Irto Country.
The Members of the South Cheshire Conservative Association dined together, at the Albion Hotel, Chester, on the 9th instant. Among the company, were Lords Combermere, Delamere, Cole, and Robert Manners, Sir PhilipEgerton, Sir Henry Mainwaring, and the Reverend Joshua King. Lord Delamere took the chair. The prin- cipal topics of the evening were abuse of Mr. O'Conell and the Mi- nisters. When the health of the "Bishop and Clergy of the Diocese" was given, the Reverend Joshua King returned thanks in a long speech, which was received with rapturous applause by the meeting. The Times thought proper to suppress this display of Tory zeal and elo- quence, in the account of the dinner proceedings ; but it is so charac- teristic of the orator and the Cheshire Tories generally, that it would be unfair to deprive our readers of the perusal of a sample of it. The orator alluded to the charge, brought against him in the Morning aronick, of being a pluralist.-besides his Cheshire preferment, Mr. Bing is the non-resident Rector of St. Matthews, Bethnal Green]- " Now, if he were the greatest offender in this particular in the whole county, he was inclined to think that pluralities were not so crying an evil as to require their excision by the extirpating knives of Papists, Dissenters, and Infidels ; although a pluralist, according to the modern nomenclature, must surely mean something dreadfully bad-he mast be a sort of nondescript animal, or worse than a murderer, if nothing he utters be worthy of evidence. This charge was preferred by the Chronicle. I do not mean that paltry, despicable, farrago of coarseness, scurrility, and abuse, to be invariably met with in the columns of the Chester Chronick-fog any observations from such a quarter I should "(m- older beneath contempt-but the charge was preferred in a leading article in a Government paper called the Morning Chronicle. True, he held two Church livings,-the one his patrimonial property, the advowson having been for cen- turies in the family ; the other, being the reward of merit or good fortune, call it what you will, having been presented to him by his College. Even the Whig rulers, reckless as they were of change, destitute as they had shown them- selves to be of principle, and bent as they cordially were upon spoliation, would not, he hoped, attempt to rob him of the former. If they did, his fin vent wish wag, that they would not send down a set of briefless barristers, without prin- ciple or character, to exercise inquisitorial powers and to institute a Star Cliam. ber in every district, as the fittest agents to execute nefarious purposes ; but that my Lord Melbourne, Lord John Russell, Lord Morpeth, Master Daniel O'Connell-(Laughter)-and the leading Members of the degraded Whig Administration, would themselves, in person, come down to eject him and take possession ; and he had no hesitation in saying it should be the last robbery they would ever again attempt to commit But the time was now come when the Church stood in need of something more than bare professions of attachment from her sons. Yea, the time was now come when it was neces- sary to nerve their arm, to buckle on their armour for the conflict, and to form the noble resolution of dying, if needs be, in her defence, or scaling away the ruthless destroyers from their prey ? They had not to contend against a common enemy. Were they to go to war with savages, they would expect no. thing but the poisoned arrow or the scalping-knife; but their foes were much more dangerous than the most ferocious savages' inasmuch as they attacked them under the assumed and treacherous disguise of' friends, falsely pretending that their sole object was to reform the abuses, or pretended abuses, of the Church, and so to add to her efficiency and usefulness.
He thus spoke of the majority of the House of Commons-
" Whenever the Clergy of the Established Church were disparagingly men- tioned (and they were never alluded to by certain Members without acrimony and the bitterest invective), such discordant yells were set up as were not sur- passed in a menagerie of wild beasts at feeding-time, there being nothing human but their form ; and he was told that the two Whig Members for that county, and the shallow-paled Radical for the city, had learnt the Irish yell to such perfection, that they would on such occasions astound even a keeper at Pidcock's or Wombwell's menagerie. And this was the conduct of legislators in the first Reformed House of Commons! The next reform would be, should the Whig missionary of Government, O'Connell, not succeed in exciting the mob throughout the kingdom to overt acts of revolution, for them to order all the prisons to disgorge their inmates, and the dens and cages their indomitable in- habitants, for the sake of obtaining, if possible, still mom proper auxiliaries for the execution of their purposes. Were such creatures as these fit to legislate for the Church ? No ; and he had the satisfaction to be assured that neither of the Whig Members' nor any Whig, nor any approver of the unprincipled con- duct of the present Administration, would be again returned for that county or City. Such was the execration and abhorence with which he contemplated the conduct of every one who voted for or approved of the Irish Church Spoliation Bill, that he declared he would not trust himself in company with any of them, except on two conditions,-the one was, that he should be allowed to wear his bat all the time, lest some of them should filch it ; the other, that he should be permitted to go amongst them without any money in his pocket, lest sonic of them should steal his purse."
(The Morning Chronicle has helped us to a passage in the history of this Mr. Joshua King, whose allusion to poison was so peculiarly apt. It appears that Mr. King and his brother Bryan were tried at Chester .Assizes on the 14th of April 1820, on the following charges, as laid in the bill of indictment-
" 1st, With conspiring to lay arsenic in certain woods and closes, with intent to poison divers of the King's subjects ; 2e1, with intent to poison divers cattle; 3d, with intent to poison swine ; 4th, with intent to poison the cattle and swine of Henry Hancock ; and 5th, with laying poison in certain closes."
The prisoners were acquitted, because the evidence only went to prove that the arsenic was used to kill game. Chief Justice Warren said, after the trial had proceeded some length-
" I shall charge the Jury that no evidence has been adduced to support the charge in the indictment. The charge against the defendants has been that they wish to poison cattle, tec. ; but the evidence has not substantiated this." And again- " I have told you this indictment should have been for a conspiracy to hill game. I shall proceed with it if the learned counsel for the prosecution please; but my opinion is the indictment cannot stand. Having told you so much, I shall so charge the Jury." It was, of course, useless to proceed, and a verdict of" Not Guilty" was recorded ; but the evidence given on the trial proved that the prisoners poisoned Sir Thomas Stanley's game. A mutilated lever was produced, written by Joshua King to his brother, in which was tbe following passage- " A men by sprnkling a little along the edge cops, contiguous to cornfields, might in a fortnight destroy every bird on Sr T. S-y's preserves. But it will be time enough to try this experiment on the partridges and pheasants, after the spring corn is got up. I have tried the drect of wheat, so prepared, upon yarrows. and it succeeds admbal ly, and have no doubt it would succeed equally well upon /urger birds. The poarhers well know how to proceed with the hares better than I can suggest. To annoy the tyrant is my determination; and if you should thro' - - have an opportunity of engaging any idler to begin, in the course of six weeks, with the foxes and partridges. I shall nut regard any expense, provided there be a fair prospect of complete success. Every fox that is taken should be sent with a label round its neck, expressive of my compliment. to Sir T. S. If a few dead partridges should be found, he rimy also be presented with them in a similar way, and must be taught, that however purse-proud he may be, and with all his despotism, he is as dependent for his comfort and amusements upon the forbearance of others as they are upon him. With kindest remembrances to all the. family. "I remain, yours affectionately, "To Mr. G. King, Manesty Lane, Liverpool.
"I. icN Johnson, a shoemaker, was employed by King, and was detected
cte' d in Sir Thomas Stanley's preserves along with Bryan King. Johnson gave this evidence- " I was found in a cover one Sunday with a bag ; Mr. Joshua King sent me there, and Mr. Bryan King accompanied me. I first saw Mr. Joshua King on the subject about a fortnight betore I was in the cover ; he came to our house, which is about two roods from his, and said be wanted me to catch some foxes. I was to set some traps; I was to use nothing else. I set soma traps on the Sunday, when I was in the cover. I had seen Mr. Joshua; it was after dinner, between service-time, in his father's stable I bad the bag in my hand ; in the scullery I had two young hares given met() put ha Me bag. and the other things, they did not tell me what I WAS to do with them, I carried the bag." A druggist in Chester examined the contents of the bag, and gave evidence at the trial. He said- " I received the bag, containing several cakes of something like eteese, in irregular forms ; I found the presence of arsenic On analyzing it, in a small quantity, but enough to destroy man OF beast."
We presume that this is quite sufficient. We wish the Tories and the Cheshire Clergy joy of their comrade, Mr. Joshua King.]
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