The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-12 00:00:00

Your voiceless lips, 0 flowers ! are living preachers—
Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,
Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers
From loneliest nook.
Floral apostles ! that in dewy splendour
" Weep without love, and blush without a crime,"
Oh 1. may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender
Your love sublime !

" Thou wert not, Solomon! in all thy glory,
Arrayed," the lilies cry, " in robes like ours;
How vain your grandeur ! ah, how transitory
Are human flowers !"
In the sweet-scented pictures, heavenly Artist!
With which thou paintest Nature's wide-spread hall,
What a delightful lesson thou impartest
Of love to all!
Not useless are ye, flowers ! though made for pleasure ;
Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night,
From every source your sanction bids me treasure
Harmless delight.

Ephemeral sages ! what instructions hoary
For such a world of thought could furnish scope?
Each fading calyx a memento nzori,
Yet fount of hope !

Posthumous glories! angel-like collection !
Upraised from seed or bulb, interr'd in earth,

To me ye arc a type of resurrection

And second birth.

Were 1, 0 God! in churchless lands remaining,

Far from all voice of teachers and divines,
My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining
Priests, ser►nons, shrines!

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE OPIUM QUESTION.
(From the Standard)
We observe that the ministerial journals are labour.
ing to avail themselves of the Duke of Wellington's
authority to justify the course of policy that has led to
this melancholy result. The Duke of Wellington's
authority is, however, strangely cited to defend a dis-
regard of his grace's own recorded advice, and the
slow adoption of that advice by Ministers seems indeed
to prove that no authority can justify their neglect of
it. Had they sent out distinct and prudent instruc-
tions to avoid' quarrels and a "stout frigate" to maintain
the respectability of the British name in 1835, there
would be no need now to invest their peaceful repre-
sentative with powers to conduct a campaign, or to send
an army and a fleet to assist him. This neglect, the
effect of which must be to involve the empire in enor-
mous expense, was the ground of complaint in Sir J.
Graham's motion, which motion was indeed especially
reproached as retrospective; and therefore it is the
height of absurdity to quote the Duke of Wellington's
opinion of the war, as condemnatory of the proposition
of Sir James : to do so, is to make his grace approve
of the contemptuous disregard of his own advice, to
make him say that it
.was right to leave the British re-
sident in a position in which he could not possibly
avoid quarrels with the Ckinese government, at the
same time leaving him without the means of getting
honourably through any dispute.
The Duke of Wellington did not indeed condemn
the justice of the British part in that war which the
Chinese have made upon us; for, however the truth
may tell, let the truth be always spoken; and the truth
is, that the Chinese have been throughont the aggres-
sors. The Duke, we say, did not condemn the British
part in the defensive war—strange if he did. When
were defensive measures ever unjust ? and what war
with a people who deny peaceful relations to all man-
kind can be unjust, whether it be aggressive or defen-
sive ? The more we consider the subject the more
thoroughly we are convinced that any nation has a right
to make war upon China while China shall remain self-
excluded from the family of mankind. The right of
occupancy—the only right by which the people of
China or any other people can maintain the inviolabi-
lity of their, soil, is, like all other social rights, the
creature of social law, and a denial of the authority of
society is a forfeiture of this right.
But though the Duke of Wellington, or any other
sane man, will scarcely impute injustice to a defensive
war, or to a war compelling a state to coins into the
common terms of human society, we all may see that
as war can he inexpedient though just and though
just in the abstract unjust in the means, a mere ac-
knowledgment of the justice of the Chinese war is not
a sufficient defence of the ministers, who by their ne-
glect have brought it on, and by their neglect also have
caused the proximate cause •of its explosion to be one
irreconcileable with justice. The questions for the
country are not these :—ls the war just ?—must it be
prosecuted vigorously ? Both questions are clear : but
• the questions for ministers to answer are the follow-
ing :—Could not this inexpedient, though just, war
have been avoided by the use of due diligence and the
exercise of common sense ?—could not a more becom-
ing ground of defence be found for the British ern.-
pire, than the protection of a smuggling traffic in poi-
son ? If we were to have a war with the Chinese,
must it be, as ministers have made it, an opium war ?
True, their organs say that it is not an opium war—but
every page in the many volumes of their blue books
proves that as they have managed it it is nothing else.

THE COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN.
(From the Cork Constitution.)
In the Colonial Magazine—one of the ablest and
most useful of our periodical publications—we find the
following paragraph :
" Let England feel and act in unison with the doctrine of
responsibility to the supreme Disposer of events—let her
moral conduct be in accordance with her physical power—
let her desire be peace, even while prepared for war—and
while sedulous of not offending or injuring others, let no fair
and just occasion be lost which may enable her to extend her
maritime supremacy and colonial dominion."

This is the counsel,. and this the conduct which befit a
country like England, and the time is coming when,
if she would keep pace with the onward movement of
the world, she must attend to the one and adopt the
other. Her " maritime supremacy" she must main-
tain ; for, that once gone, her independence goes with
it, and her :" colonial dominion" she must, we do not
say extend, but turn to better account than seems to
have been yet thought of by her statesmen. Her co-
lonies, in fact, have been treated more like aliens than
like children. Instead of nursing them as the legiti-
mate offspring of her own loins, tending them through
the years of helplessness; and leading them onward
until they were able to repay her for the care which
bestowed. on them, she acted towards them as a step-
mother, and handed them over to the " tender
mercies" of men who had neither knowledge of
their circumstances. nor interest in their welfare. If
ever they are to serve. the Empire as they ought—if
they are to become a source of strength instead of
weakness—of wealth instead of expenditure, this must
he reversed. The colonies of England present a
boundless field for employment and improvement.
They occupy the finest climates in the world, and to
them we shall by and by have to turn for a market for
those products of our industry which the success of
rival manufactures is now excluding from the Conti-
nent. We must, therefore, abandon the insane system
of encouraging the foreigner to the prejudice of our-
selves. If we would preserve our position, next to the
" responsibility" of which the author of the extract
speaks, the plough and the harrow, the ships, the
colonies and the commerce of our country, must have
our first regard. Let us look at home—other nations
will take care of themselves : at all events, we shall
find them entertaining none of the suicidial schemes
so much in favour among us. There is another ex-
tract which we subjoin. It points to the true policy
of England—a policy, the long neglect of which by a
people celebrated fur the prudence and energy of their
mercantile enterprise, would seem, were it not so well
and so unfortunately attested, to beutterly incredible:—
" In our judgment, we would desire to direct the public
mind from political agitation at home, to social improvement
in our colonies. Instead of seeking to destroy the landed
interest by breakitf• down the corn-laws, and with them the
funded property antl all species of contracts, let us endeavour
to obtain a yearly increasing supply of grain and timber from
our transtnarine possessions ; instead of endeavouring to
prevent continental Europe from manufacturing for its own
wants, let ns turn to the certain and profitable markets
which our colonies supply, remembering that in British In-
dia alone, with a population of one hundred millions British
subjects, the consumption of our manufactures is not mote
than sixpence per head .annually. In our colonies will he
found the richest fields for the increase of our power ; the,e
are the genuine sources of national wealth ; and their culti-
vation is, in reality, the true policy of England."

THE ANTARCTIC ExPEDITION.—It is not generally known
that Mr. Enderby has titled out an expedition for the purpose
of exploring the Antarctic regions. France and the United
States have recently sent out ships of discovery to the same
latitudes; and it is believed that Captain D'Urville, the
commander of the French expedition, has discovered an island
to the southward of Van Diemen's Land. The expedition,
of which Mr. Enderby is the promoter, will entail no expense
on the English government, •while it will carry out all the
views which government entertained when Captain Ross was
sent out. The officer to whom Mr. Enderby's expedition has
been entrusted, is Captain Mapleton, a gentleman of high
professional merit;--a rellow-voy,ager, moreover, with Capt.
RNi E. We are very sure that Captain Mapleton will do all
that in him lies to prtrillt France or America from bearing
which have, hitherto, be-
away those honours of discovery
Longed pre-eminently to England.--)forninil Herald.