The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-09-14 00:00:00

They have descended gradually downwards till they can
exist only by. purchasing the smiles of a mendicant at the
expense of the patronage of Ireland, and by widening the
circle of Ministerial influence through every artifice the most
corrupt minister of ancient days invented or employed. To
this have they come at last, with all their fine professions,
their essays on English government, their articles in the Edin-
burgh Review, their motions on the influence of the crown,
and their calculations of the extent of patronage fresh in the
recollection of the people they have deluded. Yet what care
they fur the memory of the past or the shame of the present
hour, so long as they can cling to places and pocket pay?
They have deluded the nation, but even more to that nation's
than their own. What excuse has any man for allowing
himself to be duped by a Palmerston, taken in by a Mel-
bourne, or entrapped by a Glenelg?
But then, perhaps we may hear some whig,, blinded to all
sense by party spirit, and ignorant of all necessary informa-
tion, put in here a claim for mitigation of censure, by assert-
ing that if hundreds of offices have been created (as no one
will ever deny) many have been abolished. It is sometimes
the pleasure of whig journals to prate boldly about reductions
and retrenchments and so forth. Now we are quite content
to take the issue on this point, and to inquire into these
boasted and patriotic proceedings. We hear of reductions
made by the whiffs. We ask, what have they reduced ? The
yeomanry, of which they had not the patronage. But what
have they increased? The army, the navy, the legal situa-
tions, the commissions, and some of the public offices of
which they have the control; and, not content with this, they
have made new modes of employing partisans, as we have
before described, in every part of the country. We hear of
retrenchments. We ask, what have they retrenched? Cer-
tainly not the public expenditure; perhaps their own duties.
Of the expenditure it is only needful to say that for the year
1838 it will be nearly £53,000.000; just about £1,000,900
more than the year 1835. We have no hesitation whatever
in declaring that the expense of carrying on the government
at this present moment, independently, of course, of the
charge fur interest on the national debt, is considerably
more than in 1832, when a motion was brought forward im-
peaching the Liverpool administration. Lord Londonderry
then stated that expense to be £18,000,000 per annum; a
sum less than is at present yearly devoted to our establish-
ments. If the Whigs have neglected to retrench this enor-
mous charge they have failed not from want of good examples.
Mr. Pitt abolished 416 places, with salaries of £265,748, and
all these unconnected with the collection of the revenue,
while he created only 197, with salaries of £77,000.-'4 In the
revenue department, though compelled to increase taxation
with the progress of the war, and so to extend also the num-
ber of places in the excise and the customs, he yet, with a
rigid hand, curtailed every unnecessary expense ' and abolish-
ed in the salt department alone NO places. How does it
happen that the reforming ministers we are now blessed with
have not attempted to do likewise? Lord John Russell enu-
merates, under the following several hands, the various
means of exerting crown influence. t ,
I. The Collection of the Revenue.
E The Civil List and the Subordinate Offices of Civil
Government.
3. The Colonies.
4. The Army, Navy, Ordnance, &c.
5. The Law.
6. The Qhurch.
7. The influence of Honours.
All these things still exist, and are still used by the govern-
ment for their political and party purposes. If they afforded
such ground for jealousy and suspicion in 1822, bow does if
happen that now, when each several department is increased
in its operation on the independence of Parliament, when
there are more placemen than ever, that we hear no murmur
from the Constitutional Whigs, and catch no whisper of regret
or anxiety ! How does it happen that we find in the Navy
List the names of young persons in command of vessels who
are notorious for nothing but relationship to Whig partisans?
Among-the most recent pramotions we find the Hon. Henry
Keppell, Edward Stanley, the Hon. Joseph Denman, the
Hon. Byron Cary, the Hon. Frederick Pelham, the Hon.
Dudley -Pelham, Thomas Eden, Adam Caruperdown Duncan,
Granville Lock, William Henry Quin, Robert Otway, Lord
Francis Russell, George Elliot, Lord Henry Russell, the
Hon. Edward Howard, the Hon. George Plunkett, Edward
Troubridge, the Hon. Chas. Elliot, the Hon. Admiral Elliot,
and very many more Twvdsons, D'Eyncourts, Pagets, Beau-
clerks, Carnacs, Codringtons, Greys, &c., whose names alone
sufficiently and satisfactorily account for the display of Mi-
nisterial interest in their welfare. On glancing at the list of
flag-officers employed, we find only- 12, and of that small
number the following approved Whigs :
Lord Ainelius Beauclerk, uncle of the Duke of St. Alban's.
Sir Robert Otway, uncle of the member for Tipperary.
Sir Charles Paget, brother of Lord Anglesea.
Sir John Ommany, the defeated whig candidate for Hamp-
shire.