The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-12-27 00:00:00

11, into a state of hopeless and incurable decay, and
made manifest to the world, that it is as impassible to
construct out of them a Government in which the

people shall place confidence, as to build a line-of-
battle ship of wooden shavings. It was a matter of
the greatest moment to the Conservatives that a period
of misrule should be granted to their political oppo-
nents, in order that their unfitness for the high office
of Ministers of the Crown might be fully demonstrated.
They have had rope enough given them, and they have
hanged themselves.
Had the party who opposed, the particular Reform
Bill' brought in by Lord Grey succeeded in establish-
ing themselves in power soon after the passing of that
measure, and retained it until the present moment,—
although much evil would doubtless have been pre-
vented, and the state of the country just now have
been very different from what it is, with rebellion at
home and in our colonies, and a general feeling of
distrust pervading and paralysing the whole world of
commerce, with seditious libels at a premium, and the
antagonist forces of Popery and Dissent united to over-

throw the Established Church,—yet we yiestion if
such lasting benefit would have been conferred upon
the nation as has been by an exhibition of the career
which those must run who clothe themselves in the
tattered garments of Whiggery. Truly may they say
with Jaques, " Motley 's the only wear ;" so patched
and piebald is the drapery with which they vainly
strive to hide their nakedness from the eyes of their
fellow-countrymen.

Had the Whigs 'during the last few years been in
opposition, their cuckoo-cries would have deceived
y. 'They would have declaimed against Patronage
ey would have eulogised Economy—have de-
nounced Jobbing—and, so far as noisy clamour may
be taken as the test of sincerity, have proved them-
selves incorruptible Patriots. They would have spoken
of the people with as much melting tenderness as
Robespierre did of his future victims, when he talked
at the Tribune of le paurre peuple ; and men might
have fancied still, that power in the hands of the
Whigs would be the advent of a political millennium.
Such might have been the case with these impostors
so long as they were untried : now for the reality, after
ten years' experience of their sway. The men who
condemned Patronage in a Tory Government have
rested upon Patronage, of the most flagrant kind, as
the great support and mainstay of their power. Every
office in every department has been given away to
political partizans, relations, creatures, dependants,
whose sole claim, in many instances, has been a willing
subservience to any commands the dispensers of these
favours have laid upon them. Even the Bench has
been made the reward of services in the House of
Commons, although the gravest reasons existed why
the choice should have fallen anywhere rather than
where it did. As to Jobbing, let any man for a mo-
ment task his memory and recollect a few of the mul-

titudinous Commissions issued during the last few
years by the Whigs, in which their hungry satellites
have been placed, to sponge out of the public the
money which they ought to have earned by honest
industry in some reputable profession. To the lower
orders of the community, whom they flattered with
fulsome adulation, and of whom they spoke as intelli-
gent, enlightened, self-denying philosophers, they have
given London constables and the halter, and have
withdrawn whole regiments from Ireland to overawe
and chastise the fellow-labourers of those " men of
Birmingham who carried the Reform Bill." Their
Economy consists in spending thousands in remedying
an abuse which costs only hundreds, and in crippling
the right arm of Britain—her glorious Navy, in order
that their official in the House of Commons may boast
of the retrenchment which has been effected when the
Estimates are discussed. They have revealed, by acts
as unequivocal as the blows of an assassin, their dislike
and fear of the Establishment, and have thoroughly
disgusted the Protestant portion of the empire, which
still forms the overwhelming majority of the nation.
They have promulgated the most unconstitutional
doctrines as to the right of the Crown to retain a
back-stairs influence, and have sheltered themselves in
the drawing-room of a Queen from the indignation
of a people of whose representatives, they themselves
openly declared, they no longer possessed the
.confi-
dence.

We think, therefore, that the time has now come
when..the lneasure ,of their iniquity is, full. an 4 • there
remains no chance of their being allowed again to
cajole and betray any section of their fellow-country-
men. They never can be trusted with power again,
and men of liberal views and moderate opinions will
look to the Conservatives as the only party in the
State which can bring this country out of the crisis in
valich she has been struggling. No sooner is Sir
Robert Peel Prime Minister, than such a force will
rally round the Conservative standard, as will secure
to him and his colleagues such a period of power, as
will enable them to work out those real reforms of
which he has been always the steady and consistent
advocate ; but above all, which will give time for pub-
lic opinion to assume a more healthy tone, and allow
the feverish effervescence of party strife to subside into
a state in which something like comprehensive plans
of public policy' may be brought forward and carried.
With such a force as Sir Robert Peel can depend on
for support, and such growing impatience to cast off
for ever the incubus of a Whig-Radical Ministry, he
need no longer hesitate or pause. We would wish in
everything to shew deference to the private feelings of
her Majesty; but this is a case in which the imperious
call of public duty ought to, and must, supersede every
other consideration. It will no doubt be very painful
to her to change those Ministers who have so com-
pletely possessed themselves of the Royal ear, and made
themselves as it were part and parcel of her domestic,
household ; but how long are we to endure this state
of things ? If the individual wishes of one person—
even though that person be the most exalted in the
realm—are to countervail and outweigh those of a vast
majority in the nation, on a matter of such vital import
as great questions of State policy, then the monarchy
of England is a despotism, and we need no longer go
through the farce of sending Members to Parliament,
who are powerless if in opposition to the Court.
We firmly believe that the period of action has ar-
rived, and that the country loudly calls upon Sir Robt.
Peel and the Duke of Wellington to assume the Go-
vernment into their own hands. It will be a fatal error
too long to disappoint expectations, and dissatisfy the
thousands who are already exclaiming, in disgust
at the policy pursued by the Melbourne Cabinet,
" Quousque tandem abutere patientid nostril ?" When
the Conservatives are once in power, her Majesty will
soon be undeceived. She will find how false have
been the calumnies of the Whigs, and will ere long
discover, as both her Royal predecessors did before
they died, that their doctrines are mischievous to the
people, and, in their scope and tendency, subversive of
the monarchy itself. ,
2 •

• If the propriety of the old adage, that when rogues
quarrel honest men get their own, were a matter of
dispute, the present state of the dominant party in our
Town Council would set the matter at rest for ever.
The disgraceful behaviour of Mr. Councillor Rathbone
to the Town-clerk, on Saturday, was only wanting to
complete the measure of Whig iniquity in that Coun-
cil, and to seal the doom of the Radical party in this
town (as we fervently hope) for ever. The farce is now
over, and the people of Liverpool have an excellent
opportunity, which we are confident they will not over-
look, of appreciating the motives and principles of a
body of individuals, who delight to style themselves,
lucus a non lucendo, Reformers. So long as the ad-
vice and decisions of their own Town-clerk were in

accordance with their wishes, no honour was too great,
no praises too loud, for him ; but no sooner did that
legal functionary, in the honest performance of his
duty, regardless of winks, hints, and every other de-
scription of artifice, venture to cross their path, than
they are at no pains to conceal the vexation which such
upright and evidently unexpected conduct has occa-
sioned them, but take, as our last publication's report
can amply testify, every opportunity which offers itself
to heap up insult upon insult upon a man, who, though
immeasurably their superior in talent, worth, and every
attribute of a gentleman, they know to be prevented,
by the position in which he is placed, from retaliating
upon them. It is thus that the party invariably act :
whilst an individual is content to participate in their
dirty tricks, he is everything that is good and virtu-
ous ;; but the moment he dares to leave their pale and
think for himself, he at once ceases to possess such
noble attributes, and becomes a degraded and dishonest