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

TO CORRESPONDENTS

If the individual who addressed two anonymous letters—one
on the 9th, and another on the 19th instant—to the SECRE-
TARY or THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSOCIATION♦ will favour
us with his name, or that of the party referred to, we shall
feel obliged. Those who bring accusations should be pre-
pared to substantiate them. No man can protect himself

from an anonymous slanderer.
-. We shall be happy, at all times, to receive communications
on subjects of local or general interest ; and if our friends
will be good enough to authenticate the same by their signa-
tures, for our own satisfaction, we shall feel obliged.

Kiberpoot tailbarb+

TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 22, 1852

THE WHIG RADICAL PARTY-ITS
ACHIEVEMENTS AND ALLIANCES.

THERE is an affectation of extreme purity paraded
just now by the Whig Radical party, combined
with an assumption of superior legislative talent,
which is peculiarly disgusting on the part of men
in their present humiliating position. Let us
recal to their recollection what is that position, and
what are the achievements upon which they base
their claim to the confidence of the liberal portion
of the British people ! The Government of Earl
GREY came into office in 1830, with an amount of
popular enthusiasm in their favour, which ought to
have secured to them a long career of power, and
which almost irresistibly invited them to enter upon
the honest carrying out of those measures which
they had so frequently promised whilst sitting
under " the cold shade" of opposition. They were
called upon by the voice of large masses throughout
the country to undeitake the reform of the repre-
sentative system ; and the task was at length
achieved. But the narrow views of mere party
interest were permitted by them to deform that
important measure. The control of the great Whig
houses over certain rotten pocket boroughs was
studiously retained, whilst the Conservative party

were stripped of all control and territorial influence.
Secured in power by that measure, and when a
thoroughly independent course was before them,
they forfeited in a brief space of time the confidence
of the honest and manly portion of their followers;
and sunk into a miserable dependence for office,
without power, upon an Irish Romanist faction, led
on by that dishonest demagogue, DANIEL O'Cox-

For a few sessions they existed only by a
resort to petty tricks and unmitigated factiousness ;
and at length succumbed, unpitied and despised,
before the conservative phalanx which had arrayed
itself under the able leadership of Sir ROBERT
PEEL.

NELL

To that statesman and his supporters it is that
the country owes all that is valuable of that change
in our financial and commercial policy, whose
beneficial results form the theme of most of the
present boastful harangues of Whig-Radicalism.
That party had itself achieved nothing beyond a few
petty tinkering measures, based upon no intelligible
principle, and leading to no perceptible advantages.
They had accumulated in a few years a deficiency of
revenue, amounting to the large sum of twelve mil-
lions and a half sterling, without having earned
the gratitude of a single human being for taxation
remitted. This incubus upon the national pros-
perity had to be removed by their successors, who
in addition set about, and accomplished, a thorough
revision of the long catalogue of import duties, 800
in number, which form the national tariff. Relieved
as if by the band of magic,the commercial and indus-
trial energies of the country immediately expanded
themselves ; and in the course of three or four
years produced a condition of prosperity, and of
active enterprize, which had never before been wit-
nessed throughout Great Britain. Vast works of
public usefulness were projected, and were being
carried into execution. Railways were commenced,

opening out the resources of our great mineral dis-
tricts, and connecting our leading marts of com-
merce and industry with each other, and with the
metropolis. And whilst all this was going on,
what was the course of Lord JOHN RUSSELL, and
the small creatures of faction who comprised his
uninfluential followers in the House of Commons ?
They were carping, in the pettiest spirit, at a policy
too great for their limited comprehensions ; they
were courting the alliance of democracy in the
manufacturing districts, and doing their utmost, by
a shameless pandering to the Romanist faction in
Ireland, to render the Government of that country
a source of distraction and difficulty to the Conser-
vative leader. Such was the dishonest and harms-
sing course of a faction which now impudently
arrogates to itself the credit of the very measures
which it so wantonly obstructed.

We pass over the history of that measure—the
repeal of the Corn-laws—consequent upon the pass-
ing of which Sir ROBERT PEEL lost the confi-
dence of the great party which he had so long led,
and was driven to retire from office. The party of
Lord JOHN RUSSELL can assuredly claim no
important sh are in the enunciation of that measure,
for the adhesion to it by his Lordship, given in his
celebrated London letter, was only the paltry
manoeuvre of a small pretender to statesmanship,
afraid of being left behind in the march of his party
to place and pay. It was an imploring cry of—
" take me with you !" The Peelite party—the
CARDWELLS, LINcoLNs, and the rest of that
body of inflated soap-bubbles—never dared to
dream of such a measure until their leader gave the
word to "wheel about ?" Like well-bred spaniels,
they obeyed ; and turned to worship RICHARD
COBDEN and JOHN BRIGIIT, the new planets
which had risen in the political Sky. They would
have turned Mahommedans at the same bidding.
Once more the 11' hig-Radicals assumed the reins
of power, strengthened by the split which had
been caused in the ranks of the Conservative
party. The repeal of the sugar duties, by which
the West India colonies were plunged into ruin,
was their first measure. The next was the entire
abrogation of the Navigation Laws. In both these
instances the party demonstrated practically their
inability to discover any middle course between a
wise modification of laws affecting any particular
interest, and measures tending to its entire confis-
cation. The rest of their career, up to the opening
of the present session, was one long series of shuf-
fling and truckling, occasionally diversified by a
little bullying and impertinence. By their Irish
policy they contrived to earn the bitter hatred of
the Roman Catholic population and the contempt
of the entire body of Protestants. Their adminis-
tration of the colonies was at once exasperating and
blundering. In the midst of the monetary crisis of
1847, the imbecility of their CHANCELLOR OF THE
EXCHEQUER provoked the disgust of all the intelli-
gent commercial classes. They truckled to demo-
cracy, until, to appease its clamourings, they were
driven to promise to remodel our representative
system: and their attempted fulfilment of the

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