The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-03-05 00:00:00

HEART AND HAND IN DEFENCE OF OUR COMMON

COUNTRY."

We did not, at the time, think it worth while be-
stowing any notice upon so ridiculous a conclu-
sion. It provoked a laugh, and was forgotten.
Yesterday, however, much to our astonishment, and
doubtless to that of the world at large, we had the
same view of the proper mode of tranquillising (!)
Ireland dressed up afresh in the columns of the

Albion, in the following flippant paragraph, upon
which we must offer a few words of comment.
Aftrr quoting the above passage from Sir Robert
Peel's speech, our contemporary proceeds to say:—
" This, of course, is sheer fudge, for the thing is within
his reach, and yet he will not take the step which will ac-
complish it. LET HIM RESIGN. The day which should
carry over the news of such an event would see Ireland
tranquil and peaceful within all her borders, ready and
eager to welcome her Sovereign to her shores with all the
enthusiasm of the most devoted loyalty. Yes! let him
resign, for he is the only obstacle to the objects which he
professes are so near and dear to his heart. We shall ap-
preciate the self•sacrifice, and none will withhold the
praise.

Oh, yes ! Set up a government which shall be the
patron of agitators, and the protector of murderers.
Send over a Normanby, to open the doors of the
prisons of Tipperary and Clare; restore to liberty
and fresh crime the midnight robber and the Agra-
rian disturber; give renewed vitality to the wide-
spread Ribbon conspiracy; giVe hope to the cupidity
which longs for the plunder of the owners of the soil
of Ireland; proclaim the destruction of that Protes-
tant Church which she has sworn to defend; and
with such a government—with such impunity for
crime—with such incentives to outrage and blood-
shed—HER MAJESTY, a Protestant Sovereign,
" will find Ireland tranquil and peacefnl in all her
borders, ready and eager to welcome her to her shores,
with all the enthusiasm of the most devoted loyalty"!
The gaols would pour forth their thousands to meet
her. The red hand of the undetected assassin would
flourish the blood-stained bludgeon at her approach.
Crime would hold jubilee in the presence of a Queen,
whose message was thus one of mingled immunity
for past, and of encouragement for future outrage.
A Whig journalist can have the unblushing har-
dihood to make to the people of Englrnd, who have
declared that IN :IRELAND THE LAW SHALL BB
RESPECTED, a proposition so monstrous ! Yes ;
the organ of a party, who, in power, ruled Ireland
by a coercion bill; denounced the repeal agitation
from the throne; discountenanced the agitators, as
unfit for the favours of government; then truckled—
basely truckled—to those very agitators; stooped to
hold office as the venal price of their support in parlia-
ment—such an organ has the fatuity to imagine that
the British people ha• ~,gotten all their incapacity,
and would pay so feaiilli a price, as the sacrifice of one
of the fairest portions of their country, for the plea-
sure of seeing them once more revelling in Downing-
street, and dipping their " itching palms" in the
Treasury! Yes : these men imagine that it is for
their presence in Ireland that the torch is lighted,
the bale-fires glowing from hill to hill—that all this
rebellious outrage is for love of them, whom the leader
of Irish agitation has called " the base, bloody, and
brutal," and the world has acknowledged as the
most venal and incapable faction by whom the des-
tinies of a great nation were ever wielded !
Strange mistake ! inconceivable blindness ! Why,
it is to this very party, whose tampering with rebel-
lion, and fondling with rebels, has been so abun-
dantly manifested, that Ireland owes so much of her
wretchedness and disorganization ;—that, in that
misguided and unhappy land, life is "cheaper" than
in any country upon which even a gleam of the
light of civilization has shone. But folly has its
lessons to teach as well as wisdom. A straw, thrown
up, shows the direction of the wind as well as the
most complicated piece of machinery. A goose
saved the Capitol ; and this very fatuity of Whig
journalism unfolds to us the present and coming
policy of whiggery as palpably as if an oracle had

proclaimed it, and Lord John Russell had not gone

out of his way to disclaim it—as well as if we bad

had no nine days debate upon the affairs of Ireland,

and no Whig coquetting with Ireland's convicted
disturber. The Whigs are once more ready to ride

into office upon this man's shoulders—to crouch a

his feet—to pander to his griping mendacity—and

at the allotted time, when they have sacrificed all
that is high, and holy, and just, to appease his vora-
cious appetite, they are prepared to be spurned from

him, to find

" in the lowest deeps a lower deep," in

which they may hide their political degradation from
the eyes of an incensed nation.

The petition of the electors of the city of Durham
against the return of the Leaguer, John Bright, on
the grounds of bribery and other violations of the
law, is abandoned, as will be seen from the following
paragraph, which we quote fry, our valued con-
temporary, the Durham Advertiser
DURHAM ELECTION PETITION.—The petition against
the return of " honest John Bright" has been withdrawn.
Why, it will be asked, has this been done? A very few
words will answer the inquiry—a want of "the sinews of
war"! The petitioners, or those who were entrusted
with the management of the petition, were in possession
of a vast mass of evidence to prove that treating to an
almost unprecedented extent was practised at the late
election, and that bribes were given to influence many of
the electors; but the inqui y to establish these facts was
likely to be of so long continuance, and the expenses con-
sequent thereon of such magnitude—far exceeding the
amount of the funds provided—that it was deemed pru-
dent rather to abandon the petition than persevere under
such circumstances. It will then be seen that it was
under no conviction of the purity of " honest John" that
the petition has been abandoned, but solely on the score
of expense.

• Does this untoward affair teach to Conservatives
no lesson ? Surely yes. The electors of Durham
had, we are . confidently assured, an undoubtedly
strong case. They had abundance of evidence to
substantiate that case. But the tools of the League
had gone serpentlike about their work. They are
no bunglers in their trade. They had, moreover, a
hundred thousand pound fund to draw upon for the
purpose of defending their achievements. But, un-
fortunately, the defenders of England's interests
have no such fund to look to in an emergency like
this petition against Mr. Bright.
This, then, is the lesson which is taught us by
this affair. It is not alone by the dissemination of
tracts, lying speeches, and jesuitical anti-monopoly
circulars, that the League is about to work upon
the constituencies. That pure body can bribe as
Drell ; and, when attempted to he bronght before the
legitimate parliamentary tribunal, to defend their
delinquencies, they are in possession of a long purse,
wherewith to escape justice, and set at defiance the
truth. They can, in fact, ride roughshod over the
constituencies, and, with mill dust and children's
bones transmuted into gold in the aie►nbic of the
factory, stifle the voice of public opinion throughout
Great Britain.

Surely the Conservative party will do something
to break down this tyranny of capital. Surely the
nobility and the gentry of England will not permit
themselves thus to be pushed out of the councils of
the nation, and a heterogeneous swarm to vault into
their places. If we are to have an Anti-League
movement, let us have as well an Anti-League fund,
not to provide lecturers merely, to address them-
selves to men whose minds are already pretty well
made up upon the great question at issue—which is
THEIR OWN EXISTENCE AS A CLASS, THE MOST
VALUABLE OF ENGLAND'S PEOPLE—but to neu-
tralize, as well, these attempts to beat down, by the
force of money, the constitutional expression of the
very opinions which they seek to disseminate. This
hundred thousand pounds, wrung from the sinews
of the poor, must not be shaken in the faces of Bri-
tish men, to awe them into submission to an odious
tyranny, without an effort being made, BY THE
LANDLORDS OF ENGLAND, to fight the anti-national
faction with its own favourite weapon. Surely the
defender of his own homestead, and the prosperity
of his dependents, will not begrudge the cost of the