The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-09-13 00:00:00

,c,it.E3T, 13. 18:36.

The declaration of Lord Melbourne, contained in his
last address to the House of Lotds, is'worthy of a few
remarks. "I am convinced," says his lordship, " that
my administration will promote the good of the people,
and I will never resign office until it is taken from my
hands." We have not the precise words before us, but
the substance we cannot far mistake.
There are some animals of a nature so sluggish that
they will neither fight nor fly, but sullenly lie down be-
neath the kicks of their assailants. In the position of
such an animal Lord Melbourne places himself. He re-
' fuses to submit to the superior power which opposes his
administration, and yet will not take those measures of
coercion which his own character and the dignity of his
office alike demand. He is convinced that the country
is with him ; yet he suffers his measures, framed to meet
the wishes of the country, to be negatived, session after
session. Armed with the authority of his Sovereign—
possessing the support of a House of Commons which
professes to represent a majority of the people, he allows,
his government to be baffled, and its proceedings to be
overruled, by a body acting, as himself and his support-
ers openly declare, from factious and dishonest motives.

Now, supposing for a moment the position of Lord
Melbourne to be such as his own vanity leads him to be-
lieve it, what ought to be his conduct as the prime minis-
ter of this great country ? Surely the constitution has
provided a remedy for such a state of things; and, as a
minister, Lord Melbourne is bound to apply it. But
does he so ? No. Can he do so ? No. Baffled and
beaten in his favourite measures, he yet dare not—he
cannot bring into operation any of those great checks
which the constitution has provided against such an emer-
gency. Yet he remains premier !—an humbling—a de-
basing position.

But his lordship errs more widely than this. Not con-
tent to exhibit himself as clinging to a shadow of autho-
rity without the substance, and bearing insult without
the power of retaliation, he is pleased to suppose that
the people of England will tamely lie down by 145 side
in the same posture of submissive infamy ! That people
he asserts are with him—that pruud and jealous race,
who wrested their liberty from the grasp of power when
Europe was in chains, and have maintained, watched over
it, and fought for it, with a restless enthusiasm which no
tyranny could ever tame. The people of England, he
asserts, are with him—submit, like him, to temporize—
to entreat—and to be thwarted by this "faction." They
submit!

No, no, my lord. If that people were with you—if the
cause were really theirs—no power, no faction could
withstand it long. If your measures were such as would
bear the calm examination, and meet with the conscien-
tious support of the people of England—not its mobs—
no branch of the legislature, however noble, however
powerful, could long impede their progress. If the peo-
ple of England—the sound, the virtuous portion of the'
people—felt any real interest in your administration, you
would have little cause to dread the power of any oppo-
sition which could be brought against you. But the case
is very—very different. Linked, band in hand, with the
calumniator of that people—supported by men who are
the scorn of nine-tenths of that people—advocating mea-
sures which break up associations dear to that people—
dear as their most sacred thoughts—how can you- hope
for their sympathies ?—bow dare you ask for their sup-
port ?

But you do none of this; for coward conscience tells
you that your reward would be contempt. You dare
not bring your measures before this people, and appeal to
them by a dissolution. That would be a manly course—
the only course which an English minister ought to
adopt. You choose an opposite course—a mean and cow-
ardly one. You vilify and calumniate, by the mouth of
your hired scribes, that body whose sound principles you
cannot pervert, and whom you dare not coerce, so strong
you know them to be in the hearts of all that is good and
noble in the land. You fan the flame of agitation, and
hazard rebellion in a country whose wretchedness is your
strength. All this mass of pollution you encounter in
the wretched hope of clinging a little longer to an office
whose duties you are confessedly unable to perform.
We leave you to the unenviable infamy of such a pre-
miership.

We could not give any attention to the extraordinary
proceedings of the Leeds dinner until to-day ; but we
really think that the trasestied specimen of threatened
legislation for Ireland exhibited, in what Mr. Wilkins
called " the most illogical of all speeches," of too much
import to be passed over sub silentio by us at this time,
when the good services of the 123 are so much required.
WHIG DINNER AT LEEDS.-Ibe whigs of the West Riding
of Yorkshire, to the extraordinary number of one hundred and
twenty-three, precisely one in every thousand of the population
of Leeds, and about one in every nine thousand of the riding,
have contrived somehow to give to Lord Morpeth a feed, Which
' exhibition came off on Wednesday last, at the Music-hall in
that town, the Worshipful the Mayor of Leeds, George Good-
man, Esq., officiating as grand showman on the occasion, sup-
ported by Edward Baines, Esq., M.P., Daniel Gaskell, Esq.,
M.P., Hen. Sir E. Vavasour, Sir George Strickland, Bart.
M.P., &c. &c.
•
We are indebted to a certain Mercu►ial Journal for our infor-
mation, which circulates amongst the learned whigs in that lo-
cality, and the dinner is only remarkable or worthy of notice
for three small matters—the paucity of the numbers assembled
—the silly speech of the chief secretary for all Ireland, and oh,
shocking!—the constitutional declaration of Sir George Strick-
land, which must verily have proved a poser for the other tchigs.
then and there assembled in mighty cogitation, and have ruffled
some of their curls tremendously.

As their desert, the elite of the West Riding were regaled wits
the following choice specimen of nectarine eloquence, which
puts to the blush all the beautiful and the imaginative in the
Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and throws the sublime of the
mighty Burke into the distant shade !

Lord Morpeth.—" Reposing yourselves under the shelter of
your improved municipal institutions—sharing in the first fruits
(qu.? official) of that system in all possible prosperity and cre-
dit, under such courteous and kindly auspices as those which we
now appreciate, you only feel a redoubled and a generous
anxiety to impart to your fellow-countrymen in Ireland those
advantages and privileges of self-yovernment and of local con-
trol which yourselves acquired, and which you have yourselves
ascertained can be oacicised without confusion, turbulence, or
outrage !"

Well, we have wandered in fairy fields and silent groves—
have soared to the regions of rhetorical fiction—communed
with the sublime and found refreshment in the music of poesy—
but, here we dare not enter,—it remained for the select few who
attended this ever-memorable Leeds dinner to comprehend this
super-human logic and to cheer its delivery ! Commentary
upon such empty twaddle of a politically-distempered brain
would be worse than ridiculous. " Mus.ridiculus sass" is all we
can condescend to apply to it,—excepting that we must inform
his lordship and the elite of Leeds that there exists no analogy
of principle whatever between the provisions of the new Eng-
lish municipal corporations, and those designed for Ireland un-
der the defunct bill brought in by his Majesty's government—a
bill which would have merely made the Irish corporators a
board of popish paviours and scavengers, whose ether and supe-
rior occupation would have been to collect interest for the whit;
ministry and drive away every independent man and every pro-
testant from the exercise of his fair share of borough legisla-
tion. Here we leave Lord Morpeth and his Irish corporaters.
And now, oh ! for Cupidon's smelling bottle!
Sir GEORGE STP,IcKLAND.--"The representatives whom you
have sent will hereafter be placed in some difficulty likewise, as
to how they should give their votes on questions of vast import-
ance; andl think it becoming in me, in older to prevent any
difference between you and myself, distinctly and boldly to
state how my votes will in future be given. It is nut unlikely
that Cie question of a reform in the House Lords will be
brought forward. I think it almost certain that the proposed
reform will be, that the principle of representation shall be ap-
plied to that house. Now, gentlemen, although I may run the
risk of not agreeing with all of you, I shall distinctly state how
my vote will. be given it that question ever should be brought
fAuaitt. In doing this I must revert to first principles—,N

but in Spain we deny that it is the universal will of the people.
It is there, as it is in England, the spirit of a faction, which has
breathed its seductive influence into the lower ranks of the army.
It has there assumed an active, whilt,t, in this country, it is, as
yet, compelled to follow a passive course; yet the motive and
the sought-for end are parallel in both cases.
The Nacional Spanish Journal proposes that a large reward
shall be offered for the discovery of Isturiz and Alcala Galliano,
who have both remained concealed since the assassination of
Quesada, and that the heaviest penalty of the law should be en-
forced against the parties who conceal them, The fate of
Quesada, Isturiz, and Galliano should operate as a warning to
all aspirants for Taub popularity ; the two last are especially the
sons of the revolution, in which they took a leading part, both
in 1812 and 1820: flatterers and patriots when out of power,—
tyrants, when in !

From Bayonne intelligence has been received, that Don
13asillio Garcia (not the famed serjeant of club law) has safely
re-crossed the Ebro, on his return to Don Carlos, with 600 re-
cruits, and a large convoy in money. See our foreign intelli-
gence.