The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-02-26 00:00:00

THE

Rtberpoot taoarb.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1856

FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

MONDAY MORNING.
THE QUEEN and the Court continue to reside at Bricking-
ham Palace, and it is pleasing to observe that, amidst the con-
tentions introduced or fostered through Ministerial impru-
dence in both Houses of Parliament, HER MAJESTY remains
in the enjoyment of individual repose—that in defiance of the
ascerbity created by the unconstitutional stretch of the ROYAL
prerogative, recommended by the LORD CHANCELLOR and
backed by the Cabinet, the popularity of the SOVEREIGN
remains unimpaired. On Tuesday, accompanied by the
PRINCE CONSORT, and attended by a party of ladies, the
QUEEN visited the Arsenal at Woolwich, and inspected the
trophies brought from Sebastopol by the Bucephalus. HER
MAJESTY appeared much gratified by the inspection, and, as
she always is, was received with gratifying demonstrations
of loyalty and affection by the crowds who had assembled to
see her passing, both in the Metropolis and at Woolwich. On
Wednesday the first levee of the season was held at St. James's
Palace. The attendance of those who held the privilege of
entree was very great, and the number of presentations was
unusually large. HER MAJESTY, who wore a magnificent
dress of blue and "white brocade, and whose head was
encircled by a tiara of diamonds and rubies of great value and
splendour, appeared to be in admirable health and spirits.
On Friday, HER MAJESTY held a chapter and investiture of the
most honourable order of the Bath at Buckingham Palace.
At this chapter, Sir RICHARD ENGLAND and Sir GRAHAM
EDEN HAMMOND were invested with the military grand cross,
and Lord PANMURE with the civil grand cross of the order.
Rear-Admiral S. LUSHINGTON, General J. W. SLEIGH, and
several others were invested with the military order of knight
commander, and a considerable number of others were invested
with the military order of knights companions. In the evening,
the Qt Est and Prince ALBERT, attended by their suite,
honoured the Haymarket Theatre with their presence. It is
now understood that the Court will leave London for Windsor
some days earlier than was expected,—about the 19th instead
of the 22nd proximo, as had been originally stated, when the
PRINCESS ROYAL will receive the holy rite of confirmation.
The Life Peerage question, which has occupied so much of
parliamentary and public attention for the last ten days or a
fortnight, has come to a termination, for the present, at all
events. On Friday night, after a debate of unusual bril-
liancy, the House of Lords, sitting as a committee of
privileges, decided that neither the letters patent, nor the
letters patent with the usual writ of summons issued in
pursuance of those letters patent, entitle Lord WENSLEYDALE
"to sit and vote in parliament." This conclusion was arrived
at after an unsucessfnl motion by Lord GLENELG (long ago
known as Mr. CHARLES GRANT), awakened for the occasion
after a legislative slumber of many years' duration, who
proposed that the validity of the title to sit and vote should
be referred to the judges. This proposal was negatived by
142 to 111 votes. Another mode of disposing of the ques-
tion without deciding in opposition to the Ministry, and yet
discountenancing the creation of life peerages, was proposed
by Earl GREY ; but it met with no better fortune than that
of Lord GLENELG, being rejected by a- majority of thirty-
five, in a committee of one hundred and forty-nine peers, no
proxies being taken on votes of the house while in committee.
The course pursued by Lord WENSLEYDALE throughout the
tedious, and to him unpleasant, if not absolutely painful
proceedings, meets with very general approbation, both in
parliament and out of doors. From the first he declined to
appear personally or by counsel, as a party to proceedings
which involved a collision between the first and second estates
of the realm. During the whole of the discussions on this
unseemly recommendation of the Ministry, every one felt, and
probably none more keenly than the noble lord who led the
opposition to the anomalous and unconstitutional use of the
royal prerogative, that by it Lord WENSLYDALE was placed
in a most invidious position; but a stern and uncompromising
sense of duty prevented the adoption of any other course.
The newly-created peer,—whose patent of nobility was pre-
sented to him, shorn of more than half its honours, had its
legality been unchallengable, but rendered doubly obnoxious
by the constitutional objections to which it was exposed,—has
small reason to thank those by whom the tarnished honour
was conferred. That the noble and learned lord was, in all
respects, through character, talents, and acquirements, com-
petent to fill a distinguished place in the House of Lords, and
even to confer lustre upon the peerage, is admitted on all
hands, and it is broadly reprobated in many quarters, that he
should have been selected as the first member of a comparatively
degraded peerage, as is alleged, because, personally, he was so
entirely unobjectionable, and had so many friends, as to make
his introduction a matter of probable ease, where others, less
favourably circumstanced, in these respects would, on their
individual merits, have had no chance of success. The un-
worthy attempt has been defeated, and now it is to be hoped,
that, taking heart of grace, Lord PALMERSTON and his col-
leagues will do what they should have done at first recom-
mend the letters patent, creating Sir JAMES PARSE a peer,
to be extended, so as to embrace the ordinary conditions of the
peerage. Much acrimonious feeling has been displayed by
the Ministerial adherents in connexion with this subject,
which, it is now to be hoped, has been set at rest for ever.
-These parties profess to say that Lord LYNDHURST, and
those who acted with him, provoked and carried on a war
against the prerogatives of the crown, bringing the privileges
of the peerage into direct collision with those prerogatives.
Such a pretence is scarcely worthy of refutation. The per-
.sonal feeling of the Sovereign has probably never been
enlisted on either side. Lord BROUGHAM broadly stated
that the creation of a life-peerage is as constitutionally
illegal as the levying of taxes by the crown without the con-
sent of parliament; and in answer to the alleged precedents
which exist for such peerages, he says there are quite as many
in favour of such a levying of taxes without parliamentary
consent; but he cogently demands, "will any one stand up and
justify the levy of a tax without consent of parliament on the
strength of such precedents ?" He emphatically answers no !
and most people believe he is right in that opinion ; at any
rate he is followed in it by Lord LYNDHURST and Lord ST.
LBONARDS, and the opinion of those three distinguished legal
authorities is endorsed by the LORD Cures JUSTICE of Eng-
land. In the present position of our foreign relations, any-
thing likely to shake the stability of Lord PALMERSTON'S
government is to be deprecated ; but even the urgency of such
a consideration cannot be admitted as a sufficient reason for
permitting inroads upon the constitution, and he is no true
'friend to his lordship who would even hint that, taking ad-
iiantage of 'his accidental position, that• accomplished senator
would lend himself to an attack upon our institutions, which he,
as the chief responsible adviser of the crown, is bound in an
especial manner to protect.

Besides their laborious defence of the constitution, as-ruled
by law and settled by practice, in reference to life peerages,
-the brilliant talent and mature judgment of the House of
Lords have, during the past week, been engaged in attempts
to maintain the practical working of our executive within the
bounds legally prescribed by the Legislature. A laudable in-
stance of this was afforded by the Earl of DERBY, on Thurs-
day evening, in his attempt to lift the veil of mystery which
shrouds the connexion between the Horse Guards and the
newly-created Ministry of War. That his lordship was only
successful in eliciting an evasive instead of a direct answer
from Lord PssMURE, is no fault of the Earl of ionany ; but
it is something to have learned, as he did learn, that the pa-
tronage of the army is managed in a sort of semi-conjoint
semi-disjoined manner between the Commander-in-Chief and
the Secretary of War. While the noble Secretary of War bad
his hand in at giving an explanation in which nothing is ex-
plained, but in which a determination to avoid explicitness
was very clearly manifested, he took occasion to allude to a

rumour, which, for years past, has obtained both currency an
credence, to the effect that the army patronage-during Lord
HARDI2TGE'S tenure of office, at all events—has been a medium
through which a Field Marshal, not less distinguished by his
illustrious position than remarkable for his "conduct in the
feld," exercised authority without responsibility. His lordship
alluded to the rumour, as he said, merely to give it a flat con-
tradiction. S'excuse, s'accuse, says the French proverb : no
one asked his lordship any question upon this particular point;
verbum sap., if he should see this, the noble Secretary for
War will probably understand its application.
The pretended friends of the working classes had a " field.
night" in the House of Commons on Thursday. On that oc-
casion the "poor man's friend," Sir JOSIIITA WALMSLET,
brought forward his motion for throwing open the
British
Museum and the National Gallery on Sundays. The philan.
thropic knight made a long and elaborate harangue," horribly
stuffed with" platitudes about the meliorating influences o'
knowledge upon the hard fate of the "working man." He
dwelt with pathos on the pleasing pictures which he "fondly
drew" of decreasing immorality with increasing. laxity of Sun-
day observances. Commencing with Edinburgh and Glasgow,
where, he said, the Sunday observance was most stringent,
and the immorality greatest, he took London next, where, he
assured his wondering auditory, that as Sunday observance
was less rigid, so also was virtue more predominant. Taking
next an excursive sweep over the continent, in which he
omitted Paris, where Sunday observance is n held to be one
of the cardinal virtues, but the moral purity of which he pro-
bably regarded as too dazzling to be rashly paraded to public
gaze, he fixed upon Switzerland as the Elysian field of modern
virtue and morality; seizing the opportunity of informing, by