The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-07-20 00:00:00

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In the

thisemer

borough of Cult

:11 Mr. CARDWELL
rambles in search of

a Peopl

ost glaring case

,n of it

I his own vote, and

thirty pounds by the
agents of the radical candidate, Mr. WILSON.
lie accepted the offer, stipulating that he must be
furnished with the numbers of

Is offered for

the sum c

the votes to be

placed in particular
a vote for the bribing can-
received the money, and
Et once proceeded with it to the Conservative com-
mittee room. A clear case being thus established,
the Conservative candidate ceased all efforts
to bring up voters to the poll and the election will,
no doubt, on a petition, be decided in his favour.
In Blackburn the election was in a great
degree influenced by intimidation. It was openly
threatened by the mob, during the polling, that
should the Conservative candidate, Mr. HORNBY,

given, and tha+
bands
tlidat

Having

Mr. WI-LION

be elected, the hotel at which his committee met
svould be gutted—as it was, in fact, at an election
in 1847—and that afterwards his house would be
sacked; and there were threats even of damage
being done to the Protestant Churches of the town.
The most gross terrorism prevailed throughout;
and, in addition, bribeg.was practised. The Con-
..

,
servative candidate had but one committee room at
the Bull Hotel. The Peelite candidate, Mr. ECCLES,

however, subsidized nearly every beerhouse in the

town, paying each £5 for its use as a committee room.;
end free drink was given by his friends on a very
large scale. In other of our manufacturing boroughs
the same system of mingled intimidation and treat-
ing prevailed. In a word, never were there elections
in this country more disgracefully conducted ; and
seldom have constituencies been found more " be-
sotted"—to use the words of the Mercury—than
those of this pattern county of Lancashire.
We do not seem to have done ourselves much
credit by the return of Mr. CHEETHAM for the
southern division of the county. This worthy

cotton spinner's definition of a man is unique in its
way :—" His definition was, that he should be an

animal standing erect on two legs, with a head on
Lis shoulders, and with sense, prudence, and dis-

crimination in that head ; and no man showed sense,

discrimination, and judgment, until he married a
,rife, and set up a house. (Renewed laughter.) The
person who claimed to be an elector, who had not
this qualification, was but a lad, and he would have
nothing to do with him. (Laughter.)" This is a
novel phase in constitutional opinions. If no man
has " sense, discrimination, and judgment, until he
has married a wife and set up a house," what a
senseless lot must be the Roman Catholic priest-
hood of this country! How stupid our bachelor
population ! If a man is to be "an animal standing
pect on two legs," we are afraid that Mr. CHEET-
VAM will find a few of the factory hands of Lanca-
shire and Cheshire, whom long hours of labour
have denied the privilege of standing erect and
being men. But we know the gentleman ; and the
country is quite satisfied that had the League pro-
posed an old chair, or table, that could stand upright
on three legs, we should have been as perfectly
satisfied with our wooden member as we are ever
likely to be with the "upright animal" furnished
for us from the banks of the muddy Tame.
It has been announced, we observe, that the
?Jercury is about to publish a list of the voters at
the late election for Liverpool, with the names of
the candidates for whom they polled. This is not
a very consistent step on the part of men who con•
tend for the Ballot and secret voting. The object
is, of course, to gratify the prurient curiosity of
the discomfited Radical faction ; but its tendency
is to prolong the ill-feeling resulting from the con-
test, and probably to subject many poor persons—
small tradesmen and others—to persecution, if not
personal violence. Should anything of this kind
occur ; should any poor shopkeeper be exposed to
exclusive dealing, or oppression from any source ;
should any working man be subjected to insult
from his Roman Catholic neighbours for having
voted for Protestant candidates, the public will not
hesitate to impute a large share of the blame to the
party, and their organ who shall have thus pointed
out the victims. There is one consolation, how-
ever, which we shall derive from this proceeding.
We shall be enabled to ascertain the precise mate-
riel of the motley alliance upon which Messrs.
CARDWELL and EWART depended to return them
es the representatives of this eminently Protestant
town. Before leaving this subject, we commend
to the attention of the Mercury the following ex-
tract from a Liberal paper—the Preston Chronicle :
" The Poll Book.—We have been applied to by various
parties to publish a list of voters, with the way each elec-
tor polled at the last election. We must decline being a
party to any such publication ; we have ever advocated
the ballot as the best mode of exercising the suffrage, and
to publish a poll book would be a direct infringement of
that principle. We never have been a party to publishing
the votes of electors, and we do not think it advisable to
commence the practice. We are, however, principally
induced to decline the publication, as we believe the cir-
culation of a poll book has a tendency to perpetuate a
Zad feeling, and encourage exclusive dealing, which have
not usually, to any extent, followed a Preston election,
and which, we trust, never will." _

It perplexes most people to understand the rea-
soning by which the opponents of Government are
"just now proving to themselves the early downfall
of the Earl of DERBY'S administration, and the
transfer of the reins of power into the bands of
what they style the " liberal" party,—a heteroge-
aeons admixture of all sorts of conflicting elements.
liVe are to have, it seems, the first thing on the meeting
of Parliament, a division upon the address, in which
Ministers are to be defeated. A most unamiable
sort of proceeding is such a division. How can
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, for example, advocate such
a reply to a speech from the Throne, prepared by
the premier whom so recently he recommended to
his Sovereign as the only man by whom, in the
emergency which he himself had created, the coun-
try could be governed? Another proceeding
threatened is a direct vote of want of confidence,
to be moved by Mr. ROEBUCK. Suppose this
acrimonious morsel of humanity to make his
motion, such a vote, to be carrie_
pre-supposes that Parliament has more confi-
dence in some other statesman than Lord DEEP
and who, we ask, is 4-1- Where.

1, naturally

n the

present House of Commons, are the elements
an administration, which can command a
•non any one question, besides, perhaps,
'ion in favour of Free-trade
-v LL alliance would be

leclarat

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cl only pot

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d himself from the sympa
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