The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-03-12 00:00:00

IRELAND.

REPEAL ASSOCIATION.-Thp only business at the
meeting of this association on Monday, was the reading
of a letter from O'Connell, in which he accounted for
his absence from Ireland by the public dinner to be given
to him in London this day (Tuesday). The repeal rent
was £493 4s. Od.

MURDER.—A private of the 66th regiment, named
John Cordery, murdered the serjeant of the regiment, o❑
Thursday week in the most cold blooded manner, by
shooting him through the body. The regiment is sta-
tioned at Belfast, and it is believed the murderer was ex-
cited to the deed through fear of having a delinquency,
of which he had been guilty, reported.
FIVE MEN DROWNED.—On the morning of yesterday
week, during the continuance of the storm, five fishermen
from Clogher were lost. They had proceeded to sea on
the previous evening, and were overtaken by the gale.
The boat in which the unfortunate men were in, was found
drifting about the Nanny Water. By this melancholy oc-
currence sixteen children were left fatherless, and unpro-
vided for.—Drogheda Journal.
DESTRUCTION OF SHEEP.—There has been a great
destruction of sheep for miles round our town, for some
weeks past, by dogs which are permitted to prowl about
the country. On Saturday night last, eight sheep, the
property of Baron Pennefather, were destroyed at
Knockeevon, and many farmers in the neighbourhood
suffered a similar loss. It appears this destruction of pro-
perty was caused by the parish priest's dog, which was
traced to his house anti killed, much against the will of its
owner. In other localities numbers of sheep have been
destroyed by dogs. which should be properly secured by
their owners, and this loss of property prevented.—
Tipperary Constitution.

ATHLONE ELECTION PETITION.—On Tuesday last,
the Committee of the House of Commons selected to try
the merits of the petition against the return of Mr. Col-
lett, as member for Athlone, were sworn at the table of
the House, and on Wednesday they commenced their in-
quiry. The committee consisted of Mr. J. S. Pakington,
Mr. Wm. Beckett, Mr. W. 0. Stanley, Mr. H. G.
Ward, Mr. W. Cripps, Mr. R. Currie, and Mr. Lock-
nart. On Thursday, two Irish witnesses were examined,
who negatived the facts they had been called to prove;
and in consequence the petitioners' Counsel withdrew the
petition. Mr. Collett was accordingly declared elected.

EXTRAORDINARY TRIAL FOR RIBBONISM.—A re-
markable case arising out of this nefarious conspiracy was
tried at the Meath assizes last week. A man named Lynch
was indicted for ribbonism, the principal witness being an
informer. who for three years acted as parishmaster and
paymaster of the association. If there is any credit to he
placed on the evidence of this miscreant, the horrible re-
velations disclosed are of a nature calculated to arouse the
worst feelings of any man who may, even inadvertently,
render himself obnoxious to this system of Irish Thuggism.
In the course of his direct examination " Paymaster"
Blake (the informer) swore " that he had often issued
money for assassinations !" and on his re-examination by
Chief-Justice Doherty he affirmed, " that any person
joining the association can complain of such as are ob-
noxious to him, or supposed to be tyrannical, and can have
them either ill-treated, beaten, or murdered !" The jury
were discharged without agreeing to a verdict; but 11, it
is stated, were for finding the prisoner guilty.—Standard.
THE VICEREGAL GENERAL GAOL DELIVERER.—The
following timely observations appear in the Cork Consti-
tution of Saturday:—" When Lord Normandy lately, in
allusion to his gaol deliveries, stated that few of the per-
sons whom he discharged were ever re-committed, he
exhibited a marvellous forgetfulness of facts. Why, of
16 whom he pardoned, and of 41 whose sentences he com-
muted in the gaol of our own city, 13 were re-committed,
and of those no fewer than ten were in due time trans-
ported. One of the latter—Mary Lynch—was subse-
quently five times committed, and at last transported ;
Jeremiah Twomey, alias Old Lock, was subsequently six
times committed, and finally transported, while two others
were twice committed. Of the whole 57 (who were
liberated between January, 1835, and April, 1839,) there
were at the time of their sentences being commuted or
themselves discharged, 34 under sentence of transporta-
tion and two under sentence of death. In the county
gaol, 47 prisoners experienced the benefit of viceregal
liberality. Of these 18 had been under sentence of trans-
portation, 11 of them for life ; but how many of them it
became the duty of the Government to introduce a second
or third time to the notice of the judge, or what was their
ultimate destiny, we are, unfortunately, not informed.
The Recorder, we observe, passed sentence of transpor-
tation yesterday on a fellow named Corkery. who had
been some years ago similarly sentenced by one of the
judges, but for whose release his worship was unable to
account. The explanation, however, is easy. Corkery
was liberated by Lord Normandy, and he has since been
living on the plunder of the citizens, on whom that vain
and visionary Viceroy so inconsiderately let him loose.
Fortunately for us we have now a Viceroy who has too
much interest in the peace of the country to turn out its
malefactors for the poor purpose of raising a shout or ob-
taining a reputation for humanity."

THE CONSPIRATORS-THE MINISTRY.

(From the Times of Wednesday.)

When the notice was originally served on the Dublin
Repealers, that they were to be prosecuted at the suit of
the Crown, the first exclamation raised by them and their
friends was, " Oh, that's all a joke—there can be no such
intention—Ministers dare not do it." As the matter
began to look a little serious, the cry was changed :
"Oh, we'll take care that the trials shall last these six
months, for thousands of witnesses are to be subpeened
from among the millions who have attended the monster
" meetings. Next, there were to be heated for evasion
and delay an entire furnace full of irons, of the most
novel and ingenious manufacture. The indictment was
irregular—the panel was to be quashed—the trials were
to commence de novo—another whole year was to be con-
sumed—and, as the grand move of all, the catholics of
both countries were to rise as one man, to resist their
" infamous exclusion" from the jury-box, and to avenge
their insulted honour.

These threats failing, and after the trials did actua ly
commence, objections and complaints were multiplied;
the stream of abuse and violence ran the stronger the more
the ground was narrowed. The witnesses of the crown
could not be contradicted ; on the side of the prisoners,
therefore, none were called ; speeches were delivered,
long, loud, and manifold ; the jury were charged and the
culprits were found guilty.
Then came a new and strange phenomenon. Men con •
victed by law took their seats as convicts among the legis-
lators of the land : they made speeches inculpatory of the
proceedings under which they had been found guilty.
Ever since, they have, most of them been daily going back
to Ireland, calling round them fresh assemblages of un-
cured repeaters, and by a series of inflammatory boasts or
murmurs inciting them to a renewal of those disorders for
which their own approaching sentence now hangs over
their heads.

To show how little has even yet been done in the way
of moral medicine for this popular delusion and insanity,
the disaffected press is, at this moment, as wild in its ex-
travagancies as at any former period. Actually, late as is
the hour, we find the same course of unseemly swagger,
and foolish as well as fruitless bullying, resorted to that
was practised by O'Connell while he was still unprose-
cuted, and when he cried out, " I dare the government to
go to law with me." They did go to law, however. The
like attempts at intimidation were practised upon the jury,
who were first told, that " no jury could venture to find
a verdict of guilty." But a verdict of guilty was found ;
and now the song is, the " Crown will not dare to execute
judgment on the traversers."
Now, setting aside the good taste, and comeliness of
such rhodomontade, is it not most absurd for men to
threaten those who have, figuratively speaking, the rope
about their necks? For where is the common sense of
all this immodest violence? The parties to it must have
seen that the Government and the Parliament were little
affected by it at an earlier stage of those proceedings ;
that when the agitation was apparently most flourishing
it was censured in Parliament, denounced from the Throne,
proclaimed against, prosecuted, convicted—and all in spite
of the bitterest execrations, the fiercest menaces, and the
most arrogant scorn.
They should not, therefore, holloa while yet in the very
thick of the forest.

The penal laws of this country are not framed in a spirit
of gratuitous hatred or revenge. Nothing so inhuman as
mere vindictiveness could have actuated the Queen's mi-
nisters in commanding these prosocutions ; nothing like
personal hostility to O'Connell can be supposed to mingle
with their motives in calling for judgmer.t, any more than
it did in determining the jury to bring in their verdict,
or than it will govern the Judge in pronouncing sentence
or the prisoners. Were the ministers in any case to have
betrayed such a disgraceful sentiment, public opinion
would on the instant have condemned and deserted them ;
but the appeal to law was a solemn and long-neglected
duty, reluctantly and too slowly performed—a heavy debt
to public justice, to the safety of the state, to the peace
and order of society. There was universal distrust
throughout the nation—a confidence rather in the agitators
of the realm than in its protectors—an extreme dread of
disturbance, insurrection, convulsion, and dismemberment
of the empire. What were individual sympathies or anti-
pathies weighed against such considerations? Well, but
could anything have been so ruinous as the slightest mani-
festation of alarm, or weakness, on the part of the Queen's
ministers? Their delay to prosecute was full of danger;
their shrinking from any feasible means of success in their
prosecution would have been fraught with still more se-
rious evil; but what would all such qualms have been,
compared with a pusillanimous hesitation to punish such
persevering and incorrigible malpractices, made unques-
tionable in the eye of the whole world, after years of dis-
graceful impunity ?
No—this unwise imitation of Lord Normanby—this
abuse of mercy, will not answer, if the Queen's govern-
ment do not mean to publish a reward for systematic
contempt of the laws, disloyalty to the Monarch, and
outrage to the peace of the community. What thanks,
besides, would be gained, or what particle of credit for an
exercise of mock lenity in such an instance? Why, the
accomplices of the disclosed conspiracy have already con-
strued the matter by anticipation. They have told yon
that you dare not punish. If you fail to execute the sen-
tence, th y will have made good their accusation, and will
boast that you spared by virtue of your own terrors, not
from regard to what the criminals might suffer. We tell
Ministers, if they fear to carry into effect that sentence,
whatever it mey be, which the judges shall have promul-
gated, they may as well proclaim at once to all her Ma-
jesty's subjects, that " in Ireland," as Lord Wellesly
said, it is " less dangerous to defy the laws than to en-
force them."
We have asked what feeling of gratitude will requite
snch a timorous misapplication of the prerogative of
mercy? and we answer our own question, by referring to

a legislative, not a judicial act—namely, the relief bill of
1829. There it was not charged upon government before-
hand, that it would not dare to refuse emancipation • but
it was broadly (and we always thought inconsideratel, for
a statesman so practical) acknowledged by the illnstriuus
Duke of Wellington, himself the emancipatory minister,
that if he bad any longer withheld it, Ireland would have
been in rebellion. It has served for a text to all agitators
and sedition brewers, from that hour to this, to encourage
each other, and their followers, in a conrse of incessant
and harrassing turbulence—as thus :—" It was we, the
Irish, that extorted emancipation, oy our own bravery
and vigour—we owe nothing for it to the people of Eng-
land, who opposed it to the last; and we owe as little to
the tory ministers, who in their very speeches confessed
the truth—did homage to our resistless power, and pub-
lished to mankind, that it was from dread, not free will,
they unfettered us."

IRISH CHURCH.

(From the Dublin Evening Mail.)

When Mr. Shell asserted in the House of Commons
that " the Protestant church has made no way in two
centuries in Ireland, while Popery is every day, and in
every way, upon the advance," he either dishonestly sta-
ted that which he knew not to be correct, or he must
have been culpably ignorant of the history of his own
country, and of those events upon which he undertook to
enlighten a British parliament. The Protestant religion,
said the orator, has in two centuries made no way in Ire-
land.
There are at this moment TWO MILLIONS OF PROTES-
TANTS in Ireland. _ _ _

Let this fact never be lost sight of or forgotten.
The Protestants are TWO MILLIONS. The Roman Ca.
tbolics six. _

Where did the former come from ? How were they
made ? From whom did they separate ? Why did they
conform ?

In the year of our Lord 1515, there were, according to
an ancient roll from which we quote, and which, as a
record, is admitted as unquestioned authority, SIXTY-
FIVE principal chiefs or heads of septs in Ireland.

[The Dublin Mail then gives the names of the chiefs,
and the provinces in which they are classed.]

Now, Mr. Sheil—and more than Mr. Sheil—the whole
nation will be astonished to learn that, of those sixty-five
chieftains, with their direct and collateral branches—
their connexions or followers—the descendants are all,
with three exceptions, conformists to the Protestant
faith—making, of course, allowances for a few families in
which the religion is mixed amongst the minor and subor-
dinate branches; but we affirm, and without the fear of
contradiction, which we court and challenge, that of the
sixty-five Irish chieftains above named, the heads of only
three have continued, or are now, professors of the Ro-
mish religion, without any admixture of Protestantism—
namely :
In Ulster—The Great O'Neil, of Tyroden.
In Connaught—The O'Conor Don.
The Mac Dermot (O'Gara of Coolavin.)
_ _ _

In Leinster, Munster, and Meath—Not one.

So that the case stands thus :
Of the representatives of the ancient Irish chieftains
there are—
Conformed
(The descendants being either wholly Protestant or mixed.)
Extinct.. • •••• •• • o
Roman Catholics

Total number .

But those who charge the religion, as established by
law in Ireland in connexion with the State, as having
failed in its missionary character, will find that the con-
struction and erection of Protestant places of worship,
and the ordination and increase of ministers of the re-
formed faith, kept pace with the spread of the religion
itself, and was commensurate with the wants and require-
ments of those who departed from the superstitions of
Popery, and came within the fold of the pure and re-
formed system of gospel truth, as preached by the
Apostles.
After the accession of the House of Hanover to the
British throne, and during the reign of George the First,
the number of Protestant clergy in each diocese in Ire-
land amounted to TWENTY-FOUR !

In 1726—The glebe-houses throughout the whole king-
dom reckoned but 141.
In 1800—Nearly a century after, they bad only increased

to 295.
In 1820—There were 768 glebe-houses, showing an in-
crease of 473 in the space of twenty years.
In 1829—There were 250 glebe .houses in addition, pro-
ving the immense increase in the number of
resident working clergy ; and, in the same
period, there were erected, or were in progress
of erection, nearly 200 churches for the ac-
commodation of multiplying congregations.
In 1806—The resident clergy reckoned ... 693

The Curates v 560
In 1830—The resident clergy were (nearly double) . 1200
And the Curates increased t 0.......... 750
And this, be it remembered when the lives of the Protes-
tant clergy was perilled by the knife of the murderous as-
sassin, or the gun of the midnight murderer ; and when
he himself deprived of his lawful income by the fiendish
confederacy in operation against him, went through the
duties of his ministry along paths beset. with danger, with
none of the accompaniments pertaining to, and with
scarcely clothing necessary for a gentleman—surrounded
with pecuniary difficulties, and tormented by pressing
creditors; his life not insurable at any risk, or payment
of any premium or by any company, so imminent was the
peril in which he existed , and so precarious the tenure by
which his life was held ; every comfort in which he bad
been reared abandoned—every elegance to which he had
been accustomed yielded up—the education of his chil-
dren suspended—the means.for its accomplishment hav-
ing ceased—his wife acid his family literally wanting
bread—and while the hard-working Protestant clergyman
shrunk not from these dangers, and endured all these pri
vations for " conscience sake, " the self•indulging parish
priest and his illiterate coadjutor, in the security of un-
bolted doors and unbarred windows—free from danger,
were indulging enjoyments which vulgar tastes and sen-
sual habits might suggest.
Yet these are the two churches of which Mr. SHELL
has asserted that the one (his own) " had struck its roots
profoundly and widely in the belief and the affections of
the people—growing beneath the axe, and opening in the
blast—while the Protestant religion, although preserved
is a magnificent conservatory, at prodigious cost, pined
like a sickly exotic, to which no natural vitality could be
imparted, and every expedient to force it into freshness
or warm it into bloom had been essayed in vain."