The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-03-04 00:00:00

latter discussion ending in the withdrawal of a resolution
brought forward by Mr. ROEBUCK, severely condemnatory of
Ministers, in relation to the newly-appointed Board of Gene-
rals to further prosecute the inquiry into the Crimean

mismanagement. •
The discussions in Parliament for the last two years have
turned so much upon " War's vast art," that matters
affecting merely civil rights have received but little attention ;
though in not a few instances these have been threatened
with serious injustice. One of these occupied the attention of the
House of Commons, almost exclusively, for the two first nights
of last week ending in a total and ignominious defeat of the
Government,on a measure,on which, judging by the parade and
ostentation with which it was introduced, and advocated, they
had obviously set their hearts. The measure in question was
the " Local Dues on Shipping Bill" introduced by the Vice-
President of the Board of Trade, in a speech full of false facts,
supported by illogical deductions, and entirely based upon the
" appropriation principles" which form so distinguishing a
characteristic of the Manchester school of political ethics.
_This Bill had been foreshadowed in the address from the
throne at the opening of Parliament—was introduced early in
the Session, and with hot-haste pushed its second reading
on Monday last. Alarmed by the revolutionary opinions pro-
mulgatechat the introduction of the Bill, in his declaration
that " Corporation property" was a thing which the legisla-
ture could appropriate to the general good, without offering
any compensation to the party denuded, the Conservative
party stood manfully forward in opposition to the measure,
which was also warmly opposed by all who object to so
sweeping a mode of dealing with property ; and on the
second reading, Sir FREDERIC THESIGFER, in a calm and
temperate but convincing speech, pointed out the dangers to be
apprehended from a measure which proposed to effect such un-
disguised spoliation. At the conclusion of his address, Sir
FREDERICK moved that " the bill be read a second time this
day six months." This was seconded by Sir F. BARING.
Mr. Lows defended his bill, but did so in a style which, by
bringing prominently forward its very worst features, raised
up enemies where he meant to secure friendship. In the words

of a contemporary, " he was by far too enthusiastic a parent,
and thought too highly of his child." Many members, whose
love of ease might have induced them to remain absent from
a division on the subject, and whose apathy or dullness might
have secured their acquiescence in a more plausibly put for-
ward tale, had their apprehensions excited and their fears
roused by such assertions as those with which he backed up
his arguments. "Whatever may be your charter," said Mr.
LOWS, " and whatever may be your legal rights, your charters
are iniquity, and your rights injustice, and we will sweep you
away, your self-elected system, and your property." Even
the dullest could perceive that a slight extension of this
dogma, which was uow only levelled at a corporation, would
snap asunder the bonds of every species of property—would
snatch the coronet from the ducal head—wrench open the
treasures of the Church—pervert and sully the direct and pure
stream of justice—filch the diadem of the Sovereign, and in
its explosion burst asunder the fabric of the throne. Mea
wondered to hear such doctrines avowed in an assembly of
constitutional legislators.; and stood aghast when reflection
restored to them the consciousness that these were the senti-
ments entertained and expressed by a member of the govern-
ment.

If the matter of Mr. Lows's Bill and his speeches were
bad, the manner in which he delivered the one and advocated
the other was by no means such as to inspire confidence in
the measure or to extort approbation tor the man. His manner
is repulsive -his assumption intolerable. He reasons with
the arbitrary harshness of a despot—assumes the stiff for-
mality of definition while manufacturing a string of what he
calls abstract truths—moves his intellectual man in a region
peculiarly his own, in which he deals exclusively with those
same " truths." These he pours upon the ear with a
rapidity of utterance never equalled, and a cold unimpas-
sioned yet vehement monotony as irksome as his self-applaud-
ing temerity is offensive and repellant. How any Ministry,
more especially a Ministry presided over by a man of such
consummate " tact," finesse, indeed, as Lord PALMERSTON,
should have confided the management of a bill so deeply
involving their own character as politicians and theiroredit
as statesmen, to such a man as 'Mr. Lows, is a matter which
evades solution, and can only be accounted for by the entire
absence of legislative skill and debating talent in- their second.
range of officials. Mr. Hossiremx., with telling suavity off
manner, followed the Vice-President of the Board of Trade; ,
and with a well aranged phalanx of facts and figures,
vanquished the abstract propositions laid down by the
framers of the bill. In persuasive accents, which told:
well, in contrast with the dictatorial impetuosity of
his opponent, the Honourable Member for Liverpool
laid before the House a succinct but glowing narrative of the
valuable purposes to which the denounced Town Dues had,
been applied, and successfully applied in such a way as to con-
tribute not merely to the maritime benefit of that town, but
to the general benefit of the country. Mr. EWART also did.
something to expose the hollow reasoning and dangerous prin-
ciples upon which the bill was founded and by which it was,
supported. On Monday night the debate was formally ad—
journed till the following day, but every one felt assured that
the fate of the measure was sealed. The property doctrines
of Mr. Lows, probably derived from his experience in the
Australian bush, where the definitions of mewn and tuum are
said not to very strict, had too effectually damaged it to admit
of its possible resuscitation. On it, as on the murdered.
DUNCAN, "treason had done its, worst." Even so adroit a
leech" as PALMERSTON could effect no present cure, and ac-
cordingly on Tuesday night he dexterously threw his mantle
over the abortion and withdrew it from further observation.
One singular, and by many it was-- considered shabby obser-
vation, as it reflected on his subordinate, escaped from 'his
Lordship in his withdrawing address •; it was to the effect
that Government did not fully understand the peculiari-
ties of the case till these were brought out in course of
the debate. On this latter point, that of attempting to
legislate for cases they didnot understand, Mr. Dr3RA.ELE
hit the Plasm= hard. Every indulgence, he said, had.
been accorded to Ministers by the Opposition, yet within.,
the six weeks during which Parliament had been. sitting,_
through their rash and ill-considered attempts at leg islationt,
they had manifested the utmost feebleness and been exposed.
to numerous defeats. They were defeated not by tht dr
loppo-
nents, not even by their supporters, but by themselvrt . Not
even the balanced sarcasm and well-weighed invectk ve of the
Right Honourable Member for. Buckinghamshire co d add
much to the damage the Government had already sustained;
and the Australian proposition of Mr. Lows was buried for
1 the time being, if not consigned to lasting oblivion.
It is now clear, that in refereneeto this measure Ministers
reckoned without their host. Relying on the comparative

feebleness of opposition which the• Manchester petitioners-had
led them to expect, and inreality, as Lord PALMERSMON, ad-
mitted, ignorant of the true nature of the case, in the hope of
conciliating that rapacious clique-, they made a swoop, at the
Liverpool Town Dues. As, in cases frequently recorded in
the annals of sporting, the falcon has been impaled upon the
heron's bill, Ministers. have ran a-tilt against Municipal pro-
perty, and they have been fatally wounded by their own shivered
lance.

VALIVSLEY' S SABBATH DES.ECTION

MOTION!

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD,

Sia,—What has become of our representative, Mr. J. C.
Ewart, and where did he hide himself on the all-important

" Sabbath Recreation" question, brought before the Commons.
by Sir Joshua ? I look in vain for his name in that tell-tale
list of ayes and noes in the division of the-House—on neither.
side is it to be found. The inference, / fear, is inevitable.
Fearing on the one band to do justice to his own feeling& by
opposing, and still more greatly fearina on the other to offend
even a few of his unwashed supporters at the hustings, a
studied balance of the difficulty probably coerced the adoption
of Falstaff's defence of the better part of valour,, and he
shirked that which he could not face. This is sorry trim-
ming. The great community of Liverpool had a right to look
for a deeper interest and a holder and more, independent
front in its representative, an one of the greatest questions
that could by any possibility agitate the legislature of the

country.
As for our Walmsleys, our Heywoods, and Shelloys, we may

look in vain for anything better from this. For the talented
young Lord Stanley's support of the infidel measure, how-
ever, the country has much cause to feel deeply grieved at the
prostitution of his highly-gifted mind, in furtherance of an
attempt to lift the very foundations of moral society, (to say
nothing of the higher principle involved,) that of legalising
. . . • .

the infraction of the Decalogue,—an acquisition long aimed
at by the Whigs, Radicals, and revolutionary infidels, both
in and out of the House. I am not sorry the question has
been mooted, for while its discussion lies been adorned with
as splendid a display of parliamentary eloquence as ever graced
the Commons Rouse of Parliament in its best days, the divi-
sion exhibits a malority so overwhelming as to lead to the
hope that any future attempt to renew the motion "looms"
(if it loomt et tin very remote distance indeed.
But
, Was the radical representative of
our borough?—where could he be burrowing on such a divi-
sion
as that which called for practical proof of the divinity
that stirred within him ? It is a pertinent question, and one
which I, a voter but not a supporter of the " honourable
member," hold a right to put. If timidity on a great not
only moral but religious question frights Mr. Ewart from
the post of honour and responsibility, what guarantee have we
that a great damaging constitutional question may not meet,
under similar fears and pressure, with the same fate? But