The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-23 00:00:00

registers.

Speaking in general terms, then, the outcry raised
against this, as a clause of wee ping disfranchisement, is
a gross impostnre by which the designing- knaves of
the ministerial party have deluded the few fools re-
quired to convert their past minorities into a paltry
majority of seven. Let us, however, examine the
amendment and its intended effect in deterioration of
the utility and value of the measure. If we mistake
not, we shall be able to show that it is, if possible, a
more barefaced connivance at impurity and fraud than
even this despicable crew have hitherto dared to mani-
fest.

The amendment carried by Lord Morpeth provides—
" That in making the register of any county, city, town,
or borough, under the provisions of this act, the name of
every person who should be registered for such county, city,
town, or borough, should be placed and retained on such re-
gister as long as his right would continue under the present
law, unless he should have lost his qualification, or unless he
should have become personally disqualified, or have died, or
unless the registry was effected by fraud or personation com-
mitted under the completion of such register of votes."

Now what, we ask, is the plain meaning of this
clause, when stripped of its Jesuitical covering ? Sim-
ply this, reader, that the admitted impurities of the pre-
sent registers of Ireland are to be continued for eight
years, and the operation of the bill restricted to new
claims to vote. It is true that ministers have not bad
the hardihood to propose that dead men, or men who,
since their registration, have forfeited their right are to
be protected in their franchise; but by this amendment
the whole of the faggot voters who shall have con-
summated their registration previous to the passing of
the bill, by fraud or perjury as to qualification or value,
are to be protected in the enjoyment of their usurped
rights for a period•of eight years from the time of that
registration. On all hands it is admitted that on the
first registration under the reform act frauds without
number were perpetrated and parties admitted on the
register whose right to be there was unquestionably
none; yet these parties having renewed their registra-
tion for eight years by the mere:presenting of the certifi-
cate originally granted, although, even supposing an
original qualification, it may have ceased years ago, are
to remain upon the registers without challenge, to record
their votes and to swamp for eight years to come the
bona fide constituencies to be formed upon this or any
other honest system of registration.
Reader, can any better evidence be wanted of the
true nature of Whig opposition to Lord Stanley's mea-
sure ? It would, if unimpaired in its efficiency by this
nefarious amendment, have destroyed the vast number
of fictitious and faggot votes with which the Romish
priesthood have for years been busily deluging the
constituencies of Ireland, and allowed their places to
be filled with the names of bona fide claimants. This,
then, we find at length plainly shewn, is the true
pinching point. The O'Connell-Melbourne adminis-
tration dare not appeal to constituencies honestly and
bona fide possessed of the qualification required by the
Irish reform bill. They know and feel in their de-
graded souls, that so despicable—so utterly base have
they become— a real ten pound constituency, even in
wretched priest-ridden Ireland, would turn from them
with loathing and unmitigable scorn. They exist only
upon the offal of corruption. They breathe only whilst
herding with the vile. They can enjoy place and pay
and patronage, only so long as they can maintain the
franchise in the hands of the brogueless and ruffian
tools of ribbon outrage and noonday murder ; and to
effect this they are ready to drain the bowl of corrup-
tion to the very dregs, and to hand down their names
and characters to the execration of posterity, dyed in
colours of measureless and irredeemable infamy.

Deeply as we regret and must ever regret the fatal

inroad made upon Lord Stanley's bill by the vote of
Friday night, we have still however one consolation.
That vote has torn aside for ever the mask of Whig
hypocrisy. We see that party now the open abettors
of corruption—the apologists and protectors of perjury.
We see them and we know them.

It will be noticed by our parliamentary summary that
Lord Stanley announced, at the close of Friday night's
debate, his intention of proceeding further with the bill
last night, when an attempt would be made to substi-
tute for his bill the measure of the Irish Solicitor Gen-
eral, and that trick failing, the member for Dublin

would " move an iustruction to the committee," or in
other words throw " an obstruction" in the way of his
lordship. Go on, gentlemen, we say, go on. But if
for all this goading course of insult England fails, at no
distant period, to exact a severe retribution, then are
we grievously mistaken in what we have ever thought
to be the characteristic of our countrymen.

It is once more our duty to enforce upon the minds
of our conservative friends the imperative duty of at-
tending to the approaching registration. Circum-
stances of an unequivocal character tend to strengthen
the conviction that a dissolution of parliament is an
event which may be looked for at no distant period.
The repeated defeats which the present degraded crew
in office have sustained must have proved to them the
utter impracticability of carrying on the business of
the country much longer with a House of Commons
the composition of which renders a majority in favour
of any ministerial measure a matter of such great doubt
and uncertainty.
At the last general election, and for some time after-
wards, ministers could reckon upon majorities ranging
from 30 to 40. These majorities, however, have, in
successive sessions, been gradually reduced. During
the first session of the present parliament it is true that
the index of ministerial popularity stood a few degrees
above freezing point. The next session, after sundry
fluctuations, brought it somewhat below that point.
The present session has shown a tremendous declen-
sion in the scale. The popularity of Lord Melbourne
and his associates is now absolutely below zero. To
drop metaphor : instead of being able to command
majorities of 30 or 40, they have latterly been left in
minorities of two, five, seven, and even eleven, and this
in spite of the secession of several hypocrites from the
ranks of the conservatives.

How has this come to pass ? It has been owing,
not to any conversions which have taken place among
the radical members of the House of Commons, but
to the substitution of staunch conservatives for truck-
ling ministerialists at the elections which have taken
place during the last three years. We may safely say
that two out of every three of the vacancies which
have taken place since the last general election have
been filled by conservatives. It is impossible that these
changes should have gone on to any great length with-
out annihilating the "measuring cast" majority of the
O'Connellite ministry. It has been annihilated. A
dead lock has been put to the motions of the ministe-
rial carriage. It can proceed no longer down the hill
of revolution, though the great " Irish dragon" be
harnessed to it.

What then must be done ? It is quite evident, from
the experience of the present session, that the venal
tools of O'Connell cannot carry any of their measures
through the House of Commons, if seriously opposed
by the conservative party. It is equally plain that the
occurrence of fresh vacancies in the present parliament
(and occur they must in the natural course of events)
will place ministers in a worse position than they oc-
cupy at present. It is, therefore, obviously their best
policy to have recourse to a dissolution. It is true that
a dissolution, in the present state of the public mind,
would be a " dread alternative" to the mercenary im-
beciles now in office ; but it is the least of two evils
left to their choice. It would be less degrading to them
to be driven out of office by the irresistible mandate of
the people of England, whom they have utterly dis-
gusted by their incapacity, hypocrisy, and venality, than
to be in office without being in power.
For ourselves, we have very little doubt as to the
choice which ministers will make. We believe that
they will once more stake their existence on the result

of a general election. But, as it is uncertain whether
a dissolution will take place under the present registry,
we would zealously urge upon our conservative friends
the necessity of attending to the registry of their votes.
If they display the same zeal in the performance of
this duty that they have evinced in past years, we have
no doubt that the day will not be far distant when the
reins of oftice will be snatched from the unworthy
hands of the present pro-popery ministers, and placed
in those of men whose loyalty to the throne and whose
attachment to the British constitution in church and
state, ;are as undoubted as their capacity for public
business is universally acknowledged.
Conservatives ! remember the significant words of
your great leader—" THE BATTLE OF THE CONSTI-
TUTION 1 TO BE FouGiur IN THE REGISTRATION
Co wrs."

It would be a waste of time to bestow anything fur-
ther than a passing notice upon the infamous epistle
which the hoary mendicant O'Connell has just ad-
dressed to his fellow-traitors in Ireland. Like every-
thing else emanating from the same impure source it
is a disgusting compound of concentrated malignity,
unparalleled audacity, and unmitigated slander. The
practised hypocrite commences his mendacious letter
with a few cant phrases, culled from the novels of the
Minerva-press school, on the joys of domestic life and
the sweets of wedded love. The fulsomeness of the
flattery which proceeds from such a source can only
produce a feeling of unutterable loathing. We know
of no libel so atrocious as the praise of such a man as
O'Connell.

After the courtly cant to which we have alluded, the
old serpent proceeds at once to insinuate that Oxford
was " not solitary" in the perpetration of his crime.
The purport of this insinuation may be learnt from
the exclamation by which it is immediately followed.
The truculent demagogue says, " If the first sovereign
of the House of Brunswick that ever showed impartial
justice to the people of Ireland—if she had fallen be-
neath the hired assassin's blow—if the Grand Master
of the Orange Lodges were now, sacred heaven ! the
legitimate monarch of these realms, as it was clearly
intended that he should, what would be the state of
Ireland ?" Any thing more diabolically atrocious than
the charge brought forwards in the paragraph which
we have just quoted, it has never been our fate to meet.
Unlike, however, the cowardly insinuations in which
the Whig-Radical press has been indulging during the
past week, it has the merit of candour and straight-
forwardness. O'Connell distinctly and unequivocally
charges the Queen's uncle, now probably tottering on
the brink of the grave, with having instigated the
attack which has spread such consternation through
the land. On what authority does he venture to
make this charge ? Has he a tittle of evidence to
support it ? Does he not set all the laws of probabi-

ity at defiance in his bold assumption ? Is he such a
Fool as to suppose that the people of England can be
imposed upon by such a vile and palpable slander?

The villanous insinuations in which the Whig-Radi-
cal press has indulged, and which have assumed a
more tangible shape in O'Connell's letter, will cause
the people of England to suspect that there really was
some plot in connection with the recent attempt upon
the life of the Queen, and that of her Royal Consort;
but the suspicion will not attach to the King of Han-
over and the loyal Orangemen. Far from it. If there
be a plot, her Majesty's ministers or Daniel O'Connell
will be instinctively thought of as the parties implicated
in its origin and execution. When we reflect that
there was an object to be gained by these parties in cre-
ating a sensation such as that we have witnessed—
when we consider that the circumstances under which
the apparent attempt upon the life of the Queen was
perpetrated, justify the strongest feelings of suspicion,
it will not be wondered at that reflecting people should
be led to think that the whole thing was a precon-
certed affair, for which all the actors were duly pre-
pared.

As O'Connell has tempted us to it, let us see if we
cannot justify a far different conclusion from that which
he would wish us to draw. The absence of the police
from the immediate vicinity chosen by the assassin—
the absence also of those of her Majesty's retinue whose
duty it is to guard her personal safety—the cool deli-
beration of Oxford on the occasion—the calm indiffer-
ence betrayed by the Queen and Prince Albert, who
did not even halt for a moment to inquire what was the
matter, nor despatch a servant to assist in securing
Oxford, but proceeded on to Belgrave-square to make
a call—the unguarded manner in which the royal caval-
cade returned to the palace, as if nothing had occurred
—the unhesitating manner in which the prisoner gave
his name and address, and the facility with which the
police discovered the mysterious papers and emblems
at his lodgings—the cool intrepidity displayed by Ox-
ford during his examination—the circumstance of a
bullet having been discovered, (not by the police, but
by some urchins sent to play on the spot,) which would
not fit either of the pistols fired by Oxford—the fact
that the alleged bullet marks on the wall were no bullet
marks at all, but, simply, indentations caused by a stick,
or some such blunt instrument—the handle made of the
attack by the Whig-radical press and Daniel O'Connell,
to subserve a political object—all these things, with
many other circumstances which we might enumerate,
would admirably serve to fix upon the ministerial fac-
tion the guilt of concocting this diabolical affair. We
might even go so far as to say that the discovery of the
crape veil, with its distinctive ribbon ties, indicated
some mysterious connection with O'Connell and his
ribbonite confederates. We do not wish our readers
to suppose for a moment that we deliberately accuse
the ministers of " getting up" the affair for the purpose
of frustrating Lord Stanley's motion; but we maintain
that we have adduced a number of particulars which
make far more strongly against O'Connell and his
tools than they do against the King of Hanover.
But to speak seriously. The attempt to fix the
charge of high treason upon the Orangemen is a device
too cunning to succeed; and the attempt to implicate
the whole conservative party in Great Britain in the
infamous attempt upon the Queen's life, is still less
likely to deceive a single individual out of the precincts
of a ribbon lodge. An appeal to the millions of Pro-
testants who on the past Sabbath joined in fervent

thanksgivings for the safety of their beloved monarch,
would be a sufficient answer to the enormous calumnies
of such a heartless and abandoned wretch as O'Connell,
backed as those insinuations are by the diabolical in-
sinuations of the rabid popish miscreants attached to
the Whig-radical press. The loyal Protestants of
England, who compose the great bulk of the population,
can well afford to laugh to scorn the miserable slanders
of O'Connell. Theirs is not a lip-loyal, contingent
attachment to the throne of these realms. Their loy-
alty is not measured the fluctuating standard of
court favour. Their zeal for the monarchy is not based
on the flimsy foundation of official patronage or party
ascendency. It has a-far nobler basis. It is grounded
upon the immovable rock of Christian duty. Unlike
the evanescent and accommodating professions of the
papist and the liberal, the loyalty of Protestants is an
abiding and ineradicable principle. If ever a day of
trial should arrive, and arrive it will at no distant day,
we shall find that O'Connell is capable of loading
with his filthy abuse that "amiable young Queen,"
whom he now seeks to defile with the slaver of his
flattery and encomium.

We cannot undertake to reply in detail to the arguments
and assertions advanced by our contemporary of the Liver-
pool Times, in answer to a few observations which we offered
upon a former article. The subject of the Corn-Laws has
now lost most of its interest, and our readers will not thank
us for reviving a question which has already been discussed
ad nauseam.

Our object was to shew, in opposition to the dictum of our
contemporary, that, however regular might be the demand
from this country for foreign corn, still a drain for specie to
a certain extent would be the result. Our contemporary
instances in reply, that cotton wool to the value of 12 millions
sterling was imported in a single year from the United States
without any exportation of bullion in return. This may be
the fact, but it is not decisive of the point in dispute. Let
our contemporary add three millions sterling for corn to our
importation from the United States, and if we can pay off
that amount in cotton goods without increasing our import
of cotton to provide the staple of those goods, we may then
possibly admit that he is correct in his illustration.
We pass by our contemporary's misrepresentation of our
remarks as to the proportion of labour to raw material in our
exports to corn growing countries on the shores of the Baltic.
To those countries we must look in the event of a general
opening of the British market for most of our supplies of
corn ; and our contemporary is well aware that remittances to
them are made in goods upon which the minimum proportion
of labour is bestowed. With respect to the special bargains to
be made with particulkr countries as a condition of allowing

to them the privilege of supplyinci us with corn, we have
seen too much of these " reciprocity" affairs to be much in
love with such a mode of proceeding.
Our contemporary in correcting a verbal error of ours, has
recorded the admission—no insignificant one by the bye—
that " the whole amount which we pay to the foreign corn
grower, whether in goods or bullion, in exchange for corn,
may be considered as so much abstracted from the pockets
of the British farmer." Good. And as a necessary con-
sequence, the British farmer will have so much the less to
expend with the manufacturer. Our contemporary, we
presume, will not dispute this position. The change, how-
ever, is to benefit the farmer, and by this abstracting process
" the agriculture of the country is to improve to such an
extent as to become superior to that of any other country in
the world !" After this, we should not wonder to hear of
the tenants of Lord Fitzwilliam throwing their next half-
year's rents into the Swale or Don, in order the sooner to
arrive at this promised agricultural superiority. Our con-

temporary must really excuse us for telling him that the British
farmer of the present day is a tolerable judge of his own in-
terest, and, that he is decidedly of opinion, that competition
with the untaxed foreigner; and, abstracting three or four

millions a year out of the pockets of British agriculturists, to

place in those of the nobility of Russia and Prussia, is not
precisely the way to " improve the permanent interest of the
farmer, landowner, and, consequently, of the labourer" of
the United Kingdom. With due deference to our contem-
porary, this kind of interference with the concerns of their
opponents is one of the impudences of which we complain on
the part of the anti-corn-law advocates. What right has a
man, who scarcely knows a plough from a harrow—a hawk
from a handsaw,—to preach to a practical British farmer
upon a subject of which he is so entirely uninformed. Let
him " stick to his buttons."

Our contemporary accuses us of abuse and scurrility in
our mode of discussing this question ; and how does he prove
his charge ? By misrepresentiug and falsifying our ex-
pressions. "It seems," says our contemporary, "accord-
ing to his dictum, that to ask for cheap bread is base and
nefarious,' and that the manufacturer is a ' knavish quack'
and hypocrite, whose object is to reduce the wages of the
people." " Such," adds the Times, " are the slanders by
which the advocates of monopoly, and their worthy allies, the
chartists, attempt to exasperate the populace against their
employers." We beg our contemporary's pardon, but the
slander is on his own lips, and is alike worthy of the cause
and its advocates. We never said that "to ask for cheap
bread" is base and nefarious ; and our contemporary knows

it. We never said that " the manufacturer is a knavish
quack and hypocrite, whose object is to reduce the wages of
the people." We know that the respectable and really esti-
mable portion of the manufacturers of England abhor and
despise the anti-corn-law agitators and their principles. What
we did say our contemporary has quoted, and how he could
have the hardihood to put such an interpretation upon it, we
really are at a loss to know.
We called that man a quack and a hypocrite who, whilst
asking to be enabled to compete with the " cheap labour of
the foreigner," professes that " he has no wish to reduce
wages." We still call him a knavish quack and a lying hypo-
crite, for he knows that cheap labour means low wages. Our
contemporary knows this, for in the usual round about way
of people who have an unpalatable truth to utter, he all but
admits it ; and we ask him by what name he would designate
the man who, asking to " be placed on an equal footing with
those with whom he must compete in the sale of his goods in
every market of the world," should have the consummate
impudence to deny, that, in connexion with "a large loaf,"
he contemplates a reduction of the workman's wages. We
would recommend our contemporary and his party to leave
this question alone, and look in another direction for the
causes of our present mercantile and manufacturing embarras-
ments. Depend upon it those causes are not so very far un-
derground that the ingenuity of our contemporary will be at
a loss in finding them out. We should readily aid him or
any other of our contemporaries in the attempt, and if
honestly undertaken we are firmly convinced that the result
would be beneficial to the whole mercantile community.
Are we for ever to persevere in the folly of converting com-
mercial into political questions ?

The Editor of the Albion complains of our " malignant
attack upon the Mayor, with respect to his conduct in the
chair" at the meeting of Wednesday last. We are some-
times at a loss to discover the passages referred to by our
various contemporaries as " malignant," " slanderous,"
&c., but on this occasion we arc at no such loss. We com-
plained on Friday that his Worship showed partiality in
allowing party attacks to be levelled by his own friends
against Mr. M`Neile and others, whilst he refused to hear—
not a retort, for retort was never attempted—but even in-
terrupted one gentleman whilst speaking to order. As a par-
ticular case we instance the speech of Mr. Taylor, which was
very directly levelled at the Rev. Hugh M‘Neile, and which,
although conveying all the venom of a slander which that
Rev. Gentleman had but a few minutes before satisfactorily
rebutted, was allowed to be heard, and vehemently cheered
by the radical and popish section of the meeting.
We have no doubt that the Mayor thought he was impar-
tial, but we can assure him other people were not of the
same opinion. One of our Saturday contemporaries in par-
ticular, was so delighted with the fancied hit made by Mr.
Taylor's speech, that he had in conspicuous letters in his
handbill—" The Rev. Hugh M`Neile's Jezebel Speech re-
buked"—a much more " malignant" practical imputation
upon the Mayor's boasted impartiality than we have ever
ventured to make.

EXTRAORDINARY. EPISTLE,
WRITTEN IN THE GENUINE UNKNOWN TONGUE.

The extraordinary document at foot has been handed to
us for translation, under the impression that it was Welsh,
at which language we are an adept. We can make nothing
of it, however, and present it in its present shape to our
readers. We certainly have an impression that it is not
altogether an original composition of the learned pundit
whose atiir it bears, having somewhere in the course of our
multifarious reading met with a similar composition. Per-
haps some of our Argus-eyed readers may introduce us to
its original author :
" EDITOR MERCURII LIVERPUDLIENSIS, DOCTORI QUEM
VOCANT PAszomsit, _CRETANS.
. .

" Doctore !—Hominum perfidissime ! in illo papyro see-
leratissimo, quod vocatur The Standard, articulos quosdam
deridentes meum Billum Stanleyii Registrationis Hibernici,
maxima indignatione legi. Melon billum id appello, quia in
versione mea non pater ipse vestigia ulla infantis cognoscere
potent. Recorderisne versiculos, de quodam, nomine Jack ?
In Anglia vernacula, sic':
" Jack stole his discourse from the famed Doctor Brown,
But, reading it damnably, made it his own—
Distichon quod ita pro meo casu paraphrazabo, ut sequitur
in hexametris lege solutis.
" En ! transcribit clausos, ex Stanleyio Billo,
Sic damnabiliter crederes Mercurius ipse
Mendax composuit ; Stanleyius non fuit auctor.
Dico etenim hoc—quod si, quod ego scripsi non est quod
Stanleyius vult facere legem, est quod alii homine_,s amantes
patrim, voluerant,—quod est, multo melius. Et nullam
aliam tibi dabo responsionem.
• " Appellas teipsum doctorem,—non reverendum, non me-
dici, sed legum, abbreviate LL.D., non curo demi-damnum
pro doctoribus etiusmodi generis. Recordarisne quomodo
alius doctor, ejusdem stampi, philosophus pius et inflatus
seipso—(Anglice eleganter,priggish)—sanguinem et wiggum
ejus nuper perdidit ? Si ego irascere me incipiam ego et
wiggum tuum et maskam demolishabo et to nudum trahebo
per iras et cachinnationes mundi. Anne, me provocas ?
" Ah ! doctore, rerfidissime, sceleratissiine,—quando fui
councillarius, et tabs councillarius ut nemo unquam viderat,
ut ne vetustissimus inhabitans recordari potuit, lavasti mecum
in bagneo Coglanno, quod ego appello in Anglice The Float-
ing Bath, sed quod alii homilies scelerati vulgo appellant
The Tub; meum corpus in omnibus contortionibus libenter
vidisti ; corki jacketum, mei inventionis, teipso imposuisti
et, in gurgite vasto recubantes, nos duo fratres, sive palli
(Anglice, pals), enigmas, charados, et riddlos fecimus.
Tunc aleam, dimidium cum dimidio hausisti, aquae vitam
nitidam, rummi punchium cum sugare, ore aperto et fauci-
bus aridis, swallowavisti; et cum in meum domum venisti,
sausageos et renes, pro suppero prebui ; stoutum Eblanense,
Guinnessio auctore, super tabulam posui ; fromagium Stil-
tonense, Cestriense, Glocestriense, in usu tibi fuit ; leaderos
pro newspapero meo scribere to permisi, de omnibus rebus
et quibusdam aliis, dum to doctore sciebas nihil plus de news-
papero quam, ut aiunt inter Hibernos. vacca vetula de ca-
misao ruffieato, (vernacule, no more than a cow knows of a
',died shirt.) Hoc vocasti nihil? Sed me vocasti Mercurii
plumbi imaginem (a leaden image of Mercury)--quod si
unquam vidisti plumbum nantem ut me nantem vidisti—et
nunc contra meum newspaperum et meos leaderos blateras ?
Ridebo mox, doctor pastore, et tunc—sed nunquam animus.
Ad interim, vive et bibe in terrore ! « Oar