The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-01-19 00:00:00

265550 302100 262100 211801
72900 50150 64400 67501

281300
58800

340100 338150 352250 326500
Total Deliveries „ 267200 288300 287850 259000

Taal Stocksleft t, 72900

50150 64400 67500 41401

Gazette Average,
355.6 d. 398.11 id. 355.10 d. 375.71 d. 495.81 d
31st Dec

We have not heretofore interfered in the controversy
between the ministerial press and certain of our con-
temporaries,. with respect to the indulgences bestowed
by the Colonial Government upon the convicted char-
tists, although we were quite certain that the alleged
favouritism so indignantly and peremptorily denied by
the organs of Government would turn out to be per-
fectly in accordance with facts. The public have now
before them the admission of no less a personage than
John Frost himself that such favouritism has been ex-
ercised. " Williams," writes that worthy ex-magis-
trate, in a letter to his wife, "is a superintendent at
the coal mines, Jones fills a situation at the Juvenile
Establishment, and I am in the office of the Command-
int—that is, the Governor of Port Arthur. lam act-
ng here as a clerk, and hitherto the labour has not

been heavy." * " Our situation is one of comfort
compared with that of many prisoners here—yes, my
dear, and with many well-educated and talented men."
No doubt of it! The cowardly agitator, the fomenter
of rebellion and outrage, we are well aware, is much
more likely to be the object of " liberal" sympathy
than the unfortunate being whose more venial errors
have resulted from the ordinary failings of human na-

; and we have little hesitation in asserting our

conviction that the production of the Colonial Secr
tary's correspondence with the Governor of Port A

thur will prove the latter to have been

thorised in his bestowal of the " comforts!' in questior
upon these quondam allies of the Whig-Radical party

With all due deference to some of our conservat

contemporaries, we cannot but think that had the
treatment of these men been of a harsher nature—had

they been placed on a level with common felons—with

men who have pilfered a silver spoon or picked a
pocket—the head of the Colonial-office would have

manifested a feeling bordering upon ingratitude, and
shovirri an extreme want of regard to. the "fitness of
things." What ! subject to the laborious and degrad-
ing occupations to which " well-educated and talented
men" must submit, who have, perhaps, committed a
vulgar forgery or passed a counterfeit sovereign—a pa-

triot whose only crime was leading some thousands of
his fellow-countrymen to be butchered by the soldiery

at Newport—whose only error was that he agitated for
the charter instead of the reform bill, repeal of the

union, repeal of the corn laws, or any other Of the fa-
voured outcries of Whig-Radicalism ! With what
justice could LordiJohn Russell condemn the Welsh

•
traitors to work in a chain

whilst the Irish trai-

O'Connell, is free to agitz

.te the dismemberment of

the empire, and to thrive and grow fat upon the pro-
&ice of his turbulent mendicancy ? These men did

hut c,:ary a little further than was legal a course of agi-
.

tation which Lord John Russell himself, in an after-
dinner speech, delivered in this good old town, de-
clared -to be justifiable and safe ; and we cannot con-
ceive how his lordship could bear the reflection that for
an "error in degree" they should be so severely dealt

That such is the opinion ihich Frost himself enter-
tains of the kindly feelirigs anti amiable disposition of

the Colonial Secretary is evident from one portion of
his letter, in which he apologises to his wife for not

expressing himself with such freedom as he could have
wished, owing to the circumstance of his correspond-
ence being subject to the usual inspection by the au-
thorities ; and adds, " I am Of opinion that my letters
will he perused by others besides the gentleman who
rules here. I suppose tke Colonial Secretary would be
glad to have a peep at the letters of his old correspond-
ent" ! ! We can picture to ourselves the sensation

which Lord John must have experienced at this allu-
sion on the part of " his -old correspondent" to their
past friendship and brotherhood. .We can imagine the
yearnings of his heart 'when busy memory traced be-

fore the eye of the minister the progress towards ruin
of his betrayed and abandoned tool. Lord John found
this witless and hapless wretch a brawling, speechify-

ing, reform-mad draper, whose mischievous propensi-
ties might have been cured by a ducking at the town