The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-08-01 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

things. We fear that the course pursued by Con-
servatives towards the government of Sir Robert
Peel, and by which that government has been so
greatly weakened in its position, is one of a fatal
tendency. But out of what has this defection
amongst the Conservative supporters of Sir Robert
Peel arisen ? Alas, alas ! we fear from the injudi-
cious course pursued by Sir Robert himself !
When has a heartiness in the cause of Conservatism
been displayed by his government ? When has the
disposition to maintain the integrity of the Church,
of agriculture, of the empire, been displayed by that
government ? Where has it been displayed ? We
look for it IN VAIN ! That fatal middle course—
;hat fatal steering between friends and opponents—
that fatal rejection of the sympathies of the former
to earn the praises of the latter a word, EXPE-
DIENCY—the rock upon which Sir Robert Peel has
once well-nigh shipwrecked his political character—
has been the bane of his government during the
present session—the fertile source of the distrust of

its friends, and the excited hopes of faction—the
cause, in fact, why, during this session at
least, we may fairly say that the substantial legisla-

tive care of Great Britain has been in the hands of
a revolutionary minority of its Parliament and its
People!

The cathedral city of Durham has earned for

itself during the past week, undying infamy and
ridicule. The very mention of its name must from
henceforth be the signal for contemptuous laughter
through the length and breadth of the empire. A.
city which has hitherto been associated in our minds
with all that is revered in religion and exalted in
learning—a cathedral and a collegiate city—must
from henceforth suggest only the idea of a commu-
nity of spiritless noodles, crawling under the dicta-
tion of a handful of " buttonless and unbaptised"
quakers. Sinbad, with the old man of the sea
clinging round his shoulders, was but a prototype
of the constituency of Durham, rough-ridden by
the tribe of Jonathan and Aminadab. We shall
never see a Durham man without fancying that the
gaitered heel of some lank fellow in drab and brown
is digging away at his sides. The stranger passing
through its streets, in coach or curricle, chaise or
cab, will involuntarily, as he passes by its noble
abbey, glance up at its villanously cemented turrets
for the broad-brimmed beaver or the kersey shorts,
which we prestime will be forthwith hoisted to mark
the subjection of the locality, over which it looks, to
the pious (?) disciples of George Fox. We shall
never even take a spoonful of Durham mustard to
our steak or joint without being tempted to ejacu-
late our contempt of the slaves who have sold their
beautiful and once-honoured city to the brawlers of
the Leagu'; and as the odour of quakeritm rises to
our sense, exclaiming with disgust,
" Give us an ounce of civet, good apothecary !"

In serious earnestness, we grieve over the humi-

liating position of Durham ; we grieve over the de-
secration of the city of " wood and water ;" and
should not marvel much to hear of the blessed Saint
Cuthbert once more taking up his bones and ab-
sqatulating—as our Yankee friends would say—to
some more classic locality. Chowbent or Bullock-
smithy—were these enlightened places possessed of
the elective franchise—might have taken to them-
selves such a representative as John Bright.
Bolton or Stockport might fitly have taken its
members out of the counting-house of a Rochdale
cotton mill. But DURHAM !—that such a city,
with its host of intelligence, learning, wealth, birth,
family—that Durham should sink so low is to us
both incomprehensible and deplorable. The Con-
servatives of the city should go in sackcloth, or
walk with peas in their shoes, until the next elec-
tion, to expiate their shame. The city coat of arms
should be supplied with " a quaker rampant" upon
its shield. A professorship of bottle-tumbling
should be founded in its university, for the special
benefit of anti-corn-law Acland. The recordership
should be offered to Mr. R. R. Moore ; and a Back-
house or a Pease, with lawn sleeves to his brown
upper benjamin, should be installed into the seat of
a Maltby, a Van Mildert, and a Barrington ! No
profanation can be great r than that of being repre-

sented by A BRIGHT—no degradatfon greater than
that of being the first Conservative constituency
which has succumbed to the dictation of the Anti•
Corn-law Leayue!

A TOWN BLOTTED OUT !—On Sunday last—
dies infelix !—the people of this Protestant land
went to church or chapel, dined, supped, and re•
tired to their beds, in happy ignorance that a
calamity almost irreparable had befallen the world.
On that day, from the Gurrane Race-course, two
miles from the town of Tuam—the episcopal seat
of " John Tuam," called by the vulgar " Bishop
MI-lale"—a doom went forth;—AHASCRAGH was
to be " blotted" out from the map of Ireland (')
and the names of its people—the euphonious names
of its Pats, its Murphys, its Terences, and Teagues
—were no more to be breathed amongst those of the
three millions whose shillings are to regenerate un-
happy Ireland.
'rhe heartrending consummation of this dire
calamity has not yet reached us in all its details.
Whether the blotting process was accomplished by
day or by night, by fire or by earthquake ;—whether
its people, each like another Marius amongst the
ruins of Carthage, are at this hour to be seen seated
upon the wreck of their mud hovels, bemoaning the
desolation before them, or are wandering around the
locality in which AHASCRAGH once stood, looking
in vain for the curling smoke of its chimnies, and
snuffing the air in vain for the scent of the "verdant
mud" of its gutters and dunghills, which have been
engulfed in earth, and,
" Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Left not a wreck behind!"
we know not. Journalism is silent upon the sub.
ject—struck dumb, no doubt, by the extent of the
calamity;—and we must content ourstlves therefore
with recording AHASCRAGH'S doom, as it fell from
the lips of its mighty destroyer.
Here, then, it is, with its cause, as uttered on
Sunday last, at Tuam, by the Great •Apostle of
Repeal—Daniel the First of Ireland t—
" At Ahascragh they had been guilty of treason to
Ireland. It appeared that triumphal arches had.been
erected there, which the police were sent by a magistrate
to take down. The magistrate might have been right or
wrong—but if wrong, the people were sure of obtaining
redress. The law was open to them, and he promised
them its protection ; but, instead of looking for that pro-
tection, they violated the very fundamental principle of
the Repeal Association. * * Instead of acting on that
wise and sacred principle, the traitors of Ahascragh
pelted the police 'with stones, and one of the police was
injured. * * HE ,WOULD BLOT OUT AHASCRAGH•
FROM THE MAP OF IRELAND. (!) He would not allow
one of the people there to be repeaters, or their names to
appear on the books of the Repeal Association, for they
had violated that beautiful principle of PEACE upon which_
their great maxim of moral force was founded."
ALAS FOR AHASCRAGH 1 We pray that the
accomplishment of the doom, fulminated against
her by her stern judge, may not throw this ter-
restrial globe from its equipoise, or create confusion
in the celestial system.

THE WNEILE AND CAMPBELL CORRESPONDENCE.—
In our notice of this correspondence last week, we stated
our conviction that the letter dated the sth ult. to Mr.
M'Neile by Rector Campbell,—and which it was com-
plained by our cotemporaries, the Albion and others,
ought to have been included with the letters first published
in the Courier,—had never been received by Mr. M'Neile.
From a letter, dated " Ballycastle, 24th July," addressed
to the Rev. Rector and since published by that gentleman,
it will be seen that such was the case. Mr. M'Neile says,
of the letter in question :—" I never received it. If it
was sent to my house in Roscommon-street, as alleged in
the newspaper, doubtless it is there still. Aly letter to
you of the Ist was dated Belfast, and must have reached
you on the 3rd. If yours to use of the sth had been ad-
dressed to rue in Belfast, I would have received it on the
7th. I waited till the 14th, and knowing that you were
not absent from home, 1 then conclu:!ed that you did not
intend to write to me on the subject. A charitable per-
son miJit rea,lilv have susixeted that shell was the ease,
r,tler than thatsurf) a better would be ‘slltuily s„ppretsui
by Mr. M'Neile or any other honourable, wan.

THE QUARTER SESSIONS.-YESTERDAY.