The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-03-16 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE " POPULAR CAUSE."
( From the Morning Herald.)
Among the various forms of congratulation in which
the, delighted whig radicals have indulged, in conse-
quence of the prospect of retaining office by means of a
majority of 29, the most impudent is their proclamation
that they have achieved a triumph for the popularcause.
It has been long ago established among the axioms of
cunning dabblers in political delusion, that any thing
regarding public affairs, however contrary to truth, may
obtain very considerable footing, and even be admitted
as a principle of political action, if only it be persever-
ingly and extensively asserted. Let.any fiction, how-
ever monstrous, be asserted in the newspapers week after
week, and day after day, for a long time, and the classes
who read these newspapers will come—not to believe
the thing—but to act upon it as an established truth,
without any rational investigation of. the thing asserted.
Of this mode of profitable deception the whig-radicals
have had no scruple in availing themselves, and their fa-
vourite habit of imposture has been to represent the ad-
vantage of their party, and the furtherance of the po-
pular cause, as identical things:
Now this is so far from being true, that the very con-
trary might with much more reason be maintained. The
popular cause is that which the present ministers, and
the party ,upon which they depend, have ever neglected.
They have been, more than any other men that ever pos-
sessed influence in this country, hostile to the cause of
the people; for the torieS; even in their Errors, were not
So sordid and so selfish as to try to engross every thihg
for themselves. If they endeavoured to grasp a greater
amount of political power than fairly belonged to them,
they did not deem it necessary to grind the poor in order
to exhibit their philosophy. If they *ere often profuse
of the national resources, they at least allowed the per-
pular body to dip in the running stream of waste. It.
was not their practice to pinch and pare in all things be.
yond the sphere of their own enjoyment, but to gorge
and cram those connected with them, either as political
supporters or as expectant relatives. This is the plan
of whig-radicals; and while jobs are multiplied, and
commissioners grow up like mushrooms from the Down-
ing-street soil—while old places, however useless, are
maintained, and new ones, however unnecessary, are
crekted, the popular. body, is not a whit the richer. No
one thrives, except there be a Cause shown in the shape
of a probable help to men whose political existence de-
pends upon a few votes in the House of Commons.
Borongh mongering under another name is as rife as
ever ; and though a man cannot go into the market and
sell the nomination to a seat in parliament, he may show
in a certain quarter that his influence is considerable;
.and he will find this to throw a wonderfully strong light
upon his claims to a commissiunership, or any piece of
patronage which may seem to him commensurate with
This merits.

But these ministers pretend that their success is a tri-
.
tunp..lt to khe popular cause.. -What Is-the popular cause ?
Is it that of the political economists? Is it tire cause-of
those who consider compassion to be one of the infirmi,
'ties of ftnmanity, and the indulgence of kindly feeling
to bea. dangerous excesS ? Is the popular cause identt-
-get' with the success of. Men who have reduced hard-
heattedness to a science, and boast of having gone fur-
ther than any other men in giving to regulated selfish-
ness a political elevation which, in less enlightened times,
it did not possess.?
We should be glad to hear from those who ascribe po-
pularity to the cause of the whig•radical party, what
the popular body have ever derived from whig-radical
measures. That the middling classes in towns have ob-
tained a greater share of political codsc4tience, and are
more directly involved in the party strife of politics than
they were, and that these changes are owing to whig-
radical measures, we admit. But beyond that—and we
can scarcely call that doing any thing for the mass of the
people—the whole scope and tendency of
.whie-radical
policy has been the reverse of popular. It has ,been held
as a reproach to the tone of society in this country, that
poverty is ignominious; but the whig-radical govern-
ment has gone mach farther than this, for its policy ap •
peals to be founded upon the assumption of the same,
thing; so that the ignominy of poverty is not merely a
defect of the manners and worldly disposition of the
time, but it. is made the foundation or. laws. The free-
dom of human beings—that is if they be poor—is treated
as a matter of very light account; but the freedom of
capital-is insisted upon with all the ardour of patriotic
emotion. The rights of riches never were more sturdily
upheld than they havebeen by whig-radical politicians—
the claims of poverty have never been more cruelly ne-
glected-than by these same politicians, and yet they have
the' effrontery to call their success a triumph of the po-
pular cause.
It is easy to call any cause popular; but so long as
the' cause of the people is that of nature and-humanity;
and,so long as the cause of the whig-radicals is that of
capital and cunning, the whig-radical cause and the po-
pular cause will be wide as the poles asunder.