The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-10-30 00:00:00

—us of the counting-houses of our merchants.
Rally concur with the rev. gentleman, notwitlastand-

s of the same nature, the present

which those for whose

thout improvement

CONTEMPORARY PRESS

IENT STATE OF EUROPE
(From the Morning Herald.)

. _
!'he dark and lowering state of the political atmo-
;hout the whole of Europe, throws an
ominous gloom over the close of twenty-five years of

sphere throug

1 peace

settlement of Europe," as it was called,
tlement which was to ensure a perma-
y, since which Europe, though not in
Ll war, has never kown the repose and

in 1815

nen t tranquillit

ience of perfect

Tory administrations governed England for fifteen
'•trine which no return of general war desolated
the great powers of the
Then came the whigs to

turoPe;

Continent did not disarm

more effectually upon " wiser and

whigs who were to give the
,ernment on the cheapest possible
,ople at home, while they maintained a
.goad, and showed how the greatest modern
the world could be ruled in accordance with
.oaxims of policy which emanate from a spirit of
,cy, mode- 'on, and wisdom, and which give the
reatest stamu to power, by basing it on the widest

real pi

equity, mutter

extent of popular affections.
The Whigs have now been ten years reforming and
improving England, and securing, according to ,their
own enlightened notions, the peace of Europe. 'Well,
how have they succeeded ? It would, perhaps, be dif-
ficult to find any period in our whole history, since the
foundation of the British monarchy, when popular
misery and discontent more abounded—when doctrines
subversive of order, religion, and morals, were more
widely disseminated,—and when authority had less of
the respect and veneration of the mass of the people,
than in this the tenth year of whig REFORM, cheap go-
vernment, and enlightened improvement.
As to our foreign relations, their condition is, if pos-
sible_ still more unsatisfactory and threatening than
At, Whig rulers of the nation,
..osurdly and disgracefully
stF west of Europe, by taking part
in the rev utionary struggles of the Spanish peninsula,
have gone 4, length to the deserts of Syria to find " a
bone of col ration" for a war in Europe !

our internal condit

1. The y

not co

assisted to embroil t

t to the most ordinary saga-
-31 matters, that the Ottoman empire has
ate of decrepitude and decay, from which
no combinations of external powers can ever recover
it. An en

city in r

hich has once filled a high place in
the history of the world, may be struck down by the
sword of conquest in some disastrous hour, but it may
again be able to rise from its humiliation, shake off its
chains, and regain its former posit*. Not so when the
decry is not the immediate consequence of external dis-
aster or accident, but the slowly progressive result of
internal debility and wasting corruption. Turkey
labours under that decline, which is incurable because
self-inflicted. Russia knows this well, though our
Melbournes and Palmerstons seem to be profoundly
ignorant of the fact, or, at least, act as if they were.
Russia knows that there is as much chance of the
" independence" of the Ottoman empire being restored,
and its " integrity" preserved, by placing " the Syrian
desert between Mehemet Ali and the Sultan," as of
giving life to a dead man by an imitation of the re-
vitalising process of Medea and her kettle—the boiling

many pieces into one.
The Turkish empire is gone. The corpse, indeed,
of that once giant power may be galvanised and con-
vulsed by the experiments of the state physicians, who
prescribed blood-letting in Syria for the repose of
Constantinople. But the whole question now to be
solved is, whether Syria shall be ruled by Mehemet Ali,
no friend to Russia—or by Muscovite influence in the
name of the Sulton. It is to determine this question
that all Europe is agitated and disturbed from end to
end, and threatened with the calamities of a general
war.

NAVAL ARMAMENTS OF ENGLAND.
(From the Time:.)
England, with such prospects of a naval war as have
been hanging over her for two or three years, has not
added to her admirable crops of marines so much as a
single company ! The marines, a force which cannot
be discipiined in a moment, ought to have a force in
applicable to all sudden emergencies, and ca-
iTlying ships afloat or ships ordered for
as well as coast garrisons at home and in
the colonies, until the establishment of troops of the
line could be recruited to the amount required by a
state of war. The marines are the most convertible of
all our forces, the most adapted to a variety of uses,
the handiest and most generally effective. They con-
stitute something between a fourth and fifth of the en-
tire crew of a man of war. Ashore they perform the
services of the best disciplined troops—afloat, when
their firelocks are stowed away in the racks, they do a
large portion of the work of seamen. The marines of
GrP-'

reserve

pable of sui
corn

Britain ought never to be kept at a lower esta-
)lishment than 16,000 men ; of which force one-half

should be kept as garrisons of the seven great depots,
magazines, dockyards, and naval stations—to wit,
Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Sheerness, Ports-
' Divmouth, and Pembroke. When the service
.fires more than 1000 men, the total establish-
ght to be reinforced in proportion ; but never
reduced below the level of that amount for the home
duty of the kingdom. - There would then at all times
be a reserve of marines applicable to any exigency.
But, as we said before, not a single marine has been
added to the `lblishment throughout the whole of
this most c-' --,nean disturbance, arising out of
the Turk'

at req

and Egyptian war, although we have been
v naval officers that all the marines in the

kingdom pia together fall short of 2000 men—not
more than the complement of nine or ten three-deck-
But for the seamen, what addition has been made
The press and the naval profession taken
together, by dint of strenuous and fearless exposures
of the miserable sleepy Admiralty, forced Lord Minto
and his colleagues into a display of something like ex-
ertion, though lagging far behind the rapid progress of

to then

the public wants.
After twelve months of a sort of superficial bustle,
they have scraped together an ill-manned squadron, the
Vanguard and Rodney included, of 14 sail of the line,
by this time in the Mediterranean, and, we believe, (we
immediate reach of the gallant
air R. Stopford. Of that squadron four are
Juan and feeble ships of 72 guns, with crews very lit-
tle, if anything, more numerous than the first class
French frigates of 60 guns, that is to say, with no
more than 540 hands on board-53 boys included—
Ind therefore short by almost 160 hands of the corn-
-illotted to the very lowest class of French line
those carrying 80 guns, and which

crews have no boys

tong them.
both in men and material, is
for a sample of the British navy under
at once jobbing and screwing, which
,epartment of the public service, because
..uc ask for money from a House of Commons
,vnich reserves its liberality for the uses of partisan
corruption.

[his sort of armament

admmistratior

HE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN
PROVINCES.
(From the Morning Herald.)

IMPORTANCE OF 'I

nportance of our South Australian colonies is
daily more known. From an obscure coun-
n by the government but a few years since,

as the place of exile for offenders against the laws of
the mother state, they are grown into immense political
importance, and only require judicious fostering to be-
come the most powerful auxiliaries Great Britain can
have. Only a short time has elapsed, when this coun-
try was the pla

to which the returns for our ownma-
nufactures were sent from the Eastern Archipelago,
but the population of New South Wales, Van Diemen's
Land, and the parts adjacent, has so much increased as
to render it far more profitable to forward the produce
Clore than to send it home. To this the advantage de-