The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-04-27 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 27, 1841

The nomination of the candidates for Nottingham
took place yesterday, and Mr. Walter, the Conservative
candidate, we are happy to say, bids fair to win. The
polling comes on this day.

The return will be very matarially affected by the
conduct of that body of the electors who belong to
the extreme Radical or Chartist section. They have
shown no favour to Mr. Larpent, the ministerial can-
didate, from the first, and we confidently expect that
they will not support him when their dispositions are
brought to the proof at the hustings. On the other
hand they have given every encouragement, and, many
of them, positive promises and pledges to the Conser-
vative candidate, which, if they will only have the
truthfulness and honesty to make good, this day, his
return is nearly certain.
A question of much interest has arisen out of this
combination for a common object, of parties so oppo-
site in principle as Conservatives and Chartists. It is
unquestionably fair to say, that if the Chartist be true
to his own principles, he can have but little love for
the Conservative who is equally sincere in the same re-
spect on his part ; but we can conceive a Chartist with
perfect honesty—should he find it hopeless to effect
the return of a candidate exactly to his mind—using
his privilege to prevent the return of one whom he
entirely dislikes ; and, when forced to choose between a
Conservative and a Whig, withholding his vote from
the latter and giving it with right good will to the
former.

Now this is just what has occurred at Nottingham.
The Radicals dislike the Whig-ministerial candidate—
neither is the Conservative;'Mr. Walter, just the man
whom they would select if they were perfectly free to
choose; but they think a Conservative is better than a
Whig under any circumstances, and they naturally
prefer one in whom they find at least one important
point of agreement with themselves, to an individual
in whom they find none. .

Mr. Walter has distinguished himself by a vigorous
and persevering opposition to the tyrahny of the new
poor law; and in this respect he brought with him a
recommendation to men who have no interest in sup-.
porting the Somerset-house commission, and who are
not placed in so elevated a position in the world as to
be indifferent to the condition of those whom the pro-
visions of the system aggrieve. In their strong and
just indignation against this oppressive law, the Not-
tinghard Chartists have been willing to forget any ob-
jection they might have to Mr. Walter as a Conserva-
tive, and to the great annoyance of the rninisterialist
Whigs, he has been, all through his canvass, a decided
favourite with them.

Now, with respect to this "meeting of the waters,"
or coincidence of extremes, we are not surprised that
it should have called forth a vast deal of smart dia-
tribe and elaborate irony from the Whig side. It has
ever been the, privilege of losers to vent their spleen ;
but, we confess, we can neither understand nor sym-
pathise with complaint and dejection when we hear
their wailings in a Conservative quarter.
That Conservatism, which carries itself so superci-
liously as to contemplate the unbought support of the
people as degrading, and despises victory itself if at-
tained by their gratuitous suffrages, is too lofty for our
comprehension. Yet something of this sort we find
in the columns of a metropolitan contemporary, which
has long been, it is true, a polished mirror of exquisit-
ism, and organ, as well as glass, of the fashionable
world. "If the Conservative party, says this double-
patented, kid-glove, and opera-hat gentleman, "is ne-
ver to become paramount in this country till it allies
itself with the snob, we hope the day of its ascendancy
will never come."

The unbought support given by the Radicals of
Nottingham to Mr. Walter is, then, in the eyes of
this superlatively aristocratic journal, an alliance of
the Conservative party with the mob ; and so ut-
terly does he abominate all mobs, and mob-alli-
ances, that he would sooner the Conservative party
should sink to the bottomless pit than endure their
contamination for a moment. He unfolds his senti-
ments on this head—in condescension to our dulness—
a little more widely. "We have no wish," he says,
" for what has been called a Conservative democracy.
We believe the project to be nonsensical, and its reali-
sation impossible. We think we are not presumptuous
in saying this ; for, unless we greatly err, the opinion
we have expressed is that of every sound and rational
man who is true to Conservative principles." He
makes a few further remarks, but they are such as to
convince us of his entire ignorance of the thing which
he condemns. He inveighs against a Conservative de-
mocracy as a " nonsensical project" ; but it is quite
evident that he mistakes the meaning of the phrase.
He speaks of his concern for the happiness of the
poor—laments that they have not been sufficiently at-
tended to by either Whig or Tory—(as if the support
of a " Conservative democracy" had anything to do
with his charitable feelings)—and then returns to a re-
iteration of his peculiarly aristocratic and anti-mob
prepossessions—declaring, as his final opinion, that
"he does not believe the mass of the people can ad-
vantageously govern themselves."

We are forced, by the spirit of the entire article, to
conclude that, in the opinion of the writer, any go-
vernment not absolutely despotic is a " nonsensical
project," and that the realisation of a cheerful submis-
sion by the people to the laws of a free constitution is
an " impossibility" ! How this journalist has lived so
long in England without perceiving that this " nonsen-
sical project" has actually been brought to bear, and
that he is surrounded by that very realised impossibility
which he here affects to laugh at, we do not know. All
we say is, that when England has no CONSERVATIVE
DENIOCRACY to rely upon, her liberties, and her con-
stitution, and all her greatness will be in extreme peril.
We believe that the great bulk of her population is
Conservative, and, therefore, using the word demo-
cracy simply in contradistinction to aristocracy, we say
that a " Conservative democracy" does exist in the
country. The project so much ridiculed by our con-
temporary is just simply to augment the body, to swell
their numbers, and in every way to increase their
strength ; and this is nonsensical--impossible ! It is
curious to observe that these exceedingly nonsensical
airs and graces and absurdities of this great organ of
aristocracy were provoked by an article in the Times, in
which, amongst other good passages, there is the fol-
lowing, which strikes our humble judgment as being
peculiarly admirable :
" The moment a Conservative party in Parliament, whether
consisting of the present or any other, shall heartily and sin-
cerely throw itself upon the people, making the faith and
the spirit of Christianity its rule, that instant the swarm of
unclean things which now professes to call itself a govern-
ment vanishes away, like bats and birds of night before the

rising sun."