The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-07-28 00:00:00

IMPORTANT TO MUNICIPAL VOTERS.

To secure a vote at the next municipal election, the
following is the necessary qualffication, namely :
" The occupation on the ensuing 31st August, and
during the two preceding years, of a house, warehouse,
counting-house, or shop, within the borough, for which
the occupier is rated, and on which all rates due thereon,
except those becoming due within six months before the
31st, have been paid before that date."

The occupier must also, during the whole of that pe-
od, (say two years and nine months) have been an in-

iabitant householder within seven miles of the borough.
The day on which claimants' qualifications must be
.ompleted, and the last day for payment of rates, is the
list of August. The sth of September is the day on
,:hich the overseers are required to make out the burgess

lists, and to deliver them to the Town-clerk, who is to
fix a copy of them on the Town-hall, during the week
preceding the 15th of September.

A person succeeding to the occupation of ouse,

by descent, marriage, demise, is entitled to reckon
as his own the occupancy and rating of the person by or
through whom he succeeds.

EIR Eiberpool Alanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 28, 1840,

By the packet-ship Patrick Henry, Captain Delano,
which arrived here yesterday, we have received New
York papers to the Bth instant. They are extremely
barren of news. We have given, in another column,
all that is worth extracting from them. Great excite-
ment prevailed throughout the union in reference to
the approaching election of President. General Harri-
son appears to he the popular favourite.

. .
There was every promise of an abundant harvest,

both in the United Siates and Canada. In trade and
commerce, however, there were no indications of im-

Tovement

As the session of 1840 draws towards its close, people
are beginning to enquire what have been its results.
Beyond the mere routine business of the House of
Commons,—the exposition of our financial prospects,
voting the usual supplies and passing a few private or

unimportant public bills,—the business of legislation
has been at a stand still; and the only boast which the
ministerial members can carry home to their constitu-
ents is, that they have succeeded in staving off for a
few months their final leave-taking of Downing-street,
and secured for their patrons at least an additional two

quarters of pay and patronage.
This " most lame and impotent conclusion" is all
which has resulted from the interminable debates of the
present session. The reform ministry of Lord Mel-
bourne—a ministry which, upon his lordship's own
sheaving, holds office whilst deprived of the confidence
of the people, as expressed through the voices of their
representatives in the House of Commons—has proved
its utter inefficiency as a movement administration, and

its unworthiness and instability as an engine of defence
against the encroachments of democracy. Substantial
power it possesses none. It can carry nothing which
it originates, except in a state so miserably mauled that

it is difficult even for its parents to recognise it; and it
originates nothing with a bona fide intention to carry
it into a law. Its measures are mere demonstrations,
produced and shelved as best suits the purpose of that
tyrant influence by which it is coerced; and when it
has a serious object in view—when some blunder of a

former session calls imperatively for correction, or some
accidental circumstance creates a necessity for legisla-
tion, it can only effect that object by a lachrymose ap-
peal to the humanity of the house, or by throwing the
functions of government, pro tcmpore, into the hands
of Sir Robert Peel and the conservative party.
In the House of Commons, then, it is past dispute
that the ministerial faction have lost ground during the
present session ; and to a serious extent. They can no
longer depend upon the thick and thin support of the
great bulk of their party; and we are firmly convinced
that there exists a large and important section of the

pseudo reformers who are prepared to fall away from
them on the first occasion which offers a colourable
pretence. During the present session even, it has re-
quired all the tact of Lord John Russell, and all the
energy of the ministerial subs, to preserve an unbroken
front and prevent desertion. The ur.blushing avowal
of the alliance with the member for Dublin—the open
coquetting with the all but republican section of the
house, and that fast and loose policy with respect to the
interests of prot-tstantism, by which ministers seek to
become "all things to all men"—have startled not a
few of the hitherto staunch friends of reform, who are
at the same time the friends of order and of the consti-
tution ; and it is not improbable, that should the present
parliament (contrary to general expectation) endure
another session, this party will return from their con-
stituents with views so materially modified by their
observation of public opinion during the recess, that
government will no longer be able to drag its members
through the same impure and dangerous paths which
they have done during the present session.

Without the walls of parliament the prospects of the
ministerial party are, if possible, still more disheartening.
A vast and important change has been gradually taking
place throughout the country. Sober and reflecting
men, who (luring the reform mania, were induced to

In the counties especially of England and Wales this
feeling is strongly manifesting itself; and in the event
• of an election during the ensuing spring, it is not too
much to expect a considerable accession of sound con-
servatism as the result. In many of the smaller bo-
roughs the present whig or radical members only suc-
ceeded at the last election by small majorities, which
are already overbalanced by new voters admitted, or by
conversions which have since taken place. In the large
boroughs alone, and especially in those which can be
affected by the late simultaneous movement of the Irish
catholic inhabitants, the ministerial party can depend
for support; and even in these th result of a new elec-
tion will, we venture to say, affbrd evidence that the
Whigs, with all their exertions, ha've not materially
im-
proved their position. The registry, we have no doubt,
will shew a considerable increase of their numbers ;
but they are little aware of the falling off which the
voting returns will shew from the effect of conversions ;
and wherever the attempt has been made to foist upon
any large borough a new whig-radical corporation—as
in Manchester, Birmingham, Bolton, &c.—we are con-
fident that the result will be, if not a victory for the
conservative cause, at the least such a bare majority
against it, as, compared with the return of former elec-
tions, will afford strong and undeniable evidence of the
declining popularity and influence of modern liberalism.

With these convictions strongly impressed upon our
• mind, we are little disposed to give much heed to the
braggart assertions of our contemporaries as to the
result of a general election. upon the present register.
It is easy to win a victory upon paper; it is more easy
upon the presumption that the opinions of mankind
are unchangeable, to count upon support which they
have always hitherto afforded than to insure its conti-
nuance. The government of Lord Melbourne is no
longer that government in whose favour the last general
election returned a majority of between thirty and forty
votes. It has lost caste. It has deserted principle,
and stooped to meanness and dissimulation ; and can
no longer, by the mere connexion of its name with
that of the sovereign, mislead the unthinking loyalty
of the people. It has no great popular principle—it
has no great popular measure—upon which to take its
stand for support ; and we have little expectation that
the unworthy alliance by which it is alone maintained
in the present House of Commons, will be one in
whose favour the sound portion of the people of
England will hurry to the poll to record their approval
and confidence.

No, no ! The Melbourne administration is a doomed
thing. For a few short months it may drag on a
miserable and flickering existence ; but its ultimate
fate is beyond retrievement. It will (lie of sheer ina-
nition, and its memory be handed down to posterity,
as one of those unaccountable phases in the history of
party, whose unprecedented baseness mankind will
regard with wonder rather than with reprobation—
with contempt and utter scorn, rather than with the
nobler feeling of indignation. Could we bring our-
selves to entertain the opinion that its leader has any
higher views than those of a hanger-on at court—any
more manly principles than those of an epicurean—we
might be disposed to believe that Lord Melbourne has
played, in behalf of the constitution, a game whose
policy is far beyond the detection of his imbecile com-
panions ; that he has held his lofty station in the public
eye only until the shafts of ridicule and contempt
should have irretrievably ruined his party and saved
the constitution. We cannot, however, entertain this
opinion, yet it is beyond dispute, Ciat every month,
every week, which is added to the existence of Lord
Melbourne's administration, is placing years between
the period of its approaching dissolution, and the form-
ation of any ministry out of the same materials and
advocating the same principles !

Our whig-radical contemporaries arc in extacies with
the success of their attack upon the register. Our
grandam of the Mercury, in particular, has contrived,
by some extraordinary effort, to shake the dust from
her eyes—we were about to say her wings—and to
raise a chuckle of triumph loud enough to lead the
uninitiated to suppose that her silly noddle had some
share in the direction of this last struggle of the faction
in Liverpool. It won't do, however. Our Mercury is
a very respectable old lady, but a little too much dis-
posed to indulge in tittle-tattle to be entrusted with the
secret movements of the Protector Society, or allowed
a voice at the conclave which holds its sittings in Clay-
ton-square. Go to sleep, old lady ! You will be roused
in time to mingle your howl in the "wake" which will
be duly held, before the Protestant voters of Liverpool
consign finally to the earth this political Frankenstein
which "one John Rosson" has created out of very
sorry materials, and over whose cradle you are just
now sounding your fivepenny trumpet.

We did venture, some week or two ago, to hint to
our conservative friends that his worship;Sir Joshua,
possessed one essential qualification as a candidate for
the " most sweet voices" of the liberal party in Li-
verpool. We thought that he would "bleed well."
Either he or some one else has already bled very freely,
as the denizens of Orange-street, Bachelor-street, and
other equally respectable and savoury localities can tes-
tify. There is scarcely an Irish Catholic or an Irish
pig in Liverpool, this blessed moment, that cannot turn
up the tip of his nose with perfect contempt at the ap-
proach of the tax collector. No fear of driving, either
the biped or the brute, for rent or rates. The knight
and his " proctectors" have lifted many a porker out
of a shaking fever; and, as nothing promotes feeding
so much as fresh air and a quiet mind, it is fully anti-
cipated that this year's bacon will be fatter and firmer
than has been known for the last generation.

It will be admitted then that Sir Joshua—how
euphonious that name !—has fully answered our ex-
pectations in the matter of bleeding. But though
ready and willing with Brutus, to " coin his heart for
drachmas," in order to obtain the object of his am-
bition—a seat in the house of Commons—we are
afraid that the worthy knight will be compelled to chew
the bitter cud of disappointment. We have heard,
within the last few days, very ominous hints of a dis-
inclination on the part of sundry good whigs, who hap-
pen at the same time to have good coats, to herd with
the new levies. It is not, on this occasion, the knight
himself who refuses to march through Coventry with
his ragged regiment, but the regiment which refuses to
walk with the knight—the grenadier with the light
companies—the light companies with the awkward
squad. It is not on this occasion the knight who has
sworn to " leave off sack, to purge and live cleanly"—
but the very drummer-boys shrink from the pollution
of bad habits and worse company; and we do greatly
doubt whether Sir Joshua, aided even by the Jesuitical
tact of his Protectors, will ever be able to introduce
anything like unanimity amongst the ranks of an army
composed of such incongruous materials.

In the meantime, however, and before the truly
liberal candidate has time to get his eyes opened, we
are told that his Irish friends are to be put in imme-
diate requisition. The parish office is to be " swept
out"—or, in other words, the present efficient servants
of the town are to be discharged, in order that their
place may be supplied by incompetent and inexperienced
persons, who happen to be either Irish catholics or
English republicans, passing under the various deno-
minations beneath which such characters now-a-days
contrive to hide themselves. The Church too—the
fabric of our Protestant Church—is to be handed over
at the next Easter vestries to the safe keeping of an
Irish mob. Mr. Sturges Bourne's act is to be shelved,
in order that numbers may carry the sway over pro-
perty—in order that an alien population, which in a
year or two will be found burdening our poor•rates,
may dictate terms to the resident gentry, merchants,
and tradesmen of Liverpool, by whose enterprise and
capital they are alone enabled to earn the potatoes and

step out of their accustomed path, and to reply to a
supposed call from the constitution to liberalize and
and remodel its form, are anxiously weighing the results

of their temporary enthusiasm. The ch2rtist move-
ments of last year were not observed by these men
without serious alarm. The stagnation of commerce
during the last two years, the anti-corn-law agitation,
the increased expenditure and diminished revenue of
the country, the " heavy blows and great d;scourage-
ments" offered to protestantism, the sudden and manifest
spread of catholicism, and the prominent position taken
by its votaries amongst the ranks of the reform party,
have excited, and are calculated to excite, serious mis-
givings in the minds of such men, and have already
induced in a great portion of them a determined
hostility to any further movement in advance of the
constitution.