The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-08-01 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

" A Special Constable" had better send a copy of his let'er to
the Mayor. We question the propriety of publishing it.
We are obliged for the hint of "Spectator," and receive it in
the spirit in which he has evidently tendered it.

Ebe Eitnrpool .)tailbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING. AUG. 1, 1848.

IT is really melancholy to witness madness so
utter as that which has been displayed during the
past week by the leaders of the republican party in
Ireland, Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and their con-
federates. These men must have seen all along
the complete failure of their efforts to lead with
them the intelligence, respectability, or even any
considerable portion of the industrious agricultu-
ral body of their country. A few violent men in
some of the leading towns sympathised with them,
and were supported by a fierce rabble; in districts,
or years the seat of agrarian outrage and blood-shed,
they threw up their caps for them and professed
their readiness to rush into a collision with the
authorities of the law, of whose real power to resist
they had obviously not the slightest idea; but the
vast majority of the people stood aloof, terror-
stricken with their violence, and longing secretly
to see them crushed, and the nation allowed to
breathe in peace. Yet, when the legislature, by
the adoption of an attitude of firmness afforded
them, mercifully, an opportunity of retiring from
an agitation which, long ago, had signally failed,
we saw only displayed by them an obstinate de-
termination to perpetrate mischief, and to sacrifice
theirignorant dupes at the shrine of a selfish honour,
or rather the shadow of honour. Mr. O'Brien's
consistency must not he doubted forsooth ! Mr.
Meagher must prove to the world that his big
words were not all idle wind; that he had all along
meant pikes when he cried for then, that he had
meant blood whilst he had been hounding on his
dogs of war ! To appease these men's vanity, a
nation must be desolated by a savage agrarian law,
and thousands of victims sent suddenly before
their God, smeared with crime the most hideous,
their hands yet red with blood, and their souls
lately boiling over with the fierce delight of
murder !

It is awful, we repeat, to contemplate madness so
utter and so wicked as the conduct of these men.
Yet have they succeeded, even now, when perhaps
the sword has been already drawn, and the pike
plunged into the breast of their victim, in vindi-
cating either their consistency, their courage, or
their fitness to lead a nation in a struggle so vast as
must have been required to achieve the object con-
• templated. Examine their whole proceedings since
the powers of the executive were directed against
them. Their first proceeding was to scamper off
to the provinces, and having donned the gay livery
of rebellion, and arrayed themselves in generals'
uniforms of green and gold, to throw themselves
into mountain fastnesses, or amongst the most
lawless and most depraved of the population. One
day they might be found addressing a mob in one
district, and crying out " let the government take
us if they dare"—vowing that they should not be
put down withoot blood being shed, and expressing
the most frantic wish for the honours of martyr-
dom. But the next hour they were gone, no one
knew whither, until we heard of similar farcical
scenes enacted by them in some other district.
Has there been one word lately, throughout the
furious diatribes which they have delivered of any
assurance to the people of ultimate success ? Not
one. A bloody struggle with the armed power of
the law seems to be all that is now contemplated.
The descendant of the kings of Munster is only
not to be interfered with in his rebellious mas-
querading. The youth of the bright sword is not
to be made amenable for the felony in which he
gloried. The wretched peasantry whom they have
misled are to be their body guard, and to suffer in
their stead !

It is possible that by this time some disastrous
collision may have already occurred. But even
yet there is time for that small portion of the Irish
people, who have thus far not committed them-
selves in a hopeless cause to reflect upon the con-
sequence, and to pause in its pursuit. Within the
last week we see how large a portion of the hopes
and aids have been dashed to the ground. Their
expectations of any effectual co-operation by the
seditious in this country ought surely no longer to
be entertained. In the metropolis, and in the
manufacturing districts of Lancashire and York-
shire, the authorities, and the loyal portion—we
may say the mass—of the population have now
distinctly proved their ability to preserve the peace,
without requiring more than ordinary aid from the
military. Every portion in these districts is now
fully organized and capable of protecting itself
even against that most dangerous and diabolical
weapon of insurrection—incendiarism. And in
Ireland herself the strength of government is
hourly growing, aided as it is by the loyalty of her
protestant yeomanry, led on and organized as they
will be by their landlords and the resident gentry.
With all their previous preparations, unwieldy
pikes and wretched muskets, the Confederates
will certainly find that the defenders of order
will be infinitely better armed and even numerically
superior to them in efficiency and resolution. In
a few wild and proverbially lawless districts perhaps,
rebellion may reap an occasional success for the
moment. An occasional detachment may be cut off
and savagely butchered. An unfortunate town or
village may be sacked or burnt, and its Protestant
population picked out for slaughter. But these
mischances of civil war will be certain to be most
terribly and successfully avenged. And suppose
even that in a whole province the revolutionary
flag may wave victoriously—what then? A pro-
vince even held against the efforts of its own loyal
population would have no earthly chance of main-
taining itself for any length of time against the
naval and military power of an empire.
But let our deluded Irish brethren reflect for a
moment upon the particular time at which this
struggle is to be forced on. Their harvest is yet
on the ground. It is not yet cut : and how much
of it must be left to perish where it has grown.
The greatest stretch of Irish ingenuity has never
yet enabled its peasantry to wield the pike and the
reaping-hook at the same time. Thus the horrors
of famine must be added to the horrors of a fratri-
cidal warfare. Fever will intervene to sweep off
what the sword has left; and this time, at least,
there will he no subsidising by Great Britain to be
relied upon—no importations of foreign food to
replace that which God's providence is abundantly
offering to them, and which they are about wan-
tonly to throw from them.
AMR

THE loyal and peaceable inhabitants of Liver-
pool have been unfortunate in exciting the ire of
the Morning Chronicle, who, in his remarks refer-
ring to the petition presented on Monday last by
Mr. Cardwell, either blindly grappled with a sub-
ject which he knew little about, or wilfully per-
verted the truth. The petition did not " emanate
from a newly-formed 'Constitutional Association',"
but from our respected Mayor and the bench of
magistrates ; nor was it, as the Chronicle, by its
one-sided reasoning, insinuates, supported mainly
by " Whigs and Liberals'." There were other
names appended besides those of " the Whig Earl
of Sefton, and the Whig stipendiary magistrate,
together with two eminent Quakers and Liberal'
politicians, Messrs. Cropper and Rathbone" ;—in
fact, it was the work of men of all parties, who
felt that the peace of this town was of too much
importance—not only to its own population, but
to the commercial existence of the large districts
which depend upon it as the spring of their wealth
—to be exposed even to the possibility of revolu-
tionary commotion ; and if they voluntarily con-
sented to forego one of their greatest constitutional
rights, to the end that the trade of the whole
country might not suffer, the highest praise is due
to them for their generous offer.
Next the Chronicle tells us, that " the whole of
the rebels together, as seen in the magnifying light
of rumour and terror, are but 8,000." Now be
their numbers what they may, more or less than
this estimate, we should much like to see the data
upon which our contemporary has arrived at this
conclusion. And with respect to the petition being
a piece of pusillanimity deserving of the most
serious and indignant reprehension," we say, that
while London is possessed of its well-filled bar-
racks, with the Woolwich arsenal at a distance of
only eight miles, the courage of the Cockneys
must have been very great when they were fright-
ened into fits in " bygone days of April." The
men of Liverpool have not flinched from their
duty, and are prepared to perform it; but while it
pays its quota to the support of the naval and
military forces of the kingdom, at all events it has
a right to some share of their services.
But the worst feature is to come.

The sub-