GOD save the QUEEN." THE RIOTS AT STOCKPORT. [From the Times, July 3]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 768, 11 December 1852, Page 4

GOD save the QUEEN." THE RIOTS AT STOCKPORT. [From the Times, July 3]

The series of riots at Stockport is about one of the most awkward incidents that could possibly occur at this juncture. The ill blood which has been gradually noutished io~-ii;at town is only a sample of the feeling which recent events have i produced between the two races and the two religions that chiefly divide these islands • and, on the eve of a general election, a sudden ebullition of this sort rntght easily have spread to every city and borough in the kingdom. In this island, at least, the imported race and the imported reli« gion would everywhere have come off the worse, as indeed they appear to have done in the present instance, but that result could not he-re-garded with satisfaction by any liberal or generous mind. Truth and charity alike would have suffered from a triumph in which bigotry was the motive and brutality the means, and when all was over our only consolation would have been that we had got back to the days of Lord George Gordon, if not yet further in the atrocities of history. Yet how easily might we find ourselves in this miserable state ! The Mayor of Stockport was obliged to call in the- troops, and that, it apI pears, not a moment too soon. Had they charged the mob, and had some half dozen Protestants, or the like number of Papists fallen under their fire, every Protestant or every Papist, as it might bs, in this empire would have felt his heart burn till there was at least a balance of casualties. But, as Stockport does not muster more thnn a dozen policemen, and as the Mayor's only resource in lime of need is to swear in what are called " special constables," it is evident that all must depend on the military ; and unhappy experience informs us that the worst may be expected when there is no intermediate check between the mob and the 1 soldiery, and when the first appeal to the good sense of a furious, and most probably intoxicated rabble, is the Riot Act, mumbled by an old gentleman under cover of fixed bayonets or drawn swords. But, before we go_ futther into . th c religious aspect of this unhappy affair, we. will at once call attention — though it is hardly necessary to do so — to some peculiar and very disagreeable features in the report. Our readers must have observed that the man who was killed was an Irishman ; the 50 wounded, many of them very severely, were Irishmen ; the 114 prisoners were all Irishmen ; the chapels that were gutted were all of them Roman Catholic ; the houses that were ransacked and half destroyed were all those of Irishmen. In fact, so far as appears on 'the record, there was hardly an English pane of. glass or an English head broken. The Protestant English were as superior in the result as they were in their cause, and for once truth was great and prevailed without any of the qualifications or delays which usually mar that blessed consummation. Whar increases the mystery -is that, as far as the riot came under the cognizance of the Mayor, the Ii isb were always the active party. Wherever bis worship moved the English had gone quietly to their beds, and the Irish were kicking up a row. How shall we solve this enigma? Were the Irish gutting their own chapels, breaking one another's heads, and turning their own bouses inside out ? At this moment we are not going to push these .questions farther, though we think them a -very

oious habits, by their combination of employment and mendicancy, wages and rag's, and by working' more hours and at lower terms, ke f p down the wages for a]] descriptions of labour. The English labourer or artisan, from his more refined and comfortable habits of life, requires higher wages, and cannot bear to find, himself beaten down by a continual invasion of strangers, who don't care much whether they are relieved from the workhouse or the mill, and who must do anything rather than go back to their own miserable country, their own unroofed hovels, and unhedged fields. But their inexhaustible numbers, their utter destitution, their roguish mendicancy, and their honest thrift, are not the only manner and means by which they beat down the standard of wages. They act together. They are always ready to combine, and, even without express combination, race, religion, language, and habits, render them a virtual conspiracy. * To a certain extent they cannot help this, and the uniformity of their unhappy circumstances is an .appeal to the hospitality rather than the jeakusy of our countrymen. But the Irish, unfortunately, are too apt to conspire and combine ; as they do in their own country so do they here ; and, as they do when they are the n ajority, so also when they constitute a comparatively feeble minority in the heart of an adverse population altogether their superiors. The union which gives them a certain strength in their own country only provokes suspicion, dislike, and persecution elsewhere.. But for it we have no hesitation in saying that they would stand as good a chance in England as any, other class of working men. For the truth of this, natural and most unhappy characters' iq we need only offer one patent proof. An individual Englishman, or any few individuals of the race, are sure to be ill treated, if not cast oof,u f , by an Irish population. On the contrary, Irish of all sorts -are freely tolerated in tbis metropolis ami every town in the island, until they asurae the form of a conspiracy, and seem to set together on a law and understanding of their own. The advice we mean to tender the Irish and the Roman Catholics under these circumstances , is of a very homely and common sense character; in fact, precisely that which we should give to an Englishman and a Protestant settled in Ireland. Let them be as quiet, peaceable, and unobtrusive as their duties or their necessities will allow.' Theje can be no absolute occasion for them to make a great parade of their numbers or their religion ; they need not declare open war against the Royal supremacy, and pretend a spiri' u »I conquest of the land ; they neejJ not fulminue pastorals, edicts, and all sorts of paper artillery against the English, their religion, their constitution, their Parliament, and their Queen ; they need not threaten excommunication to all who teach or are taught in the same schools as Protestant children ; they need not burn Protestant Bibles; they need not ring more bells than are necessary to announce thrir services ; they need not get up pompous processions in our streets ; it is not even quite necessary that they should walk about in fancy costumes ; all these things are gratuitous, and provocative in the midst of a population whose feelings are possibly rather too much in the other direction. Nor is it less necessary that they should eschew all acts and movements savouring of conspiracy. At all events if they persist in doing these things they must stand the consequences, for no arm of power, no public opinion, and, as they see at Stockport, no Mayor, no special constables, no soldiers, will save them flora these consequences. They will say, perhaps, that we are telling the lamb not to come to the stream, for whether he drinks high or low the wolf will still pick a quarrel with him. No such thing. The lamb must come to the stream, but there is no such necessity that Dr. Wiseman should be swollen iato a Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, or that the Church of Rome should maintain the principle and practice of hostile aggression. If it does this,* who can wonder that reaction should be pushed even to excess? Who can complain of a Royal proclamation reminding Roman Catholics of the laws in force against any public parade of their, religion, or that the Queen should be advised by her Ministry on the eve of a general election to, appeal to the people to support the Protestant institutions of the country ? Certain acts will always provoke retaliation. Common sense tells us what they are, and if people, with their eyes open, choose to invite persecution, they are beyond our pity, for they must be obtaining what they realiy desire. The only misfortune is that the weak too often suffer by the alliance of the strong. The Cardinals and Primates of the Roman Catholic Church are coming ont with more magnificence than ever, while the priests at Stockport are escaping out of their back windows ; Pontifical masses are being celebrated with the aid of voices from the opera, while the,chapel at Stockport is reduced to an empty barn, the organ, the vestments, and the plate lying in fragments on the floor ; and aristocratic converts are revelling in soothing services and. splendid hospitalities, while the poor Irish of Stockport are beaten at their own firesides, routed by Protestant special constables, draggedby scores to prison, turned out of tbeir house's, deprived of work, and even robbed— as far as mobs can rob them — of tbe consolations oF their faith.,