The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-07-21 00:00:00

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ent, with opinionsandprin-

masses of the people, For years past the leading
questions at the hustings have been on speculative
and theoretical matters ; questions as to the mode
in which the commerce of the country is to be dealt
with, or the more abstract ones of constitutional
change, whilst the more vital considerations, affect-
ing our moral and social improvement, have been
thrown into the shade. We have had reforming
parliaments and free trade and protectionist parlia-
ments. We want a parliament, now, which will
take a more extended view of the country's require-
ments, and apply itself to the removal of evils,
which have been overlooked in the late rage for
ted as too deeply

mere fiscal char], _
for legislative handling. Happily we have got rid
of the bulk of those questions, which have served
to mislead the national mind from a consider

or trea

ation of

the true interests of the country, and the best means
of securing the happiness of the people. The bulk
of our purely selfish and commercial questions are
set at rest, and we have leisure to turn in another
direction. The business of " the shop," as it were,
being arranged, we have time to look into the state

of the household and examine the moral and phy-
sical health of its inmates.
What a field we have here for the statesman.
Let us just glance at the most prominent objects
which it presents. The first and most important of
these is the question, which must now come to an
issue—are we henceforth to he intitled to the name
of a Protestant and Christian nation ? For years,
whilst absorbed in the selfish considerations of
trade, or legislating for speculative reforms, we have
been frittering away that character, undermining
our National Church, and pampering the heresy of
Rome. The question must be broadly put to the
nation, and must be the leading one asked of every
candidate at the hustings,—is this system of bit by
bit concession to the demands of error to go on ? If
it is, let us know.our fate at once. Tear the mask
from off the face of the foul thing, and let English-
men say whether they will submit to hug and feed
its deformity.

Again, if we call ourselves a Christian nation, we
must set ourselves to the task of providing for the
religious wants of our population. We have grow-
ing up around us, attracted by the employment
afforded in manfacturing and commercial pursuits,
vast masses of labourers, mechanics, and traders,
immersed from.morning until night in their various
avocations, and imperatively requiring the teaching
and the comforts of religion, How are these to be
provided ? Individual exertions cannot do it. We
are too deeply sunk in selfishness to spare from our
superfluity enough to furnish the means of supply-
ing a sufficiency of buildings and ministers for the
worship of God and the saving of souls. Our com-
mercial and manufacturing capitalists can raise hun-
dreds of thousands to push forward any measure of
class aggrandisement, or to reward some successful
but, when appealed to on behalf of thou-
sands perishing for the lack of knowledge of the
truth, how slowly their contributions come in, and
how miserly their amount ! The legislature—the
nation, as a national matter—must take into its own
hands this duty. If influenced by no higher and
holier considerations, they ought to perform it
from considerations of mere worldly expediency.
As a community, we erect prisons ; we dis-
burse the cost of the national crime; we provide
penal settlements, and pay fur death being adminis-
tered by the hands of the executioner. Why not
expend a portion of the national funds in meeting
the source of the crime which we punish, by hold-
ing up to our erring fellow beings a knowledge of
the truth which saves from crime, and its worldly
and eternal punishment ? By party, as it has
hitherto been formed—by Conservatism, its expedi-
ency policy and its cowardice, or by Whig-Radical-
ism, with its excessive liberality, or more properly
looseness of principle, this cannot be effected. We
must have a party formed to effect it, with loftier
aims, with a more extended and a purer object in
view, than any of those emasculated things, in ho-
nor of which we have been in the habit of hurraing
at public festivals, or declaiming from the hustings
or the platform.

agitator ;

We ire told that the present ministry is about to
devote itself to measures of social amelioration, to
impmement of the sanitory condition of our towns,
and to the provision of some new-fangled system of
secular education. In a portion of this policy there
may be good involved. In the educational fea-
ture ofit there is unmingled evil. But can we,
amongst our measures of social amelioration, over.
look the duty of removing that cauterizing blister
which we have fastened upon the bodies and the
souls of our unfortunate poor? Our atrocious new
Poor Law, with its heartless provisions and its utter
tyranny, must be got rid of. We must have no
more bones-crushing and bones-gnawing; no more
starvation dietaries ; no more separation of man and
wife, parent and child; no more bandying of poor
starving human beings from workhouse to work-
house ; no more premiums offered for infanticide
and for murder. This wretched system—an abor-
tion conceived by Whig-Radicalism, and supported-
by those mongrel politicians, who call themselves
Conservatives—the nation would willingly be rid of.
Our labouring masses implore its removal. It has
fixed the social comfort of our population too low.
It places the rate of wages at the precise points at
which a human being can be supported in worse
than a felon prison. Talk of the absence of protec-
tion ! Here is protection to the capitalist against
the legitimate demands of poverty. Here is the
machinery by which a fair remuneration for labour
is'filched from a helpless class of our fellow-beings;
by which human nature is c'egraded to the level of
the beasts, and charity, religion, brotherly love and
common justice are made mockery of and outraged.
Such questions as these it must be which ought
to influence us in the selection of members for the
next Parliament. We have a determinate policy now
to fix upon for the future government of the coun-
try, which is not to be dictated by considerations of
temporary expediency or party necessity. We can-
not every day afford to throw (low n a buttress of
the constitution, or to submerge some important
interest of the country in ruin, to prop up a minister
or to feed his time-serving satellites. The affairs of
a great nation must be regulated upon some fixed
principles; not like a game of chess, where a pawn
is given to bring a knight out of difficulty, and a
castle is brought out to stave off the capture of a
queen or a check-mate. The figurative allusion, we
regret to say, is but too apposite. Statesmen and
parties have been playing at political chess too long.
It is time for us to remember that the stake perilled
is the moral and social greatness of the British
empire—the temporal and eternal happiness of the
British people.

The noble effort to provide for our seamen an
escape from the harpies who live upon their plunder,
the first active step in which is to be made next
week, suggests the existence of another monster
evil existing in our town, which we believe to be
remediable. Whilst proceeding along our magni-
ficent docks, his Royal Highness may perhaps be
struck with the vast numbers of migratory popu-
lation continually landing and departing from their
quays. He may be told that five or six thousand
persons, during the summer months, are domiciled
temporarily in our town, waiting for an opportunity
to emigrate. An equal number, perhaps, of a lower
c!ass, are passing to and fro with produce from
Ireland, or to seek for harvest or other employment;
and the thought may naturally occur to him, where
do these poor unfortunates find places of rest and
shelter during their residence amongst us ? Have
any means been provided for securing to them a
healthy night's lodging, or protection from imposi-
tion, or from moral or physical contamination ?
The answer will be, that there are no such means
provided ; that the poor wayfarers are left to draft
themselves off to filthy lodging-houses, in back
streets and courts, to herd with the most dissolute