The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-09-17 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We bav no means at hand of ascertaining the particalars re-
lative to the town of Bolton.
Aotumn Reflections in our next.
The alleged neglect noticed by a Layman is rather more appa-
rent than real.

Ely Etberpool A"tanireati.

TUESDAY MORAING, SEPT. 17, 1814.

His royal highness, the Prince de Joinville, proved
himself recently so very desperate a fellow—upon
paper—that we were prepared to see him perform
miracles of devastation against the poor feeble foe
whom he had selected to encounter him upon his
own element. The man who could whip the fleet
of Old England, drive her steamers from the seas
and blockade us with his preponderating force, we
concluded could demolish the crazy forts of Mo-
rocco with a broadside; and we positively trembled
for the fate of Gibraltar herself, upon whom he was
reported to have directed some very appalling looks.
We were agreeably relieved, however, by what we
then thought his merciful disposition, as evinced
before Tangier ; and quite ourselves again when he
withdrew himself from before Mogadore, without
doing that quarter of the globe more set ions de-
struction.
With this impression previously upon our mind, of
the Prince's great talent as a seaman, and the powers
of the fleet under his command, so fearfully painted
in his own never-to-be forgotten pamphlet, we must
take the liberty of expressing the same surprise
which has been felt by a contemporary, the London
Times, at the publication, in the Moniteur of Tues-
day last, of a description, by himself, of his achieve-
ments throughout this naval campaign, in which
every nautical reader must acknowledge that he
seems to have met with some unaccountable mis-
haps. To begin with the operations before Tangier ;
his Royal Highness says—
" On the 6th, (August,) at day-break, the steamers
Veloee, Pluton, Gassendie, Phare, Rubis, and Var came
and moored alongside of the Jemmapes, Suffren, Triton,
Cassard, and Argus, in order to be ready to tow them to
the posts assigned them. The calm, which generally pre-
vails in the morning in the Bay of Tangier, rendered this
necessary. About eight in the morning the squadron was
in motion. I prescribed that they should take their sta-
tions running from east to west, mooring with two an-
chors, one with a strong warp to the east, on account of
the bad quality of the ground and the cast wind, which
had for some time blown with violence in the day. The
Jemmapes was the first to come into line, but, after her
first anchor was fast, her tow-boat was not able to stretch
ber chain to its full length. The Jen:raves, however,
succeeded in bringing her broadside to bear upon the
place within four cables' length. The Suffren and Pluton,
perfectly directed by Captain Lapierre and Bouet, also
took up excellent positions. The Argus found a compen-
sation for her long and painful winter station at Tangier,
by laying herself to at the extremity of her draught at
water in a position where she could give much and had
much to receive. The Cassard placed herself so as to
play on the scarp marked L, on the map I send you, and
whose fire enfiladed our line. The weakness of the tug-
ships, added to the force of the currents, prevented the
Triton and Belle Poule from immediately fixing them-
selves at their posts. The Triton came up with her sails,
and the Belle Poule, after being ably extricated from a
critical position Captain Massin, of the Gassendi, came
into line about ten o'clock, but, as the tire of the town
was nearly silenced, the presence of these ships became
useless, and I sent them to cannonade forts Abdel Seller)
and El Arbi-el-Saidi, which fired some balls upon us.
All our movements were made without any opposition
from the enemy."
Now this description does, we must confess a little
startle us with respect to the extent of the power, to
be exercised in future by Steamers in Naval engage-
ments, if we can take French steamers, manned and
officered by Frenchmen, as affording a fair example of
such power. The Jetnmappes line of battle-ship comes
first into action but her " tow boat was not able to
stretch her chain to its full length." Her effective-
ness was then in part botched. The Suffren and
the Pluton got into good position, but the Argus
got into one where she had " much to give and much
to receive"—a rather doubtful recommendation, if
she had been opposed to good gunnery. The Triton
and the Belle Poule, however, could not get up at
all until too late to be of service; and the former
had first to be " extricated from a critical position !"
And all this bungling when their movements " were
Made without any opposition from the enemy !"
Why, an opposition anything like effective would
have placed the whole squadron in very critical
positions indeed !
For ant tier specimen of seamanship, we turn to
the Prince's description of the operations before
Mogadore.
" On the 11th, he says, the squadron was assembled be-
fore Mogadore. New difficulties, and of more than one
kind, here awaited us. For four days the violence of the
wind and the roughness of the sea prevented us from com-
municating with each other. Anchored upon a rocky
bottom, our anchors and causes broke, and the loss of
them deprived us of resources which were indispensible
in order to obtain our object. Some vessels had only one
chain and one anchor, and the latter deprived of one of
its flukes. We could not think of maintaining ourselves
before Mogadore under sail. The violence of the currents
and of the gale would probably have carried us too far,
and we should have lost the opportunity of acting. Be
sides, in causing the steamers to get ready to proceed
with us, they would have consumed their fuel, and in
leaving them by themselves they would be exposed to run
short of provisions and water. It was therefore neces-
sary to remain at anchor."
Pity that such steamers, so short of fuel and provi-
sions, could not have been taken on board and
stowed away till they were wanted ! But it seems
a bright idea had occurred to his Royal Highness
that steamers are too brittle things to be used for
serious fighting; for he remarks, when describing
the subsequent operations :
" I could not think of employing the steamers to take
the ships of the line to their post. The preparations which
were being made on land proved that we would not be
permitted to approach as easily as at Tangier. A single
ball could put the engines of a steamer out of order, and
force it to stop in a critical position, (!) from which we
might not have been able to withdraw it, and where it
could not defend itself.
After this very novel discovery, it will surprise us
much to see the French admiral ever going to sea
again w ith such troublesome toys as French steamers
appear to b t.
It cannot but be highly consolatory to the British
nation to have this incontestible voucher, under the
hand and seal of an admiral and prince of France,
that that gasconading people are still—as they ever
were and ever will be—no match for John Bull
upon his own element- For years past France has
been constantly strengthaning this arm of warfare ;
and especially she has paid attention to the forma-
tion of a powerful steam-marine. She has got one
in her possession ; and, if these operations be a fair
specimen of her ability to make use of it, she may
as well menace England with an army of hobby-
horses, as attempt to fright us from our propriety
by even such a steam force as she possesses now, or
can raise in a dozen years, which with such hands to
man and direct its operations, resembles, more than
,anything else, Jew watches, made to look at, and
warranted not to go. Poor Joinville; what an ex-
hibition hast thou made of thyself I

The question of questions which, for a century
past, has presented itself to every British statesman,
and every successive administration was probably
never more urgently required to be solved than at
the present moment. " What is to be done with
Ireland?" By what policy is the cause to he re-
moved, which keeps that fairest portion of our em-
pire ever wretched, ever hindmost in the march of
civilisation, ever steeped in poverty, in crime, and in
debasing ignorance ? She possesses within herself
vast national resources; but they remain unde-
veloped. She possesses in the character and habits
of her population—in their industrious energy and
their unequalled powers of endurance—the sources
of wealth and national progression. And yet she is
doomed to witness those great resources wastefully
and madly squandered in the pursuit of chimeras,
impossible of attainment, and worthless if attained.
Other nations advance in civilization, in power, in
happiness ; Ireland alone,—unhappy Ireland,—
stands still?

Whence is this strange anomaly, and hOw is it to
be provided fur 1 v
length without finding e need not travel a street's
t leasth a dozen empirics
who are ready to prescribeeir infallible nostrum
t
for its cure. Nay, the " certain
remedy"d has been at
least a dozen times applied
already;
yrtualnendti yet Ireland
ignorant,
abolition
is precisely where she was, t
wretched as ever. Catholic relief, tithe
acts, municipal acts; "heavy blows and great
dig-
couragements" to Protestantism, accompanied with
ample concessions to Popery, have failed to amelio-
rate her condition or the temper of her people. We
have given up to her powers and immunities which,
in other hands, would have been largely productive
of advantage and blessings; she applies them, how-
ever, only after the fantastic fashion of wayward
childhood,—plays with them in delight for a mo-
ment and then pouts for more, to misuse them in
the same insane way. With what confidence, then,

can we hope for beneficial results to arise from a
new course of concession—from any one of the fur-
ther boons clamoured for in her behalf—when every
past hoop has been so shamefully unproductive of
the effects promised from it, and so little inclination
is evinced by her to apply the future to any other
than purposes injurious to the stability of the em-
pire, and fatal to the happiness of her own people ?
We can have no hope from concession—no con-
fidence in the beneficial result of indulging further
the whimsical fancies which Ireland and her agi-
tators propound to us as the remedy for her condi-
tion. That country has been too long treated as a
diseased limb of the empire—subjected to alternate
pampering and depletion, corrosive applications and
emollients, as successive doctors have had the ma-
nagement of her case. She has too long been looked
upon as something to be peculiarly dealt with—
something requiring to be differently handled from
any other portion of Great Britain ; and the tune,
we submit, has now coma for the adoption of a
different policy. We must govern Ireland. We
must treat her as we would al English or a Scottish
county ; and, if the law as it exists is not strong
enough to enable us to do this, it must be made
strong enough, and, moreover, be vigorously and
promptly administered.
Would any government, we ask, tolerate for an
hour the existence of such an agitation, as that
which, within the past week, has been revived in
the City of Dublin, were its locality changed to
Yorkshire or to Lancashire ? Would any govern-
ment submit to witness in these countries the growth
of such an organized body as the Repeal Association
—a body which declares its hopelessness of carry-
ing out its objects through the ordinary channels of
the constitution, and looks for success to " the
weakness of England"—a body openly sympa-
thizing with the enemies of England, supported by
the contributions of disaffected men in other coun-
tries, and which dares to tell us that, in the event of
a war in which this country may be engaged, it
will seize upon the opportunity of wresting Ire-
land from the connexion with the British throne,
and making her "a nation' ? No government
would tolerate this in England ; and as little should
it any longer he tolerated in Ireland. The entire
framework of the Repeal Association must be broken
up by the hand of the law ; and if that hand it not
possessed of power sufficient, as the recent escape
from punishment of O'Connell and his confederates
would lead us to infer that it is not, it must be
strengthened and supplied with weapons to suppress
a movement, the objects of which are treasonable,
and whose issue cannot be other than most lament-
able and disastrous.
Utterly vain and illusory, however objectionable
otherwise, must be any legislative efforts for the ad-
vancement of Ireland in civilization and comfort, of
which such a vindication of the powers of the law
is not the first step. The giant evils which afflict
her at the present moment are this agitation, which
convulses and distracts her, and the lesson which it
is sedulously teaching her credulous population, that
their advancement to a position of worldly comfort,
and even greatness, is to be worked out by some
effort of revolution or legislation—some despoiling
of the Saxon—and not by the legitimate course of
honest industry and commercial enterprise. De-
stroy this delusion, by striking at the powerful con-
spiracy which propagates it ; and Ireland, becoming
self-dependent, looking to her natural resources
alone for support, may at length commence a steady
progress towards that national greatness and happi.
ness, which, we trust, she is destined to attain. The
capital of England will then begin to flow into her
fertile valleys. Her neglected wastes will be brought
into productiveness. Her noble rivers and bays
will become the favourite resorts of commerce ; and,
instead of her sons and daughters being the com-
pulsory wanderers of the world—the hewers of wood
and drawers of water for the people of other lands
—they may be enabled to find in their own beloved
country an ample reward for their industry, and to
gain for her a far nobler rank amongst the nations
of the earth, as a prosperous portion of its mightiest
empire, that could be attained by the gratification
of the brightest of those dreams by which agitation
now deceives and betrays them. Oh what a bene-
factor would that man be to Ireland who, possessing
the confidence of a people with such a destiny within
their reach, wo-ld dare to be honest, and teach them
the only practicable path to its attainment I
We despair not that in good time such a man
may arise. Nay, we imagine that already, we can
discern signs of a movement, in the direction to
which we have pointed, prompted by the good sense
of an influential portion of the people of Ireland
themselves, who are becoming lukewarm towards
the appeals by which they are goaded into submis-
sions to extortion, and waste of their energies. Such
a blessed consummation Sir Robert Peel's govern-
ment might now aid by a bold step in advance.
Let him close the doors of the Conciliation-hall, and.
declare the agitation for repeal of the union or col-
lection of money to advance that agitation, illegal
and treasonable ; let him do this instead of waiting
until called upon to suppress another Clontarf
meeting, and the well-affected and loyal people of
Ireland (and there are thousands of such who are
now unwillingly placed within the vortex of that
agitation) will thank and bless him !

We were wrong in regarding the Stipendiary
Magistrate of this borough as the only modest indi-
vidual to be found ready to oppose his opinion upon
legal matters to those of the eminent lawyers con-
sulted by the Watch Committee, upon the subject
of the relative powers of that body and of the bench
of magistrates. Mr. Rushton is now potently re-
inforced. The Conservative Courier and the Radi-
cal Mercury have rallied to his aid, in his proposed
crusade against those loyal Conservative Protes-
tants, who have the assurance to evince their at-
tachment to the principles of our glorious Reforma-
tion—the principles which placed the House of
Hanover upon the British Throne—by becoming
members of the Orange order. Strange associa-
tion ! strange spectacle ! The professing Conser-
vative and the virulent Radical, throwing aside their
ancient enmities to assist, by the weight of their
vast wisdom, an effort to render declared and proved
fidelity to the established institutions of the land, a
disqualification and a reproach to their possessors !
We certainly did expect this hacking of Mr.
Edward Rushton from the anti-Protestant Mercury.
Consistency to all his past hatreds required it. The
ally and apologist of Repeal agitation and Romish
imposture was naturally to be found battling upon
that side, by which a blow was hoped to be levelled
against Prota-tantism and good order. From such
a quarter we might have expected to see loyal men,
legally associated for the preservation of their con-
stitutional liberties, jesuitically classed, in one con-
catenation, with men illegally organised for pur-
poses of sedition and outrage. But from the Courier
—in whose columns we have so often seen
advocated the principles which Orangetnen hold
dear —in whose columns we have seen the
Orange order itsel' defended and eulogised—
we might reasonably have looked for a different
course upon this question. But, alas! defection
from recorded opinions is now-a-days no rarity in
the world of politics or of journalism. The cause
of Conservatism has of late received blows more se-
vere from its friends (!) than from its most bitter op-
ponents; and the humble objects of Mr. Rushton's
displeasure must prepare themselves to encounter,
in addition to the rancour of their open enemies,
the hostility of the Liverpool Courier, and be thank-
ful that the power of that organ to injure is not
exactly in proportion to the amount of its inclina-
tion. But let us briefly examine the excellent logic
and legal acumen with which the Courier endea-
vours to justify his position.
Our contemporary founds his argument that the
magistrates are right in law, in the course which
they are pursuing, upon the 77th section of the sth
and 6th William IV. chapter 76, which runs as
follows :

And be it enacted, that the 'Watch Committee for any
such borough as aforesaid may from time to time frame
such regulations as they shall deem expedient for pre-
venting neglect or abuse, and for rendering such consta-
bles efficient in the discharge of their duties ; and the
said committee, or any two justices of the peace having
jurisdiction within the borough, may at any time suspend
or dismiss any constable whom they shall think negligent
in the discharge of his duty, or otherwise unfit for the
same; and when any man shall be so dismissed, or cease
to belong to the said constabulary force, all powers vested
in him as a constable by virtue of this act shall immedi-
ately cease ; and no man so dismissed as aforesaid shall
be re-appointed without the consent of two of the jus-
tices of the peace ha yin, jurisdiction within the borough.
This, he contends, gives to the Justices power at
any time to dismiss any constable whom they may
" think" unfit for his duty ; and, " supposing them
then to be of opinion that belonging
society constitutes unfitness, the act coleanrl Orange.
them the power of dismissing any constable
belongs to an Orange society." We say nothing of