The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-06-22 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD, TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 1852.

matical handful of political juveniles, whose alliance
with the dregs of democracy has at length been
consummated. They had set themselves up,
forsooth, as the nucleus of a party which was first
to hold the balance of power in both Houses, and
ultimately to reconstruct a progress administration.
They attempted to insinuate themselves into the
confidence of the Conservative portion of the legis-
lature, but they were repulsed with distrust and
aversion. They trimmed, and vacillated, and dodged;
but no party recognised their pretensions to super-
lative wisdom and statesmanship. At length the
decisive moment arrived when they could coquette
no longer ; and they prostrated themselves forth-
with in the mire of the lowest radicalism, and made
common cause with the most virulent instruments
of the papacy. Mr. CARDWELL, in this town, is a
precious example of the consistency and honesty of
his faction. In Liverpool he boasts himself to be
an evangelical Protestant, and to have been the inti-
mate friend and admirer of the late Dr. CHALMERS.
His party have not scrupled to publish of one of
his opponents the lying assertion—prored to be so
by a letter in our columns this day—that Mr.
FORBES MACKENZIE had proceeded from Liver-
pool to London to vote for "the Puseyite Mr.
BENNETT," thereby imputing to him as a reproach
that he entertained the religious sentiments of that
gentleman. Yet, Mr. CARDWELL himself—the
evangelical of the CHALMERS school,—is one of
the most promineut supporters of the pretensions of
Mr. Wm. EWART GLADSTONE, the defender of
Mr. Bennett, to represent the university of Oxford ! !
Mr. CARDWELL is also the intimate friend of the
same Mr. GLADSTONE, who openly threatened the
overthrow of the established Church of Ireland as
the retaliation for any interference with the Romish
College of Maynocth!
Most emphatically we tell the Electors of Liver-
pool that some measure of that description—
another "heavy blow and great discouragement" to
be dealt against the Protestant Church of these
realms—is meditated by the allied Romish, Peelite,
and Manchester factions. Let a party be once placed
in power in this country with Mr. CARDWELL, R.
COBDEN, and JOHN BRIGHT as its prominent
leaders, the Irish Brigade as the rank and file, and
Cardinal WISENIAN and Father CULLEN as the
fuglemen, and we shall shortly have little left
worth defending in this once Protestant and loyal
empire !

THE MERCURY AND THE REV. D. JAMES.
WE have no wish to prolong the discussion which
has arisen from the publication of an electioneering
letter, ascribed to Mr. THO.MAS BOLD. But there
is one feature connected with it to which we feel it
our duty to advert, before we allow the matter to
pass into oblivion—we mean the forging of the
name of the Rev. D. JAMES, of Kirkdale, at the
foot of it, as the person to whom it was addressed.
In order to place this matter before our readers in
its true light, and expose the unscrupulous—the
unjustifiable, not to say malicious—conduct of the
Mercury in the whole affair, we shall at once assume
the existence of the letter in question, by whom-
soever written, leaving its genuineness to be settled
by the only parties who can do it—the person who
wrote it, and the person to whom it was addressed.
To enable us to do this, let us trace the use which
has been made of the letter by the Radical press
and party. It was first printed in the Liverpool
Mercury, of the 11th instant, bearing the name of
THOMAS BOLD as the writer, and the name of the
" Rev. D. JAMES, Kirkdale," on the left corner
below, as the party to whom it was written. This
occurred on the Friday. On the NI onday following
appeared in the Albion a short letter from Mr.
JAMES, " denying that the letter in question had
been written to him, or that he had been able to

ascertain the name of the party to whom it was
addressed." And on Tuesday a second denial, in a
longer note, appeared in the columns of the Mercury
itself from the Rev. D. JAMES, stating "that no
such letter lad been addressed by Mr. BOLD to
him." On Friday, the 11th, as we have already
stated, the Mercury published this private letter,
bearing the name of the Rev. D. JAMES as the
party to whom it had been addressed. On Tuesday
the 15th, in consequence of Mr. JAMES'S denial
that any such letter had been addressed to him,
the Mercury made the following admission in its
leading article :—" It will be observed that he (Mr.
JAMES) states that the letter inscribed at the close
to Rev. D. JAMES, Kirkdale, was not addressed
by Mr. BOLD to myself ? That is quite true; the
original letter was not inscribed at the close,
NEITHER WAS THE COPY OF THE LETTER

WHICH WE RECEIVED INSCRIBED AT THE
CLOSE." These are the Mercury's own words !
and they mean just this: that the editors received a
copy of a certain letter, purporting to have been
written by Mr. THOMAS BOLD, but bearing no
inscription at the close; and that they sent it forth
to the public through the medium of their journal
with the name of the Rev. D. JAMES, Kirkdale,
appended to it. Now, what is the inference ?
Why, from the Mercury's own showing, it is just

this, that the affixing of Mr. JAMES'S name was a
forgery, and that the forgery was committed by the
Editors themselves ! This is the only conclusion to
which their own words necessarily lead us ; and it
will require more ingenuity than they seem to
possess to get rid of the charge.
And what, we beg to ask, will the public think
of such conduct ? What will the high-minded
portion of the Whigs and Radicals themselves
think of the attempt thus made by the editors of a
public journal to involve a highly-respectable
clergyman in a proceeding which his known habit
of avoiding party politics renders it utterly unlikely
that he could either have shared in or approved.
The end aimed at by the editors and their parti-
zans was without doubt the damaging of Mr.
JAMES'S character and standing in the town, and
especially among his own countrymen; for the letter
to which the editors of the Mercury forged his
name has been printed, also, in the same office, in
the form of a large placard, and posted all over the
town.

Having convicted the editors of the Mercury of
forgery in this case, we proceed in the next place
to lay before our readers some of their false asser-
tions respecting Mr. JAMES in connection with the
same letter.

In the Mercury of the 15th instant, immediately
after the insertion of the letter ascribed to Mr.
BOLD, the editors proceed thus :—" Now we assert
that the Rev. DAVID JAMES received the letter, of
which the above is a copy ; that it has been seen in
his hands, and in his house; that the Rev. DAVID
JAMES has himself read it to his friends ; and that
the Rev. DAVID JAMES used it for the purpose of
trying to get up a meeting of the Welshmen of
verpool, as suggested by Mr. BOLD. We make
ese assertions advisedly, and we defy Mr. JAMES
And again, a little further on, the
" But will Mr. JAMES deny that the
d to him ? Will he deny that
Will he deny that he
For his sake, and for the

to deny them."

,e was di

eceived the lette

to his friend

ave been wr