The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-07-05 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We are indebted to a kind friend, who has called our atten-
tion to a paragraph in the last Mercury, for the sincere
gratification of knowing that an individual behind that
journal honours our labours with his attention, and
pursues them with criticism. He is much to be praised
. for his industry in perusing articles, which were cer-
tainly not calculated to please his peculiar taste in
politics, and whose dulness (we have his own word
for it) exceeds all mortal patience. Nor can we venture
any defence to the charge of dulness when preferred by
one who ought to know what dulness means, better than
any living writer. But we would suggest to our discerning
friend, that like Homer or his own Humming top, himself
will sometimes sleep: and we think when he saw the mis-
print which served as the text for his discourse acknow-
ledged (in an erratum, " for longer - gems read longer
yarns") in our paper, appearing at the same moment with
his own sagacious animadversions, he must have cursed
his unlucky stars, and wished he had thought of the possi-
bility before. We believe our friend is familiar with peg-
tops which need yarns in schoolboy practice, though they
need not have brought " longer yarns" into the columns
of the sublime. Mercury. " Yankee" too is a word which
naturally suggests the idea of "yarns," and " Yankee"
(when this great writer dies) will assuredly be found en-
graven on his heart. We will acknowledge that we have
never learned Calligraphy from the itinerant teachers of
that useful craft whom the Mercury loves to puff: nor is
it our proper business to get up in type (or, as our critic
we suppose would call it, to compose) the articles in ques-
tion : and with all our dulness we never reckoned on so dull
a reader, who should not recognize (even in the disguise of
a misprint) a phrase so very appropriate to his own lucu-
brations as " longer yarns." Were our article as stupid
as the Mercury's blundering criticism and the error of the
printer have made it, it would (yet by virtue of that un-
lucky erratum " gems,") have had, like Shakspeare's toad,
a jewel in its head, while in the Mercury we find the
" ugliness" and " venom," and only desiderate the
" jewel." So much for the mare's nest. As to the charge
of fine writing (to which we at least make no pretension)
there is a familiar reply to a heavier charge than that of
dulness, " Sir, you are no gentleman," to answer in truth-
ful contempt, " Sir, you are no judge." Whether the
Mercury be a judge of fine writing those who read him will
better tell than we. We confess he has heaped fire upon
our heads. Dull as we are, he deigns to read : when_he
" spins out the thread of his discourse beyond the staple of
his argument," we seldom look at, and never laboriously
read through, his "longer yarns." We have heard it
whispered that those who do, find serious charges against
him on the score of dulness, without blundering into trans-
parent errata, or insisting on palpable misprints. We re-
commend him, next time he reads the Standard, to wipe
his spectacles, and think he would be none the worse if
he could wash his brains.
We beg to acknowledge the receipt of 10s., from " A Friend,"
for the distressed inhabitants of the Island of Achill. We
trust our Protestant friends will not forget their suffering
fellow-christians under such circumstances as we detailed
in our last.

Cbc 7iLibtrpoot .;•tallbarb.

FRIDAY MORNING, JULY 5, 1339.

Reader, did you ever see an owl tied upon the back
of a wretched duck, and the unhappy pair thrown
together into a pond ? In these days of common hu-

manity and decency, we will lay our lives you never
did : but you have witnessed, and you daily witness,
a sight which affords infinitely better sport, and need
not shock the most sensitive nerves, or wound the
most fastidious refinement. You have seen that most

ill-assorted pair, the supercilious Whig and the rough
democratic Radical, rudely bound together in the gall-
ing thongs of faction, and pitched headlong down into
the bottomless slough of perdition. So long as the
Ministerial duck can swim upon the troubled waters,
so long the extortionate owl of democracy is driving

his relentless beak into the head of his reluctant con-
federate. Forced by the pain of these unceasing
strokes, the amphibious bird (fit emblem of your epi-
cene Whig) dives into the deep, and carries his per-
secutor with him into the strange element. At length
up come the pair, and still float together as before :
the owl shaking in despair his drenched and drooping
wings, and looking as foolish and as much out of his
element as daylight and demi-drowning can make him.
While affairs prosper with the Reform Coalition, the
Radical's hooked beak is everlastingly at work. The
Whig at last will no longer bear it—goes below the
surface (but only for a dive, since though he can bear
being below better than his rough associate, yet both
must come to the surface at last)—gives the Radical a
rude surprise—and then suddenly re-appears and
brings him up far quieter and more tractable, and
looking exceedingly crest-fallen and very particularly
foolish.

Reader, we think we need not dwell at any great
length upon the events which will force themselves
upon your memory when you read this homely com-

larison ; nor is it necessary to show why the web-

footed waddle-and-swimmer is an apt similitude of a
double-dealing and dunder-headed Whig, or the sharp-

beaked bird of darkness an appropriate type for the
ravenous gorger of democracy, and the hater of Gos-
pel Truth.
But if the illustration he thus borne out in these its
minor particulars, how infinitely more close does it
come to the mark in its scope and moral ! Do you
imagine, Reader, that, because the myrmidons of the
Shameless Confederacy vote in a single phalanx, they
are moved by one will, or swayed by a common
principle ? They sink or swim together, like our
fabled pair; but, like them, it is because bonds they
fain would break have united them in ruthless alliance.
The bonds of faction bind them fast : and these bonds,
fixed by their own perfidy, and drawn closer and more
close in every struggle of their reckless and mad de-
spair, will never, we hope and trust, be broken. We
desire no partial victory : we look to no half revenge.
Like Ravenswood, we will bide our time. Assuredly

the day is at hand, when the doomed and miserable
pair will sink together beneath the broad waters of
public opinion, and death will terminate for ever their
sufferings, unpitied and unblest.
If our fable fail in any point of coming close to the
true comparison, the failure lies in this :—we have
represented two factions as fighting it out against each
other. They are not two: their name is Legion.
When Lord Melbourne returned to power, he found
it necessary only to secure Mr. Daniel O'Connell and
Mr. Joseph Hume. This traitorous triumvirate met
in unhallowed conspiracy, schemed their nefarious
project, and agreed on their mutual concessions. But
"- nous aeons chang6 tout cela,"— these practised
teachers have found active pupils; and there is many
and many a thorough-paced Radical, and many a frail
and faltering Whig, who has learned the use of the
personal pronoun, and the care of number one. " Show
me your reason," cries out many an ungorged snake
of faction. " Why should Ibe with you ?" echoes
many a very earnest Reformer. " What good has the
Coalition done for me ?" querulously squeaks the
unsatisfied suckling of Democracy, who looks to a
coming Dissolution, and sees he must be driven from
the trough. Verily our friend " The Bear" (whom
we have so often presented of late to the notice and
attention of our readers) is beginning to find his voca-
tion almost as troublesome as his namesake in "Esop,
who rashly engaged a nest of living hornets.
But worst of all, and saddest cause of all their sad

perplexities, the very Cabinet itself is the focus`of all
this disunion and discord. The easy, aristocratic
Melbourne, the self-important and self-seeking Lans-
downe, the simpering and "superficial" Rice, and the
oracular and self-approving' Russell,' "find -it hard•
enough work to contend with the more active and yet
more unscrupulous influences which are straining
every nerve against them, within and without the
Cabinet. Personal hatreds exasperate public differ-
ences. Squabbles for the spoil have grown into eter-
nal enmity. Jealousies and supplantings are rife
around every conspirator iR the plot. And whether
the old recluse of Howick does or does not intermeddle
in these base contrivances, he knows at least that he
has a representative in the Court Cabal, of whom the
aged parent well may say, as the mother of a great
soldier said when she heard that her son was taken
and marched up the country with other prisoners
chained in pairs together, " Gude safe the puir chield.
that 's chained wi' my Davie." _ _ _

We wish the Reform Ministry, the Court Cabal,
the Chamber Cabinet, no worse than a prolonged ex-
istence and a protracted infamy.

There is a species of offence by no means uncom-
mon in our large towns, known by the name of " child-
dropping." Puny brats are brought into the world,
and then exposed by their unnatural mothers, tied up
in baskets to the knockers of doors, or, on some pre-
tence, entrusted to the cold mercies of strangers, while
the parent decamps and is not again heard of.
In the political world our present ministers have re-
sorted to a similar expedient, and " bill-dropping" is
now their favourite remedy for getting rid of the bur-
thens with which, by reason of their inflated and hol-
low professions, they have encumbered themselves.
Bantlings—ugly and unsightly enough in all con-
science to the eyes of others, but which they, with the
perverseness of true motherly partiality, have caressed
and dandled with a fondness in proportion to their de-
formity—have been either disgracefully given up to the
demands of enemies who showed no mercy to the
sickly offspring, or contemptuously abandoned to the
kennel and the workhouse by their unprincipled pa-
rents. With regard to part of this Whig-Radical
spawn, of which the promise has been great and which
has not yet come forth into the light, we may, without
irreverence, say, that " the children are come to the
birth, but there is not strength to bring forth."
H. B. might find no bad subject for his inimitable
pencil in representing Lord John Russell and his col-
leagues, dressed in the female garb, which so peculi-
arly suits a bed-chamber ministry, and disposing of
the little ones which the impulses of Nature should
have led them to nurture to maturity, by every imagi-
nable expedient—dropping, strangling, stifling, im-
posing—while Sir Robert Peel, as the parochial autho-
rity, Mr. Bumble, looks sternly on, and doubts how
far he is justified in lifting a portion of the ricketty
progeny out of the mud, while he castigates with his
cane the sneaking progenitors.
We will not go back to the commencement, or, ra-
ther, rechauffement of the Melbourne administration in
1835, and recapitulate the disgraceful history of the
measures on which they have been defeated, or which
they have abandoned, up to February 1839. We doubt
whether our columns could contain the catalogue. Of
those which have been passed into laws several were,
in principle, due to the Conservatives, to which, how-
ever, Ministers contrived to add such objectionable
matter as to compel Sir Robert Peel and the House of
Lords to oppose them until the foul adjuncts were re-
jected—as, for example, the Irish Tithe Commutation
Bill, which originated with the Conservatives, but which
the factious violence of desperate Whig-Radicalism chose
to saddle with the appropriation clause ; an excres-
cence so hateful and dangerous as to require the sharp
remedy of total Excision, even although, during the
operation, there was imminent risk that the Irish clergy
would be literally starved. But so it has been. What
was good in principle before, our vile Cabinet has adul-
terated with baser matter, so as to render opposition a
bounden duty where there was the greatest readiness
on the part of government to refrain. But ministers
were perhaps compelled, by the hard terms of alliance
between themselves and the Radicals, to do this; they
were obliged to disguise their measures in the squalid
rags of hungry Democracy—

As dirty gipsies tan their little elves,
To make them tanned and dirty like themselves.

But a brief review of the present Session will suffice
to support the indictment which we now prefer against
the O'Connell Cabinet for " child-dropping." Let
not however any one be deceived by the number of bills
brought in. This is one of the worst features in the
whole affair. It is the very bane and curse of sound
legislation to be compelled to conciliate support by a
display of activity, while the thewes and sinews requi-
site for the exertion are wanting. It is like the con-
tortions of epilepsy, impotent and pitiable. The rest-
less fever of Radicalis►n, which seeks relief from its own

distempered fancies by interineddling with every sub-
ject under Heaven that politics can embrace, is the
state most inimical to the carrying forward of any
well-digested measure of practical utility. That Mi-
nisters have introduced a number of bills augurs no-
thing in their favour to our apprehension. We are
wide awake to that clap-trap kind of government—
the legitimate child of the Reform Bill--which throws
dust in the eyes of the country by an affectation of
spurious activity, but which makes as little real pro-
gress as those gentlemen do who expiate their offences
by tramping on the tread-mill. As well might we hear
an appeal made to the notice-hook of the House of
Commons to prove what zealous and vigilant represen-
tatives we possess, because it contains notices of mo-
tions on every conceivable matter, from Reform of the
House of Lords to some dirty cheese-paring crotchet
of Joseph Hume, more than half of which are never
intended to be brought forward or pressed to a di-

vision.

How then stands the account ? The Session com-
menced on the sth of February, and in that month
twelve bills were introduced by the Ministry, of these
six are still in the Commons, one of them, which we
consider of very great importance, that of the Irish
Corporations, was discussed for the first time in Com-
mittee on the 28th of June last, and another, the Attor-
ney-General's Registration of Electors Bill, has been
abandoned.
In March, nine bills were brought in, of which three
were passed ; three are still in the House of Commons,
and three have been abandoned.
In April seven bills were introduced, and of these
four were abandoned. One of them was the Jamaica
bill, the vote upon which was a majority of five, which
the Cabinet took as a pretty intelligible hint, and which
caused their sham resignation. Another was the Fic-
titious Votes (Scotland) bill, a pet favourite of the
Scotch Whigs, whose properties in many of the coun-
ties being more strictly tied up by entail than those of
their political opponents, prevent them from putting
on the Registry as many life-renters as the Conserva-
tives, although they do so to the utmost extent of their
capabilities. Hinc Ulm lacryme. What will the pure
Member for Cockermouth say to this instance of
" child-dropping" ?
In May the second Jamaica bill was carried by a
glorious majority of ten, and is now running the
gauntlet of the House of Lords. It was there on
Tuesday night decapitated by having its first clause
struck off. Lord Brougham put the question of the
degree of respect with which the Upper House of
Parliament should treat the measures sent up to it just
now in its true light. " But how was it," asked his
Lordship, " with a measure agreed to by the narrowest
majorities—by chance-medley, hap-hazard majorities—
by majorities that turned the scale by dust flung into
the balance—wavering, quivering, shaking in the wind,
—so that it could hardly be seen which of the two
preponderated, when neither kicked the beam. He
said that, the scales in such a case being even, it might
more properly be said that no opinion had been pro-
nounced, no decision given, and no authority inter-
posed."

In June twelve bills were brought in, and of these
three were passed ;.and at the same time the Educa-
tion Scheme was smuggled into a money bill ; but the
House of Lords is about to declare the article contra-
band, and we have little fears about its ultimate fate.
So that forty-one bills have been laid on the table
by Ministers, of which fourteen have passed the Com-
mons (three only of much importance), and NINE
have been abandoned.
To-night Mr. Spring Rice is to be delivered of the
Budget, which has already exceeded by three months
the ordinary period of gestation. Truly we have rea-

son to be thankful for the blessing of a Whig• Radical
Government I

To-night, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer is
bringing his embryo Budget to light in the House of
Commons, the amiable and excellent Prelate who stands
at the head of the Hierarchy of England will address
the assembled Peers upon one of the most momentous
questions that can be agitated in Parliament—the
Education of the youthful mind of this great and
populous empire. We rejoice in this. It is very right
and fitting that, on occasions like the present, the
Episcopal Bench should assert its high prerogative to
watch over and protect the spiritual interests of a
powerful nation. The Right Reverend Dignitaries
stand as sentries at the gate of our Christian and
Protestant citadel, and must be prepared at all times
to answer the anxious question addressed to them by
respectful and confiding millions, " Watchman, what
of the night ? - Watchman, what of the night ?"
Since Ministers have, on such a vitally important
question as Public Education, dared to exclude the
House of Lords from direct and legitimate interposi-
tion, we are glad to see that House vindicating its
right in the only proper and constitutional way; and
we are eminently pleased that the Archbishop of Can-
terbury is the man who unfurls the banner of resist-
ance to the unrighteous and demoralising scheme.
No one can suspect his Grace of party motives, for
no man has stood more aloof from party politics than
he has done. It is a deep conviction of the dangers
which threaten our infant-schools—a serious sense of
the awful responsibility which rests on the heads of
those who sit in high places as the constituted and
recognised champions of the Church, which has im-
pelled his Grace to come thus prominently forward,
and emphatically denounce a scheme so full of irreme-
diable mischief as the appointment of a Treasury Com-
mittee to tamper with Education. On Tuesday night
the Bishop of Lincoln communicated to the House of
Lords the purport of the resolutions which the Arch-
bishop would submit to them, and which are to be
sent up to her Majesty in the form of an address.
He stated that they " will include an expression of
opinion upon the appointment of the Committee of
Privy Council, and upon the plan proposed by them ;
and the prayer will be, that a measure so deeply af-
fecting the interests of the people may not be finally
adopted without affording to this House the opportu-
nity of considering it." With all our hearts we say
to him and his Episcopal brethren, God speed !

" Thank God that we have a House of Lords" was
the natural exclamation of William Cobbett, on an oc-
asion when the Whig faction were busily employed in
their attacks upon the liberties of British subjects.
Such was also our involuntary exclamation when we
read the debate which took place in the House of Lords
on Tuesday Evening last, when the tyrannical enact-
ment against the House of Assembly in Jamaica was
expunged, by an overwhelming majority, from the mi-
nisterial measure. We congratulate our fellow-subjects
in the West Indies on the noble stand made in defence
of their liberties by the House of Peers. We congra-
tulate our fellow-subjects in England on the determi-
nation evinced by the House of Lords to resist the
unprincipled and unconstitutional aggressions of the
" measuring-cast majority" in the House of Commons.
The defeat sustained by the ministry on Tuesday
night was complete. It covered them with shame and
confusion. It came upon them like a thunderbolt.
Poor Lord Melbourne exclaimed panic-struck, that he
" was utterly at a loss." Hitherto few occasions have
presented themselves, during the present session, for
permitting the House of Lords to pronounce a ver-
dict upon the measures concocted by the " bed-cham-
ber" ministry. We rejoice to find that the first divi-
sion of importance in that House has been of so sig-
nally humiliating a character to the would-be ministry
now in office.

But the division which took place on Tuesday was
not the only source of annoyance to the ministry. The
overwhelming talent displayed by Lord Lyndhurst, in
his attack upon the obnoxious scheme for annihilating
the liberties of Jamaica, made Lord Melbourne and
the Marquis of Normanby feel as uneasy as if they
were tortured on the rack. Nor was this uneasiness
removed when Lord Brougham got up to apply the
lash to their recreant hides.

Lord Lyndhurst's speech was a masterly effort—
worthy of the distinguished reputation which he has
secured by his great eloquence, penetrating judgment,
and sagacious views. He demonstrated, to the satis-
tion of every unbiassed and unprejudiced mind, the
flagrant injustice and the gross impolicy of the
government measure. He left the ministry (to use a
familiar phrase) " without a leg to stand upon." The
defences of Lords Glenelg and Normanby were, as
might have been expected, of the most weak and mi-
serable character imaginable, like the hopeless effort
of the counsel of a prisoner when the evidence against
him is irresistible.

Lord Brougham's speech was pungent in the extreme.
He indulged in another of his tremendous philippics
against his quondam friends on the ministerial benches.

His witty allusions to the " glorious" ministerial ma.
jorities in the House of Commons must have been any.
thing but palatable to Lord Melbourne.

We trust that the victory obtained on Tuesday over

the ministry will prove to be only the prelude to a se-
ries of similar triumphs. As long as the powerful con-
servative party iri the Upper House continue to watch
over the interests of the British empire there can be
no cause for entertaining any feeling of apprehension.
Arrayed on the side of the constitution, they are sure
to enlist the feelings of the people in their favour. The
House of Lords is now most decidedly the popular
branch of the legislature. Long may it continue so.

The malignant tendency of the Irish policy of Lord
Normanby was never more strikingly manifested than
it has recently been by the contrast afforded in the
wise and conciliating line of conduct adopted by his
his successor. It will be in the recollection of our
readers that Lord Normanby was in the habit, on the
first of July, to send a strong military force into the
north of Ireland. This was done for the purpose of ir-
ritating the loyal Protestants, and of provoking, if pos-
sible, a collision. There was also another motive for
these periodical movements. The concentration of the
military in the north of Ireland gave the appearance of
disaffection and disobedience to the laws to the perse-
cuted Protestants. Such was the mean and despicable
policy of Lord Normanby. Lord Ebrington (Whig
though he be) has adopted a more manly, honest, and
straight-forward course. He prohibited any move-
ment of troops or police to the Protestant districts
on the first instant. The result has fully justified
him in this policy. Not a single instance of disturb-
ance took place on that day. All was peace, and
quiet, and harmony.

The animus which prompted the Education Com-
mittee in the Town Council to adopt the Irish system
of education, becomes daily more and more apparent.
Nothing, however, could more plainly discover the
secret motives by which they have been actuated than
the declaration made by Mr. Walmsley in the council
room, on Wednesday last. He said that he " should
be very glad to see the day when nothing but' secular
instruction is given in the schools." We thank Mr.
Walmsley for speaking out so plainly on the subject.
The object of the Education Committee is, to " secu-
larise" the instruction of the poor, or, in other words,
to bring them up as infidels. This is also the real
design of the government scheme of national educa-
tion. All that is wanted is, to banish religion from
the schools in which the poor are instructed. Nothing
less than this will satisfy the " march of intellect"
philosophers.

While we are alluding to the council proceedings of
Wednesday we cannot avoid asking where Mr. Shiel
could have studied history ? Our reason for putting
this question is, the extraordinary• assertion which he
made on Wednesday that " the question about the
authorised and Douay versions had been in dispute
for many hundreds of years." Where did Mr. Shiel
learn this ? We never heard that the Douay version
was of such great antiquity. .

The silly epistle from Mr. Aspinall which was read
at the Council Meeting is undeserving of any further
notice than to remark that it proves the writer to be
what we have long asserted—a latitudinarian in his re-
ligious opinions. We leave the reverend gentleman to
reconcile such opinions to the obligations of his ordina-
tion vows, in which he pledged himself " to root out
all heresies" from among his flock.