The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1847-12-14 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

ALTAR DENUNCIATIONS.  (From the Cork Constitution.)  Our, remarks on Tuesday on the speech of Priest Hughes we concluded with these questions :—" Is it any marvel that murder is the pastime of the peasant ? And will any sane man tell us that the Priests are blameless ?" After what has recently occurred, few, we apprehend, will be disposed to deem these questions so uncharitable as once they might have thought them- but should there be one still sceptical, let him read the 'following, which we take from the Dublin Evening Herald:— "We happen to know a very recent case of altar denunciation, the particulars of which are now before the governmen, and will soon be, we trust, before the pubic. In this instancethe 'Clerical instigator' is stated to have distinctly indicated two 'individuals for assassination. This was done without any kind of reserve or mystification. He simply stated what his line of conduct would have been bad he been placed in the shoes of the evicted tenant. His language was exquisitely simple, and perfectly adapted to the comprehension of his audience. He would have taken,' he said, a loaded gun and done for the villain that turned him out of his land.' To this was, a few days subsequently, superadded language directly, addressed to the denounced individuals, and so frightfully menacing that they are, we believe, immediately about to leave the country—in the belief that by doing so they are consulting their only chance of safety. It is, indeed, high time that this priestly prerogative should be a little clipped." Until the'exercise of it be prohibited, and the Pope's sub jests be stripped of the power of obeying it, by being deprived of the "gun" which they are ready to " load" for any person " indicated" et the altar, the legislation which consumes so much time and temper will be of little use. But it would be unconstitutional ! Unconstitutional to wrest from a Priest the "prerogative" of preaching murder and from his disciple the means of committing it ! Be it so; but the sooner both are put beyond the pale of the Constitution—in short, hanged by the same halter, the better for the country. Is there any rational Romanist who will say us nay ?  In Tipperary, Father Laffart's county, they have got a safe mode of carrying out the councils of priests of this stamp. • A man who has a grudge against another encloses a sum of money to a club, whose members meet at " a shibeen -house, ') by the way these "shibeen houses" ought to be looked after, for many a murder is hatched in them), and there sit in diabolical deliberation on the measures necessary for compassing the death of individuals doomed by their atrocious law. There is a regular scale, we are informed, -and this scale is said to be well known among the population. A Pound is stated to be the price of a caution or a threat, and on its receipt a " Notice" is despatched that -curdles the blood of the denounced. Three Founds are the " consideration" for a beating, and for Five, the assassin is sent on his bloody mission, and the `victim is dogged until, unsuspecting and unpeepared, he drops dead under, perhaps, the aim of an eye that ought to have looked on him with gratitude and affection. This, we are told, is,the system in Tipperary.