The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-07-08 00:00:00

"GENERAL ORDER.

" Having learnt that at the outposts conversations, rather
frequent, were kept up with deserters from the British auxiliary
force, and the Portuguese auxiliary army, or with individuals
expelled from the service for dishonourable acts, the Comman-
der-in-chief deems it proper to remind the troops that, acting in
complete union with the British royal navy, all British subjects
who shall be found fighting in the ranks of the enemy shall be
considered as real rebels against his Majesty the King of Eng-
land, and subjected to the penalty of death, which will probably
be inflicted upon them, in the event of their being captured, ac-
cording to the English law.

" In consequence it is ordered that if any individual speak-
ing English, and suspected of belonging to the degraded class
of persons abovementioned, present himself at our outposts, he
shall be immediately fired at; all communications with the
enemy's outposts shall cease, and hostilities shall commence
again with them until this habit be put an end to.
" The Lieutenant-General Commanding-in-chief the corps
d'armee of the Cantabrian coast.

" DE LACY EVANS."
Upon receipt of this very extraordinary general order
we trusted, fur the honour of Englishmen, that it might
prove to be a fabrication. However, by our Parlia-
mentary report of Tuesday, the reader will find that
Lord PALMERSTON, in answer to a question put by Sir
ROBERT PEEL, as to its authenticity, expressed his be-
lief that "Some such order had been issued," although
he could have no official cognizance of its existence, be-
cause the British government was not responsible for
the acts of an officer not in the English service. There
appears little doubt, notwithstanding the evasive reply
sof the Foreign Secretary, that the king's ministers were
privy to General Evans's intention to issue the above
atrocious production, if they did not actually give him
instructions to do so. At all events, it only remains for
government to do one of the two following things,—
either to throw General EVANS and the QUEEN OF SPAIN'S
cause overboard, or, to take the responsibility of the
order upon their own shoulders, and aid EVANS in putting
its sanguinary threat into execution. Dare they do
the latter is We think not, although it is impossible
to foresee to what extent they will carry their arbitrary
policy towards the inhabitants of the Peninsula who
adhere to Don CARLOS, and our own fellow-countrymen
who may take up arms in his cause. But they must
remember that although a British-born subject can never
divest himself of his allegiance to his sovereign, and,
therefore, notwithstanding he may be resident in any
other country, he becomes liable to the pains and penal-
ties of a rebel if in the event of a war arising between
that country and England, should he be found adhering
to the King's enemies and fighting in their ranks; yet,
as the King of Great Britain has not declared war upon
the Spanish Carlists—as his ministers have all along
disavowed any intention of making war upon the parties
who support Don CARLOS, no British subject, by taking
arms in support of the Carlist cause, can become a rebel
to his king, who is at peace with the Carlists. That
being the case, in what an unenviable position are minis-
leis arid-their friend General EVANS -placed I How they
'will extricate themselves or him we shall know shortly.

"The way of transgressors is hard," and so will the
contemptible knot of dishonest and imbecile creatures
now forming the cabinet, ere long, find it. Dependent,
`(some of them almost for their bread,) upon the will of a
man, who has long ago forfeited every claim to the cha-
racter of a gentleman, whose praise is infamy, and whose
foul-mouthed slander is directed alike against friend and
foe when it suits his selfish purposes; the position of his
MAJESTY'S ministers is one of the most humiliating a
country was ever called upon to witness. Opposed by
the property, the intelligence, the franchise of England,
surroundedby swarms of needy sycophants who deceive,
and assailed by thousands of flaming patriots for commii-
sionerships, places, embassies, consulships, magistracies,
and that with the tacit threat of abandonment if refused—
beaten at every election where there has been a contest,
set at defiance by the calm, dignified, and resolute con-
duct of the peers of the realm, who are now, more than
ever, the "pillars of the state," objects of dislike to the
SOVEREIGN, whose throne they are secretly undermining,
cowed by the thunders of the agitator's bellowing, sub-
mitting day by day to the lash of the mendicant, and
writhing under the taunts and defiance of a PEEL and a
STANLEY—there they are—look at their degradation,
Englishman! and contrast the miserable crew with the
historical recollections of a PITT, a BURKE, a CANNING,
a SHERIDAN, or a CHATHAM. When Providence intends
to punish a land, it generally permits the lowest of the
people to occupy the high places, and melancholy as is
the infliction, we must confess that we are almost come
to that pass. The love of place, and pay, and power,
and that inherent recklessness which delights in mischief,
however profitable to the possessor•, cannot exist long
without bringing down retribution upon the guilty par-
ties. The cabinet paid the fee at Litchfield House for

the support of the beggar and his tail, in the promise of
the Irish municipal reform bill. They paid it unwill-
ingly, but the- alternative was the loss of place, and with
men who had thrown principle to the winds, and embraced
the wizard of expediency, the ruin of protestantism and
the re-erection of popery was a trifling consideration.
Whenever men seek the attainment of even laudable
objects by the use of disgraceful or disreputable means,
disappointment and misery in one shape or other are
the usual consequences.
But when men, acting in an executive capacity, wil•
fully and wickedly sanction measures which they know
to be unjust, and for the purpose of carrying those mea-
sures avail themselves of the use of means which are
disgraceful, the crime becomes of a deeper dye. To lick
the dust before a man whose political character is a libel
upon human nature, bad, as it is,—to sweep away at his
bidding the Protestant institutions of Ireland, because
the professors of Protestantism are numerically inferior
to the Papists, although superior in wealth, intelligence,
and civilization ;—to bully and threaten one branch of
of the legislature, and wrest from their fears those con-
cessions which their reason could never sanction,—to
bring forward motion after motion upon what is termed
" appropriation," when they knew fell well that no sur-
plus exists to appropriate—these are scandalous means
which sooner or later will crush the faction, and consign
them as politicians to the tomb of the Capulets. Their
miserable majority of twenty-six on the appropriation
clause, the other night, is tantamount to a defeat. Right-
minded men, would consider it as such, but kick Lord
John and his collegues as much as you please, you cannot
kick them out of their place and pay. They will submit
to any indignity rather than give them up. Why the
majority is not even the number of the tail! But, say
s the ministerial hacks, it is the majority of the people of
England. Quite the reverse. Were the matter left to
to the representatives of England alone, the majority
against ministers would exceed 40; and when we con-
sider how slender were the majorities by which numbers
of the radical members were returned.—such as Ewart,
for Liverpool, by about 200 votes only, in a constituency
of 9 to 11,000; Thornely, for Wolverhampton, by about
100 votes; and the delectable Wason, for Ipswich, almost
a drawn battle, it must be evident that as far as the
church of England in Ireland is concerned, the voice of
England is strongly in her favour. Will any man who
is not blinded by prejudice say, that on such a miserable
majority as 26 ! and of such tag-rag and bobtail mate-
rials too, the House of Lords has not a right to exercise
its discretion ?
March your majority through Coventry my Lord JOHN
RUSSELL, and display their glory to the people of Eng-
land. Falstaff's recruits were quite as honourable as
they, and you need not be ashamed, with such a squad,
of following such an example.
It was for the purpose of preventing a House of Com-
mons from becoming absolute that the upper branch of
the legislature was created, and if any tyranny can be
more odious than another, it is that which the commons
would undoubtedly exercise were they not under the sa-
lutary restraint of the upper house. They would soon
vote their sittings permanent. Annual parliaments
would be forgotten by such men as EWART, HOME,
WAKLEY, and HARVEY, who, notwithstanding the brag-
gadocia of the radical prints, are all likely to be turned ,
out of their precarious seats on the next contest, and
would gladly shirk a contest, if they could. The liberty
of Englishmen would soon become an empty name.
Warrants would be granted to search our houses on sus-
picion, as Colonel Fairman can testify. Men of intelli-
gence would see gratuitously the inside of Newgate, if
the absolute house had a suspicion that they had opinions
adverse to their own. Witness the incarceration of many
respectable individuals in the case of Ipswich.
The tyranny of one radical is bad enough in the com-
mon affairs of life; the system is necessarily one of sus-
picion and dissatisfaction, and the tender• mercies of a
wealthy radical are contempt and cruelty. It is worse
when local jurisdiction is placed in such hands—worse
still when the government of a free country is found in
them ; and woe be to the liberties of the English people
if ever they are resigned to the absolute government of
an unchecked House of Commons and a radical ma-
' jority.

The eyes of the people are fast opening to this im-
pression, and no stronger proof of it can be given than
the late county elections, Warwickshire was a bitter
pill to the (Melbourne administration. Collision in-
deed ! The ministers may exclaim, like orator SHEIL
with his seven millions ! We are 26 I! ! But let Lord
JOHN dissolve Parliament now if he dare, and we sus-
pect that four conservatives will walk into the house
from every county in England and Wales. These are
the inevitable results of unnatural coalitions. The whigs
of the olden time stand aloof from the treacherous and
downward course of the rump now in power, they can-
not, dare not join with the faction whose burning desire
is to sweep awky the monarchy, tho church, the peerage,
and every thing sacred, every thing in short which is
above them in excellence. Moderate men have become
alarmed at the revolutionary tendency of government
measures ; and thus the band of conservatives, notwith-
standing the extent of the elective franchise, has become
of late materially
strengthened. The elements of free-
dom still exist in the different classes of society, and care
must be taken that these elements are not destroyed,
and the balance of the state subverted, either by an un-
due preponderance of regal or popular power : for
in either case the gate of tyranny may be opened, and
the liberties of the people extinguished. That sound-
ness of principle, and virtuous hatred of base ex-
pediency which is one of the characteristics of the Eng-
lishman, offers a safe guarantee that the ministry which
hugs with apparent delight the mouth-piece of popish
rebellion, and truckles to the insolent demands of one,
whom but a short period since, they honoured by denoun-
cing, will soon loose their remaining hold.

Our readers will observe by the extended report of the
Council proceedings of Wednesday, which will be found
in another place, that a decision was come to which bids
fair to make the members of our Corporation still more
unpopular than they are at present. We allude to their
determination to exclude from the Corporation schools
the sacred scriptures in an unmutilated form, and to sub-
stitute the garbled and Popish version at present in use
in the whig-radical schools in Ireland. The consequence
of this proceEding of the socinians and, political-dissen-
ters in the Corporation has been to induce a number of
gentlemen—lay as well as clerical—to call upon the
people of Liverpool to mark their disapprobation of that
step by taking into consideration the propriety of erect-
ing other schools in which the entire word of God shall
be had free access to. Upon this subject we shall say no
more at present. We refer the reader to the report to
which we have alluded, and also to a notice calling a
meeting, to be held on Wednesday next, at the Amphi-
theatre.