Glasgow Courier. — 1848-10-28 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

WESSENBERG. Oct. 15.  We do not understand the Standard and its Trish coadjutors on the subject of the late State trials, which, for some reason or other, they would seem entirely to condemn. A few months ago no paper in the United Kingdom was more emphatic in its calls upon the LordLieutenant to arrest and punish the men whom the Standard assured us were plotting treason against the state; but now that, after an unsuccessful attempt—but, nevertheless, an attempt--at rebellion, they have been arrested, tried, convicted, and condemned, our Conservative ally is more displeased than ever, and pours out the vials of its wrath on the heads of the Crown officers of Ireland, as if they, and not the traitors, were the really guilty parties. Day after day we are treated to homilies on the virtues and kingly descent of O'Brien, for whom, some short time since, the English vocabulary could scarcely provide an epithet sufficiently harsh or contumelious; and within the last few hours we have been assured that that young firebrand Meagher is a "highly gifted" creature, whom a disordered imagination, and not vice, has betrayed into many-culpable excesses, no doubt, but excesses which fall far short of treason. We repeat, that we do not understand this. Our notion was, and still is, that but for form's sake there could be no necessity to prove what was notorious to the whole world, and was not denied by the men themselves, namely, that they meditated, and carried into execution, so far as their means allowed, an armed resistance to the authority of the Crown wisase subjects they were; and this we, and others unskilled in the law, call treason. Read their speeches before receiving sentence, speeches which had been much better never delivered, and all doubt upon the subject must vanish. They not only de. clam that what they have done is justifiable, but they actually justify it; leaving, of course, no room for hesitation as to what their ultimate designs were. They would have revolutionised Ireland, confiscated its property, expelled and possibly murdered its landlords, and proclaimed a republic; and does the 8 andard really suppose that it can excite public sympathy on behalf of persons contriving and endeavouring to carry out such atrocious projects, because it cannot manage to get seine dozen of the Romish priests hanged or transported? We tell our contemporary that the attempt is beyond its power, ani must fail. The guilt of the priests would not substantiate the innocence of the confederates; and it appears selfevident to us, after the solemn declaration of the SolicitorGeneral, that the government would not have spared any of these reverend incendiaries had it possessed the means of convicting them. We have no higher opinion of their loyalty, than the Standard; but a conviction in Ireland is difficuit to be had, and a trial for high treason without one wouid have a most injurious effect upon the mass of inflammable ignorance on which the power of the Romish priesthood ultimately rests. In any case, there can be no reason why the Standard should not, like its neighbours, rejoice that so much, at least, has been done to vindicate the majesty of the law, though all may not have been done that it could desire, or may consider proper. So far as it has gone the government is entitled to all praise for the promptitude and energy which it has displayed in the treatment of the Irish rebels; and we must be allowed to think that the higher class of its opponents might afford, even in the face of Tam Young's letter, to concede to them credit where credit is due. A contrary course must be injurious to Conservatism, how nitwit soever it may subserve the ends of faction, or gratify the passions of excited partizans. One word more. Will the Standard tell us quietly, and without anger, what claim Mr. Smith O'Brien and his asiociates have, or can have, upon our commiseration? Wa have no doubt that if we were to turn over a file of that paper, we should find their political characters written in