The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1843-06-02 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

FRIDAY MORNING, JUNE 2, 1843.  There was no need existing of a demonstration of the meanness which forms the distinguishing characteristic of Whig statesmanship. There was scarcely any evidence wanting of its desperate wickedness. And yet how irresistibly are these qualities forced upon our observation by the debate of Monday and Tuesday nights, upon the Irish Arms Bill! A reckless incendiary and an alien priesthood, in Ireland, are struggling to sever that fair but unhappy land from the British Empire. Midnight crime has for years past stained with blood its fertile vallies, and carried terror and outrage to its solitary homesteads. The brutalised and misguided population of Ireland—to use the expression of a witness who well knows them—" thirst" for the possession of arms ; and to procure them rush headlong to the commission of violence upon the persons of the owners. To provide a remedy for such a state of things, the Irish government propose the renewal, or, more properly, the remodification of the existing arms hill—a measure passed, under circumstances infinitely less pressing, by a Whig administration ; and yet against the passing of such a measure, at a crisis the most fearful, with rebellion actually impending, the leader of the late Whig administration has the insufferable audacity to enter his puny protest, and mouth out his own miserable specifics for the cure of the evil which it is designed to meet and overcome I And what is the Whig prescription for the putting down of Irish outrage ? It is, briefly, impunity, and encouragement to its perpetration ! " Ire," exclaims  his lordship, " governed Ireland upon the principle of conciliation. We released the convicted murderers in her prisons ; we turned loose upon society her ruffianly assassins ; we gave power and pay to her disaffixted agitators. We displayed to the civilised world the novel spectacle of the councils of a great nation swayed by a mendicant plunderer of his fellow-countrymen and the tail of 30 or 40 venal instruments of his bad ambition, which the terrorism and coercion of mob violence and priestly intimidation had placed within his hands to wield ; and as the result of such a policy, we  left Ireland tranquil! Yes : tranquil as the beast of prey after he has gorged himself with the flesh of his victim. Oh, how tranquil was Ireland ! It was a sleeping volcano. Its very air was charged with the elements of ruin and devastation, with the spark only wanting to bring about the explosion Give justice to Ireland, exclaims the apologists of Whig statesmanship. " Justice to Ireland," we ask ! What is that ? Where is its definition ? Is it to be found in the destruction of the Protestant Church in that unhappy priest•ridden land ? Is it to be found in the Repeal of the Union ? We can find it nowhere— in the realisation of no intelligible or definable evasion of the rights of property or of conscience. It is a thing too buoyant to be grasped—too impervious to be felt. Even Lord John Russell dare not attempt to grapple with it ; but contents himself, as a substitute, with pacification for Ireland. You need no arms bill, he exclaims. You may place pikes and muskets in the hands of her unfuriated and misguided millions, and you will be safe, if you only consent to govern them upon Whig principles (!)—to wink at outrage, to concede to threats, to reward the disaffected, and permit a burly traitor to bask in the smiles of authority, to feed upon peculation, and to insult with his loathsonte and fawning flattery the throne itself ! " I am prepared, when the question of Repeal of the Union, is mooted in a constitutional manner in this house, to meet it by a direct negative ; but I deprecate harsh proceedings on the part of government, which will tend to aggravate the popular dissatisfaction." Indeed, my lord ! But the leader of the agitation for repeal is not disposed to trouble the House of Commons with any discussion upon the subject. He laughs at Parliament ! He laughs at the power of Great Britain to put down his disaffected proceedings, and is about to attempt the achievement of his object by violence. A petty Whig statesman, longing for the sweets of official place and pay, may talk about his determination to meet that attempt, when the time is ripe for its explosion, by the arm of authority ; but a wise Conservative government will disarm treason, before it has leisure to put its lance in rest, and commence its headlong career against the peace and integrity of the