The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-15 00:00:00

FOR THE LAST

MUNICIPAL ELECTION ;
Shewing the Duplicate Qualifications of the VOTERS,
and the WARDS in which they polled. The Lists
have been examined with the Polling Papers in the
possession of the Mayor. This publication, which
has been compiled with the utmost care, will be found
of great utility as
A BOOK OF REFERENCE,

and will be found of service to the several Ward
Committees in carrying on the Canvass for the ensu-

tag year.
Printed and sold by LACE and ADDISON, Standard-
offce ; and sold also by other Booksellers.

Ebt 'ibrrpool &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 15, 1840.

By an extraordinary express from Toulon, the whole
of the correspondence between Commodore Napier
and Boghos Bey, relative to the submission of Mehe-
met Ali, has been received. Commodore Napier's
first letter, which is published at length in the Morning
Herald of yesterday, conveys a request that Mehemet
Ali would send back all the Emirs and Shiehks of
•..air •
Lebanon, who were sent to Alexandria in the month of
July, by order of the authorities of Syria, and that he
would give up immediately, and without any conditions,
the Ottoman fleet, and withdraw his troops from Syria.
Commodore Napier enforces these demands by an
appeal to what has been done in Syria, where 6,000
Turks and a handful of marines have taken Saida and
Beyrout, defeated the Egyptian army in three different
actions, taken 10,000 prisoners and deserters, caused
all the seaports to be evacuated, taken all the passes of
the Taurus, and the mountains of Lebanon, and
rcduced Acre, after a bombardment of only three hours.
Fte then alludes to the discontent which prevailed in
the Egyptian army, and advises his highness to reflect
that " Alexandria might be taken as Acre was taken."
Boghos Bey, in his reply, assures the Commodore that
NlehemerAli had already anticipated the wishes of the
Allies with regard to the liberty of the Druse Chief-
tains, and expresses the gratitude of the Pacha for the
propOsition regarding the hereditary government of
Egypt. Boghos Bey then states that it had never been
the intention of Mehemet Ali to retain the fleet of the
Sultan. The whole communication of Boghos Bey is
of a deprecatory character. Commodore Napier, in
his reply, enforces the necessity for the immediate
evacuation of Syria, and the unconditional surrender
of the Ottoman fleet, and, at the same time, states
that he would not insist upon the departure of the
fleet for Constantinople until the Pacha be guaranteed
in the hereditary government of Egypt. On these
conditions Commodore Napier consents to suspend
hostilities. In a second letter Boghos Bey expresses
his satisfaction at the assurances given respecting the
hereditary government of Egypt, and promises the
immediate restitution of the fleet, on receiving the
official notification of the allied powers. He then
states that the Viceroy was ready to order his son,
Ibrahim Pacha, to concentrate his troops in Syria, in
order to their falling back upon Egypt. To the latter
proposition Commodore Napier replies, that the troops
were already concentrated, and offers to place at
the disposal of Mehemet Ali a steam-boat to conduct
to Beyrout the officer who might be appointed to carry
the despatch to Ibrahim Pacha. The correspondence
closes with the formal acceptance of this offer on the
part of the Pacha, and with an expression of gratitude
for the Commodore's " care and delicacy in the solu-
tion of the thorny difference" which has given rise to
the recent operations in the east.

We dare say that some of our readers may have
heard of the existence, in a neighbouring town, of an
individual who, by the grace of her Majesty's ministers,
has been enabled to rejoice of late, in the name and
title of Sir Thomas Potter, Knight,—the latter, which
distinguishes him from other Potters, having been con-
ferred upon him at the same period, which enabled
our own Sir Joshua to take precedence of his fellow
reformers in Liverpool. In both cases, we believe,
the title has been fairly earned. Sir Joshua has him-
self done "good service to the state;" as his various
contributions of money and counsel to our Protector
and Reform Associations, sufficiently evidence. In
this respect, however, he has not come up to the ex-
ample of his compatriot—the knight of Manchester;
who may be said to have made himself a kind of
Eleemosynary pump, at whose spout needy radicals of
every grade, from John Thorogood—the church-rate
martyr, to Daniel O'Connell—the great agitator, have
drunk and been filled.

To this same Sir Thomas Potter, Knight—on the
occasion of his retiring from the office of pseudo
mayor of Manchester,—the whig faction of that whig-
ridden town gave, on Thursday last, what we believe
they dignify by the name of a dinner, but what might
be termed, with greater propriety, a three and sixpenny
scramble for cold meat. The said three and sixpenny
scramble was attended by some six hundred whig
patriots,—a sorry number for an occasion of such
momentous interest ; and amongst the rest by the
members for the borough, Mr. Mark Philips, and Mr.
Greg; by Mr. Gisborne, M. P. for North Derbyshire,
and by Mr. Milner Gibson, M. P. for no place just
now; but an aspirant hereafter to represent the
borough of Manchester.

We are not going to chronicle the doings at this

wretched, affair—to weary our readers with the vapid
impertinences of Mr. Mark Philips, or the insufferable
boobyism of Mr. Milner Gibson, who assured his sym-
pathizing audience that he "gloried in the appellation
of a Rat !" Our object at present is merely to lay before
our readers the candid admission of Mr. Gisborne—
and to his hearers at this feed evidently an unpalatable
one—that modern liberalism in the House of Commons,
and throughout the country, is at its last gasp ! "Our
friends," said Mr. Gisborne, "have one after another
dropped off into the ranks of those who were formerly
our masters, and who before long will be so again.
(Confusion and cries of 'No, no.') Ay but they will.
though ! I am not here to flatter yon with prospects
which will not be realized. This is the truth; and
although disagreeable for you to hear it, it is not less
disagreeable for me to utter it."

We dare say it was disagreeable for Mr. Gisborne
to utter it, and for his three and sixpenny audience to
listen to so lamentable a confession. For that very
reason it gives us pleasure to add circulation to such
a truth, amongst the thousands of Whig-radicals in
Liverpool who delight in the perusal of our columns.
We have ourselves asserted the same fact over and
over again. We have asserted the fact of this very re-
action, accompanied by proof which would have con-
vinced any thing not absolutely wooden; but we have
not been listened to. A delusion is abroad amongst
our Whig-radical brethren, which will not allow them
to see that their days of political probation have past
by, and that they are about to be laid upon the shelf to
moulder for another half century of hopeless exclusion
from the sweets of offite and the sunshine of patronage.
Will they listen to Mr. Gisborne—a member of their
own party and an able one ? We trust they will.

The Manchester Guardian of Saturday last, in re-
plying to our remarks on the sugar duties, reiterates
the assertion that " the time has come when the Bri-
tish public ought no longer to be required to pay dou-
ble prices for their sugars and their coffees, for the be-
nefit, not of the revenue, but of a body of colonial
monopolists," and insinuates that the West India in-
terests have had " a sufficient term of experience" to
warrant the presumption that they cannot produce
those articles on " an adequate scale, and at a reason-
able price." There would be some show of reason in
these assertions if it could be proved that the British
planters are alone to blame for the serious defalcation
which has arisen in the supply of those staples. The
contrary, however, is notoriously the fact. The people
of this country are alone to blame in this matter. If
the abolition of the Negro apprenticeship had not been
precipitated, in compliance with the popular clamour
raised in this country, the planters would have been in
a very different position to that in which they are at
present placed, and the supplies of sugar and coffee
would have been fully adequate to meet the increasing
demands of the British population. It would require
more ingenuity than the editor of the Guardian can
lay claim to, to prove that the planters of the West In-
d;es have evinced any indisposition to supply the Bri-
tish market with those articles. They have not been
guilty of retaining any portion of their stock in order
to produce a rise of prices. They have anxiously for-
warded home their annual crops for immediate sale.
They have found it necessary to do this that they might
be enabled to carry on the cultivation of their estates.
The real cause of the deficiency in the supplies of su-
gar and coffee, and of the consequent advance in
prices, has been the general indisposition of the Ne-
groes to labour. The planters have not had fair play ;
neither have they had such a term of experience as
would justify us in consigning them to immediate and
irretrievable ruin. The government, urged on by a
set of unreasonable agitators, in this country as well as
in the colonies, haS interposed every obstacle in its power
to prevent the British planters from obtaining an
adequate supply of labour on their estates. Let
the restrictions on free immigration be removed for a
few years, and we feel confident that the West Indies
will yet recover from their depression, and that they
will speedily furnish both sugar and coffee as cheaply
as the Brazils. It remains yet to be proved that free
labour cannot, under any circumstances, compete with
slave labour. The advocates of emancipation have
always maintained that free labour ought to be more
productive than compulsory labour. We do not deny
the position. But let the experiment be carried out.
Let the planters have a fair chance of testing the com-
parative merits of the two systems. Until this is fully
and fairly conceded, it would be an act of gross cruelty
as well as injustice to consign the West Indies to a
state resembling that of their primitive barbarity.
The Manchester Guardian asserts that it is not true
that it has ever proposed, suddenly and at once, to de-
prive the colonial products of all preference in the home
markets. It should, however, be remembered that
even the partial abolition of the discriminating duties
would have the immediate effect of giving a preference
to foreigners in the British market. Even with the
present scale of duties the British planters find great
difficulty in competing with slave-holdingforeign states.
The position of the West India proprietors is eminently
critical at the present moment. They have, as yet,
found it impossible to prevail upon the Negroes to set-
tle down to continuous labour, without which the cul-
tivation of sugar especially can never be carried on with
any degree of success. It would, therefore, be highly
ungenerous to take advantage of this precarious and
trying situation, in order to " deal heavy blows and
great discouragements" to the suffering planters. They
ought to have a little breathing time afforded them,
that they may endeavour to realise the promised advan-
tages of the free labour system. In demanding this
respite on their behalf we are merely insisting upon
having the principles of the abolitionists tested in the
rigid school of experience.
We can well aflbrd to smile at the imputation that
the Liverpool Standard " almost lives and moves, and
has his being as the organ of the West India interests."
We really must disclaim the honour which the Guardian
appears so anxious to confer upon us. A reference to
our advertising columns will, we trust, convince our
contemporary that the amount of support which we
derive from the West India interest is exceedingly
limited. With some half dozen exceptions, the West
India merchants very rarely favour us with any of
their advertisements, notwithstanding our persevering
and consistent advocacy of their claims. We trust
that the Guardian will take this as a proof of our
disinterestedness in taking up the gauntlet in defence
of the British plantations.
We are glad to find that the Guardian has ventured
to speak its mind freely on the subject of the impor-
tation of slave-grown sugar and coffee, for home
consumption in this country. Our contemporary
boldly avers that " Great Britain does not and dare
not profess so to set herself up as a. censor of other
nations, as to refuse to trade with them on equal
terms, avowedly because their forms of government
permit the existence of slavery." Does she not, at
the present moment, our contemporary asks, permit
the importation of American cotton and tobacco, which
are the products of slave labour? True; but she
does so in virtue of treaties of commerce which were
in existence before slavery was abolished in our own
colonies. Her adherence to those treaties is no reason
why she should extend her countenance to slavery in
other countries, and especially those countries by which
the slave trade is still carried on in all its pristine
atrocity. The people of England are not prepared
thus to stultify their own exertions in the cause of
negro freedom. The strongest opponents of the free
trade in slave-grown produce, for which the Guardian
appears to contend with so much earnestness, will be
found among the ranks of the abolitionists, many of
whorn have formally announced their intention to
forego the use of sugar and coffee altogether rather
than admit those articles from slave-bolding countries.
On this subject we beg to refer the Guardian to the
declaration which Mr. O'Connell made, last session,
in his place in Parliament—a declaration which Mr.
Gurney, Mr. Sturge, Mr. Scoble, and Sir T. F. Buxton,
have not hesitated to reciprocate at several public
meetings held subsequently. We happen to know
that this feeling of repugnance to the direct encourage-
ment of slavery and the slave trade is daily gaining
ground in all parts of the country, and that it will
eventually prove too powerful to be successfully op-
posed by the band of heartless political economists by
whom that encouragement is at present advocated.
We do not deny that "the differential duties are as
high against foreign free-labour sugar and coffee, as
against foreign slave-grown sugar and coffee." The
reason of this is well known to every one who is, • the
least, familiar with commercial affairs, Our exietig

treaty with the Brazils effectually precludes us from
showing any preference to Manilla, Java, Siam, St.
Domingo, or any other free labour countries. Are
the manufacturers of Manchester prepared to give up
the reciprocal advantages secured to us by that treaty?
The Guardian concludes its reply to us by asserting
that this country has been encouraging free labour in
our own colonies during the last six years. Where is
the proof ? As far as our Whig rulers are concerned,
as we have before remarked, every possible obstacle
has been thrown in the way of the successful working
of the free labour system in the West Indies. Even
in the very last session of Parliament the claims of the
West India planters were contumeliously rejected by
the Whigs. Nothing, in fact, has been effectually done
in order to secure an adequate supply of immigrants
for our colonies, though it has been proved that hun-
dreds of thousands of such immigrants are ready and
willing to accept of the terms which the planters have
offered. Something, however, must speedily be done,
or we shall witness the final ruin of the West Indies.
The friends of humanity must force this subject upon
the attention of the legislature.

As a copy of the letter of the Rev. J. Clark, in refe-
reference to the Pastoral Aid Society, has already been
made public, we feel at liberty to depart from our
original intention, by giving it insertion in our own
columns ; and this we do the more readily because our
"candour" has been impeached in consequence of our
having suppressed it on Friday. Our principal reason
for declining to publish it, in the first instance, was a
disinclination to pursue the controversy any further.
We feel assured that the publication of Mr. Clark's
letter will do no harm to any one but himself. It will
be seen that we have given insertion to a spirited reply
to Mr. Clark's injudicious effusion. As we have no
wish to protract the dispute we shall content ourselves
with a mere reference to the letter of " A Lay Member
of the, Pastoral Aid Society,". and with an expression
of our concurrence with its language and sentiments.

We have occasionally heard good conservatives, and
good Protestants too, advance the opinion that the
cause of conservatism is damaged by introducing reli-
gious discussion into political questions. We are
allowed to controvert statements of facts, to attack the
principles and expose the fallacies which our opponents
put forth. We may even use occasionally the argumen-
tum ad hominem. But we must allow the religious opi-
nions of our adversaries to remain sacred from assault.
Whether Turk or Mahomedan, Socinian or Papist, we
must judge of the man by his actions or by his pro-
fessions, and exclude altogether from our notice his
religion or the religion of his supporters.
It is something akin to this spurious liberality which
inclines many of our moderate conservatives to depre-
cate the zeal displayed by a portion of our clergy in
denouncing the tenets and the practice of the Romish
church. "Leave religion alone," exclaim these timid
churchmen. " Leave religion alone," echo the friends
of dissent and the professors of no religion. "Itis a po-
litical quarrel which we have to maintain ; and with
political Weapons it ought to be maintained." But is
the fact so, we ask ? Is the quarrel, between conser-
vatism and modern radicalism, a political one merely,
or, if so, is it fought by our opponents with weapons
purely of a political nature ? Far from it, we reply;
and the reason why conservatism, in warring with
whig-radicalism, directs so great a portion of her
strength against popery, is that Whig-radicalism sym-
pathises with popery, fosters popery, and is supported
by, and allied with, popery! The power of that dark
apostacy over the pe►sons and the consciences of its
slaves whig-radicalism eagerly seeks to profit by, and
to direct against our present Protestant constitution.
The experience of the last few years shews, too, that
popery, in any political contest, is a powerful and effi-
cacious ally. She allows no dissensions amongst her
flock ; no differences of opinion; no splitting of hairs,
which so fatally weakens the protestant interest. The
followers of the Church of Rome, led on by their spiri-
ritual superiors or lay fuglemen, throw the whole
weight of their body into the scale; and are ready,
when called upon, even to lay aside the most powerful
considerations of worldly interest, as insignificant when
placed in opposition to the supposed interests of their
church. Their political conduct is made an intrinsic
portion of their religious faith. Surely, then, when
this is so notoriously and, evidently. the case, it will be
perceived that we cannot break down the political power
which popery at present exercises in the state, except
by destroying the chain of ignorance and superstition
by which she leads on her blind dupes to perform her
insidious behests !

But let us see how our opponents treat this alleged
mingling of religion and politics when practised by
themselves. Do they deprecate in their own case what
Mr. Rosson terms the agitation of the Priesthood ? Is
the gag of the law to be applied to "their Reverences,"
as well as to our Protestant Clergy ? Not at all. We
find the Morning Chronicle—the leading organ of the
ministerial party boldly declaring that it is the
bounden duty of the Popish Priesthood to use their
spiritual authority—and how great that is we need not
be told now—to coerce, if necessary, the political con-
duct of their flocks. In a leading article on Saturday
last, upon the subject of the Carlow election, amidst a
mass of frantic railing against the Protestant land-
owners of the county, we find the following passage,
which is pretty significant of the "liberal" view of the
extent to which priestly interference in political matters
may be carried when it is exercised in favour of the whig-
radical party :—" The Priest ought to warn the voter
against the sin against religion (!) which he commits
in voting for a man who seeks to promote what is
destructive to the best interests of his country."
Here, at any rate, we find no mawkish sensitiveness
displayed—no begging of the question. The Romish
Priest—favoured man !—may enter boldly and openly
into the -field of politics; become a political agent
and even a canvasser. He may warn the voters of the
sin against religion, which they commit in presuming
to think for themselves. Warn them !—threaten them,
would be the fitter word, and yet the Protestant Clergy-
man, far from seeking to enter thus actively into the
strife of politics, is not even to denounce and expose
this fearful and blood-cemented system, lest he should
be reproached with having a political object in view!

Let us bear in mind, too, the fact that the course of
policy which the Catholic Priesthood consider con-
ducive to what our ministerial chronicler calls, " the
best interests of their country," is that which they
deem to be most calculated to advance the interests of
" their Church," and the destruction of every other
establishment and creed. The Romish Priest has no
country. The supremacy of his own faith is the first
and last object of his thoughts. In his devotion to
" the Church " is absolved every tie of affection, of
relationship and of country ; and his political views are
directed as his spiritual training teaches him to direct
them to one sole object—the temporal and spiritual
triumph of the Roman Catholic Faith!
Against such an opponent it is mere childish ab-
surdity nay worse —to argue that Protestantism
should be restrained from using, in self-protection,
every influence and every opportunity which her
present position affords her. How soon a tame sub-
mission to the inroads of Popery would remove that
'opportunity we shall not speculate ; but at present, we
thank Heaven, she is not gagged !