The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-03-14 00:00:00

MR. DILLON'S CASE.

The following is, we are informed, a correct version of
the circumstances upon which Mr. Dillon founds his claim
upon the Government :

On the night on the 15th of February, 1822, at 8 o'clock
Mr. Dillon, who commanded the coast guard at Milk Cove
county of Cork, proceeded out to sea with two of his boats,
the one of six oars, the other of four oars. the wind at the
time bloWing hard and a heavy sea running. Mr. Dillon
states that be had no expectation of falling in with any smug-
gling vessel when he proceeded out to sea, his sole intention
being to show his men that he was determined to do his
duty. On getting outside of the Cove, the chief boatman,
who was in the four oared boat, pointed out to Mr. Dillon a
sail to the westward. Upon seeing it, Mr Dillon ordered
his second boat to follow him, and pulled (for the vessel.
Upon getting up under her stern, he hailed her, and received
a defiance to come on. He then pulled on the lee side, and,
intending to hoard her, desired the weather oars to be laid
in, and the boat to be kept to with the lee ones.
On his seeing, as he conceived, from 40 to 50 men on board,
he sheered off and sent up a rocket, and burnt a blue light
in order to alarm the coast, and to attract the attention of
any cruisers that might be in the offing He also kept up a
fire of musketry. During all the time the four-oared boat
was lying on her oars to windward.
The smuggler, finding that it wasiimpossible to effect the
landing her cargo, the coast having been alarmed, put out
to sea, and Mr. Dillon returned with his two boats to Milk
Cove. The next morning the Captain of the Peru, who, as
it appeared, was anxious to run his vessel to France, but was
resisted by his crew, with the advice of his pilot, ran her
into Kinsale river, where she was immediately boarded and
seized by the tide surveyor.
A reference to the map of Ireland will show that the har-
bour of Kinsale is about 30 miles distant from Milk Cove,
with severel headlands intervening, and it is, therefore, quite
clear, that although Mr. Dillon did prevent the landing of
the cargo of the Peru in this district, but that could have no
effect whatever in forcing the vessel to run into Kinsale
river on the next day.
It is upon these grounds, and not upon any suspicion of
cowardice, that Mr. Dillon's claim to share in the proceeds
of thivapture has never been at any time allowed, and he
never received any sum as a share of such capture; but in
October, 1833, Lord Althorn, then Chancellor of the:Ex-
chequer, directed the sum of £5O to be paid to Mr. Dillon,
in consideration of his distressed situation, and the heavy
expenses which he had incurred.---Times.

BRISTOL LEATHER FAIR.—The supply at this fair las
week was in most articles below the average of former spring
fairs, but owing to the causes at present depressing almost
every branch of business the attendance of buyers was
unusually short, and their purchases extremely limited. The
transactions were therefore very unimportant as compared
with preceding fairs. Our quotations vary but little from
former rates, except in skins, which, being in greater supply
comparatively than other articles, have suffered more from
the absence of a demand. In Bark a good many small par.
cels were brought upon the market, but the very high prices
demanded, and the near approach of the new supply, pre-
vented many sales from taking place. The transactions in
raw goods were quite immaterial :—there is no stock.

POSTOFFICE.—A return has been laid before the House of
Commons, showing the amount of gold, silver, &c., con-
tained in letters which have been consigned to the Dead
Letter-office, in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, during
the five years ending 1841, and which had been opened be-
cause the parties to whom they were addressed could not be
found. The amount in gold, bank notes, and silver, found
in such letters, for the five years, was £28,898 for London,
£696 for Edinburgh, and for Dublin £2830; total, £32,424.
The total amount in bank post-bill, bills of exchange, pro-
missory orders, &c., exclusive of money, was £2,053,341.
The amount restored to the owners was £167,179, and that
paid into the revenue £134: but it is necessary to state, that
the bills had all been restored or destroyed by the authority
of the owners, and the sums recovered to the owners for the
two last years cannot be stated, as the " dead letters had
not remained three years in the office.
MorromANlAi—The following case is given in the Standard
to show how stebngly epidemical the fashionable monomania
is becoming. And this case we cannot do better that describe
in the words of our before-mentioned excellent contemporary:
—`• The case at Bow-street, yesterday, opens, indeed, a new
and an interesting chapter in the science of monomania, sug-
gesting hints that no doubt will be acted upon. Mr.
the menacer of the life of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
it appears, claims a large sum of money, which he thinks he
would obtain but for the opposition of the too vigilant
guardian of the public purse, and he communicates in a mild
way to the party certainly most interested in the subject of
his communiclition, certain monomaniacal notions about the
propriety of taking a pistol and sending a ball through him.'
Why should not this mode of seeking money or promotion
be extensively adopted ? We can fancy a letter to the follow-
ing effect producing a considerable impresiion upon a nervous
man Sir, lam an unhappy monomaniac who am very
desirous of £—, or the office of —; now vacant (as the
case map be), and I have been able to think of nothing for
the last month (excuse me) but taking a pistol and sending a
bullet through you. I enclose my certificate of monomania
from halt a dozen mad doctors, and have the honour to be,
sir, your very humble servant, --. P.S. Please send the
money or the appointment (whichever is demanded) with as
little delay as possible, as I find all•my dreadful thoughts
rushing into my mind.' Or, more shortly-±' Sir, Put £5 in
a certain place, or expect to hear something more of yours,
A— Monomaniac by Deploma. P.S. Be
quick—verbum mt.' Such are some of the less horrid con-
sequences to be anticipated from the establishment of the
'new doctrine."

THE LARGEST STEAM FRIGATE IN THE NAVY.—The
Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty last year approved of
a plan submitted by Mr. Oliver Lang, Master Shipwright of
the Woolwich Dockyard, of a steam frigate on a far larger
scale of dimensions and power than any hitherto constructed,
and ordered her to be built at Woolwich, and named the
Terrible. It is now contemplated that this splendid steam
frigate shall be built at Deptford Dockyard on the same slip
from which the Worcester 50 gun ship will shortly be launch-
ed. This arrangement will prove a source of great satisfac-
tion to the inhabitants of Deptford,who, from recent reports,
feared that the place would cease to be a building-yard. As
a portion only of the dimensions of this great Leviathan of
the deep was given on a former occasion, the following more
full details will convey some idea of the magnitude of this
vessel :

Feet. Inches.
Length between perpendiculars.... 226 0
Keel for tonnage 196 101
Breadth extreme
Depth in hold
Burden in tons 1,847
She is to be supplied with Maudslay and Field's patent
double cylinder marine engines of 800 horse power. The
cylinders will be 72 inches in diameter, and the erection of
the engines alone has been contracted for at the cost, includ-
ing the boilers, of the large suni of £40,250. The engine
room will be of the following splendid dimensions :-75 feet
long, 38 feet broad, and 27 feet deep ; and the weight of the
engines and requisite gear connected with them will be up-
wards of 500 tons. The diameter of the paddle-wheels are to
b.: 34 feet by 13 feet in breadth. The coal-boxes will contain
800 tons of coals ; and, altogether, this great vessel will far
exceed in length and other important points the largest ship-
of-the-line ever constructed in this country. The Lords of
the Admir4l4 have shown by their adoption of Mr. Oliver
Lang's plan
of a steam-frigate of such magnificent and un-
paralleled dtiMensions, that they are ,resolved Great Britain
shall continue to reign, as she has previously done, mistress
of the seas, and that they will cordially encourage every nn-
provement in modern science tending to render the navy of
this country the most efficient, and it may be said, far supe-
rior to any other power in the world.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We can answer " Inquirer" more satisfactorily on Frida3%
Can " A Young Physiologist" furnish us with the paper he
mentions, and we shall then be better able to say what we
can do with it ?

Ebt Eibtrpsal &tanDarlt.

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 14, 1843

In a recent article upon the debate on Mr. IlLebuck's
motion, we intimated to Sir Robert Peel that his
generous protection of his discomfited opponents,
and particularly of Lord Palmerston, was not a kind
of proceeding which would find imitators. The mo-
tion of Thursday night,—in condemnation of Lord
Ellenborough's Somnauth proclamation, ostensibly,
but against his lordship's entire policy, in reality,----
and the debate by which it was followed, afford ample
proof that our estimation of the length and breadth
and depth of Whig-radical meanness and dishonesty
was not greatly at fault. The reader has perhaps
seen, at some period of his life, a cur, or some other
mongrel specimen of the canine race, relieved by the
humanity of a passer-by from the unenviable pressure
of a cart-wheel upon his loins, or dragged, at the risk
of smeared hands and garments, from a pit in which
he was being stifled by inches. Did the gasping ani-
mal lick the hand which preserved him, or even whine
forth his thanks at his feet ? No. Ten to one it
snapped at his legs and, with a portion of his torn
trousers hanging from its jaw, ran yelping off, to
plunge next moment into some fresh dishonesty, and
reap the reward of a sousing in a horsepond, or a
kick in the ribs from some victim of its propensity for
meddling and peculation. Such is precisely the con-
duct of the faction, over whose head Sir Robert Peel
interposed the shield of his good nature. His hand
lifted the baffled incapables out of the mire in which
they were plunged ; and their first moment of reco-
vered breath and' spirits is devoted to an attack upon
their preserver.

We are sincerely pleased, however, to observe that

the conduct in question has not been without its efiect
upon the mind of the Premier. Sir Robert distinctly
announced On Thursday night his sense of the ingrati-
tude displayed, and his resolution that, in future, he
should not be the man to interpose between the ex-
ministers and those who bring down punishment upon
their heads. Most deeply do we deplore that, in the
case of Mr-Roebuck's motion, he was led thus to in-
terpose. We shall be satisfied, however, if the error is
not repeated.

The proceedings taken by government against the
Chartists implicated in the recent disturbances in the
manufacturing districts have terminated much as we
anticipated. The supremacy of the law has been vin-
dicated. The Chartist agitators, and their dupes, have
been taught that they will not be permitted to goad to
frenzy a suffering people, in the hope of achieving by
violence their insane projects ; and at the same time
justice has been tempered with mercy, the convicted
prisoners having, instead of receiving a summary sen-
tence, been required to present themselves at the next
sitting of the Court of Queen's Bench in London,
where most probably they will be bound over to keep
the peace and discharged.
It was due, we maintain, to the character of her
Majesty's advisers, to take this course. The working
classes were to be taught a lesson; they were to be
taught that they could not, in a civilised country, and
under constitutional government, be permitted to cor-
rect their injuries, real or assumed, with their own
hand. The selfish or misguided men, by whom those
classes are usually led, were also to be taught that the
law of England was not a weapon which mere cobweb
sophistries could\:suffice to blunt. On the other band,
these lessons welly) be taught in a kindly, not a re-
,
vengeful, spirit. Could it be doubted that the offen-
ders; or at least the majority of them, and the masses
whom they led, had acted under cruel provocation ?
The progressive deterioration of their condition during
the past twenty years, and the evidence before their
eyes of a disposition on the part of their employers to
make further and further reductions in wages—the
threats known to have been in circulation with respect
to these reductions, and the impression, so sedulously
spread amongst them, by Chartist and League agita-
tors alike, that the remedy was solely in.a demonstra-
tion of their strength, for the carrying of a legislative
change—the charter or free trade in corn—were toge-
ther sufficient to impel ignorant men to a course of
violence and folly; and no gcivernment could have
visited, with consistency, a heavy weed of punishment
upon the overt actors, whilst those equally, if not more
guilty persons, who precipitated their course of error,
were screened in immunity, by the greater secrecy or
cunning with which they, worked out their object.
That such persons there were, few men who have
perused the evidence brought forward upon this trial--
fewer still, acquainted with the state of the manufac-
turing districts- during the past year—will venture to
deny. What, we ask, is the impression which we find
existing in the mind of the arraigned Chartists ? Why
that the League manufacturers were straining every
effort to break up the Chartist party, and to drive the
working classes, from sheer desperation, into the
movement in favour of cheap bread. The two parties
have long been notoriously at feud with each other.
The master Leaguer had been endeavouring to seduce
his Chartist workmen to give up Feargus and his six
points, and embrace the cause of free trade. 11l blood
had been between them long; and when, at the close
of the last session, the League conventions and depu-
tations returned, half frantic, to their various homes;
when they had declared, in a document hearing
the names of men of station, wealth, and respectability
—we were going to add sense—that the country was
upon the verge of a bloody revolution ; when they pro-
ceeded at once, with an improving market and the
prospect of the advantages to be afforded to commerce
by the new tariff before them, to a reduction of the
miserable
wages of the working classes ;—what so
reasonable a conclusion, on the part of those working
classes, as that which they arrived at, viz.: that in the
proceedings which they adopted—the forcible stoppage
of factories and other outrages—they were so precisely
carrying out the predictions of some members of the
League that they need • fear little interruption on the
part of the authorities ? What so reasonable a conclu-
sion as that the rittempted reduction of wages was in-
tended to produce the strike which followed ? The

League party are morally responsible for every act of
violence which attended the outbreak of August last.
We now proceed to comment briefly upon the ad-
mission made on Wednesday by one of the party--
Sir Thos. Potter—with respect to the doings of the
Manchester authorities during that outbreak.
Sir Thomas was asked, in cross-examination by the
Attorney-General, several questions with respect to the
course taken by the authorities of whom he himself
was one ; and in reply the worthy knight told of sun-
dry meetings held and placards issued, and of his own
attendance for two days and nights at the Town-hall'
But he was pressed to say what protection was given
to parties applying for it, whilst the mob was engaged
in forcibly stopping the factories ; and the naive ad-
mission was given, that the authorities " advised the
parties applying that it was the best plan to submit I ,
Employers anxiously seeking protection, for themselves
and their workpeople, from the dictation of an excited
mob, were told, that they were to yield without resist'
a;ice to the violence offered to them And why was
such a course pursued by these sage magistrates?
Sir Thomas was again and again pressed upon this
point. " Were they afraid of bloodshed being the re'
suit ?" : Sir Thomas Potter indignantly repelled
the idea that he could be afraid. What was the reason'
then ? What could be the reason of this submission to
which peaceable individuals were urged ? Why, an
that could be alleged by the worthy knight was the
assertion, as a fact, that the workpeople willingly
obeyed the dictation of the insurgents, and turned out
—an assertion which, in the case of several factories
and other works, is contradicted by the efforts made
by the workpeople themselves to prevent their stop-.
page, by meeting force with force.
We question that willingness of the men ; but wile-
titer it existed or not is no valid plea on behalf of the
supineness displayed by the authorities. And this
opinion appears to have been that of the Attorney'.
General himself, who commented upon it in the fol
lowing emphatic language, which we recommend t°
the consideration of the gentlemen to whom it refers'
"No doubt," remarked the learned gentleman, this
was only a part of the tampering policy which induced
the magistrates to withdraw the troops and to allot''
the mob to march into a town like Manchester, which
was handed over to them for a space of 48 hours !" f
We dare say we shall be greeted with a flourish °f
triumph and gratulation from the Leaguers, 1-11)°°
their assumed escape from the exposures with which
they feared this trial was rife. Let them pause, Ws'.
ever, before they invite too much public attention t°
the details, bearing upon the wretched Condition °,f
their boasted population, afforded throughout the al:
dence. Bearing in mind, even, the somewhat tainted
source from which some of these details emanate'
there is still much to excite serious misgivings in the
minds of reflecting men, whether it is a sound state °f
be

things in which the tenth part of such evils can
permitted to exist. And lest such oracles as our Col-
temporary the Manchester Guardian should ride oval
with the impression that his clients of the League have
effectually purged themselves of all implication in the
disturbances of August, we beg to call his attention t°
the pithy description of them given by the Attornel
General. " Their character"—the character of the
disturbances in question—" might be. described in two
words. It was tumult or intimidation ou'r OF Mg'
CHESTER; it was ENCOURAGEMENT, IN IVIAN,
CHESTER !"