The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1838-04-13 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

THE STATE OF IRELAND.—It is one of the first duties of every government to repress vice and to punish crime. The next to this is, to protect the innocent, and thus to prevent the commission of crime. Our present administration, however, in their government of Ireland, seem to have inverted these wholesome maxims. It appears to be their object, as it is also frequently their boast, to encourage vice and demoralization—to offer a bonus upon the perpetration of the most horrible crimes —and to remove all those restraints upon the ungovernable passions of wicked men, by which alone the inno• cent are enabled to live in peace and security. Against such a government it is the imperative duty of every man to declaim unceasingly, until a sense of shame shall drive them to relinquish the reins of power into the hands of those who will endeavour to remedy the existing evils—evils which have sprung from a direct connivance at all that is bad and execrable, and from the palpable discountenance of all that is good and praiseworthy. It is an undeniable axiom in morals that the fora of example operates more powerfully than any other extrinsic cause in controlling the actions and modifying the habits of any community : and the impulse to popular feeling derived from this source is always stronger in proportion to the elevated position of the exemplars. This may account for much of the existing disorder and contempt of justice which unhappily prevails in Ireland. What can be expected from the deluded population of that priest•i idden country, when they see their rulers ready to stretch out the spoilers hand upon the property of the clergy ? What can be expected to take place under a government notoriously acting upon the principle of dealing "heavy blows" upon Protestantism ? Is it not a natural consequence that the people, operated upon by the example of their rulers—infuriated by the exhortations of an unprincipled priesthood—and impelled by their own feelings of inveterate animosity, should likewise emulate the example of their betters, and give the greatest " discouragement" to Protestants. We distinctly repeat it, that the religious feuds and the midnight assassinations, which are now so prevalent in the sister island, are, in a very great measure, attributable to the example of the Whig-Radical ministers. We have been led to these remarks by the frightful details which are almost daily presented to us in the Irish journals. We well know that the liberal press of this country ridicules the idea that there is anything in the state of Ireland which affords ground for serious alarm. Let the editors of these papers take a sojourn of a few months in that country, and we will venture to say that their sentiments will speedily undergo a change. It is very easy to deal in wholesale denials. It is easy to laugh to scorn all the atrocities reported in the Irish papers. It is easy to call them " tory inventions" and " tory exaggerations." But it is not so easy to invalidate the testimony of the Official Gazette. We could fill our paper with well-authenticated details of recent murders and other acts of violence in several parts of Ireland ; but we shall, for the present, confine ourselves to the following extracts from the Dublin Evening Mail of this week :