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

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 boon has been so -hamefully 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 peculiar:y dealt with—
something requiring to be differently handled from
any other portion of Great Britain ; and the time,
we submit, has now come for the adoption of a
different policy. We must govern Ireland. We
must treat her as we would an 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 be 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, wcoild 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 backing 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
iroloosture was naturally to be found battling upon
that side, by which a blow was hoped to be levelled
against Protestantism 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 Orangemen 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 having jurisdiction within the borough.
This, he contends, gives to the Justices power at
any
"think"
to dismiss any constable whom they may
unfit for his duty ; and, " supposing them
then to be of opinion that belonging to an Orange
society constitutes unfitness, the act clearly gives
them the power of dismissing any constable who
belongs to an Orange society." Ws say nothing of