The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-10-25 00:00:00

HUMAN LOVE.

Oh if there is one law above the rest
Written in Wisdom—if there is a word.
That I would trace as with a pen of fire
Upon the unsunn'd temper of a child—
If there is anything that keeps the mind
Open to angel visits, and repels
The Ministry of ills--'tis human lore !
God has made nothing worthy of contempt,
The smallest pebble in the well of truth
llas its peculiar meanings, and will stand
When man's best monuments wear fast away.
The law of Ileavea is lore, and though its name
Has been usurp'd by passion, and profan'd
To its unholy uses through all time,
Still the eternal principle Is pure :
And in these deep affections that we feel •
Omnipotent within us, we but see
The lavish measure in which love is given;
Add in the yearning tenderness of a child
For every bird that sings above its head,
And every creature feeding on the hills,
And every tree and flower, and running brook.
We see how every thing was made to lore.
Oh ! how they err who in a world like this
Find any thing to hate but human pride !

Ca.VTEMPOR4IRY PRESS.

The Whig journals are delighted to hear that Lord
Durham intends to vindicate his character against some
newspaper attacks, by an appeal to the law of libel. In
our humble opinion, the best vindication of his lordship's
character would be to show, by despising such attacks,
that his reputation was placed above the necessity of
being so vindicated. The fame of a patriot, if it be worth
anything, should be its own protector. He who seeks
refuge under the shield of the law against the shafts of
political assailants wants the moral courage which is ne-
cessary for public life, and which teaches men of high
mind and conscious integrity to rely, not on that law of
which guilty men can avail themselves as well as the
innocent, but upon the retributive justice of public
opinion.
The Whig flatterers of his lordship say, however, that
it is against attacks upon his private, not his public cha
ratter, that he has set in motion the wheels of penal law.
He says so himself; yet we are told, at the same moment,
that what he complains of originates in the absurd male
volence of the 1 ory press. If so, the malice and the
folly must be obvious to the whole world, and that is a
sufficient vindication of his character against the impnta•
tions which flow from such a source. Where there is an
innate sense of worth, there is a dignity that will despise
detraction. When the great Marlborough was accused
of peculation in the affairs of the army, by the pamphlet-
eers of his day, he felt, like a man of great mind, that to
distrust the eventual triumph of his character would be to
assist in the work of his own defamation. He left it to
time and opinion to become his avengers. Had Wel-
lington imitated his example, his reputation would have
risen in moral value, in proportion as it showed itself
superior to legal protection.
It is natural enough for persons of dubious fame and
equivocal characters to resort to the artificial and tech-
nical protection of the law against the too free criticism
of the Press. The law of libel, which makes truth it-
self a crime, is admirably framed for the protection of
those who have really no characters to lose. The swind-
ler and the gamester—the concocter of the basest frauds,
finds himself as much favoured by the law of libel as the
most virtuous of mankind. For the very reason that
worthless persons are ever ready to fly to actions or
prosecutions of libel to defend what they call their cha-
racter, men of high and honourable feelings are apt to
avoid a course which can in any way confound them with
the ricketty objects of public contempt, whose condition
of moral infirmity requires that they should always
" wear flannel next their reputation."
It is not long since a Weekly Newspaper stated that
the Lord Chancellor had threatened a prosecution for
libel, in consequence of some ridiculous statements, or
observations, which could only become serious through
his own serious notice of them. Now, the once-ultra-
Whig Lord Durham makes war upon the Press. We
recollect when more bitter attacks, both personal and
political, used to be made,in the Whig Press upon Lord
Eldon and the Duke of Newcastle, than the Tory Press
has made upon the Lord Chancellor or Lord Durham ;
yet we never heard of those " illiberal" Noblemen hav-
ing fled to the protection of penal law. But, then, they
never used to quaff the celebrated Whig toast, " The
liberty of the Press; it is like the air we breathe—if we
have it not we die !"--Morning Herald.

REFUSAL OF RENTS.—When the Whig Government
first encouraged—if it did not institute—the system of
Church robbery, known as the passive resistance to tithes,
we remonstrated loudly—not with Ministers, for that
were idle—but with the gentry of Ireland-4he landed
proprietors, and the intermediate interests between them
and the lowest tenantry—on the impolicy—the personal
impolicy towards themselves—of suffering an organised
conspiracy against any species of property to be success-
fully carried on. We warned the Liberals in particular,
and the great Whig absentee proprietors, that in sup-
porting a government which winked at the enormities of
the anti-tithe rebellion, they were laying the foundation-
of their own and their families' ruin. We said distinctly
that the "extinction" of tithes would lead to the aboli-
tion of rent, and that the j)eople who had succeeded in
shaking off one species of agrarian burden, would not
be slow of easing their shoulders of another.
Our voice to the landlords was, " tua res agitur cum
proximus ardet Ucalegon." But our warning was un-
heeded. It was fine sport to fleece a parson, The even
hand of justice, however, has brought the poisoned cha-
lice to their lips. The fine pisantry in various parts of
*the country have refused to pay rents, and, advancing a
step beyond passive resistance, boldly bid defiance 'to
their landlords.

The following is an extract from a letter received this
morning, at our Office, from a gentleman of high cha-
racter and the most unquestionable veracity :
" MIDDLETON, OCTOBER 19, 183.3.—Rents have at length
been resisted in this county ; a few days ago Mr. Spratt of Pen-
cil Flill, near Mallow, went to a tenant to receive his rent on
an appointed day, but instead of his money, he was told that the
men had removed the cattle, corn, &c. &c., and desired him to
get what he could, adding, that 'passive resistance' need not be
resorted to, as the people were determined to be no longer
orioressed by rents, tithes, or taxes, and that they know how to
right themselves. There have been several instances of a simi-
lar nature, especially in the barony of Duhallow, where the
above occurred. The Mail often told with its own powerful
voice, what the effect of the 'passive resistance' system, so ab-
surdly encouraged by the Whigs, would end in."
We may observe, as Lord Bolingbroke did once be-
fore us, " that the country gentlemen have made the Lire
so fierce to roast the parsons, that they have scorched
themselves.,,