The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-06-14 00:00:00

so refined in their notions, that they carried their cane-
bills wrapped up in their handkerchiefs, and were
ashamed of carrying their hoes visibly !

We have been favoured with copies of the St. John's
(N. B.) Weekly Chronicle to the 26th of April. They
contain very little news that has not begin anticipated
by the late arrivals from New York. This journal
complains very bitterly of the conduct of Governor
Fairfield, in reference to the disputed territory. It
states that the inhabitants of New Brunswick have
been completely "out-jockied "in the matter. Gov.
Fairfield having taken the country south of St. John
under his protection, the Chronicle proceeds to make
the following apposite remarks :—" In this stage of the
business, it has occurred to us to put a question to the
advisers of the governor in this affair. Suppose per-
sons are detected in trespassing on the Aroostic, or,
being detected, should resist the authorities attempting
to stop them, and blood should flow, who is to punish
them ? Will they be allowed to be taken to the State
of Maine, and tried by a foreign court ? Or can they
be convicted in New Brunswick, when the territory
on which the crime was committed has been partially
ceded to that foreign power ? Here is a bone for the
lawyers. We put this question that it may be duly
considered in time, for we apprehend there may be
some case in point before long."

We have received copies of the Canton Register and
Canton General Price Current to the 12th of February,
inclusive, They contain no news of importance, if we
may except a magniloquent decree, commanding the
foreigners to block up their back doors. The preven-
tion of smuggling is assigned as the reason for this
extraordinary step. Instant obedience was commanded
or the consequences, in the usual inflated style of the
Chinese authorities, would be very serious.

Shortly before Easter we called the attention of our
readers to new symptoms which had already manifested
themselves in the diseased constitution of the sinking
ministry. The ravages which had been made out-
wardly, had long been evident to all the world : but it
then for the first time began to transpire that the seat
of the disorder was in the very inward framework of
the wretched system, and the fatal canker was gnawing
at the heart's core. Conservative England had aroused
herself from her lethargy—election after election had
withdrawn one and another frail support of hope—new
enmities had been contracted in every quarter—fresh
sources of despair had grown up in every fresh minis-
terial proposal. But whatever prospects far-seeing men
may have entertained at an earlier period, the proximate
cause of cabinet dissolution was Only then beginning to
transpire,—the internal dissension 6f its members among
themselves. Previously to that time the history of the
Lichfield House intrigue had been one dull record o
shameful and abandoned profligacy, varied only by
new instances from time to time recurring of barefaced
falsehood and bold unblushing fraud. It was univer-
sally known that a particular personage, by Mr. Buller
called Scipio Africanus, and by ordinary men ycleped
" the Bear," from his notoriety in the, city of London,
had been measure-broker to the united reformers. This
gentleman's back parlour was the place in which the
mischievous scheme was hatched at first, and the place
no doubt where every succeeding difference was satis-
factorily and easily adjusted. It was his business to
find out "who would vote for what," and thus he has
been (if any individual has) the virtual prime minister
of England. Between the whig whips on the one side
and the extortionate barathrurns of democracy on the
other, he was the convenient go-between of countless
unprincipled contrivances. There was no sickness for
which he had not a specific : the whig cabal sustained
no bruize for which his art could not provide a balm.
Like the cave of Trophonius, difficult questions were
referred to his oracular solution, and doubtful answers
were returned in sage vagueness and worldly wisdom.
The confessor of the allied and rival factions, he had in
his confessional a convenient orifice at either ear, and
heard the tale of both. Possessed of every secret, he
knew well when and where every reforming shoe was
pinching, and could always advise precisely the requi-
site amount of whig concession. He held the measures
and the scale of whiggerv, and as he was destitute of
every other attribute of justice, so he laboured not
under the inconvenience of her blindness. And as the
wants of the respective parties were proportioned to
their chances of success, and no greedy expectant was
fool enough to demand more than he could reason-
ably look forward to obtaining, (on the principle which
our readers will remember we have dwelt upon so fre-
quently in our prognostications of whig-radical union
and disunion, viz. the not killing the golden goose,) and
as promises were plentiful, and jobs by no means scarce,
so this internuncio got on tolerably well with his doubt-
ful duties, and caulked to admiration the leaky and
sinking craft. But meanwhile there was a party look-
ing on at this game, who every now and then obtained
a hand in it himself, and must sooner or later have the
whole issue in his power. We mean that mysterious per.
sonage the people of England. Slow in his apprehen-
sions, and not easily stripped of an ancient prejudice, he
had rashly given the confederates some credit for honesty
and sincerity of purpose. But he had watched every
turn of the game with calm attention, and every suc-
ceeding disappearance of the pea had excited his atten-
tion, and at length aroused his suspicion. His mind
was awakened, his temper began also to be excited,
and when the damning truth became at length clear
and almost confessed, his spirit gave most unequivocal
signs of a disposition to take the law into his own
hands. In fact it became quite apparent that the first
dissolution of parliament must annihilate the unrighteous
confederacy at once. In this posture of affairs, some
decisive step must needs be taken : the lost power
must be regained : a new partnership must be set up
under happier auspices and a different name. At first
the old hand-to-mouth policy was resorted to, and since
colonial difficulties assumed at the opening of the par-
liament, the most perplexing aspect on the ministerial
horizon,—the colonial minister was sacrificed to ap-
pease the more clamorous faction,—and faith and
Lord Glenelg were thrown together to the winds of
heaven. But the Palinurus of the colonies, like his
prototype in the iEnead, pushed overboard by Som-
nus, dragged away the helm with him : for the piti-
ful stratagem recoiled upon its authors, and entailed
upon the cabinet far greater perplexities than those
from which they hoped to he released. The active,
selfish, and aspiring temper of Lord Normanby was a
new element for the whigs of confusion worse con-
founded. He presented to the radicals a more conve-
nient rallying point than they possessed in the cabinet
before. True. But how has this resulted in its effect
upon the ministerial game ? Instead of conciliating
their more zealous support, it has simply excited to a
dangerous degree their ambitious aspirations. The
radicals now are at a white heat. Knowing that there
are two sections of the cabinet, irreconcileably divided
from each other, and each guided by its own premier
or expectant premier, the philosophers are more intent
upon furthering their own immediate views within the
cabinet than upon strengthening the whole combined
coalition in the conflicts of parliament. So that if
Lord and Lady Normanby have only spirit in their
reckless ambition to put the game to hazard, and if
Lord John Russell mean to preserve one solitary shred
of his patrician garb, one vestige of honesty and ho-
nour, the rottenness from within must work destruc-
tion, and the miserable patchwork fall to pieces of its
own incohesion. Thus is it that

" Vaulting ambition cloth o'erleap itself,
And fall on t' other side."
This is the current of affairs by which the conservative
leaders have sat watching silently : and thinking the
quarrel " a very pretty quarrel as it stands," they have
not interfered between the combatants, nor chosen by
a rash hostility to reunite in the common bond of their
common enmity the discordant sections of the despe-
rate faction. This is the Fabian policy. The rumours
which have been afloat, and which we have been ena-
bled to appreciate with tolerable correctness, and to lay
frotn time to time before our readers, when they have
assumed anything of a fixed and palpable shape, and
have been deserving of belief or notice, have impressed
us with the strongest conviction of its wisdom. In
our humple sphere we have laboured to recommend
individual energy to every good soldier of the state at
his own proper post, united with a firm reliance in the
wisdom of our able leaders, and a calm patience in the
prosperous progress of our common cause.
We do not believe that Lord Melbourne, with all
his insouciance, is indifferent to the course which events
have taken. He is a born.aristoerat, and, without

accusing him of principles, we believe him to be en-
dowed with certain propensions or tastes. To men
like Lord Melbourne taste supplies the place that
principle ought to fill. We are much mistaken, there-
fore, if the premier have not earned at the radical hand
his flattering appellation of a " crotchetty creature";
and we incline to the much-bruited opinion that he
has again taken office chiefly to save the Queen from
the more desperate counsels of men still more aban-
doned than himself. Still he has no answer to the
question we have so often asked,----" Why, if his re-
signation was made bond fide, did not he explain to
the Queen the misunderstanding which he has acknow-
ledged to have been the only source of difficulty ?"
Party ties—party engagements—bonds given to more
daring men which might not be broken—alliances with
desperadoes that could not be unravelled—pledges to
profligates that could not be forfeited. His taskmas-
ters gave him no alternative. He must take office, or
leave it for a man who would do their work better
than himself. He obeyed. He bent his neck down
to the yoke. Judicial blindness has been his condign
Punishment. He now threatens to pull down the
unholy edifice of the Philistines, and doubtless himself
will perish in the ruins. The situation of Lord Mel-
bourne is little to be envied. Some future bard may
write his history ;

" There rose no day, there rolled no hour,
Of pleasure unembittered ;
' And not a trapping decked his power,
That galled not while it glittered."
We shall recur to this subject on Tuesday.

" Cunning," says Bacon, "is left-handed wisdom;"
and if so, never was a more sinister line of policy pur-
sued by a set of men than that exhibited by the pre-
sent government. Never did a hunted hare turn and
double from her pursuers more pitiably than do these
crest-fallen ministers attempt, by shifts, and tricks,
and juggles, to escape from the difficulties of a position
which greedy avarice has impelled them to occupy, and
conscious imbecility warns them to abandon. Truly
the conservatives may, if maliciously inclined, enjoy
the most notable spectacle yet seen, of men who have
become

"A pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she pleases."
th no object in common but the salary of office,
with no principle in common but the selfish love of
patronage and power, the ministry, bankrupt in cha-
racter, ridiculed by all parties, and trusted by none, is
content to become the laughing-stock of the country,
and show us the depths of degradation into which
factious politics will induce men in office to descend,
who, if analogous circumstances occurred in the history,
of their private life, would feel that they had forfeited
for ever the character of gentlemen. Truckling, trim-
ming mystifications and deceit are the staple materials
out of which the inglorious edifice of modern whig-
radical politics is constructed. Instead of a manly
avowal of opinion on important questions, and a de-
termination to stand or fall by the success of their mea-
sures, Lord Melbourne and his colleagues are content
to hold office by the tenure of mean compromise and
compliance with men, who, however deplorably wrong
we may think their views and principles, have yet
boldness enough to profess them openly, and who take
vigorous steps to reduce them into practice. Since the
moment when the friendship of the Sovereign for two
ladies of her court brought back to her service, and re-
instated in the most important situations which men in
this country can occupy, those who, in their place in
parliament, openly confessed that they had not the
confidence of that body in either house ; we have
looked in vain for anything like an intelligible decla-
ration of the policy which ministers intend to pursue.
Lord Winchilsea made an attempt, for which the na-
tion owes him thanks, to extort from the Premier some-
thing like an explanation of his future course. But
this attempt, as might have been predicted, failed.
Honesty and candour are terms not found in the
vocabulary which Lord Melbourne, in his official
capacity, makes use of. To be sure it was due to na-
tional anxiety to put forth some kind of manifesto as
to the principles which were in future to guide her
Majesty's government; it was highly proper and
honourable that ministers should choose and assert
their own opinions in matters of state policy, and leave
the question of support or desertion to be settled by
the wrangling malcontents who now domineer over and
dictate to the puppets in office, in a tone of insult
hitherto unparalleled—but then this would have been
also highly inexpedient—it would, by making their
principles intelligible have precipitated their downfall,
and they must either have bid defiance to their radical,
or disgusted their whig allies. So what was to be
done ? Here was a dilemma of no pleasant nature.
If on the one hand, said these high-spirited ministers,
we declare ourselves opposed to the wild schemes and
desperate experiments which papist, schismatic, demo-
crat, and infidel unite in portentous league to force
upon the country ; if we show the nausea we really
feel at the nostrums which issue from the shop of
Grote, Molesworth, Leader, O'Connell and Co.; if we
give any hint that we will defend the church from the
calumnies and lies with which she is vilified, and as
members of her communion show any regard for her
interests, then will there be open mutiny in the camp,
and with a howl of execration the radicals will leave us
to our fate. If on the other we profess too great wil-
lingness further to tamper with the constitution and
persist in our attempt to divorce education from re-
ligion, we shall instantly convert some of our dubious
friends into conservative foes, and become either utterly
extinct as a party, or march in the ranks of the radi-
cals, despised and dishonoured volunteers in the cause
of sedition and anarchy. But by throwing a veil over
our policy, by making use of pompous phraseology and
amphibological expressions which are capable of being
interpreted in more ways than one, and by committing
ourselves to no one principle or measure, we may
ward off for a while the evil day—we may pocket an-
other quarter's salary—we may possibly let loose upon
the country another swarm of well-paid commission-
ers. This seemed an admirable expedient. It was
very cunning and very dishonourable ; but the con-
sciences of whig-radicals are not squeamish. Upon
this hint Lord Melbourne spoke, and dealt out his un-
meaning phrases, which, interpretated in mitiori sense,
by the Duke of Wellington, drew from him some ad-
vice and doubtful encomium which, if we mistake not,
will yet be found of little service to the interests of the
whig-radical faction ; for as soon as the moderate sec-
tion of the cabinet begins to take the lead, and gives
its tone to the measures of government, from that mo-
ment will the ill-repressed hatred and contempt of the
democratic radicals burst forth, and not even their
rabid hostility to a conservative ministry will be able,
as hitherto it has so often done, to prevent them from
destroying the creatures whom they have placed and
still retain in office. The policy of the wrinkled Lo-
thario at the head of the government is to dine as long
as possible at the table of his royal mistress, and con-
tinue to be regarded there as a most agreeable bon-vi-
vant, while he deceives his grumbling supporters by
vague professions and worthless promises, and allows
the members of his cabinet to throw "a tub to the
whale" every now and then, according as the appetite
and taste of each may lead him to the democratic side
of a question, without committing the ministry as a
whole. This is the true secret of open questions—the
surest symptom of party weakness, and embodying a
principle the most destructive of anything like efficient
government. What do Lord Melbourne and Lord
John Russell care about the fate of measures or
questions so long as they remain in power ? Have they
not abandoned measure after measure, after eulogising
the excellence and enforcing the necessity of each ?
We should really like to see, in round numbers, a list
of the important questions of state policy brought for-
ward by the present ministers and wrested from them
by the vigilance of their opponents, or voluntarily
thrown aside, from their inherent rottenness, from the
appropriation clause of 1835 to the Canada resolutions
of June 1839.
The expedient, then, of open questions, it seems, is
to be tried ; and, by way of experiment, the ballot
humbug of Mr. Grote is to give the ministry an oppor-
tunity, of propitiating the radicals. We propose, at
another time, to show up the absurdity as well as mis-
chief of this pet crotchet of this well-meaning but most
deluded gentleman. At present we are only concerned
in stating, that there is every reason for believing that,
on the next annual field-day on which turn out the
motley squad of radicals marching under the banner
of the ballot—that is, on the 18th of June instant
(shame that such pernicious quackery zhould occupy