The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-08-08 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS,

If " A Shareholder'

his communication of the
nay insert his letter. The

[cation with that object

ale a for
Neer

mr to the Nhtional (
1 to allude to that

C Etbrrpool 4;,tanbarb.

.2% At

Once on Wedn

the Innocents" took
in the House of Com-

mans

T. that

;h of- small i)ills were announced as

t must st

session, so very simpi
TIC of them so obviously

any one as marvellou

nbly, comprising so many men

been spared since the 4th of February to dispose
of them. But so it ever is. The majority of our
representatives in Parliament can see nothing which
is not of imposing aspect, with the exception of

measures, unless of large import, involving some
great principles, or connected with the balance of

. .
parties, are elbowed aside from night to night, and
week after week, until at length they are allowed
to be quietly smothered.
Amongst the measures thus dismissed on Wed-
nesday night, is one which really ought to have
occupied a more prominent position than has been
assigned to it, and which ought to have been
pressed forward by the voice of public opinion as
most especially important at the present crisis. We
refer to the bill for effecting an alteration in the
law with respect to damage done to property by

riotous assemblages

_
By the law as it stands,—the
remedy given against the Hundred falls very far
short of the justice of the case. A riotous mob—
and we have recently, although happily not in
Liverpool, had some experience of the proceedings
of such mobs—may break into and strip a ware-
house, a house, a shop or any other building; may
inflict ruin upon the industrious tradesman by
sweeping away the proceeds of years of patient toil
and thrift; and there is no remedy available for
the recovery of his property. The offence only
amounts to a misdemeanour ; and, to enable a
party thus injured to recover from the Hundred, it
must amount to the crime of felony. There must
be a demolition or a beginning to demolish the
warehouse or the shop—an invasion of the freehold.
By the bill, introduced at the commencement of
the session, it was proposed to give a wider range
to the law, and to enable parties to recover for loss
sustained by the acts of riotous assemblages,
whether the freehold was touched or not. In fact,
it was proposed to return to the law nearly as it
bad previously existed. The proposal was strictly
just. There can be no reason why the house—the
shell—should be protected, and the property which
it contains unprotected : and there is still more
claim now, in the altered state of society amongst
us, than there was when the principle that protec-
tion should be given to the individual for losses
occasioned by the neglect, or the want of power in
the authorities, to preserve order was first re-
cognised. We have seen rising up around us
within the last few years vast communities, depen-
dent upon capital, the caprices of markets, and a
variety of other contingencies for support, who
may at any hour be driven into excesses and vio-
lence, to strikes and turn-outs, during which they
may revenge themselves, or feed themselves, upon
the property of the unoffending shopkeeper, who
must submit to be plundered without redress ;

st, at the same time, an injury inflicted by the
very same hands, and through the very same
agencies, upon the possessor of a mill, a barn, or
even a wall, is amply paid for. We are more liable
now than we ever before were to similar disturb-
ances as the fruit of political agitation. And it is
grossly unfair that the damage done during such
disturbances should fall almost solely upon those
the least able to sustain it, and who, in most
instances, have had the least hand in bringing
them about.

The most proper measure, however, amongst
others, is to postpone to another session, in order,
Sir George Grey informed us on Wednesday night,
that the Attorney-General may have an opportunity
of framing one upon his own pattern. He is
willing for some alteration to be made ; that a
remedy may be given against the hundred, where
the offence committed has been only a misde-
meanour instead of a felony; but he is afraid of
opening the door too wide; and the legal subtlety
of her Majesty's law officers may be able to impart
some retarding friction to its hinges. There has
been abundance of time, moreover, for those law
officers to have considered the bill ; and we are not
at all certain that, by the aid of the multitude of
lawyers the house contains, it might not have been
made all that is required at an hour's, or half an
hour's sitting. The object which it had in view,
however, was one only affecting a few miserable

shopkeepers—mere canaille in the eyes of a Whig
ministry. It was thrown aside, with other similar
low-bred pieces of unfinished legislation. The
house could not waste its precious time upon it;
and accordingly proceeded to press forward a bill
for the improvement of sundry gravel walks, and
other approaches to her Majesty's park at Windsor.

THE great Irish rebellion of 1848, like an ambi-
tious rushlight, has prematurely flared up, and
been puffed out for its impudence. The armed
millions, who were to have swallowed up her Ma-
jesty's forces, horse and foot, and artillery, have
vanished into thin air, before the moral weight of a
proclamation and the muskets of fifty or sixty
police; and the leaders—the men who were to have
burled her Majesty from her throne—the presi-
dents of_ a republic in embryo—where are they ?

Vanished also ; burrowed into some deserted rabbit
warren, or crept into some favoring coal mine, or
some illicit distillery of the genuine potteen. The
_ _

gorgeous uniforms of green and gold, which were
.to have transformed drapers' shopmen into colonels
-tains, are laid up in ordinary; the pikes,
ch Were to have done such terrible execution,
qined to be transformed into more pacifc
• and the stock of muskets and pistols
L'•* never be employed in a

and cal.

ed will probabl

cause than that of shooting an agent, .
Andlord, from behind the comfortable shelter of a
hedge, or a stone wall. Alas for the hopes and the
aspirations of the men of the bright sword and
physical force ! Was ever the world so befooled

;irring

sented as riding away-
police inspector's horse.
Thus ended the first act ; and the curtain has
len. before -' led and expectant audience,

.a la Dick Turpin—upon a I

his ch

led, ran awa

ne thousand or two
Bom-

to fie

and he has not redeemed

of Mun

ter has shewn

gill ; and. there is, we

.e, for the present