The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-02-20 00:00:00

MISCELLANEOUS.

At a meeting at the Duke of Richmond's on Saturday,
at which a great number of noblemen and gentlemen were
present, a metropolitan society was formed for the pro-
tection of British agriculture.
Lord and Lady Stanley gave, on Saturday evening, an
elegant entertainment, at their residence in St. James's-
square, London. Amongst the company were the Right
Hon. W. E. and Mrs. Gladstone, Lord Sandon, and
Mr. Cardwell.
MunnEn IN NORWICIL—On Thursday evening last
an inquest was held at Norwich, before Mr. W. Wilde,
on view of the body of John Seeley, aged 65, who came
by his death on that day, as was allged, from a blow
with a poker given by his wife, a woman apparently
about 40. The parties kept a low pnblic-house in that
city. They had been in the habit of quarrelling, and on
the day named more than usual, and deceased stated that
his wife had struck him with a poker in the chest. He
died the same afternoon.
ABSENTEEISM.—Let us inquire if absenteeism existed
when the Irish Parliament was sitting ; if so, there are no
grounds for maintaining that the creation of another Irish
Legislature would prevent the perpetuation of the alleged
evil. Every writer on Ireland, for several centuries, has
written forcibly against absenteeism at the very periods
when the Irish Parliament was in its greatest plenitude.
Sir William Petty, Prior (or Dobbs), Gee, Spenser,
Dean Swift—all wrote against absentees. The Dean said
"it perpetually drained the country, and drove half the
farmers into beggary and banishment." In the reign of
Richard 11., there was a heavy tax imposed on absentees ;
who were fined two-thirds of their estates. The law was
revived in the reign of Henry VIII., for, as the late Mr.
Sadler says "like all others of this nature, the former
the former had been evaded." Mr. Sadler adds, that
" in the time of James I. the entire lands of all abseen-
tees were vested in the Crown." In 1715, the Irish Par-
liaments taxed the pensions, salaries, &c., of all absentees
four shillings in the pound, which tax was afterwards re-
pealed. A recent and patriotic writer says—" Absentee-
ism existed to a grievous extent even under the resident
legislature of Ireland, notwithstanding all their exertions
to destroy this plaie potilique la pluss devorante. There
were legal enactments against absenteeism from 1377 up
1753: they all proved inefficient. In 1773, Mr. Flood
made an attempt to revive the old laws, but failed. In
1783, a proposition to the same effect was supported by
Mr. Grattan, in vain. In 1797, Mr. Vandeleur, made a
motion with the same view, which proved abortive."—
Bryan's Practical View of Ireland.

THE IRISH STATE TRIALS.—At length this tedious
affair has come to a conclusion, and terminated, as we
have expected ever since we read some portions of the
evidence, in a conviction of all the defendants—whose acts
and language had undoubtedly gone for beyond the line of
legal and constitutional appeal to public opinion. Many
of the liberal newspapers are loud in their complaints
against the government for having instituted the prorecu-
tion against Mr. O'Connell and his co-defendants; but
we must confess that in these complaints we cannot at all
concur. From the time of the meeting at Mullaghmast,
where the act of the union was declared to be a nullity,
and the announcement of " the repeal cavalry," for the
purpose of making a demonstration at Clontarf, it appeared
to us that the government had no choice, unless they were
disposed to allow the discontented portion of the Irish
people to place themselves in complete military array, and
to prepare for an outbreak which would have deluged the
land in blood. Mr. O'Connell's real objects may be, as ~
many people believe, quite laudable; but without troubling
ourselies to inquire into that point, we are quite sure that
the means to which he has resorted for the attainment of
those objects have been in the highest degree illegal, un-
constitutional, and, considered in a moral point of view,
exceedingly wicked and nefarious. Notwithstanding all
that has been said in defence of the conduct and motives
of Mr. O'Connell in the agitation which has led to this
prosecution, we cannot bring ourselves to sympathise with
a man who has done his utmost to stir up a feeling of deeq
and malignant hate between Englishmen and Irishmen,
and who has not scrupled to point to incendiarism as a
mode of punishing Englishmen for supporting the govern-
ment in its resistance to the demand for repeal,—/Ifaec
chester Guardian, Radical paper. ;-Vv "lrk'.
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