel party. With
respect to the other bills, a portion of which our
contemporary admits to be altogether in nubibus,
we do not see how blame can attach to any other
party than Ministers themselves. The more rational
conclusion to be drawn is that deducible from all
past experience, that, out of office a Whig states-
man has a panacea for every ill under the sun,
which, when in office, and called upon to make good
his bragging, he can scarcely ever produce.
Our contemporary forgets, also, how miserably
the commencing months were frittered away in the
consideration of their abortive financial project—a
project which did more to shake the confidence of
the country in their capability to conduct its affairs,
and to reconcile it to the retarding, no matter how,
of any other measures of their concocting, than the
Most damaging efforts of their most bitter oppo-
nents could have done. We remember, too, the
time thrown away in the discussion of their Jewish
Disabilities Bill, which might have been devoted
to the pressing forward of the Navigation Laws,
a question certainly more important to have settled
in some way or other, as affecting the entire corn-
merce and a large portion of the industry of the
empire, than the question whether Baron Roths-
child was to take his seat in the House of Corn-
mons as the colleague of Lord John Russell.
Our contemporary, however, urges against the
Protectionists, that—
" During the present session, they have carried to an
extreme the practice of repeatedly adjourning debates,
which has been gradually increasing for several years past ;
and they have constantly obstructed the progress of mea-
sures to which they are hostile, by almost every means
which the forms of the house would allow. Four or five
nights have been occupied in debates which might as well
have been concluded in one or two ; discussions that might
have been brought to a termination before dinner, have
been spread over a whole evening ; and many an hour has
been wasted in preliminary discussions upon the question
whether the business of the day ought to be proceeded with."
We are not at all aware that the party in question
have carried this practice to any greater extreme
than it has been carried by the Whig-Radical party
before them. Indeed we remember Lord John
Russell himself used to be an adept at the same
kind of thing. But, let us ask, what the major
part of these obstructions and adjournments have
been founded upon. Several of them, it is well
known, have arisen out of the well-merited in-
dignation of the house at suppressions and per-
versions of evidence upon important questions
before the house itself, or its committees. The
proved trickiness of the Board of Trade and the
Colonial Office have driven honourable members
to pause and to sift facts; and the country owes
them a debt of gratitude for so pausing, before
consenting to sacrifice important interests on un-
orted grounds.

WE are, it seems, to have an Irish rebellion in
Liverpool as well as in Ireland, with the most
modern accompaniments of barricades, &c., and,
as an addition, a little incendiarism—burning
down of warehouses, of shipping, and other pro-
perty. Authentic and tolerably detailed evidence
of the intentions of the parties is in the hands of
the authorities, who are very properly taking steps
to place the town in a posture of defence; which
object our would-be insurgents will perhaps find
to have been more completely achieved than will be
quite pleasing or convenient for them. The pre-
cise time only when the rebellion is to commence
is not yet ascertained. All we know at present is
that it has to be determined by the time selected
for the head movement on the other side of the
channel ; for ours is apparently only to be a kind
-.of flank movement—a diversion, an Irish sort of a
one, to distract our attention and that of govern-
ment from the movements of the main army in the
sister country.
A stranger, unacquainted with the eccentricities
of the Irish character, would naturally ask the
question, what has rebellion to do here ? What
have the merchants and tradesmen of Liverpool to
do with the question, for the advancement of which
our Irish friends are so anxious to fight—tile
Repeal of the Union ? How are these men so
aggrieved by us that we are to have their pikes at
our throats, or their muskets pointed at our
breasts ? We have taken them from a country
which had no labour to offer them, and no bread
to give them. We have employed them in preference
to our own industrious poor. We have placed them
in trust over our property ; enrolled them amongst
our police-force., given to their children the advan-
tage of educa bon,
provided hospitals and dispen-
saries for their relief in affliction, and from every
charitable effort undertaken by us as a community
they have been large and welcome recipients.
Whence this ungrateful return?—this savage eager-
ness to shed our blood and to destroy or plunder
our property ? It cannot surely be the result of
unprompted malevolence. Human nature is surely

not so base. A people, known to be susceptible in
the extreme of generous emotions, cannot of them-
selves have determined thus to turn upon the hands
that have fed them in extremity. The idea is pre-
posterous.
There are, we feel assured, emissaries of sedition
busy amongst our Irish population, from whose
teaching and preaching flows the poison which has
so deeply impregnated their hearts—men whose
task it is to misrepresent every action of English-
men towards their Celtic fellow-countrymen, and to
attribute every throe of pain which agonizes Ireland
to the direct agency of the people of England. It
is time we were setting about the inquiry, who are
these men. Who are the leading agents in the
formation of these clubs, which we hear of as form-
ing, for the most desperate purposes, in every quar-
ter of the town ? If they were strangers, surely
our police would know something of their persons
and their whereabouts. Men possessed of the in-
telligence and influence required to enable them to
become the leaders and title contrivers of a rebellion,
are not likely to steal amongst us in the garb of
paupers, or the patchwork freize of agricultural la-
bourers. The emissaries of treason must be resi-
dent amongst us, to enable them to acquire the in-
fluence, which is required for the task of inciting
men deliberately to peril life in what is worse than
a forlorn hope ; and what if it should be found
that some of these are men for whom we are pro-
viding weekly, by the confidence which we have
unwisely reposed in them, and the ample wages
which we pay them, the means and the position to
inflict upon us a deadly injury ? It may appear
uncharitable to entertain such a supposition, but
it may possibly be too correct.
There is a way in which the loyalty of every
member of the community, and at all events of
every resident of Liverpool, may he tested. The
authorities have called upon all, without distinction
of country or religious creed, to present themselves
and be sworn as guardians of the public peace.
Have the Irish Roman Catholics employed in our
docks, and in the warehouses of our merchants,
responded to the call with the same promptitude
displayed by their Protestant and English brethren ?
Are they prepared to stand between the lives and
property of their employers and the outrage with
which they are menaced ? It is their plain duty to
do so; and we trust that the test will be applied.
It is the duty of every employer of labour to
satisfy himself of the loyalty of those in whom he
has to repose such a weight of confidence. When
this is done—if we can be assured that the em-
ployed portion of our Irish population are sound at
heart—the task of repressing the efforts of its
migratory refuse will be easily accomplished.
We cannot readily believe that any large portion
of these men—that any more than a small minority
of them—are mixed up in this projected effort of
ruffianism. It is altogether too wild and hopeless.
We cannot think that any body of men—intelligent
working men—would throw away the prospect of
future employment and good wages for the scram-
ble of a day and companionship in outrage and
plunder with the scourings of their own country.
Such men, one would think, would be able to
estimate the advantages which the commerce of
England offers to the industry of Ireland, and
foresee too clearly the issue of the mad course in
which they are prompted to embark. In what can
it result except certain defeat, and the ousting of
every Irishman from the'. labour market of Great
Britain. The English working classes have for
long enough submitted to have the bread snatched
from their mouths by the competition of the
pauper labour of Ireland. At this moment our
agricultural parishes swarm with her shoeless and
shirtless peasantry, who are permitted to pick up
and carry away with them to • their own country
what would have made comfortable the cottage
home of many an industrious English peasant.
Thousands of Irish families have located them-
selves, and are yearly increasing their numbers, in
our manufacturing towns and villages, to whose
arrival amongst them our operatives attribute their
reduced wages and partially unemployed condition.
And is it to be conceived that, in case of outbreak
amongst the Irish in Liverpool, or elsewhere, that
their intrusion amongst us will be tolerated any
longer ? It is not probable. Our Irish brethren
are at present—it is no use concealing the fact—
not popular amongst Englishmen of their own
class. Their squalid habits have bred unequivocal
disgust and dislike. And the certain result of such
an outbreak as is anticipated will be the com-
pulsory removal of every Irish family to their own
country, desolated, as in all probability it will be,
from the effects of a futile attempt at rebellion,
drenched with blood, and trampled down by the
hoof of military power.
There is one body to whom, in Liverpool, we
ought really to be able to depend upon as willing to
exercise some controul over this misled people.
Their priesthood, at least, one would imagine, are
capable of discerning the madness and wickedness
of any resort to violence. We are told that it is
the peculiar characteristic of Romanism that the
laity are in the hands of, and respect implicitly the
counsels of, their spiritual advisers. We tell the
Romish clergy of Liverpool, therefore, that we look
up to them for the exercise of their authority on
this occasion. The anathema from the altar has
been found to be unfortunately too efficacious
for evil ; let us now learn that it is equally powerful
in the cause of peace and order !

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

Stn,—As Dr. Reynolds is reported in the Journal of
Saturday last, to have stated at a Rebel club meeting held
in Liverpool, on the 22nd instant, that there are many
Repeaters in the ranks of the 89th Regiment, I wish re-
spectfully to inform that Rebel-in-chief, and his compa-
nions in iniquity, that if he succeed in getting up an
excitement, as he terms it, ho will find to his loss, that
the ranks of the 89th are not so tainted with foul air as
he imagines ;—that they are faithful and loyal, as they
have ever been, to their Queen and country, and that they
are not only ready, but anxious at any moment, when re-
quired either to repel the aggressions of foreign enemies,
or to suppress domestic rebels.
If the Doctor would apply to this regiment, whenever
he feels the pike and vitrol complaint coming on, they will
administer to him, and to all such, free of expense, and
without delay, a sufficient quantity of their purifying
pills, which though nut patent medicine, yet have stood
the test of long experience,—particularly having done
much execution in '9B. They will be sure to give the
Doctor almost instant relief, and to do away with the
necessity of his being sent to Bermuda for change of air.
Respectfully asking you to give this letter insertion in
your next paper,
I remain. Sir, your obedient Servant,
A PRIVATE 1N THE 89TH REGIMENT.
Barracks, Bevington Bush,
Liverpool, 24th July, 1848.

SMUGGLING TOBACCO.—Two seamen were yesterday
fined £lOO each, or to be imprisoned, for concealing to-
bacco in the shins to which they respectively belonged.
Several other smugglers of the same article (under 61b.
woight) were fined £5 each, or to be imprisoned one
month.
ASSAULTS ON POLICE-OFFICERS.—SeveraI cases of
assault upon police-officers were yesterday brought before
Mr. Rushton, who fined the aggressors in considerable
amounts—remarking that in some parts of the town there
were lawless fellows who took every possible opportunity
of attacking the police, and inviting attacks from others,
with sticks, stones, bricks, &c. He expressed his de-
termination to protect the force from such assaults to the
extent of his powers.
ROBBERY FROM TILE PERSON.—A man named John
Mullen, lately arrived from America, appeared yesterday,
et the Police-court, against a young man, for robbing him
of his purse. It appeared that complainant had gone to
Mr. Pritchard's public house, at the New Quay, and after
treating all the company round, went up stairs when he
became rather inebriated. The prisoner followed him.
and was seen to drag from his breast the purse, which was
tied round his neck with a string. He made off with the
booty, but was afterwards captured in Denison-street.
He was sent for trial.
PRESENTATION OF A SERVICE OF PLATE.—The les-
sees and tenants of the Right Hon. the Earl of Derby, at
Bootle-cum-Lytham, are about to present to Mr. Moult,
of Knowsley, a splendid Service of Plate, consisting of
a chocolate, coffee, and tea service, with waiter, bread-
basket, water-pot, slop-bowl, castors, salts. water-jug,
spoons, &c., forming a full and complete service for the
breakfast or tea-table, of a very elegant form, and richly
ornamented. The pieces are very chaste and beautiful
and have been manufactured by Mr. Mayer, of Lord-
street, at whose shop they may be viewed until Thursday
morning, when they will be sent to the school-room at
Bootle, prior to their being presented on Thursday even-
ing, at seven. o'clock.
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.—The Night to Scotland, post-
poned from Friday, came off last evening, when the at-
tendance was numerous, not only of the natives of the
Sister Isle, but of the general public. The whole per-
formance went off with more than ordinary eclat. Ma-
dame Warton, in conducting the representations of the
characters in the poems of Robert Burns, was perfectly at
home—and each successive personation was hailed with
most enthusiastic plaudits. The concluding tableaux, in
honour of the realms of Great Britain, is magnificently
got up ; indeed, these classic representations, many of
which are from the paintings of the ancient masters,
though splendid in grouping, serve but to show the su-
periority of nature over art. The fireworks were con-
cluded with a temple representation emblematic of Scot-
land. Madame Warton remains only this week, and those
who have not yet seen her poses plastiques should not for
a night omit an opportunity o: re occurrence.