The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-08-19 00:00:00

IRELAND.

THE GREAT NATIONAL CATTLE SHOW.—The annual
exhibition of the Royal Agricultural Improvement Society
of Ireland opened on Wednesday, in Dublin. and the ex-
hibition surpassed all former meetings. The attendance
was very numerous and most respectable, comprising a
great assemblage of the aristocracy, including the Duke of
Leinster, the Earls of Leitrim, Roden, and Mayo, Lord
Viscount Monck, and several others of the same class.
DISCOURAGEMENT OF INDUSTRY.—The crusade waged
by the Roman Catholic clergy, not merely against the
system of mixed education, but against all attempts to
soften down religious asperities by training to industrial
pursuits in the same schools children of different religious
denominations. continues in operation here. Some
months since it was mentioned that a school in the
immediate vicinage of Dublin was attended by a large
number of young girls. Protestants as well as
Roman Catholics, who, having been duly taught fancy
needlework, &c., were paid weekly wages in propor-
tion to their abilities ; and as it was decided that
the question of religion was to be altogether
excluded from the course of instruction afforded to
the pupils, matters went on smoothly until the sittings of
the Thurles Synod 'caused the parish priest to interpose
his dictum, and by degrees the Roman Catholic children
dropped off in their attendance. For some time the
Protestant clergyman endeavoured to stem the course of
defections, but all in vain. The numbers grew thinner
and thinner, and, at length, he has struck his colours be-
fore the Roman legion. The undertaking is abandoned,
and the doors of an institution which gave employment
and bread to a most helpless and destitute class of the
community, are abouc to be hermetically sealed up. _

THE POTATO CROP.—The reports are, day I.)y day,
becoming more cheerless, and there is no longer a shadow
of doubt as to the setting in of the disease in the form it
assumed in the two past years—that is, somewhat more
mitigated in its extent and virulence, but still sufficiently
wide-spread to cause alarm for its ultimate consequences.
The weather, too, continues unfavourable. Mr. J. Kin-
caid, of Leinster-street, one of the most extensive land
agents in Ireland, has addressed a letter to the Evening
Post in reference to this subject, and the evidence of a
witness of this gentleman's position, whose interests are,
as he remarks, " all the other way," is more than alarm-
ing in the ordinary sense of the word :
" I am sorry to say," he writes, " the potatoes are gone.—
Going—going—gone I I have been in different parts of Ire-
land, and over very many farms within the last fortnight, and
have watched the potato crop most closely, and up to Thursday
last I thought all was safe, but on that day, for the first time, I
saw the first partial appearance of the disease in the county of
Meath ; and yesterday. when in the north of the county of
Dublin, I saw, unfortunately, not merely partial indications of
it, but whole fields affected, and precisely the same general
appearances as in 1849 and 1850. I obtained yesterday some
diseased stalks that were green and sound on Wednesday last,
and I have now in my office diseased tubers taken out of the
same field, in which there were, however, many stalks quite
gone, the tubers at the roots of which were perfectly sound.
The disease may be considered as having commenced generally
last week, and is spreading slowly and gradually. lam not an
alarmist, and my interests are all the other way, but I think it
right to give the public this early intimation of another visita-
tion, in order that, as far as possible, it may be anticipated and
provided against."

Mr. John Lamb, the Quaker correspondent of the Nor-
thern Whig, has just completed a tour of the province of
Ulster, and his report of the state of the crops. including
the potato, is upon the whole satisfactory. With respect
to the latter, he admits that he saw undoubted cases of
blight in some localities, and that the disease will progress
he thinks is quite certain, but it seemed to be of a less
virulent type than even last year, so that, judging from
former seasons, we may hope that there will not be a very
great loss of food. The accounts from the south are of a
diversified character. In the eastern districts of Lime-
rick, and throughout a great portion of Tipperary, there
has been as yet but little cause of complaint. Intelligent
observers assert that about one-eighth of the crop is
totally free from the blight, and that the early potatoes
are all safe. From Waterford the intelligence is of an
opposite nature. The crop, it is said, has been all blighted
from Mothill to Credan, a distance of twenty-fives miles
along the north-east of the county. "It is plainly visible
in the stalks, and in some places the tuber is affected."
In the west, where the crop up to within a day or two had
held its ground, the fatal blight appeared extensively in
several unions in the county of Mayo. Its ravages, how-
ever, are confined to the leaves, the tubers being still
sound and healthy.—We have subsequently received more
satisfactory accounts from various parts of the country.

BARBAROUS MURDER IN THE 'COUNTY DONEGAL.—
It is our painful duty to record another of those horrid
crimes which have of late become so frequent in this
hitherto peaceable county, and to present our readers with
the details of a murder which, in point of savage cruelty,
stands almost unparalleled. The unfortunate victim,
named David Moore, was an aged man of the most
quiet and inoffensive character, who had for some time
past been engaged as a day labourer and bailiff on Colonel
Platt's estate, having been employed by the agent, James
Johnston, Esq., Woodlands. On Saturday morning last,
at six o'clock, deceased was proceeding as usual to his daily
labour, without any apprehension of danger, and, when
at the distance of a few paces from Coravaddy Lodge—
near the same spot where Mr. Johnston was lately attacked,
his horse shot, and himself robbed and severely beaten—
he was assailed by his savage murderers and left mangled
in the most shocking manner. The skull was cleft to the
nose by some sharp weauon, such as a bill-hook or sickle,
and the right hand almost severed from the arm, no
doubt when raised as a defence against the blows; the
chest blackened and bruised, where the inhuman monsters
had leaped on their victim when down ; and, as if de-
delighted with their bloody work, the demons hewed the
calves of both legs, stripping them to the bone, and then
decamped, leaving the unfortunate man for dead. He
lingered till evening in great agony, and then expired. All
this was perpetrated in the light of day, near the house of
Mr. Platt, and at an hour when the daily labourers proceed
to their work ; yet so secure did the assassins feel, that they
had been amusing themselves, before their victim came
forward, by cutting the tops off the weeds and brambles
which grew near the fatal spot • and, looking at the time
they must have taken to mutilate and mangle the body,
they could have entertained no fear of detection. The only
cause that can be assigned for this wicked murder is that,
a few days previously, Mr. Johnston had been under the
absolute necessity of dispossessing several tenants who
refused to pay any rent, and were not less than seven
years in arrear—thus bidding defiance to landlord and
agent. Their miserable cabins had been demolished by
the police, and Moore, it appears, was standing by
at the time, little dreaming that he was to become
the first victim of the lawless spirit of retaliation. The
murdered man was a Protestant, and bore an irre-
proachable character. He has left a mother, ninety-eight
years of age, and a sister, to deplore their bereavement.
We are afraid, from the extended spread of the Ribbon
system in the county Donegal, that this dreadful murder,
like former outrages, will remain a mystery. It is, to say
the least, remarkable that all the late outrages in this
county have been perpetrated upon Protestants—first, the
murder of Mr. Davis; then, the attack on Mr. Richard
Pratt, on the fair day, in the public market, where he was
beaten and left senseless in the midst of hundreds, and yet
no person to identify the dastardly assailants : more
recently, the attack on Long (the process-server), and Mr.
Johnston, of Woodlands ; and, nor, the lamentable mur-
der of unfortunate Moore.—Derry sl4o9dard.

ECCLESIASTICAL INTELLIGENCE.