The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-01-18 00:00:00

IRELAND.

The Cabinet appeais to be divided upon the subject of
Ireland. Some of the members imagine that a proclama-
tion would suffice to .put down O'Connell and the Volun-
teers, whilst others insist on the necessity of placing Ire-
land under martial law, and putting down O'Connell at
the point of the sword. The O'Connell, as is well known,
does not light, but the O'Gorman does, considering
which, we think he has been rather scurvily treated by
his peaceful compeer. By the way, we should like to
know how our good ally citizen King Louis Philippe
came to be so interested in the affairs of Ireland? O'Gor-
man, if we are rightly informed, is in the habit of speak-
ing of his burgeois Majesty as an exceeding good fellow,
to whom he was presented when in Paris; and O'Con-
nell has we believe, an uncle, or some other rich rela-
tive resident there, to whom he despatches a part of his
family occasionally upon a visitation.—Guardian and
Public Ledger.

The melancholy fact that government would be under
the necessity of sending a large additional military force
to Ireland must have been for some time foreseen by the
most casual observer of the scenes which have been acting
in that interesting and ill-fated country. Of the neces-
sity of this, we fear, there can but be one opinion ; but
of the causes which are thus producing new scenes of ruin
and misery to a land for which Nature has done so much
and man so little, opinions doubtless differ widely, though
we confess that they appear to us to be gradually concen-
trating into a focus, which must soon fix the present
misery of Ireland on one party, if not on one man. But
our business is not to criminate, but to cure ; and we
would, as we have repeatedly done before, earnestly call
upon those, into whose hands the present destinies of Ire-
land appear to have fallen, to pause upon the threshold of
her new calamities, and to ask themselves what must be
the consequenee, both to Ireland and themselves, if the
present system of internal agitation and convulsion is
allowed to go on ? To the principal actor in this frightful
tragedy we would say, in the splendid language of the
poet—
" Is there not some chosen curse,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man,
Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin?"

What renders the state of Ireland at the present mo-
ment the more interesting, and the error of those who
are hastening on so fearful a crisis the more inexcusable,
is the fact that there has been no period, in the history of
her past misrule, when there was so fair a prospect pre-
sented of seeing her extricated from its consequences as
now exists. 'I hough we may not altogether approve
either of the persons employed, or the measures which
the present government has hitherto adopted towards Ire-
land, yet there can be no doubt that at no period has
there existed an administration either so warmly inclined
or so deeply pledged to consult her welfare by every pos-
sible means. Even were that not the case, the ills of Ire-
land are the ills of England; and it is impossible, there-
fore, that a reformed parliament, such as we have now
got, could assemble without the state of Ireland being
one of the earliest objects to which its attention must be
directed. There is; indeed, one way—and one only—in
which the best intentions of the government and the legis-
lature can..be defeated : that is, by the two countries be-
ing brought into angry collision ; and the sword being
called for, instead of the hand of peace being held out and
accepted. If a struggle is to take place, frightful as its
progress must be, there can be no doubt as to the result;
and the utter hopelessness of an appeal to arms, on the
part of the wretched and misguided portion of the popu-
lation of Ireland, only enhances, in a hundred-fold degree,
the crime of those who, to gratify a feeling which it is
impossible to define or comprehend, are insanely urging
on a catastrophe of which they themselves may probably
be not the last victims.:

If we mistake the motives of these persons, let them
show us that we do, by giving heed to our counsel. Let
them, we repeat, pause on the- threshold of those calami-
ties which await this member of our common country.
Let them remember that there exists the warmest disposi-
tion, both in the people of England and the government,
to redress the wrongs of Ireland ; and the beneficial ef-
fects of such disposition can alone be defeated by the cup
being dashed from the lip to which it is on the eve of
being presented.—Morning Herald.

EFFECTS OF POPERY ON THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OF

A PEOPLE.

When controwersies resolve themselves into questions
of evidence, it is equally unprofitable and unpleasant to
prolong them. The Morning Chronicle has, in a mea-
sure, brought us to this ne plus ultra in the inquiry as to
the effect of the Romish superstition upon the physical
condition of a people.
We yesterday cited the cases of Italy, Spain, and Por-
tugal, as the only countries, except Ireland, in which
that blight upon the eternal and temporal happiness of
the human race reigns uncontrolled; and we were able
to cite these countries also as the abode of the most mise-
rable peasantry in the world, except the peasantry of
their partner in popish suffering, Ireland. The Morning
Chronicle, passing- over with trifling deductions the fla-
grant cases of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, as cases, we
presume, not to be refuted,' refers to Austria and the
Austrian party of Italy, where the wings of ROmish au-
thority are so clipped as to leave the nations scarcely half
popish ; and to the Low Countries, in the days of such
princes as Charles the Bold, who knew as well as any
prince of the House of Hapsburgh, how to hold the fo-
reign ecclesiastical in proper subjection to the domestic
civil authority. That the Low Countries were never
very obedient subjects of the Pope, before Philip the Se-
cond overwhehned at once their religious freedom, their