The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-26 00:00:00

•

in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. Services, indeed!
What have both the services which this pragmatical
Benthamitegas rendered, to entitle him to such an ex-
travagant amount of pay ? Will it be believed that
they have chiefly consisted in attempts-4utile, we are
glad to say, in many cases, but not less mischievous on
that account—to extend the infamous system of free,
trade, by which the merchants and shipowners of this
country have been duped and cheated, and which has.
plunged a large portion of the working classes into
irretrievable ruin ? For his attempts thus to give other
powers the advantage of a " unilateral reciprocity"
with this country, this contemptible would-be philoso-
pher has received eleven thousand pounds of the public
money. Faugh ! The whole affair is a rank job..

There was a time when the Independents, as a body,
repudiated every thing savouring of Popery and
Prelacy, under the latter of which terms was included
" church government by Archbishops, Bishops, their
Chancellors and Commissioners, Deans, Deans and
Chapters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical
officers depending upon that hierachy." Such, in
fact, was the language of these sectarians in the dayi
of Oliver Cromwell. But tempora mutantur et nos
mutamur in ills. The more refined Independents of
the present day have agreed to repudiate the language
of the " Solemn League and Covenant for the Reforma-
tion and Defence of Religion." At the so-called
" ordination" of an Independent minister at York,
the other day, the Rev. C. Payton remarked that " he
thought the Right Rec. Dr. Raffles, if he would allow
him to call him by that title, might have favoured them
with a word of exhortation." The Rev, Dr. Raffles
hereupon rose, and said—" His friend, Mr. Parsons, was
the owner of that title." The Rev. Mr. Hamilton said
"he should enter his protest against this. When he
saw his Rev. Friend, Mr. Jackson, in the room, he
considered that the title Archbishop belonged to him."
Such is the servility with which these Dissenters now
intimate the language of Episcopalians. Shades of
Pray-God-Barebones and Obadiah Strong-in-the-Faith !
what would be your horror .if ye -witnessed these
heretical pranks of your Church-hating but Popery-
loving successors? lieu! pietas! lieu ! prisca fides !

After effecting all the mischief in his power among
the negroes of Jamaica, the arch-agitator Knibb has
come to England to stir up the angry passions of the
people of this country against the planters of the West
Indies. He commenced his campaign on Tuesday last
at Birmingham, at a meeting held for the purpose of
hearing his statements respecting the results of negro
emancipation. He was accompanied by two emanci-
pated Africans, who respectively addressed the meet-
ing before their rev. friend commenced his abusive
tirade against the West India interest. One of these
" coloured deacons" attributed the fact of the falling
off in the production of sugar to the circumstance that
the women were no longer compelled to work in• the
fields from morning till night. There might be some
reason or show of plausibility in this plea, if it could
be proved that the able-bodied among Me male popula-
tion of 'Jamaica had manifested a proper disposition to
labour. The reverse of this is notoriously the• case;
and it is, therefore, the most idle nonsense (not to
designate it by any harsher term) to talk of the present
exemption of women from field labour. The plain
truth of the matter is, that the men have been idle.
This is the true cause of the •fearful falling off in the
crops.
Mr. Knibb, who was received by his greasy= and
begrimed audience with plentiful applause, begawito
lacquer his Brummagem friends with compliments
upon their " manufacturing enterprise," and. their
"determined opposition to slavery wherever slavery
was found to exist." The irony of the latter compli-
ment will be apparent when we consider the unremit-
ting exertions of the free-traders of Birmingham for
facilitating the introduction of slave-grown sugar for
home consumption.
The staple of Mr. Knibb's speech consists in a tissue
of blundering falsehoods, awkwardly put together, and
.scarcely deserving of a serious refutation, were it not
for the mischief they are calculated to produce. It is
false to assert that Mr. Knibb challenged the planters
of Jamaica to refute the charges which he brought
against them, and that they refused to accept his chal-
lenge. They have over and over again, through the
medium of the press, and by resolutions passed et
public meetings, proved that his assertions respecting
the good conduct of the negroes, and the tyranny Of
their masters, were utterly groundless. It is false to
say, that the present Governor of Jamaica, " before he
was twenty days in the island, had dared to traduce the
character of the whole body of Baptist missionaries."
Sir Charles Metcalfe never was guilty of such an act.
We defy Mr. Knibb to the proof. It is true: that he
" charged the Baptist missionaries with entering into
political partisanship ; " but this charge only contained
a plain unvarnished statement of the truth, as every
respectable inhabitant in the colony can testify. The
only fault that Mr. Knibb can find with Sir Charles
Metcalfe is, that he has acted in a strictly impartial
manner in his administration of the affairs of Jamaica.
He has refused to walk in the steps of that mad-cap Sir
Lionel Smith. Hence the rancorous enmity of Mr.
Knibb and his fellow-agitators. •
It is false, again, to assert that the influence of the
Baptist missionaries has had nothing whatever to do
with the diminution of the produce of Jamaica. It is
notorious that they have been mainly influential, through
their bad counsels to the negroes, in causing the latter
to refrain from labouring for such remuneration as the
planters could afford. It is equally false to say that
" the planters refused to cultivate the land, under the
impression that the negroes would not work." Such
a preposterous assertion carries with it its own refuta-
tion. Such a refusal as that hinted at would have been
an act of suicidal policy of which no sensible man could
be guilty.

It-is false, also, to allege that the planters attempted
to force exorbitant rents from the peasantry." We hoe
repeatedly shown the utter futility of this charge. We
have over and over again proved, from data which ad'
mit of no controversy, that the planters have acted with
the greatest forbearance and liberality towards the la-
bourers. It was obviously their own interest to afford
their labourers every reasonable indulgence and encou-
ragement. The despatches of Sir Charles Metcalfe,
when published, will. we hesitate not to say, prove that
they have thus consulted their own interests.

It is false, also, as we before intimated, to say that
the diminished produce of sugar is owing, in any ap-
preciable measure, to the withdrawal of the women
from field labour. This is a lame excuse to screen the
delinquency of those who have misled the negroes, ti
their own detriment and the ruin of the planters.
Mr. Knibb asserts that which is not true when he
says that "if we have received in this country 109
sugar, we have .exported to the West India colonies a
much larger quantity of our manufactured goods."
The table of imports into Jamaica sets this question at
rest, as we shall, when it suits our own convenience,
prove to the satisfaction of Mr. Knibb himself.

c, But," adds Mr. Knibb, " if they (the West Indies)
had not enough of sugar to supply the home constunr
tion, there are other countries to get it from." Other
countries, indeed ! Yes, slave-holding countries'
countries by which the slave-trade is carried on in all
its primitive activity, and with more than its primitive
atrocities ! Here is a consistent denouncer of slayer"'
for you! Out upon such barefaced hypocrisy !
wonder that Mr. Knibb's audience did not cry out
" Shame !" upon such a villanous proposition as that
of encouraging slavery in other countries, for the sake
of encouraging idleness in Jamaica.
Mr. Knibb asserts that " there is not a labouring
population on the earth so free from crime as the la-
bouring population of Jamaica." Does he forget the
incendiarism, the pilfering, and the cattle stealing-v.11i%
have recently become so prevalent in the island ?
-1)1
he forget the frightful catalogue of offenders brought
1
up for trial within the last year for various offences

against property ?
But enough for the present. We shall have muchmore to say to Mr. Knibb before we have done with
t.
him. We know the state of Jamaica too well to be

imposed upon by his gross misrepresentations.

The ministerial organs still affect to considOr as no-
thing the important triumph of Wednesday,'
evidently looking forward to the chaptei;Uf accidents-
the bill in com-
for some godsend to defeat or delay
mittee. Lord Howick and- Mr. :Wciod, they argue,
may retrace their steps; the absent ministerialists may
be whipped up for the committee; and, by a surprise

Or a lucky turn up of. the cards of some kind or other,
the majority of three may be turned into a minority,
and ministers and their Romish coadjutors in Ireland
may be enabled, for another session, to outrage and vio-
late the feelings of the British people. Such, we admit,
may be the case ; but at what a damning sacrifice of
principle and character on the part of the ministry will
this be effected ! How utterly fallen will those men
appear in the eyes of their fellow-countrymen, who
can submit to retain office by a trick, and to receive
the wages of office when the power of earning them
exists no longer !
It will he remembered by our readers that after the
division on Wednesday night the committee on the
bill was adjourned to Friday. On that day its noble
mover was compelled, by the factious obstruction of
the Hume-O'Connellite ministry, to adjourn it further
until the 4th of June, previous to which period it was
announced by Lord John Russell, amidst the laughter
of the house, that the Irish Attorney-General would
lay upon,the table a Government Registration Bill, be!.
tween which and that of Lord Stanley he would frame
such. a motion as would enable the house to decide.
It is, of course, a matter of very little concern to us
what are the principles upon which the bill to be intro-
duced by ministers will be founded, inasmuch as we
have it already recorded from the lips of Lord John
Russell himself, that it will contain provisions which
will ensure its rejection by the House of Lords ; and
we are therefore compelled to come to the conclusion
that its object will only be, as described by Lord Stan-
ley during the debate, "to serve as a peg upon which
to hang.up the question altogether."
Be it so., Such a result would be a worthy accom-
paniment to the celebrated appropriation clause, upon
the passing of which the Melbourne administration
came into office solemnly pledged, and which has long
ago been quietly shelved amongst the forfeited pledges
of that despicable and dishonest crew. But will the
House of Commons, which has just declared that the
evils of the present registration system in Ireland are
insupportable, turn round, at Lord John Russell's invi-
tation, and stultify themselves by rejecting a measure
calculated to remedy those evils, in favour of one which
is admitted by its author and framer to be a mere de-
monstration—a trick—a fraud—and which is purposely
so drawn up as to be rejected, and so to leave the
Irish constituencies in the same state of rotten-
ness and corruption which is now complained of?
We think ministers and their supporters may dis-
cover that there still exists in that house some re-
gard for decency; and that a body of English gen-
tlemen, who have just recorded their well-considered
opinion in favour of Lord Stanley's bill, are not so
venal as to be bought with .the honied words of the
treasury, or so unwise as to sink themselves with a
sinking ministry, by declaring in favour of every
scheme wsaich the beggarly defamer of their wives
and daughters may succeed in forcing upon the adop-
tion of that loathsome and impure set. Lord John
Russell may discover that the people of England—the
constituencies of England—are not disposed for ever
to have Ireland, with her filthy demagogue and her
brawling priesthood, hanging like a millstone round
their necks; and that a spirit is rising throughout the
land, which, if aggravated and mocked, will grow
stronger and stronger, until at length it succeeds in
Hinging away and trampling upon the incubus which
England hasAlowed too long to depress her energies
and to sully her reputation !
Let this besotted and factious imbecile look around
him, and observe ,the signs of the times. Ludlow and
Cambridge have each nobly exerted themselves to
strengthen the hands of Lord Stanley in the object
which he has undertaken ; and we tell him now, that
other constituencies—a great majority of the constitu-
encies of England—are at this 'moment panting for an
opportunity of consigning himself and his mercenary
and dishonest supporters to the obscurity from which,
in an evil hour for England, they have been allowed
to emerge !

We are sorry that our strictures have been so unpa-
latable to the Mercztry as to drive him to the perpetra-
tion of the mass of absurdity which disfigures the

pages of his last publication. Our contemporary, we
find, cannot bear contradiction. He has vegetated for

So many years in an elysium of fancied supremacy that
_. '

he cannot allow the rude breath of opposition to dis-
turb his self-complacency; and because we have awaked
him from his doze, and disturbed the cloud which
he has allowed to settle upon his perceptions, we

are incontinently visited with a storm of thunder and
fury which would make even the redoubtable Captain
Bohadil tremble in his shoes. We will, however, take
heart, "pluck up drowned honour by the locks," and
strive to. face this grisly emanation of spleen—this
" embodied essence" of detected dishonesty.
Our dozing contemporary, we are quite aware, was,
at the time of writing the articles upon Lord Stanley's
hill, profoundly ignorant of the subject upon which he
So flippantly descanted. He "had not recently read
the clause in question." He had not at all read the
bill in question: He had read, in fact, and knew, in
fact, nothing at all about the matter; and, such being
the case, a "mistake might easily be made." Granted,
good Mercury. We admit the mistake, and readily ac-
knowledge the reasonableness of its occurrence. But
we are not such raw campaigners as to allow our flank
be turned by new levies whilst the main body of the
enemy, represented by thy worthy self, is in full re- •
treat. We are not to be driven. from our position by
quotations from the stupid perpetrations of Mr. Shar- .
man Crawford's pen, or the equally stupid. nothings of
Lord John Russell's lips. We have convicted the
Mercury of ignorance and misrepresentation, and are
not to be put off with the " lame and impotent" ex-
cuse that, if the Mercury has erred, he " has erred in
good 'company." Heaven knows what the Mercury
means by good company !
We-shall not follow our contemporary in his attempt
to withdraw his readers from the questions at issue,
which he dare not meet manfully. But we must pro-
test against a charge which he brings against us, that
we were guilty of a quibble when we challenged him
to prove that any Irish judge had ever yet " ruled that
to confer a right of voting upon a leaseholder, under
the sth section of the Irish reform act of 1832, a man
must prove that he. has a holding for which he pays
£lO a-year." This legal dictum, be it remembered,
was laid down'by our contemporary as that of the Irish
judges ; and we repeat, that we give him three months
to prove it in, in addition to the week which has already
expired. We mean no quibble, and will not allow our
contemporary any.

But, says our contemporary, in palliation of his
mistake"—(query, misrepresentation ?)—" our ob-
jection was obvious/y to that ruling which requires a
man to prove that a solvent tenant could afford to pay
for his tenement £lO a-year more than he himself pays;
and amongst the people ' out of Bedlam' who have
declared against this interpretation of the clause, or
discussed it as a subject of grave consideration, we are
about-to produce, inter aliis, the Duke of Richmond,
the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord J. Russell, the Irish

judges, and the Irish barristers." Now we care little
• about the opinions of the Duke of Richmond, Lord
Lansdowne, or Lord John Russell; neither do we care
much about the Irish barristers. Our main business is
with the Irish judges, only two of whom were of any
other than our opinion as to the " obvious" meaning
of the term "beneficial interest" as referred to in the
sth clause of the Irish reform act, and not one of whom
ever ruled, or dreamed of ruling, that a leaseholder, in
addition to his beneficial interest, or without it, must pay
£lO a-year rent !
Our contemporary denies next that, in objecting to
the production of title deeds by the claimant, he meant,
fraudulently or otherwise, to convey the impression
that this " was required for the first time by Lord

Stanley's bill." " The impression intended to be con-
veyed," he says, was, " that such production of deeds
would enable tory landlords to carry almost any county
in Ireland." We must differ from our contemporary
here. If he knew that the productions of title deeds
is required by the.present act, how could he bring for-
ward that grievance as an argument against Lord Stan-
ley's bill, which does not in one tittle alter the ?natter ?
By so bringing it forward he did convey the impression
that it was a grievance of Lord Stanley's creating ;.and
whether that impression was conveyed " ignorantly or
frandulently" we leave to our contemporary himself to
- explain. , t,-
I3ut, our contemporary is not content with merely
evading the misrepresentations of which we have con-
victed him. Having carefully studied the speeches of
Lord Stanley's opponents, and quoted from them

pretty largely, he adventures upon new ground, and
bases upon a quibble a new misrepresentation. Lord
Stanley's bill, he says, " subjects the voter, or renders
him liable, to" the production of his title-deeds "twice
a-year instead of once." Now, if we were disposed to
rest satisfied with a quibble, we should at once say
that this was an untruth. It is, in fact, morally, if not
literally, an untruth. Lord Stanley's bill, we repeat,
enacts no fresh necessity for the production of title-
deeds by a claimant ; and the assertion that it " ren-
ders him liable, to" such production " twice a-year
instead of once," is a stretch of fact which is quite
wocthy of being called a wilful perversion of truth.
It does, we will admit, render the claimant who has
failed in proving his right before the assistant barrister,
and who chooses.to appeal to the judge of assize, liable
to be again asked to produce evidence in support of
his appeal ; and what- mighty hardship can this be ?
The claimant was liable to the same hardship by the
act of 1832 ; and the only alteration effected by Lord
Stanley's bill is, that an objector as well as a claimant
may appeal from the decision of the assistant barrister,
subject, however, to the imposition of costs, if his appeal
has been made vexatiously. It no doubt suits the pur-
pose of the Mercury and his .faction to dwell upon and
distort this feature of the bill; but they are perfectly
aware that their objections to it are mere fudge.
Let us, however, leave for the present our contem-
porary's quibbles, and advert briefly to the astounding
discovery which he has made as to our identity, and
the awful denunciations which he has thought proper
to hurl against us. We are highly gratified, we can
assure him, by his flattering notice of the " raciness"
of our style, and our " correctness of composition ;"
but what he means by our having a " private grudge
to gratify," or " a personal wrong to avenge," we really
are at a loss to know. We found this man impugning
the motives of honourable men, and misrepresenting
the provisions, of a.us.eful measure. We detected his
ignorance, and exposed his trickery to the public.
We shelved him the shallow thing he is, when stripped
of his usual covering of bombast and impertinence;
and if we have effected this to his own content and
that of the public, our object is complete. The Editor
of the Mercury may rest assured that we have no
" private grudge" against him, and that all the decla-
mation which he pours forth so volubly upon our un-
lucky head is so much fine writing absolutely thrown
away. _ _ _

What an absurdly inflated idea our contemporary
must have of his own importance, if he supposes that
to contravert the silly twaddle which flows from his
pen, it is necessary that the powers of some "great
unknown" should be called into requisition ! Yet such
is the ludicrous idea which has now taken possession
of him. We are not, it seems, the editor of the STAN-

DARD, but some evil genius of the Mercury who has
" crept behind the editor's chair," and been guilty, in
so doing, of " a compound of meanness, perfidy, and
utter disregard of principle, such as hardly ever be-.
fore disgraced any individual, public or private, in this
or any other country" ! ! There's a climax for you,
reader ! "We think," adds the Mercury, "we could
lay our hands upon the man" ! ! Horrifying thought !
We are assassins too, " cowardly and perfidious," be-
cause we have neglected to send our card and compli-
ments along with the trifle of correction which we be-
stowed upon him this day week. It is lamentable to
witness this delusion of our contemporary; and, in
order to ease his mind and enable him to settle down
to his usual harmless and trifling pursuits, we assure
him that, never having had the honour of his intimacy,
we have no personal grudge towards him; and that we
most certainly never entertained such an exalted opi-
nion of his powers as to lead us to ask for assistance in
any contest we might have to wage with him.
In good time we have no doubt of being able to
convince the Mercury of this fact, as we shall occa-
sionally venture upon the liberty of giving him a gentle
shake up. He must learn, however, to correct his
temper, and lay aside the Furioso style of writing with
which his remarks to us are concluded. Such stilted
swagger only makes a man look supremely ludicrous.

How vastly considerate and correct some of our
modern Whigs become when they discover that they
are no longer able to advance their own cause by dis-
honest means ! They can agitate when it suits their
turn ; they can brawl and threaten with the loudest ;
they can spout treason and excite rebellion ;--bat-let=
any of these weapons be turned against themselves;
and forthwith the brawling democrat becomes a quiet,
easy-going soul, who dreads excitement, and " depre-
cates" anything likely to promote dissension, or awake
unpleasant feelings.
We have an amusing instance of this one-sided
propriety in the Liverpool Journal of Saturday. It
has been announced that on Friday next, the anniver-
sary of the restoration of King Charles the Second,
the Shipwrights' Society of Liverpool would resume
their ancient practice, and form a procession through
the principal streets of the town, the same liberty being
always allowed to the Temperance Societies, and to
the Irishmen on St. Patrick's Day. But no ;.--the
shipwrights ire a loyal and respectable body of Eng-
lishmen—of Protestants—of Conservative Protestants;
and our contemporary on a sudden makes the disco-
very that a display of 'such a body of men is impolitic
and unwise—that all such processions ought to .be
forborne as likely to provoke disturbance,—and then
appeals to the authorities to interfere and prevent the
procession of Friday from taking place, reminding
them of the circumstance that on the same occasion
last year. some disturbance and contention were the
consequences.

Our contemporary will hardly expect us to believe,

that if the shipwrights of Liverpool were to submit to
waive .their ancient custom, and, in deference to the

law, and from a regard to the peace of the town, to
abstain from their procession, the example would be
followed by the hodmen and lumpers, who are accus-
tomed, on St. Patrick's Day, to display their sweet

persons decked out in the trappings of rebellion, and
marching to tunes which recal only the recollection of
bloodshed and outrage. The experiment, we remind
our contemporary, has been tried. The Irish popula-
tion of Liverpool will persist, on every occasion, in
insulting the feelings of their English fellow-towns-
men ; and there is no occasion in the world why such
profound deference should be paid to their insolent
and factious demands.
We have no fear of any disturbance being the result
of the procession on Friday. The loyal and true-
hearted men who will compose it are not the common
brawlers who are likely to seek an occasion for riot
and outrage. They have the same right as other bo-
dies to enjoy their humour, and we trust that the
authorities will take care they are not insulted or in-
terfered with. Our readers will perceive that a sermon

will be preached to the society, at Christ Church, by
the Rev. Fielding Ould, and that a collection will be
made in aid of the funds of the Blue Coat Hospital.