The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-12-24 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE QUEEN DOWAGER.
(Prom the Mornihg Herald.)
The hatred which the present cabinet bears to Queen
Adelaide is faithfully reflected in the columns of the
few leading journals. Lord Melbourne and his col-;
Ileagues know that they have stripped their young and.
innocent Sovereign of a large portion of that popula-
rity which attendd her, but two short years ago. The
Queen's advisers, have, in short, placed her Majesty in
a false position relatively to thb great body of her sub-
jects ; and the cabinet traitors cannot bear that a con-
viction of this great - truth should be permitted to en-
ter the royal mind.- True, the Queen now receives but
few of those enthusiastic cheers which used to impart
to her appearance in public the air of a triumphal pro-
cession ; yet still, until after the return of Queen Ade-
laide to England; the effect_ of contrast was wanting to
deteeinine the full meiSiire of-the wrong which Lord
Melbourne awl his colleagues have inflicted on their
confiding Mistress. Not that the great body of the
people of England love or honour their Sovereign less,
at the present moment than formerly ; but they feel
imperatively called on to prove, by all the means which
they may respectfully employ, their utter disapproba-
tion of the parties who compose her Majesty's court
and cabinet. (Shade of Pitt ! When, in English his-
tory, were the words synonymous before ?)
This course has, we repeat, been forced upon the
people of England—because the present Ministers 'ne-
ver tire of boasting, that " the Queen is with" them.
If it be useful to the whites to promulgate such a state-
ment, it must be more useful to her Majesty to be
ap-
prised that her people are not " with" her selfish and
treacherous• advisers.
The return of Queen Adelaide to England has
proved, we repeat, of evil omen to the whigs. The
loyal people of England have not forgotten the virtues
which the Queen of William the Fourth exhibited on
all occasions; nor do the loyal people of England ho-
- dour Queen Adelaide less when they recollect that her
Majesty is believed to have discovered, long ago, the
„baseness of Lord Melbourne and his " reforming" as-
Snciaies !
Queen Adelaide was rapturously welcomed back to
England. She is rapturouSly received wherever she
moves: Of these facts Ministers cannot be unconscious.
They forget, that when Queen Victoria succeeded
to the Throne of England, she was the idol of her
people. Lord Melbourne and his coleagnes cannot
fail to perceive, that by -seeking:to identify-themselves
with their much abused Mistress, they have compelled
the'people.on many occasions to withhold those out-
ward semblances of deep _devotion to the Monarchy
which the loyal-people.of England delight to render.
The whigs fear least, the Queen should inquire into
the causes of these things. The wings. know that the
solution -of the difficulty could not be remote.
The rage with which the cabinet views on every side,
the signs of its unpopularity, has latterly found vent in
the foulest abuse levelled at Queen Adelaide. The
Morning Chronicle,* in a "spirit disgraceful to the Bri-
liSli.press, although appropriate enough in an organ of
the O'COnnell Ministry, accused in the grossest terms
the widow-of William the Fourth, of having openly
and unbecomingly censured the habits and pursuits of
Queen _Victoria. The calumny was promptly repelled ;
and the Duke of Palmella, at whose house the offence
was alleged to: -have been committed, has indignantly
vindicated the honour of Queen Adelaide. Has this
proof of the disgraceful falsehood of their charge in-
duced signs of shame or of repentance in the conduct-
ors of the Government journal ? Let the following
passage in the Morning Chronicle of yesterday tes-
tify

" So far as Queen Adelaide was accused of expressing her-
self in terms of censure towards her Soiereign in the pre-
sence of the Duke of Palmeila, at Lisbon, she must be held
to.be innocent; and we freely admit it. We will put the
court gossip at Lisbekn,ntirely out of view. We will give
her violent partisans thcyr4ll advantage of the Duke of Pal-
mella's denial, carried to its utmost extent; but, under the
cover of this advantage, who but the veriest fools or knaves
will be led astray by the ludicrous contortions and grimaces
exhibited by our tory contemporaries at the notice which we.
have at various times deemed it right to take of the tory de-
monstrations, made by the little knot of courtiers who sur-
round the Queen Dowager ? The game played by-these wor-
thies, aided by the tory press, was a deep, and, until we in-
terfered, apparently a successful one. The object was to
impress on the country a belief that all the virtue, piety, and
propriety of the Royal Family were centered in the persons
of Queen Adelaide and her chamberlains ; and that the court
of her mistress and Sovereign was degraded by conduct ofan
entirely opposite character. In furtherance of this object,
orators, lay and clerical, have not scrupled, in their political
orgies, to apply the-most disgusting and disloyal epithets to
her Majesty's royal person, to her household, and her mi-
nisters. The Queen Dowager has been paraded about the
country, housed, fed, and bepraised by tories; and herself
and her qualities held up eternally in contrast with the
Queen. This indecency must and shall be put a stop to.
Why are not the household of the Queen Dowager. the
Howes, the Denbighs, the Ashleys, the Barrinytons, and the
rest of the bigotted tories who surround her, content with
their share of the oIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND pounds, which
is annually divided amongst these hungry officials ? . Let them
pocket their salaries in silence and in retirement, (a state in-
finitely more becoming the widowhood of their mistress than
the puppet-show journeys in which they indulge), and the
country will not complain."

Did vulgar indecency ever before usurp such licence ?
And does it not approach the sublime -of impudence,
that a journalist who applauds to the echo a court, of
which such men as Lord Headfort and Lord Melbourne
are regarded as distinguished ornaments—a court, in
which the Hastings'. tragedy has recently been en-
acted—should dare to talk of the necessity (marked
you the journalist's " absolute shall ?"—" shall be put
a stop to") of interfering by force with the composition
of Queen Adelade's establishment !
The whole affair is in accordance with the tactics in-
variably pursued by the whigS ! Who has forgotten
the threats of decapitation addressed by the whigs and
their retainers to Queen Adelaide, while yet the con-
sort of William the Fourth ? Who was forgotten
their unutterably-loathsome statement, that, in the
event of Sir Robert Peel accepting office, Queen Vic-
toria would be poisoned ? Or who has forgotten the
equally disgusting circumstances, that for the propaga-
tion of that atocious falsehood, O'Connell remains; to
the present ha- or, uncensored by a single Whig journalist ?
The whigs are now utterly lost to character and to
shame. What are their principles—what their public
objects ? The reply is silence: They live, by their
own confession, to enforce no great public principles.
They live only " to keep out the tories;" and as their
last desperate chance for keeping out the tories for a
few weeks longer, they devote themselves to the fabri-
cation of calumnies against the conservatives, more
foul than any that ever before disgraced party war-
fare !