The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-09-22 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

We are. very glad that Mr. O'Connell has set out on
Liu speeching progress, and we hope that the reporters
will take care to give us his tirades with more than ordi-
nary accuracy. It will serve to show what a dirty god
the grovelling Irish fell down to worship=-what a fetid
gnome it is to whom the ministry hive sold themselves.
We are told that the newspapers are giving the man
importance by taking so much notice of him as they do,
and perhaps there is something in the observation; but
we are a'nxious that he should he allowed to exhibit him..
:coif. He is the man who will knock down his own repu-
tation, such as it is, in the provinces. Nobody is de-
luded into the belief that the audiences whom the Great
Liar of the West addresses are English. They consist
of the base and wretched Irish rabble of filthy paupers,
-Which, to the calamity of °or inanUfacturing towns, are
permitted to infest and pollitte them. There is of course
a.sprinkling of the local bullies and buffoons; whermake
themselves great men by bawling against their superiors
in thesundry pothouses; hut even orthern the :Imbiber is
tirnall: The congregation is; to all practical intents and
purposes, Irish of, the most profligate and debased class.,
But then comes the .press ; and though O'Connell is not
very scrupulous as to.what he says among the miscreant
retitle he- is actually addressing, he knows that his words
will go among the-people of England. Let that people
then value what is the worth of the oratory of the Big
Beggarman when he is not upon his good behaviour, by
what they find it t e be when he is. Let them value his
r‘peeches. in the Corn Exchange in Dublin, (where he
can obtain some reporters base enough to, garble and
interpolate, to falsify and alter as he pleases what it suits
him either to admit or suppress, or in still more secret
conclaves where reporting is not allowed at all,) by the.
record of his speeches in Manchester or Newcastle.
In the first place, falsehood, falsehood in all its
branches, active, passive, direct, indirect, open-m.onthed;
Whispered, the falsehood of the bully, the falsehood of the'
coward, the unblushing lie, the sneaking insinuation
in all its varieties lying is the great weapon-Of Mr.
O'Connell. That the sham member for Dublin asserts
anything is, with all persons who have a regard for
truth, a prima facie evidence of its falsehood. If he told
us that he dined yesterday at a square table, we- should'
feel a perfect conviction that it was round—or perhaps
we should call for other evidence to prove that he had
dined at all. We wish that some one with leisure for
the task would sit down and collect the confessed lies
which he has uttered since he entered parliament, and in
parliament. As for those he uttered before and else
where, the task would be hot only endless, but useless.
The number is beyond calculation and then', after all
the labour had been expended in collecting the lies, it
would be of no avail. Five hundred perjurers trained
by Dens are ready at hand to swear that nothing of the
kind occurred—that, for example, when O'Connell said
that nineteen out of every twenty women of England
were strumpets, he had in fact passed .a panegyric on the
superior chastity of the English ladies, which was de-
signedly misreported by the gentlemen of the press. He
said it nevertheless ; and we recommend it to the atten-
tion of those who think that any reflection on the history
of Mr. O'Connell's life is unjustifiable. If his friends
and partizans in England agree with the sham member
for Dublin, they no doubt derive their good opinion of
their countrywomen from the conduct of their own wives,
mothers, sisters, or daughters. Perhaps, according to
the old maxim—

" What can,we speak or but of what we know?"
they are right; and we wish that the ladies in question
may be as kind to all the O'Connells as possible.
Here, however, in parliamentary and other English
reporting, we have the man safe ; and it is with no ordi-
nal" degree bf pleAs'ure ire haVe witnessed the con-
temptible figure he displays. In Ireland he might revel
as.he •

. . 1115, se jactet atsla
.
izEolus, etclauso ventorum carcere regnet.
Tkieie let The blusteter; 'mid the slavish crew
Of Clete-mouthed sycophants, his Venom spew;
There scoff at truth and decency; content
Ifruttian lies add twopence to the rent
All he had to do in Ireland was to call the. English brutes,
beasts; heavy Saxons; (as if the honoured name of Saxon
was a reprOacb,) thieves, sWindleri, prostitutes, and so
forth. This mess need.only to be garnished with lamen-
tations over the loss of the grand constitutional vystem
of government which prevailed in Ireland.
. . Ere het faithless sons betra.y'd her,
And Malachi stole a collar of gold—
or whatever else is the run cf such rubbish.
Sivin sinchuries of opprishun—the widow of Ryan—
the hangedlminet (hanged by the kind aid of Plunkett)
—the hereditary bondsmen (urged to strike the blow by
the racist lily-livered coward in existence, who would have
consigned to the gallows the victims of his advice withas
pinch readiness as he left the victims of his libels to
starve in gaol)—the gem of the sea—great, glorious,
and free—arid all the other claptraps which are redolent
at once of buffoonery and blood, which would be objects
of profoundscorn or contempt but that they are the ma-
terials of rntrder---would suffice for a speech. Here it is
dittrent. Here the base football player must eulogise
freedom of conscience, while the doctors of his church are
preaching- the burning of heretics, and the ecclesiastics of
his church are, wherever they have the power, suppressL
itig with felon hand the slightest approximations to
liberty of opinion—and he must even descend to what,
to any One else but himself, would he deemed the infinite
degradation of eulogizing the revolution of 1688 ! How
often has he 'wit, with the vindictive yelpings of a
beaten hound, given tongue against the great man by
whom that revolution was brought to its consummation
—and who can believe that the liar was sincere in his
eulogy when we recollect his anticipated persecution of
the orangemen, the followers of the principles which put
William 111. on the throne, and which keeps William [V.
there?

Further dirt must be eat—he must gift maby more of
his own words if he goes on much more in hitspeeehing
tour. If there be a particle left of the old Presbyterian
feeling in Scotland, he will be pelted, as was the Dean of
Edinburgh in the reign of Charles I, for introducing the
prayer-book, because it looked like a mass-book. Here
is among them the very apostle of the mass-book itself.
There is no conjecture about the matter. In Scotland
We are to have (by this time we have had) a hireling iti-
nerant appealing to the Presbyterian prejudices or feel-
ings of the people, whom the sharers of his faith would in
their day of power have burnt. But those whom he will
address are not nice. We recommend him to press one
point on which he has the merit of being original. He
called Oliver Cromwell, a few. days ago, a humbug.
That humbug subdued Scotland in a single campaign—
mid the Scotch may remember Dunbar. That humbug,
in a quarter of a campaign, beat to the earth the coward
Irish papists, red with the murder of women and
children. Let Mr. O'Connell, therefore, entertain his
audience with denunciations of Cromwell. The sharn,
member can bravely defy the absent and the dead. We
request him, however, to favour the company with his
opinions on John Knox.
On the whole, we sincerely rejoice over Mr. O'Con-
nell's new plan. In Ireland he was all but invulnerable.
'We have him here—and if he do not come out of his tour
a greater liar, traitor, sycophant, and blackguard, we are
content to take the appellations in his stead. We re-
quest him, however, as a matter of taste, to vary his ora-
tions. There should be some new stuff occasionally in-
terspersed. The 170 peers—the hereditary tailors—the
club of Odd Fellows, and so forth, have growil horribly
stale :
Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros;
wbicli may be thus interpreted:—

O'Connell chokes
The northern nightmen with his rehasli'd jukes.—dire.

There is no circumstance connected with this affair.
which has- given us more sincere pain to contemplate
than the conduct of the dissenting ministers who officiated
on.this occasion. Messrs. Nisbet and Halley belong to
the secession—who are, or profess to be, presbyterians.
Their creed is the same as that of the church of Scotland
—essentially protestant. It is, therefore, their most
solemn duty on all occasions to protest against the errors
of popery, and to loSe no opportunity of endeavouring to
convert the benighted followers of that superstition.
They have sworn to perform this duty in season and out
of season. But what has been the conduct of Messrs.
Nisbett and Halley'not.
? At the dinner to O'Connell
only did they, in offering up thanks, cautiously abstain
from touching upon the errors of popery, but they most.
anxiously, as it appeared to us, divested their prayers'
(for in length they fully merited. this description) of.
everything like a protestant tendency. They prayed in a
popish, not in a protestant, spirit. They adapted them-
selves most carefully to the sentiments and opinions of.
the Roman catholics Not an allusion was made to the
light of the gospel, nor to any subject that could possibly
elicit a dissent from the staunchest friend of popery.
O'Connell, indeed, crossed himself repeatedly in acknow-
ledgment of their prudence; but how must he have
despised the individuals who could thus consent to de-
part -from their religion and their duty as protestant mi-
nisters! Would he have budged an iota to humour the
ideas of a protestant ? Did he consent to countenance
or join in the ceremonies of the Church of England,
performed at the obsequies of Cobbett ? No, he retired
from the scene, and by covering himself, demonstrated
his dissent from the principles of protestantism l We do
not object so much to protestant ministers being present
at this dinner, though, considering O'Connell's zeal in
behalf of his church, we deem such conduct excessively
unbecoming ;.but we do certainly think that it was most
culpable in them to step forward, in their official capacity,
and give a tacit sanction to a creed which they detest
and repudiate. We heir that at least some members of
their congregations are of tine same way of thinking as
ourselves upon this point ; indeed, we:know that several
of Mr. Nisbet's hearers have determined to abandon his
chapel for that. of some more steadfast supporter of the
protestant faith—one who will 'never be found in the
campof the enemy of our religion, countenancing him
ih 'errors, arid supporting him in his unbelief.—
_Edinburgh Evenivg Post,