The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-03-23 00:00:00

TIM LIVERPOOL STANDARD, TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 1852.

similar,

THE MINISTRY, THE OPPOSITION, AND

THE DEMAGOGUES.

"SATIRE," says SWIFT, "is reckoned to be the
"easiest of all wit; but I take it to be otherwise in
"very bad times; for it is as hard to satirize well
" men of distinguished vices, as to praise well men
"of distinguished virtues." Those who attempt to
treat as it deserves the conduct of the motley
Opposition that now assail the Ministers, will not
dispute the opinion of the Dean. After the
Ministry have fully and repeatedly declared that
they only await the measures absolutely necessary

to carry on the Government and defend the nation,
that they may appeal to the country, they are
asked to declare upon what question they will
make the appeal, and to inform the Opposition
exactly at what moment the appeal will be made.
They are reminded of opinions, and pelted with
former professions. Men who never kept a promise
become suddenly eloquent about political faith.
Men who dare not look at their own speeches or
letters of six months old, courageously open
Hansard, the very sight of which was their terror
while in office. The champions of consistency are
the Duke of NEWCASTLE, Lord JOHN RUSSELL,
an d—guis tulerit gracchos ?—Sir JAMES GRAHAM !
There is not in England any man devcid of
violent prejudice or some selfish motive, and of
sane mind, who does not understand the fairness
and candour of the declarations of Lord DERBY.
Those who preceded him fell by their own complete
incompetency. Lord JOHN RUSSELL lost office
plainly and clearly because he had not the ability
to discharge its duties. In the whole history of
England, no other Prime Minister but one went
out from mere incapacity, and he had the candour
to acknowledge it, and not to attempt a return to

a position nature had unfitted him to hold. The
Earl of DERBY, on the hopeless and complete

destruction of the late Government—he having
hut recently refused office—is sent for by the
Queen, and undertakes to advise his Sovereign.
He knows the Parliament—called while Free Trade

was yet an experiment—is against him, and he
admits it. He undertakes to ask the people of the

Empire if they are content that he remain in power;
and the inconsistent, factious, and dishonest place-
hunters demand a programme of policy to be laid
before a dying Parliament. They quote the saying
of the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, that Sir
ROBERT PEEL was bound to resign office or to
declare his future principles, and they pretend to
apply this to the state of the present Govern-
ment. The cases are very different. Sir
ROBERT PEEL had just publicly and suddenly
abandoned the principles on which the country
had returned him to power, and he had done so in
the face of a Parliament by which he had been
kept in office. It was, therefore, necessary to have
a full declaration of the new principles he intended
to adopt pro tern. The present *Ministers have
been called into power when they neither hoped
nor expected it, and that by a vote of a Parliament
hitherto occasionally supporting Lord JOHN
RUSSELL. It would indeed require one to see
with the eyes of the Whigs, and feel their dis-

appointment, before the cases would appear at all

On one subject the Opposition are particularly
sensitive—the reference of the Earl of DERBY to
the influence of demagogues, and his determina-

tion to control it. This question, indeed, is a
pressing one with such aspirants to power as the
Opposition, and the Earl of DERBY is the first
Minister of a free State that has had the courage
to announce his intention of dealing with so great

ai evil—an evil that has exercised the speculation
of the greatest minds, from Lord BACON to Lord
BROUGHAM, but with little active result. Lord
BROUGHAM, coinciding in his great predecessor's
opinion of "leagues in a State," which make the
Government itself " tanquant unus cx nobis," has
given a fair estimate of the influence of mobocracy,

as distinguished from democrat.-, in his sketch of
the French Revolution. It is valuable, as from
the pen of a man who himself had wielded the
will of the people in a stormy period, and given
the pure example of being a popular leader with-
out becoming a demagogue—fighting against
oppressive privileges, with a wholesome honour
all the while of the

Civium ardor prala jubentium

The numbers of the ill-intentioned," says Lord

" may be very inconsiderat

BROUGHAM,
the tendency of extreme opinions, when zealously

propagated, because fanatically entertained, is
always to spread, and the disposition of the re-
spectable and peaceable classes is ever to be in-
active, sluggish, indifferent, ultimately submissive."
"The tendency of great meetings of the people,''
he continues, "is twofold—their numbers are
always exaggerated both by the representations of
their leaders and by the fears of the bystanders.
and the spectacle of force that they exhibit, and
the certainty of the mischief which they are
capable of doing, scares all who do not be-
long to them. Hence, the vast majority of the
people afraid to act remain quiet, and give the
agitators the appearance of having no adversaries."
These lines, strange as it seems, are not written of
the events of the last ten years, but of the first
French revolution. No man can abut his eyes to
the evil described; but the question of the remedy
is still to come. Politics and medicine differ in the
applicability of the maxim that to know the disease
is half the cure. If, however, we are not content
to have every interest of the Commonwealth de-
stroyed by a class who can only exist in times of
trouble, we must be prepared to see whether the
regimen adopted by the late Government towards
the unfortunate dupes who believed its once pro-
fessing and acted upon them may not advantage-
ously be extended to a class more powerful and
mischievous. One thing is certain, that the
system of itinerant agitation such as that by which
the Anti-corn Law League invaded peaceful agri-
cultural districts, diatributing bribes in money and
blankets to the labourers, to make a jacquene, is a
clear crime against public policy and the general
good. With such expedients of agitation, the
Ministers are hard to deal. Those who take so
great office as the Government of the first of
nations have, to use the words of Lord BACON'
" No easy task ; but that is ever for the good of
tie public." How Lord DERBY is to carry out in
detail his declaration as to demagoguism a little
time will show; and whatever may be said of the
next election and the questions involved, those
questions, in our humble judgment, will qe some-
thing much higher than Protection or Non-protec-
tion. They will be evidently those of " order,"—
word that whatever it may mean in continental
politics, is assuming an all-important significance
in England.

HURRAH FOR FREE TRAM,: !—An adjourned meeting
of the Freetraders of Liverpool was held on Tuesday last,
at the office of the Financial Reform Association. The
press was refused admission. The meeting, if not respect-
able, was at ell events select. There were taco gentlemen
present ! !

WARD MEETINGS LAST NlGHT.—Meetings of the
committees in Everton, and other wards, were held last
night, for the purpose of making proper arrangements
for submitting the Conservative requisition to the whole
of the electors for their signature, and for making other
provisions for the successful conducting of the election.