The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-10 00:00:00

e— •
Tuesday, and will speak to the Council of the League
about the arrangement. [The terms of payment] .
. . . All are fully sensible of the value of your novel
labours in the cause. One word of advice —do not let any
animus in favour of •the League or manufacturers appear
in your writings—[secretiveness again]—especially the
letters in the Chronicle, which I know attract a good
deal of notice. . . .
"` In the last Number One there is a letter from a
farmer, going for total repeal on the ground that he can-
not fatten cattle to compete with foreigners, unless he
gets the raw material cheap. Can't you insinuate a short
letter into Number One, which is read by the farmers ?
But you must not let your signature identify you—[se2re-
tiveness again] ;—" Peter Robins" and "Reuben" are
both palpable nouns de guerre. Sign, a Westmoreland
or Leicester Farmer. I shall want you to write a good
address from the League to the farmers of the kingdom.
It must be well done. I have some suggestions to
make which I will send to you when I have been able to
refer to some facts.—l remain yours truly,

"` A. Somerville, Esq.' irg "
"I did* not write as a Westmoreland' or ' Leicester
Farmer.' In at first calling myself 'One who has
Whistled at the Plough,' I was described truly. Other
signatures used by me were only for private identification,
not to misrepresent myself as a farmer, which I was not.
-" Mr. Bright had the same degrading opinion of the
press as Mr. Cobden. He it was, if the rumours in League
circles did not belie him, that so fatally operated on the
Warwickshire paper, as to extinguish it in a fortnight.
I Indeed, one of his brothers, in giving me particulars of
his career in 1846, confirmed this delicate liitle rumour.
Subsequently, in a conversation with Mr. Bright himself,
it was alluded to, when he observed that the less I said
about it the better. He applied to me, 184.3-'4, as Mr.
Cobden did, to write letters as a farmer of a certain loca-
-1 lity. He hinted at having operated on one or more agri-
-1 cultural papers circulating in Durham, North Yorkshire,
and Northumberland. I adhered to my rule not to write
' as that which I was not ; and not, by professing to be
Tory and half-and-half Protectionist, to " insinuate," as
Mr. Cobden phrased it, letters into Protectionist journals.
Mr. Bright said, if I wrote certain articles and gave them
to him, I need not know nor care what became of them.
He got them in private from my own hand. I knew no
more until I saw them in North country papers, signed,
A Farmer who Sells his Corn at Newcastle. From
these agricultural papers they were reprinted by the
League as genuine farmer's letters, and circulated uni-
versally as such !"
Much additional evidence of a similar kind, and refer-
ring to similar transactions, is to be met with in different
portions of the book ; but enough, we think, will be found
in the two instances quoted, to warrant the charge of dis-
honesty brought against the men, and the means through
whose agency the abolition of the corn-laws was brought
about.

In this racy pamphlet the curious reader will likewise
find much interesting matter, relative to the organisation
and working of another league,—we mean the Peace So-
ciety, with the sayings and doings of which, it appears,
poor SOMERVILLE has also been made acquainted, in a
spirit the reverse of dove-like. To many the publication
will afford another source of interest in the enlightenment
it sheds around the means by which the unadorned elo-
quence of Mr. COBDEN is prepared and manufactured, we
pretend not to say at whose expense. If Mr. SOMERVILLE,
however, is to be credited, the expenditure of either time
or pelf pertaining to th(honourable member for the West
Riding is neither extensive nor oppressive; particularly if
private individuals or quasi public institutions can be
made to furnish the particulars. We had, indeed,
some intention of going more into detail on this branch
of the subject, as that is illustrated in the book before, us ;
but the much more important matter of public demorali-
sation, as that has been deliberately charged by the open
accusation referred to, has so completely occupied our
space as to prevent it.
In that agitation which ended in the abrogation of the
corn laws, and which, managed through the instrumen-
tality we here see exposed, became a species of urban
delirium, many an individual was induced to contribute
largely of his means in support of what he was taught to
look on as a great national benefit. How few of all those
honest dupes were aware of the base and hypocritical
uses to which their contributions were applied ! How
much more narrowed still would have been the circle of
contributors to that ill-gotten fund, if wilful and malig-
nant falsehood, gross dissimulation, concocted cheating,
and planned deceit had been among its avowed instru-
ments of success ! We can well remember the yell of
triumph with which the existence of the league was de-
clared to be " a great fact ;" sincerely do we hope the period
will never arrive when the organ of that note of exultation

shall be proved to have been cognizant of the existence of
so unprincipled a system of political seduction as that
proclaimed and all but demonstrated in the " Colidenic
policy." Up to the period of that inglorious strife of
cunning and duplicity against honest conviction—preju-
dice if you will—the agitation of British politics had
been a manly, an open, an ingenuous contest. The field of
its engagement had been an arena in which-:

" Minds combat minds, repelling and repelled,"

and it has been reserved for our own day, and for those
who, in the affected purity of their religious zeal, would
overthrow our altars ; who, in the fervour of their political
liberalism, would annihilate our constitution and degrade
our monarchy, to achieve one object of their ambition

through means at the use of which a felon would blush—
to secure a chance of selfish aggrandisement, by pursuing
a course which bold ruffianism would feel ashamed to own.

THE SNOW STORM.

FOR a considerable time past we have had indications of
the approach of severe winter weather ; and so long since
as the beginning of the week before last a smart frost set
in, which continued for several days ; the morning of Tues-
day, the 27th ult., being ushered in by a considerable fall
of snow, and that, at this season of the year, unusual
phenomenon of a very loud peal of thunder, accompanied
by a brilliant flash of lightning. The frost, on that occa-
sion, though sharp, was not of unusual severity, and on
Thursday, the 29th ult., it gave way -to a partial thaw,
succeeded, however, the same night, by a frost of much
greater intensity than the preceding, which continued
fluctuating till Sunday morning, when a very severe frost
set in. After night-fall of that day, snow began to descend,
and before morning the ground was covered to a consider-
able depth ; from this period up to the end of the week,
the frost was intense; the extreme limit of cold being
reached betweeen Monday night and Tuesday morning,
when the thermometer indicated a temperature of 20'1,
that being lower than has been marked in Liverpool at
any period within the last eight years. During the night
of Tuesday snow again fell heavily, and at dawn the ground
displayed a white coating six inches thicker than that
it wore at sun-down on the previous day. On the after-
noon of Wednesday, at a little before dark, snow com-
menced descending, and continued to fall without inter-
mission for many hours, under the influence of a strong
easterly wind, drifted in many of the streets to a great
depth, and, on Thursday morning, the ordinary street
traffic was maintained with much inconvenience and no
small amount of difficulty. From that time until Satur-
day morning, no more snow fell, or, at all events, what did
fall was of very trifling amount ; but after several chop-
pings and changings of the wind during the course of
Thursday and Friday, thaw set in on Saturday morning,
accompanied by a south-easterly breeze, and a tempera-
ture, which, speedily converting the surface of the snow
into an uncomfortably pulpy mass, rendered the chief
thoroughfares almost impracticable to the ordinary con-
veyances ; and which, but for the prompt and judicious
measures adopted by the authorities, would have rendered
pedestrian progress almost an impossibility.
While great inconvenience was experienced in con-
ducting the local traffic of the town, on account of the
snowy impediments which the streets presented, a source
of still greater anxiety displayed itself in the threatened
freezing of the Mersey,—a continuous coat of ice, of no
inconsiderable thickness, stretching from the north towards
the south shore,—the stream being studded by masses of
floating ice, thickly covered with snow ; and a still
increasing intensity of frosty influence being manifested
in the frozen canals and other still waters of the neigh-
bourhood. The street traffic, more particularly in the
busy vicinity :of the docks, was frequently brought to a
stand-still, from the accumulations of snow, 'notwith-
standing the very general employment of double teams.
The various omnibuses, in defiance of extra horsing, had
great difficulty in maintaining even an approximation to
regularity in their trips, and_most of the cabs and cars
were forced to employ extra horses.

By far the greatest source of annoyance and loss,
however, was found to result from the entire stoppage of
intercourse with the metropolis, and, indeed, with all
distant parts of the kingdom, whether by rail or horse
conveyance. On Wednesday and Thursday, Liverpool
was entirely without communication by any of the leading
railway lines, and neither letters nor newspapers from
London, or along the lines converging towards it, were
received. Towards the south the snow had drifted into
and filled the cuttings at Crewe, in the neighbourhood of
Stafford, at Tring, and in the vicinity of Warrington.
The line to Derby became impassable on Thursday ; and
a train despatched by the authorities of the North-
western Company, for the purpose of endeavouring to
force its way by the united power of two engines, was
soon stuck fast, and six engines were required to extricate
it from entanglement, and drag it back to the station.
Many accidents occurred to foot-passengers from the
very slippery state of the footpaths, none of them, fortu-
nately, as far as we can learn, occasioning very serious
injuries.

SNOWBALLING ON THE EXCHANGE.

Among the incidents arising out a the snow storm,
not the least interesting or amusing was a mimic
war, suddenly improvised in the flagged lava of the