The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-05-11 00:00:00

"'Till famine and the ague eat them up
Were they not leagued with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful in the field,
And beat them"-
intc good behaviour and an honest mode of life.
But the good time is coming when we shall give them
such a drubbing as they never dreamt of when they cried
out so lustily for an appeal to the country.
Poor JOHNNY RUSSELL ! He is truly to be pitied. I
can't clearly make out what has come over him. Like
Hamlet, he " has of late lost all his mirth," and has be-
come transmogrified into a sour, crabbed, cantankerous,
venomous " shrivelled adder,"—as HENRY GRATTAN
would say. In fact, his good genius has deserted him
since Fox Mat-Lit was translated to the House of Lords.
Fox MaxLE, to do him justice, is a merry. jovial soul,
overflowing with fun and good nature ; and, when he was
the constant companion of his chief, he drove the spleen
out of him, and brought out all the amiability that was in
him. But he is gone to " another place," and Lord
JOHNNY has become morose, vicious, spiteful, and—worse
than wicked, according to diplomatic morality,—unfortu-
nate. llehas taken to the companionship of that pragmatical
coxcomb, " the Right lion. ROBERT VERNON SMITH,"
a thorough snob, and no very great Solon, who affects the
juvenile dandy, and makes frantic efforts to sink the patro-
nymic SMITH, and adopt the aristocratic nameofVEßN-ox.
Whether or not he exercises any malign influence on Lord
JOHN, it is certain that, since he has been substituted for
Fox MAULE, the noble lord's temper has sadly dete-
riorated, and his parliamentary conduct and manners very
much changed for the worse.
But if the factious proceedings of the past week have
been extraordinary, those in store for the coming one are
to be prodigious. The notice given by Mr. DISRAELI, of
his intention to propose substitutes for the disfranchised
boroughs of St. Alban's and Sudbury, has set the whole
rookery of Reformers in commotion, and they threaten I
don't know how many kinds of opposition. Strange that
these creatures, who are continually 'making such a noise
about reform, should make objection to it the moment
that it is actually brought forward. Strange that they
should vow and organise a furious opposition before they
even know, or can guess at, what will be proposed. Yet
so it is. Never was there more hurried rushing hither
and thithz:r, more junketting, and closeting, and
scheming, and manoeuvring., amongst the several joints of
the Whig-revolutionary tail, than since this announcement
of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to fill up the blanks
in the representation of the people left by his predecessors
in office. Of course they want to have all the credit of
reforming to themselves ; and to be able to shout at the
hustings that Lord DERBY'S government is the enemy of all
representation of the people. But they will find to their cost
that Lord DERBY'S Government is a reforming one in the
true sense, and that all it desires and all it will sanction is
a bond fide representation of the intelligence, the respec-
tability, the property, and free will of the nation. It is
not, I feel pretty sure, to the creation of a new metropo-
politan borough of the same stamp as that of Finsbury,
Marylebone, &c. that Mr. DISRAELI will ask the House
of Commons to consent. These new metropolitan
boroughs and their representatives are the opprobrium of
the house, and to add to them would be madness indeed.
Such a pack of inefficient, brawling, intriguing, corrupt,
and disreputable members are not to be found elsewhere,
as these said men who sit for Finsbury, the Tower Ham-
let, and the other new metropolitan boroughs. Fancy
one of them, Mr. GEORGE THOMPSON, who had been
over in America to improve his manners and to learn
democratic politeness, telling his constituents a day or
two ago that " he had fought with the beasts at Ephesus,
and was not afraid of the ' Painted Vultures' and the
' Green Dragons' of the Tower Hamlets. He would take
his principles to the House of Commons; or, if not
elected, he would take them home again as not suited
for the market of the Tower Hamlets." The market
of the Tower Hamlets ! There's a pretty commercial
electioneering phrase for you. But, depend upon it, these
said pure and simple republicans don't confine their ob-
servations upon the state of the markets to words only ;
they understand well, and apply too, when they can, their
favourite Free-trade maxim of " purchasing in the cheap-
est, and sellingin the dearest." If the immaculate GEORGE
THOMPSON has not yet sold the seat which he so cheaply
obtained, it is because no minister would give twopence
halfpenny for it—that is, for the conceited empty-headed
donkey who has possession of it.
But enough of politics. Let us find a fresher subject,
and a purer atmosphere—no very difficult search, I cal-
culate.

Spring. genial and gentle, and warm, and exhilarating, has
atlengthburstuponus,and theabominable east wind, which
made man and beast shrink into half their natural size,
and which racked the bones with rheumatics, has, after
an unprecedented visit of two months' duration, gone to
old Hookey Walker. The showers have not yet come,
but we have the sunshine and the soft south wind, and an
occasional puff of the refreshing west. The lovely
spring
was fairly inaugurated on Saturday at the great horticul-
turalPte at Chiswick. Wonderful to relate, the day was
magnificent, and not a single drop fell from the clouds to
flutter the gentle hearts and spoil the charming bonnets
of the peerless beauties assembled to grace the first me-
tropolitan festival to the goddess of fruits and flowers.
The geraniums, the roses, the heaths, the rhododendrons,
the azalias exhibited were superb ; and the multitudes
of green-house plants and new varieties exceeded all
former Expositions. But the fruits were what took
possession of my weak fancy. Gazing at them—at the
immense bunches of purple grapes, with the autumnal
bloom fresh upon them—at the Brobdignagian straw-
berries, large, lustrous, and luscious beyond the power
of words to describe—at the splendid pears, divine melons,
and fragrant pines ; and yet unable to pluck and taste, (for
they are there to be admired, not eaten,) I fully felt the
temptation to which Eve was subjected, and from my