The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-11-30 00:00:00

*Orr.

TRYING TO PLEASE EVERYBODY.

Hints to Editors.

One reader cries, your strain's too grave,
Too much morality you have,
Too much about religion;
4;ive me some witch and wizard tales,
Of slip-shod ghosts with tins and scales,
And feathers like a pigeon.

I love to read, another cries,
Those monstrous fashionable lies—
in other words, those novels.
Composed of kings, and priests, and lords,
0: border wars, and Gothic hordes
That used to live in hovels.

No, no, cries oue, we've had enough
Of such confounded love-sick stuff

To craze the fair creation:
Give us some recent foreign news
Of Russians, Turks, the Poles, or Jews,
Or any other nation.

The man of dull scholastic lore
Would like to see a little more

Of first-rate scraps of Latin;
The grocer fain would learn the price
Of tea and sugar, fruit and rice;
The draper, silk and satin.

Another cries, I want more fun,
A witty anecdote or pun,
A rebus or a riddle;

Some wish for parliamentary news,
And some, perhaps, of wiser views,
Would rather hear a fiddle.

The critic, too, of classic skill,
Must dip in gall his gander qu►ll,

And scrawl against the paper;
Of all the literary fools,
Bred in our colleges and schools,
He cuts the greatest caper.

Another cries, I want to see,
A jumbled-up variety,
Variety in all things—
A miscellaneous hodge-podge print,
Composed (I only give the hint)
Of multifarious small things.

I want some marriage news, sass miss,
It constitutes my highest idiss
To hear of weddings p:eoty ;
For in a time of general rain
None suffer from a drought, 'tis plain,

At least not °nein twenty

I want to hear of deaths, says one,
Of people totally undone •
By losses, tire, or fever;
Another answere, full as wise,
I'd rather have the fall and rise
Of racoon skins and beaver.

Some signify a secret wish
For now and then a favourite dish
Of politics to suit them ;
But here we rest at perfect ease
For should they swear the moon was cheese,
We never should confute them.

Or grave or humorous, wild or tame,
Lofty or low, Nis all the same,
Too haughty or tou humble ;
So, brother editors, pursue
The path that seems the best to you,
And let the grumblers grumble.

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

LADY HESTER STANHOPE AND THE WHIG
GOVERNMEN
(From the Moi fling Herald.)
We published, yesterday, a very curious correspon-
dence relative to the conduct of the Whig government
in reference to Lady Hester Stanhope. We take,
now, the opportunity of stating, that the annals of
official meanness contain nothing more disgraceful.
The ' hig cabinet has not, since the accession of
Queen Victoria, been sparing in the unconstitutional
use of her Majesty's name, and alleged political sym-
pathies. But. we are not aware that they have, in any
previous case, compromised the authority of theit'royal
mistress in a manner so grossly unconstitutional, as
they have in this affair of Lady Hester Stanhope and
one of her creditors.
The facts of the case are these. Lady Hester
Stanhope, the niece of Mr. Pitt, has, since the death
of that distinguished statesman, received a pension of
£1,500 per annum. Her ladyship has, for very many
years, resided in eastern countries. In her wander-
ings, she has contrived to learn more of the manners
and opinions of the "far east" than ever was learned
by European before--encountering, at the same time,
more moving accidents by flood and field than ever
fell to the lot of heroine of romance. Her ladyship's
eccentric habits, strong powers of mind, and unbounded
generosity, have acquired for her vast influence in the
district where she has of late years fixed her residence.
In consequence of a recent ebullition of benevolence,
on a very magnificent scale, her ladyship was com-
pelled to transact sundry large debts. One of her
creditors, at length, applied to the British government
for aid in his attempt to enforce .a settlement of his
claim, and in answer to this application Lord Palmer-
stun prevailed on the Queen to intimate that Lady
Hester Stanhope's pension should be stopped until the
debt in question was provided for.
On the subject of the debt adverted to, Lady Hester
Stanhope has declared, that her creditor subjected her
to extortion of the rankest kind, and that, at all events,
he is entitled to no preference over her other cre-
ditors.

It seems to us scarcely possible to imagine any de-
reliction of duty towards the crown more gross than
that committed by Lord Palmerston in advising the
Monarch to abase the royal prerogative into the means
of effecting, the forcible adjustment of- a dispute be-
tween a creditor and a debtor. Such a duty is not, as-
suredly, amongst the duties assigned to the crown by
the theory of the constitution; but if such are to be,
henceforward, on the authority of Lord Palmerston
and his brother whigs, revised as amongst the
functions of royalty,it would seem to follow that all
Creditors may, when it suits them, advance pretensions
to the benefit of the friendly offices of the crown, in
bringing refractory debtors to reason—pretensions
quite as well-founded as those of the whig-patronised
claimant on the resources of Lady Hester Stanhope.
Many debtors, having large means in England, have
been in the habit of living abroad, in order to evade
payment of their debts. Why should not the influence
of the crown be forthwith placed, in all such cases, at
the disposal of all classes of creditors, honest and dis-
honest ? Why should not the crown prerogative be,
henceforward, employed in the attachment of rents and
dividends—the property of all debtors who may not
choose immediately to settle with their creditors?
Who can touch pitch and not be defiled ? Royalty
itself, when doomed to contact with whiggery, would
seem destined to lose no small portion of its lustre I
It may be urged, perhaps, that our reference to rents
and dividends is not warranted in the circumstances—
that pensions differ in character from the other varie-
ties of property which we have named—and that, over
pensions, the crown must be.admitted to possess a le-
gitimate -power of control ! •
It will, at all events, be conceded by the defenders
of Lord Palmerston, that if this assumed distinction
were admitted, the admission would not deprive the
interposition of the tvhig goverriment in this matter of
Lady Hester Stanhope, of its oppressive and uncon-
stitutional character, unless, in all similar circum-
stances, a similar species of interposition Wright, as a
matter of cotirse, be calculated on. Yet such inter-
position might have been, and might still be, attended
with exceeding inconvenience-in the instances even of
many illustrious individuals. The Duke of Sussex
might, on his confession, be, at this moment, subjected
to the benefit of this whig-discovered variety of the
royal prerogative; whilst, "if we have writ our an-
nals true," the late Dukes of York and Kent might
have had the pecuniary difficulties that beset them fear-
fully aggravated, if the measure which has been meted
out to Lady Hester Stanhope had been meted out to
those members of the royal family.
We beg, however, to express our dissent from the
whig construction of the nature of that control which
is, undoubtedly, possessed by the crown over the re-
cipients of pensions. Pensions ought not to be granted
on light grounds; nor ought pensions, when granted,
to be, for slight reasons, revoked. As the sanction of
Parliament besides, is, not unfrequently, superadded
to the royal authority in the bestowal of pensions, it
might be desirable, perhaps, that the sanction of Par-
liament should, in like manner, generally, warrant the
withholding of that which bears the character of a
public reward. Not that we would be understood, for
a moment, to question the constitutional right of the
Sovereign to revoke a pension; but we venture to
think, that as a pension is presumed to have been won
by public services, the forfeiture of a pension ought,
e converso, to be preceded by some offence against the
public on the part of the recipient. And on this po-
sition we are prepared, without hesitation, to take our
stand—that although the crown may, with perfect pro-
priety, in certain cases, interfere to revoke - a pension,
the crown never can, without compromising its dig-
nity, interpose to regulate the distribution of the pen.
sion between the recipient and his creditors.
Tire creditor of a public pensioner, like tire creditor
of every kind of debtor, has his remedy at law ; and
to courts of law--on the implied protection of which
he, in the first instance, risked his property, in tlie
shape of a loan—he ought to repair for redress. If
the powers of courts of law be found insufficient to se-
cure justice to creditors—(although on that Aide there
is not commonly supposed to he any lack of efficiency
in our civil tribunals)—let these powers be increased
until the ends of justice can be attained. To the
whigs alone could it. have occurred to abase the royal
prerogative t 9 tire level of the privileges rested by the
constitution in a Court of Requests.

It is a circumstance not generally known that the three
last u:etendeis of the dethroned 'dirtily of the Stuarts, have
recorded upon limit tomb-itones in the cathedra! church of
St. Peter, at Rome, their.pretended titles of Kings of Great
Britain and Ireland. under the names of Charles ill., James
111., and Henry IX., the last being the Cardinal York, who
lived and died a pensioner of Geo.
Ime Emenaou TRAJAN.—" You teach," said the Em-
peror Traj;in to the Rabbi Joseph, "that your Goo is every-
where, and boast that he resides amongst your nation; I
should like to see him."—" God's presence is indeed every-
where," replied Joshua, "but he cannot be seen; no mortal
eye can behold his glory." The Emperor insisted. " Well,"
said Joshua, "suppose we try to look first at one of his aua-
bassaclurs?" The Emperor consented. The rabtlftook him
in the open air at noonday, and bid him look at the sun iu
its meridian splendour. " I cannot, the light dazzles sue."
"Thou art unable," said Joshua, "to endure the light of
one of his creatures, and canat thou expect to behold the re-
splendent glory of the CaxaTna? Would not such a sight
annihilate I (A?" —Goodhu9h's Lectures on Biblical Literature.