The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-07-30 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 30, 1844.

As we anticipated, the intimation given by Sir
Robert Peel, of the nature of his intentions towards
what is left of Protestantism in Ireland, has fallen
with chilling weight upon the minds of the Protes-
tant Conservatives of that land, and of the empire,
whilst it has excited the wildest hope and exultation
amongst the " liberal" and popish party. A new
and a heavier blow, than has ever yet been dealt by
their worst enemies, is about to be directed against
the Protestant institutions and the Church of our
common country, by hands to which they have
been taught to look for protection. A Conserva-
tive ministry is about to effect that, from which the
combined forces of Whig-Radicalism and Popery, a
few years ago, shrunk back, palsied in the effort by
the loudly-expressed indignation of the British
people.

We are certainly not very greatly surprised by
this movement of Sir Robert Peel. It may have
come upon us a little sooner than we anticipated;
but long ago we saw and foretold that it must come.
It is only another turn of the lever—although an
important one—which is ultimately to prostrate the
whole fabric of our Protestant Establishment in Ire-
land, and hand over that unhappy country to the
dark and degrading sway of Rome. It is the car-
rying out of the fatal principle of the bill of 1829 ;
and who so fitted to superintend and aid its pro-
gress as the statesmen who gave it the first impulse
towards the ruin which it is destined to work ? We
are not then surprised. On the contrary, we can
look forward with confidence to further similar ef-
forts, to be made by the same hands with, as the
avowed object, in view the weakening of what has
ever been held as the bulwark of British liberties
and the fertile source. of Britain's greatness—her
attitude of firm protest against the growth in power
of the most blinding and besotting system of super-
stition and tyranny which ever held any portion of
the world in its thrall.

This is no hasty conclusion. It is not the dic-
tating of mere pique or unfounded suspicion ; but,
on the contrary, is as clearly susceptible of proof as
any such charge, involving men's motives, can be.
For what is the position of Sir Robert Peel's govern-
ment, at the moment of announcing these measures
of innovation ? Can it be said of such a govern-
ment, so situated, having just succeeded in vindi-
cating the supremacy of the law over disaffection
and meditated outrage, that it is, at all, in a position t o
be coerced into concessions so injurious ? It cannot
be. No government ever occupied a position from
which it might more safely, and with more dignity
and effect, devote itself to measures remedial of the
real grievances of Ireland—and they are many. No
government, for centuries past, has been in a posi-
tion, more safely and effectively, to

" unthread the rude eye of rebellion,
And welcome back again discarded faith ;"

to approach with a healing hand the social evils
and exasperations of that unhappy land; to descend
into the cabins of its suffering poor, and, by well-
directed and large measures of amelioration, endea-
vour to raise them from the low station which they
occupy, in the scale of worldly comfort and civilisa-
tion, to one which, under Providence, they are ca-
pable of occupying, and ought to occupy. Such a
policy towards Ireland was within the reach of Sir
Robert Peel's government. The harsh working of
an oppressive, and, for all good purposes, an inope-
tive Poor-law, might have been corrected. The
existing state of the law of landlord and tenant, the
fertile source of agrarian outrage, might have been
dealt with; the exactions of agitation might have
been put down, and the people been taught to look
to the constituted tribunals of the country for pro-
tection against the tyranny of the demagogue and
the outrages of the secret tribunal. This would
have been an intelligible policy, operating directly
upon the leading sources of Irish misery and dis-
content. But such is not the policy of which Sir
Robert Peel is enamoured. It is not for such ob-
jects that Sir Robert is willing to direct the power
at his command; and yet no other feasible objects
have been loudly suggested by the public—no mea-
sures such as those announced; nothing, in fact,
more specific and practicable than the submission to
the wild cry for Repeal. He is left to choose his
own policy. He is a volunteer in his concessions;
and yet when he has before him an opportunity of
embarking, in earnest and with fewer restricting in-
fluences than were ever placed in the way of any
minister, in an effort to stem the tide of ghastly and
hideous poverty which overruns this fairest portion
of the British empire, he deliberately turns back his
hand, from that effort, to throw a sop to Popery !
When Ireland's famishing millions ask him for
bread, he tenders to their acceptance—a popish uni-
versity, When a nation, sunk in the dregs of fa-
naticism, ignorance, and deprivation, cry out for
an amelioration of their social condition, and for
permission to live upon the sweat of their brows, in
the security of their nwn homes, the minister of a
Protestant Sovereign and People answers those
prayers with a shower of popish fellowships, and an
increased grant to Maynooth ! Surely, it would be
very Midsummer madness to deny that a statesman
pursuing, under such circumstances, the course
which Sir Robert tells us is about to be his, is the
deliberate enemy of those principles and institutions
which he voluntarily outrages and perils.

But the grave question suggests itself—will Sir
Robert Peel be permitted, by the Conservatives of
Great Britain, to carry into execution the measures
which he has announced, with too much clearness
to allow us to be thrown off our guard by his apolo-
gists of the ministerial press ? Is the Protestant
Strength of England so totally and fatally gone that
We must crouch abjectly at the feet of Sir Robert
Peel, or any other minister,
" to find ourselves dishonourable graves?"
Are we so craven and so lamb-like in our disposi-
tions that we consent to

" lick the hand just raised to shed our blood '"
Is there no Conservative statesman bold and
honest enough to stand forth in this battle, and,
with the Protestant spirit of the empire At his back,
to tell Sir Robert Peel, and the factions to which he
is truckling, that the Protestant institutions and