The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-08-06 00:00:00

FRIDAY MORNING, AUGUST 6, 1841

Sir Robert Peel, in his speech at Tamworth, enu-
merated among the circumstances which contributed
to shake the confidence of the people in the ministry,
the fact of their having entered into a compact with
the chief of the Irish Repealers after they had them-
selves denounced his projects in a speech from the
throne. Now the passage in that speech which refers
to the subject is so remarkable, and so well worthy of
being remembered, that we shall take the liberty of
laying it before our readers in this place. They will
recollect that it was drawn up by the Melbourne Ca-
binet, and delivered by his late Majesty William IV.,
at the opening of the session of 1834. His Majesty
says,—

" 1 have seen with feelings of deep regret and indignation
the continuance of attempts to excite the people of Ireland to
demand a repeal of the legislative union. This bond of the
national strength and satety I have declared my fixed and
unalterable resolution, under the blessing of Divine Provi-
dence, to maintain inviolate by all the means in my power.
To the practices which have been used to produce disaffec-
tion in the state, and mutual distrust and animosity between
the people of the two countries, is chiefly to be attributed
the spirit of insubordination which, though for the present
in a great degree controlled by the power of the law, has
been but too perceptible in many instances. The united and
vigorous exertions of the loyal and well-affected in aid of the
Government are imperiously required to put an end to a
system of excitement and violence which is destructive of
the peace of society, an& if successful, must inevitably prove
fatal to the power and safety of the United Kingdom."

This was language suited to the occasion—strong,
explicit, impressive. His Majesty would " maintain
this bond of the national strength and safety [the
union] by all the means in his power"—that is to say,
by all the strength of the empire. The attempt to lead
men in pursuit of the repeal of that great bond, be
denounces as one to produce " disaffection in the
state," and as having produced a "spirit of in-subor-
dination too perceptible in many instances," and he
concludes by calling upon the loyal and well-affected
to aid the government in putting an end to a " system
of excitement and violence destructive to the peace of
society, and possibly fatal to the power and safety of
the united kingdom." The Cabinet who drew up this
speech must have had a pretty strong conviction that
the cry for a repeal of the Union was but another name
for rebellion, and they treated the movement as an ac-
tual overt act of disaffection. For so thinking, and so
acting, they had the sympathy and approbation of all
good men. The nation entirely concurred with them
in their views, and for once in his life the Repealer
stood aghast; he was left quite alone in his infamy,
and his evil practices were for a while put a stop to.
But a base negotiation was afterwards set on foot, and
some of the very men who had advised his denuncia-
tion from the throne, so degraded themselves as to en-
ter into a guilty compact with him, without the re-
'quirement of any pledge or promise, on his part, as
he has himself frequently boasted, that he should
abandon his seditious and treasonable designs in any
shape or degree whatsoever. Anything more infa-
mous, or more disgraceful to ministers of the Crown
than this, was never heard of. It is only astonishing
that men palpably convicted of holding correspondence
with a denounced traitor—voluntarily placing them-
selves in contact with him—and still worse, being un-
der an actual contract of doss alliance with him for
purposes of offence and defence—could possibly sus-
tain themselves in the face of the nation for upwards of
five years afterwards. Such a transaction at any other
time would have hurled the guilty parties to it from
power with a load of disgrace upon their heads suffi-
cient to sink them for ever; but though divulged,
though promulgated, it did not immediately produce
that effect in this case. The ministerial covenanters
had possibly calculated the chances, and found that
whatever amount of stigma the disclosure might cast
upon them, it would yet be insufficient to shake that
usurpation which Ithe compact itself would insure to
them.:
Infamy however great, said they, cannot de-
prive us of our places. Let the people hiss at us ever
so much, the alliance will give us noses which will tell
upon divisions, and noses will secure us the tin, So
the alliance has endured, and the nation has been of-
fended, insulted, and punished for its sins from that
O'Connell ministry.
clay to this with a Whig
y glad that Sir Robert Peel
Now we are exceedingly

le one to refresh our memory upon these
interesting facts, because it gives us additional assu-
rance, though we wanted none, that his policy as mi-
nister, which we soon expect to see him, will be just
antipodal to that of the degraded covenanters. Ire-
land may possibly be his "great difficulty," but we
feel strongly disposed to believe that the difficulty will
not consist in determining how it should be governed,
or how a traitor, denounced even by Whigs, should he
treated by a Conservative ministry.
That traitor, though in compact alliance with her
Majesty's ministers, has never ceased to carry on those
malicious designs for which he was denounced from
the throne in 1834. He has just published what he
calls a Declaration of Grievances and Rights, which is
about as seditious and disloyal a manifesto as could
well be published, and such as, were there a firm Con-
servative government in existence, he would never have
dared to have issued. Under the administration of Sir
R. Peel we should confidently expect that all such do-
ings would instantly be put a stop to.

has been tt

The Declaration is one unbroken tissue of falsehoods
and slanders of the most atrocious description—having
for its object the excitement of hatred to England, and
the concentration of the mind of the people on the
pretended grand remedy for all their grievances—Re-
peal of the Union ; or, in other words, the political
separation of the countries and the dismemberment of
the empire. -We shall make a few random extracts.
Some of the truths which it sets forth are as follow :
" No country in the world ever violated towards any other
country its plighted faith and solemn treaties so often and so
foully as England has done towards Ireland."
" So far from having relaxed in the antipathy to the Irish
people and their hatred of the religion of the Irish nation,
the English people now exhibit more venomous virulence and
acrimony than ever they did in the worst periods of our
history."

" The aristocracy of England, the leaders of the present
hostile movement against Ireland, have employed enormous
masses of their wealth in the most profligate corruption of
the Eitglish constituencies in order to procure the return to
parliament of the inveterate and virulent enemies to Ireland
and to catholicity.—This wicked hostility to Ireland and to
her catholic people is vicious, almost to a pitch of demoniacal
insanity, inasmuch as it is exhibited at a period when the
Irish people, instead of meriting this satanic hostility, are in
reality deserving of the respect and gratitude of the English
aristocracy of wealth and rank.—Under the administration
conducted by Peel and Lord Stanley, it will be imprudent—
and, indeed, utterly unsafe to call out the Irish militia, as
that force must necessarily be constituted in the proportion
of ninety-nine catholics to one of every other religion."
" Foreign powers in dealing with the Peel-Stanley admi-
nistration, will avail themselves of the weakness and wicked-
ness of that administration, occasioned by their misgovern-
ment of Ireland."

Next follows a list of grievances—first, " that Ire-
land has not obtained an equalisation of privileges,
franchises, and rights with the people of England and
Scotland—with a corollary touching the Union. Then
there is the " grand practical grievance that the eccle-
siastical state revenues of the nation are enjoyed by
the church of a small minority." The next " great
and outrageous grievance sustained by the people of
Ireland is, that they are inadequately represented in
parliament. The Irish ought, upon a calculation of
comparative revenue and population, to possess more
than one hundred and seventy representatives. They
have but one hundred and five.." The tenth and last is
the " master grievance, the source of all others to
Ireland—the legislative union—a union brought about
by force, fraud, treachery, corruption, and bloodshed."
We might make our extracts much longer, but we
should tire our readers. The document is altogether
a most daring and flagitious production ; but it is im-
portant as showing that the writer is the same ill-dis-
posed, truculent traitor that he ever was, and that he
comes out of the hands of the Whigs with all their in-
dulgence, feeding, and coaxing, as far as ever from be-
ing well-affected towards British connection and Eng-
lish interests. There is then no more room for com-
promise or conciliation with such a character. A Con-
servative minister must not only keep him at arm's
length, but cut short his career of seditious agitation.
Declaring himself, as he does, an enemy to British
connection, he must be treated as such. There is no
other policy for a Conservative minister to act upon,
whatever difficulty there may be in making it
effectual.

As drowning men will catch at straws, we should
not be surprised if the ministerialists took an omen,
favourable to their still lingering hopes, from the fact
that Sir Robert Peel will not oppose the election of Mr.
Shaw Lefevre as speaker in the new parliament. That
such is the case, we learn from a London morning jour-
nal of Wednesday, which states that the right hon.
the member for Tarnworth had written to Mr. Lefevre,
to apprise him that such was his intention. Here,
then, is a little respite for the Whigs. Their miserable
minority will not be exposed so early as they might
have apprehended, did they judge of others by them-
selves, or conclude, as to the course which the Conser-
vatives would pursue, from what had been their own
when in opposition. Their journals, we do expect,
will immediately begin to crow, and mistranslate the
mild forbearance and patriotic expansion of mind which
has induced the great Conservative leader to acquiesce
in the re-election of the Whig speaker, into an evidence
of fear to try his strength with the mighty men of va-
lour on the ministerial benches. The state of trade,
the prospects of the harvest, our unsettled relations
with America, the war with China, and, above all, the
threatened rebellion with Iretand, they will say, have
frightened him ; he will be in no such haste to grasp
the reigns of power as his more impetuous followers
would have him to be ; you see he is not anxious to
begin the battle; he does not venture to oppose our
speaker. Now, however ridiculous such gasconade
would be, it would not be one whit more so than the
tale of the right hon. baronet's flight to the continent,
and a dozen other equally probable circumstantials of
scandal lately set afloat by the truth-loving organs of
the government. Here, however, they have the advan-
tage of gaining a peg to hang all their suspicions and
inuendoes upon. Motives are easily assigned, and false
ones not so susceptible of disproof, and the lie of the
morning has the greater chance of a prolonged exist-
ence.

We need scarcely observe that, with a working ma-
jority of above eighty members, it is idle to say that
the permission given by the Conservative leader to Mr.
Lefevre to resume his office as speaker, could result
from any doubt of his having it perfectly in his power
to remove him if he deemed it necessary or prudent so
to do. Nor would the ministerialists have had any
right to complain if such a step were adopted. They
had themselves afforded a recent precedent for it, in
the case of Mr. Charles Manners Sutton, now Viscount
Canterbury. In the parliament called by Sir Robert
Peel in 1835, the Whig opposition proposed Mr. Aber-
cromby (now Lord Dunfermline) in opposition to this
gentleman. Mr. Sutton had been speaker nearly eigh-
teen years, and a more able, learned, dignified, and
impartial officer never occupied the presidential chair.
The slightest imputation had never been cast upon any
one of his decisions; he had performed an arduous
duty in arduous times ; and during a long course of

service, had upheld the dignity of the house, and added
lustre to its proceedings by his graceful eloquence, and
grave, yet courteous, deportment on all occasions.
But the right hon. gentleman was a Tory in principle,
and avowedly Anti-Popish in his sentiments, and this
was sufficient to render him obnoxious to the Papists
and radicals, who just at this time had rushed into the
house, bent upon a scramble. That their factious pro-
ceeding would saddle the country with an unnecessary
and uncalled-for expense—the retiring speaker being
entitled to a pension of £4OOO per annum, was an ac-
cident for which they cared nothing; and, accordingly,
they went through with it, and carried the election of
Mr. Abercromby against Mr. Sutton by a majority of
ten. Mr. Lefevre was elected on Mr. Abercromby's
m
1839, in opposition to Mr. Goul-
bu t
the numbers being, exclu-
sive of the tellers, 317 and 299.
Now Sir Robert Peel does not mean to follow this
precedent of the Liberals. He adheres to the doctrine
laid down by himself in 1835. He then said on the
occasion of Mr. Sutton's proposed election, " that
members ought to consider that the office of Speaker
was one that ought not to be made the subject of party
feeling; the precincts of the chair ought not to be con-
verted into ground on which political battles might be
fought"; and now in forbearing to
oppose Mr. Le-
fevre, he will act consistently with this principle.
This is a view of the question in which we are per-
fectly sure, the ministerialists have no feelings in com-
mon with him.
They call themselves Liberals in-
deed, but true liberality is as much a stranger to their
conceptions as it is to their practice. Sir Robert
Peel's sentiment is the truly liberal and tnagnani-
mous one.. He can recognise propriety, merit, talent
in a politi cal adversary, or in persons not in the imme-

diate circle of his supporters ; and with a deep consi-
deration for the dignity of the honourable House of
which he is a member, he is more anxious to have the
department of its chief officer properly filled, than that
officer should be one selected from any particular
party. Many members might unquestionably be
found in the Conservative ranks fully as well qualified
to discharge the duties of Speaker, as Mr. Lefevre ;
and if the choice was one now to be made ab initlo,
one resulting from a vacancy occasioned by some other
cause than merely that of a parliamentary dissolution,

the case would be different; the Conservative leader
would certainly then be bound to take a different
course, in common justice to his own friends and
party. But Mr. Lefevre has now a qualified posses-
sion in the chair, and his conduct in it has hitherto
afforded no room for exception.
We say then, -that it is liberal, disinterested, and
high-minded in the right honourable baronet to leave
the Whig-selected Speaker undisturbed in his occupa-
tion. A sacrifice indeed is made, but it is the sacrifice
of some individual only for the common good. A
Conservative is subjected to privation, debarred of a
dignified office, to which his party would easily have

helped him ; but a saving is thereby effected for the
country, and the Conservatives, as a party, do not

aurmur ; they are content,

Thus it is that Conservatives commence their reign

Contrast them with the Whigs, whose conduct you
find to be one continued job from first to last—from
Mr. Speaker Abercromby to plain John Campbell, ex-
Lord Chancellor of Ireland, with a pension, expect-
ant. The country will take this act of self-denial on
the part of the Conservatives, as a gratifying evidence
of the benefits to be expected from this administration,
and we Sincerely rejoice on this account that such a
course has been decided upon. Conservatism can re-
ally lose nothing by such generous disinterestedness ;
it must gain by it. It will gain in the estimation of
the country; it will gain by its own intrinsic gene-
rosity and patriotism ; it will be contrasted by all men
with the voracious cupidity and selfishness of the
Whigs, and it will strike its roots downwards in the

respect and affection of the people. It is an admira-
ble commencement of the new order of things which
we now look for.

Upwards of two hundred ministers of religion, it is
said, have engaged to attend a conference at Manches-
ter, on the 17th instant ;—for what purpose does the
reader suppose ? For something religious perhaps ?
No, indeed ; but on the subject of the corn laws. It
is to be a sort of disssenting convocation, previous to
the meeting of parliament, and it is expected that so
great a company of preachers, if they enjoy no recog-
nised legal capacity in their ministrations of religion,
will be extremely impressive on a subject which they
probably understand equally well. We have always
observed that the lecturers of the Anti-Corn Law
League had rather a taste for something of the reli-
gious. Many of them are fond of quoting texts of
scripture, and introducing them, with whatever incon-
gruity or misapplication, into their harangues; and it
is probably from the piquant effect which they found
the practice to produce in their own exercises, that
they have been induced to collect such a number of
dissenting preachers at Manchester, and discharge the
whole battery at once on the 17th instant. By the
way, we are sorry to perceive that the Hon. and Rev.
Baptist Noel has been giving his aid to the cause, by a
brochure, which is called " A Plea for the Poor ;" but
begging his pardon, it is altogether begging the ques-
tion to designate an argument for the repeal of the corn
laws a plea for the poor. Mr. Noel, in his ignorance,
may sincerely think it to be such ; but that does not
alter the fact. In our opinion, such an argument is a
plea against our own people—a plea for the foreigner,
and consequently a plea against the poor of England,
instead of for them. We have looked over his pam-
phlet, and find it to be a very poor affair indeed ; but
intending to say something more on the subject at an-
other opportunity, we dismiss it with this hasty remark
for the present.

The letter of " Conservator" in the last number of
the STANDARD, was, we doubt not, perused by the
Protestant public with mingled feelings of gratification
and regret—regret, because the evils which afflict the
sister country are so great and multiplied—and grati-
fication, because there are still some master-minds
who can dive deeper than the surface of things, and
cannot only discover the nature of the grievances which
press so heavily on unhappy Ireland, but are able to
discover the most likely methods to alleviate or re-
move them. We feel honoured that an intelligent
correspondent has selected the STANDARD as the me-
dium of giving publicity to his sentiments, and
whilst we shall be honoured by receiving any further
communications, we are sure our readers will be
equally delighted. Such writers as " Conservator"
are not met with every day.