The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-07-04 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

We have received from a correspondent, " Ozoniensis,"
a note pointing our attention, and that of the authori-
ties, to the exposure of indecent prints and books of
an immoral tendency in a shop-window in Manchester-
street.

In a recent article, referring to some proceedings of the
visitors of the workhouse, Messrs. Urquhart and Mo-
lyneux, we committed an error which, as we understand
it has pained the latter gentleman, we hasten to correct
and explain. We alluded to these two gentlemen, erro-
. neously with respect to the latter, as dissenters.
THE EXHIBITION AT THE COLLEGIATE INSTITUTION.—
"J. D.," who, in a note, expresses his anxious desire
for the prosperity of the institution, says :—* * *
" I regret extremely to find that the directors, from,
perhaps, a well meaning, but certainly mistaken motive,
have fixed the price of admission at one shilling for all
classes (excepting children), and for all times of the day ;
and have, in my opinion, prematurely announced that
no alteration will take place, so that decent artisans and
working men and their families, who can ill spare that
sum, and who can, moreover, spare only a short time
in an evening to hurry through the rooms, are virtually
excluded. I have myself many men and youths in my
employment (and no doubt there are many others in
large and small establishments throughout the town,
who entertain the same laudable desire), who are
anxious to see the exhibition, for the purpose of in-
formation as well as amusement, but who are thus
precluded from visiting it. They think the admission
daring the day reasonable, and even moderate, from
what they have heard of the great extent and excellence
of the collection, for parties who move in the higher
circles, and have abundance of leisure on their hands ;
but they complain that, as their time would not permit
them to view the whole, even cursorily, in one visit, in
order to obtain a satisfactory inspection, they would
have to go again and again ; so that, as individuals of
humble means, the charge would be much greater for
them than for the rich, for the same gratification.
Surely it was never the intention of the founders of the
institution, or of the projectors of, or the contributors
to, the exhibition that such a system of partiality, and
of exclusion of the industrial classes should be adopted.
I may add, that I feel convinced that the working
classes of Liverpool, if admitted at a lower price after
four or five o'clock in the afternoon (as at the Mechanics'
institution), would conduct themselves in quite as
orderly a manner, and refrain from wanton damage to
the articles on view, as even the younger branches of
wealthy families,—some of whom, I am informed, have
already shown a disposition to do mischief. On con-
sidering the subject in the light in which I have put it,
the committee will, I trust, see that they overlooked
the circumstances under which the industrial, and even
many of the middle orders, are placed, and be induced
to make the requisite alteration, which I do not think
would amount to any breach of faith ;—the announce-
ment they have put forth having been made at a time
when the facts stated were accidently overlooked."
[We quite concur in the opinion of• our considerate
correspondent, and think his suggestion worthy of the
serious consideration of the committee, with a view to
some alteration, every day, or on the afternoons and
evenings of certain days of the week, that may conduce
to the greater popularity of the exhibition, and, con-
sequently, to the advancement of the funds of the
institution ; the prosperity of which, we believe, the
mass of our townsmen, rich and poor, have warmly at
heart.—En. STAND.]

Etberpoot ktanbarb.

TUESDAY MORAING, JULY 4, 1843

Another of those rebel gatherings—those displays
of physical force—by which the agitator of Ireland
trusts to win, from the fears of England, the conces •
sions which he demands—would he held yesterday
in Dublin. Of the proceedings, of course, we can
know nothing as yet. The thousands of ignorant
beings there assembled, after listening for five or six
hours to the revolutionary appeals of their great apos-
tle—after having been wrought up to desperation by
vividly drawn pictures of their wrongs, and stimu-
lated to a fiercer hatred of the English nation—" the
—by the violent and lying denunciations of

They are husbanding their strength until England is
weak ; until her armies are occupied on a foreign
shore, her navy in a distant sea, when the yell of onset
would be given, the beacon fires be lighted from hill
to hill, and myriads of drilled and organized rebels
rush at once to the work of destruction and massa-
cre, for which the spirit of popery in Ireland longs
with the wild longing of a wolf for blood ! and we
are to wait until this crisis has arrived ! We trust
not. We trust that such fatal blindness—such utter
madness—will not be persisted in by the government
of Sir Robert Peel !
We ask of that government to cast their glance
upon the position of the protestants of Ireland at the
present moment. Let them look within the solitary
hovel or the low farm-house, at nightfall, where some
poor protestant family lies down, in ignorance whe-
ther their waking will be amidst conflagration and out-
rage. Let them look, even, at the better protected,
because more populated towns of Ireland, where
protestants are compelled to band themselves for se-
curity against the malignant hostility by which they
are surrounded on every side- Let them ask, what
must be the feelings of these men, of their wives, of
their daughters, when, from some neighbouring hill

or plain, they hear the howl of five hundred thousand
voices proclaiming,—swearing,—eternal hostility to
their race and their faith, and remember with what
bloody zeal that hostility has been wreaked upon
their fathers in times of old ! Does the government
of England—a conservative government too—owe
no protection to these men—no gratitude for past
deeds and old and well-tried loyalty ? Are these
men to be left trembling, beneath their present feel-
ing of insecurity, because a traitor bullies us or a
coward entreats forbearance ? Such should not be;
such must not be, unless we are prepared to submit
tamely to the utmost and the worst which rebellion,
armed or unarmed, can accomplish !
If it is, indeed, the resolve of the present cabinet
to maintain the integrity of the empire, the integrity
of our national church, and the lives and liberties of
our protestant brethren in Ireland, the effort must
be made firmly, and at once ! We cannot bring our-
selves to contemplate, as probable, those fearful re-
sults of such an effort, with which we are threatened.
We believe on the contrary, that a resolved position
on the part of government—a prompt step in the
right direction—is all that is wanted to disarm the
insolent ruffian who is now betraying, and beggaring
the suffering and excitable population of his country.
Declare the agitation for the repeal of the union,
TREASON ! Declare those vast gatherings,—by
which loyal and peaceable men are awed into subjec-
tion to the dictation of midnight plunderers and as-
sassins—to constitute armed rebellion ! Make the
collection of rent for a treasonable purpose illegal !
Put down the seditious assemblages, of repeal war-
dens and other similar fuctionaries, held weekly at
the corn-exchange. Above all, let the government
rally to its side the tried friends of protestantism and
loyalty to the British throne, in Ireland ; and they
may laugh at O'Connell's threats, at the blustering
of his priesthood, or at the ribald menaces and insults
of the enemies of the integrity of the empire, whether
they are to be found in the mass-houses of Ireland,
or amongst the bankrupt ruffians, who squirt tobacco
juice and bluster bobadilism in the taverns of
New York or Baltimore !

We have always maintained that the agitation, by
which the effort of government to procure scrip-
tural education for the children of our factory popu-
lation has been defeated, was not so much based
upon sectarian grounds—was not so much a reli-
gious movement—as it was a movement of " libe-
ralism" amongst the manufacturing body. The
measure of Sir James Graham enfranchised the
suffering factory child. It took him from his long
and dreary toil, at the loom or the spinning frame ;
and sought to raise him from the morll darkness
attendant upon his enforced position. And it was
opposed, with all the organised and concentrated
virulence which dissent can bring into antagonism
to any measure against which its services are

retained, not so much because its provisions were
offensive to voluntaryism in religion and education,
as because it crippled the power of the manufac-
turing capitalist to overtask his human machinery—
because it added a farthing or a penny to the cost
of a piece of his calico or a pound of his yarn !
Confirmation of this fact was scarcely necessary,
in this part of the empire. However great may
have been the amount of delusion, spread from dis-
senting pulpits and platforms, elsewhere, here, at
least, the real animus of the agitation was perfectly
well known. We have, however, that confirmation
before us, in the report of a meeting of dissenting
ministers and others, held in Manchester on
Wednesday last, with the avowed object of defeat-
ing, not the educational clauses of the Factory Bill,
but the emasculated Bill itself—stript as it is of all
that can by any possibility excite religious, or
quasi-religious, animosity. It is not now the edu
cational clauses which are attacked, as injurious to
dissenting interests, or oppressive to dissenting
consciences, but the regulation of the hours of
labour of infant children in factories, and the prin-
ciple laid down, that such children shall be edu•
cated !

We shall give a few specimens of the sayings of
these reverends at the meeting in question ; and
first we notice the following passage from the
speech of the reverend Mr. Massie. This worthy
firebrand, after giving a garbled and grossly unfair,
nay false, edition of the 33d clause of the amended
bill, which defines the powers given to inspectors to
enable them to ascertain that education is given to
the children employed in factories, proceeded to
argue that such clause