The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-26 00:00:00

or a lucky turn up of the cards of some kind or other,
the majority of three may be turned into a minority,
and ministers and their Romish coadjutors in Ireland
may be enabled, for another session, to outrage and vio-
late the feelings of the British people. Such, we admit,
may be the case ; but at what a damning sacrifice of
principle and character on the part of the ministry will
this be effected ! How utterly fallen will those men
appear in the eyes of their fellow-countrymen, who
can submit to retain office by a trick, and to receive
the wages of .office when the power of earning them
exists no longer !
It will be remembered by our readers that after the
division on Wednesday night the committee on the
bill was adjourned to Friday. On that day its noble
mover was compelled, by the factious obstruction of
theHume-.O'Connellite ministry, to adjourn it further
until the 4th of June, previous to which period it was
announced by Lord John Russell, amidst the laughter
of the house, that the Irish Attorney-General would
lay upon the table a Government Registration Bill, be-
tween which and that of Lord Stanley he would frame
such a motion as would enable the house to decide.
It is, of course, a matter of very little concern to us
what are the principles upon which the bill to be intro-
duced by ministers will be founded, inasmuch as we
have it already recorded from the lips of Lord John
Russell himself, that it will contain provisions which
will ensure its rejection by the House of Lords; and
we are therefore compelled to come to the conclusion
that its object will only he, as described by Lord Stan-
ley during the debate, "to serve as a peg upon which
to hang up
the question altogether."
Be it so. Such a result would be a worthy accom-
paniment to the celebrated appropriation clause, upon
the passing of which the Melbourne administration
Came into office solemnly pledged, and which has long
ago been quietly shelved amongst the forfeited pledges
of that despicable and dishonest crew. But will the
kiouse of Commons,, which has just declared that the
evils of the present registration system in Ireland are
insupportable, turn round, at Lord John Russell's invi-
tation, and stultify themselves by rejecting a measure
calculated to remedy those evils, in favour of one which
is admitted by its author and framer to be a mere de-
monstration—a trick—a fraud—and which is purposely
so drawn up as to he rejected, and so to leave the.
Irish constituencies in the same state of rotten-
ness and corruption which is now complained of ?
We think ministers and their supporters may dis-
cover that there still exists in that house some re-
gard for decency ; and that a body of English gen-
tlemen, who have just recorded their well-considered
Opinion in favour of Lord Stanley's bill, are not so
venal as to be bought with the honied words of the
treasury, or so unwise as to sink themselves with a
sinking, ministry, by declaring in favour of every
scheme which the beggarly defamer of their wives
and daughters may succeed in forcing upon the adop-
tion of that loathsome and impure set. Lord John
Russell may discover that the people of England—the
constituencies of England—are not disposed for ever
to have Ireland, with her filthy demagogue and her
brawling priesthood, hanging like a millstone round
their necks; and that a spirit is rising throughout the
land, which, if aggravated and mocked, will grow
stronger and stronger, until at length it succeeds in
flinging away and trampling upon the incubus which
England has allowed too long to depress her energies
and to sully her reputation !
Let this besotted and factious imbecile look around
him, and observe the signs of the times. Ludlow and
CaMbridge have each nobly exerted themselves to
strengthen the hands of Lord Stanley in the object
which he has undertaken ; and we tell him now that
other constituencies—a great majority of the constitu-
encies of England—are at this moment panting for an
opportunity of consigning himself and his mercenary
and dishonest supporters to the obscurity from which,
in an evil hour for England, they have been allowed
to emerge !

We are sorry that our strictures have been so unpa-
latable to the Mercury as to drive him to the perpetra-
tion of the mass of absurdity which disfigures the
Pages of his last publication. Our contemporary, we
find, cannot bear contradiction. He has vegetated for
so many years in an elysium of fancied supremacy that
,he,cannot allow the
.rmle breath of opposition to dis-
turb his self-complacency; and because we have awaked
him from his doze, and disturbed the cloud which
he has allowed to settle upon his perceptions, we
are incontinently visited with a storm of thunder and
fury which would make even the redoubtable Captain
Bobadil tremble in his shoes. We will, however, take
heart, "pluck up drowned honour by the locks," and
strive to face this grisly emanation of spleen—this
"embodied essence" of detected dishonesty.
Our dozing contemporary, we are quite aware, was,
at the time of writing the articles upon Lord Stanley's
bill, profoundly ignorant of the subject upon which he
so flippantly descanted. He " had not recently read
the clause in question." He had not at all read the
bill in question. He had read, in fact, and knew, in
fact, nothing at all about the matter; and, such being
the case, a "mistake might easily be made." Granted,
good Mercury. We admit the mistake, and readily ac-
knowledge the reasonableness of its occurrence. But
we are not such raw campaigners as to allow our flank
to be turned by new levies whilst the main body of the
enemy, represented by thy worthy self, is in full re-
treat. We are not to be driven from our position by
quotations from the stupid perpetrations of Mr. Shar-
man Crawford's pen, or the equally stupid nothings of
Lord John Russell's lips. We have convicted the
Mercury of ignorance and misrepresentation, and are
not to be put off with the " lame and impotent" ex-
cuse that, if the Mercury has erred, he "has erred in
good company." Heaven knows what the Mercury
means by good company !
We shall not follow our contemporary in his attempt
to withdraw his readers from the questions at issue,
Which he dare not meet manfully. But we must pro-
test against a charge which he brings against us, that
we were guilty of a quibble when we challenged him
to prove that any Irish judge had ever yet " ruled that
to confer a right of voting upon a leaseholder, under
the sth section of the Irish reform act of 1832, a man
must prove that he has a holding for which he pays
£lO a-year." This legal dictum, be it remembered,
was laid down by our contemporary as that of the Irish
judges ; and we repeat, that we give him, three months
to prove it in, in addition to the week which has already
expired. We mean no quibble, and will not allow our
contemporary any.

But, says our contemporary, in palliation of his
" mistake"—(query, misrepresentation ?)—" otir ob-
jection was obviously to that ruling which requires a
man to prove that a solvent tenant could afford to pay
for his tenement £lO a-year more than he himself pays;
and amongst the people ' out of Bedlam' who have
declared against this interpretation of the clause, or
discussed it as a subject of grave consideration, we are
about to produce, inter aliis, the Duke of Richmond,
the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord J. Russell, the Irish
judges, and the Irish barristers." Now we care little
about the opinions of the Duke of Richmond, Lord
Lansdowne, or Lord John Russell; neither do we care
much about the Irish barristers. Our main business is
with the Irish judges, only two of whom were of any
other than our opinion as to the " obvious" meaning
of the term " beneficial interest" as referred to in the
sth clause of the Irish reform act, and not one of whom
ever ruled, or dreamed of ruling, that a leaseholder, in
addition to his beneficial interest, or without it, must pay
£lO a-year rent !
Our contemporary denies next that, in objecting to
the production of title deeds by the claimant, he meant,
fraudulently or otherwise, to convey the impression
that this " was required for the first time by Lord
Stanley's bill." " The impression intended to be con-
veyed," he says, was, " that such production of deeds
Would•enable tory landlords to carry almost ally county
in Ireland." We must differ from our contemporary
here. If he knew that the productions of title deeds
is required by the present act, how could he bring for-
ward that grievance as an argument against Lord Stan-
ley's bill, which does not in one tittle alter the matter ?
By so bringing it forward he did convey the impression
that it was a grievance of Lord Stanley's creating; and
whether that impression was conveyed " ignorantly or
' fraudulently" we leave to our contemporary himself to
explain.

But our contemporary is not content with merely
evading the misrepresentations of which we have con-
victed him. Having carefully studied the speeches of
Lord Stanley's opponents, and quoted from them