The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-01-05 00:00:00

shame his wurshiers, and not the least those degenerate,
who ad accepted his support and become his co-
uljutors. (Great applause.) He had that confidence in his
ieuutryinea whit he had ever had; that while he acted
umestly, and intepeadently, and fearlessly in defence of the
ustitutions of tly country, he had no daubt he should always
neet with the stmaart of the great bulk of the people. Ile had
to fear of so (trailed a calamity as that of society being dis-
solved and collusion ensuing while theoperatives came forward
in defence of al they held dear, as they had done that day.
Let them do his, and he had no fear of that destruction of
society, which if once achieved, he would venture to say, with-
out making any pretence to prophetic power, would never again
he raised intotxistence.—The hon. baronet sat down amidst
protracted chering.
• The CHAIRMAN next gave—" The Duke of Wellington, the
pride of the,lyitish army, and the conqueror of the conqueror
of Europe." Drunk with Wellington honours?
Song—" Cd England's glory."
The CHAItMAN then said, that it was with much pleasure
that he ptopeed " The health of Charles Wilkins, Esq., and
the Conservative bar." The toast was drunk amidst loud
cheering.
Mr. WILIINS then rose, and was received with continued
cheering. le said, gentlemen and brother operatives, or as a
certain learned personage who some time since, had honoured
their boroup, would term them, "miserable remnant of an ex-
piring factpn." ( Hear and laughter.) How joyous" they
looked in heir misery ! With whet magnanimity and conser-
vative plubsophy they regarded the approaching agonies of
their demist. (Continued applause.) They bad been pleased
t 6 couple hs name with the conservative bar. He• confessed
that it appeared to him extraordinary how any man calling him-
self a haulier, supposed to be imbued with the spirit and con-
stitution of the British laws, could be anything but a conserva-
tive. (licsr.) He was not speaking of the special pleader
who lookel with the microscopic eye of a man searching for a
deinurrer,but he was speaking of the lawyer in the highest and
proudest acceptation of the term—a man who through the teles-
cope of hiaory had traced the laws framed through the various
stages of society, who had seen how the laws had kept pace with
the wantsof man, and adapted themselves to all the wants of
the lowes, and the most polished society. He would venture to
assert, without fearing the consequences that nearly every sound
lawyer it the kingdom was a conservative. It was true that
they had at present an Attorney-General, who had been con-
fronted Ind confuted by a layman—who had declared the
existenci of an anomaly never before recognized by the Bri-
tish law—who hail declared that the British law had a right to
assert what it had not the power to enforce. 'chat was a doc-
trine which the fathers and founders of British laws would
shake in their graves to hear, and a doctrine not to be tolerated
in any society in England for one moment. They would allow
hits to tell there that. the bar, like every other institution in
this country, was merely a means to an end. The bar should be
'-the living commentators of the law, and it was for them to say
whether they would allow a parsimonious and mean legislattire
so to strip that profession of its emoluments and rewards, as to
drive from it honourable men. It had been truly observed by
the honourable baronet who had preceded him—and ty follow
him under any circumstances, was no trifling disadvantage—
that they were a nation placed under most extraordinary cir-
cumstances; that the members of their government, to a certain
extent, the legislature of the world, were men utterly incapable
of framing laws to meet the exigencies of the times—that they
had men in office, who, for the mere sake of office, had con-
stantly surrendered every principle they before had held sa-
cred, and had thrown each overboard at the demand of a hete-
rogenous band of traitors, (for he could call them nothing
else,) who sought for the destruction of every thin, they held
..rltid and great. 'Their ministers were truckling before these
men for the tnere retention of office, and the enjoyment of those
advantages which it brought to them. It was somewhat curious,
he confessed, that men calling themselves reformers at the pie-
sent day should twit him with being an apostate from the rauks
of the reformers. He asked one man for his definition of
"reform," and he referred him to the Morning Chronicle; an-
other man referred him to the Examiner • another man who was
equally loud in his denunciations of his (Mr. W.'s) incon-
sistency, referred him to the defunct True Sun as the sam-
pler of a reformer's creed. If he came nearer home, where
should he seek for the standard of reformers? Why. a gentle-
man who had visited theta not long since (Mr. O'Connell)
would take them to Derry nane.—( Hear and a laugh.) A for-
mer acquaintance of his, (Mr. O'Connell,) for ought he knew,
addressing an assemblaae in some neighbouring town at that
time, Mr. Fergus O'Connor, referred him to his pamphlet,
which held Mr. O'Connell up as everything contemptible and
mean, and told hint that Ireland never possessed a more arch
apostate—a more arrant traitor; another man at Manchester
refer red him for his reform creed to the Manchester Guardian;
another to the Manchester Times; and another to the Man-
chester Advertiser • each one had its advocate, and all of them
gave different definitions of that strange and all-important word
`• reform." If he had abandoned his former principles who was to
be his accuser? Who amongst these men was t') tell him that
he had abandoned his principles ? The fact was, they had no
cornmoh principle but one, and that was the destruction of
every thing in their constitution. Their inotto'was, " Sic cob,
sic nolo, pro ratione colonies." (Cheers.) They said the con-
servatives were acting in opposition to the people. Let them
ask those men who were the people? Why, when Mr. Joseph
Hume wished to convince parliament that they (the conserva-
tives) were acting in opposition to the wishes of the people, he
was obliged to go to Kilkenny fur the living proofs of hisdoc-
trines? (Cheers.) He who not long since never rose in the
House of Commons but to speak of the enlightenment of the me-
tropolis, and its superi 'r knowledge, was flute singing London
now is out of town," and "The boys of Kilkenny are fine roving
blades." (Cheers.) Let them ask the Hon. Secretary for the
Home Department where he found his proofs of popular
favour? He shrank from Devonshire in abhorrence and went
to the multitudes of Stroud. (Continued cheering.) Let them
ask Edward Taylar, of the Manchester Guardian, who were
" the pefiple," and he would tell them, as he had done in his
last week's paper, that the people were the middle classes; that
the rabble were unworthy of attention ; that all those who
differed in opinion with -Edward Taylor, or his partner, on
the all important topic of the new poor-law question, were
nobodies. (Hear.) In fine, they (the conservatives) found
that these men agreed in no one topic but destruction, which it
scented to him they were all seeking for, iu order to their own
aggrandisement. 'lime boat. baronet who had preceded him had
latacateu very torelole ou the intbecibty or the pi et,ettt ',-
went, and the utter failure of all the measures brought forward
by them. If lie would allow him, he would extend those views
a little further, and look abroad at the working of their measures,
for their measures and conservatism were not confined in their
operation to this country—conservatism stretched its arms over
the whole world and was to nations as to individuals; and they
must deal out the same measures to all who came within the
sphere of its action. What had they gained since the present
came into power? They bad lost that power which Hol-
land had always been inclined to afford them; they had re-
moved from the frontiers of Belgium, those fortresses which ages
had built, and which the wisdom of their forefathers had thought
necessary to resist the aggressions of political France. Turkey
had become a province of Russia, Poland had been laid pros-
trate in ashes aid, in point of fact they had given power to all
those governments which it would have been wisdom to curtail.
They had pursued the same line of policy in the German states,
they had united Austria, Russia, and Prussia against us; and
every one who knew anything of history knew that France
must be opposed to us in some degree, and they had allowed
France to stretch her arms in Africa and obtain a position which
she might make one of offence against us. (Loud cheers.)
If they looked to Spain they found there gathered all the mi-
serable hurtles that congregated on the Isle of Dogs, to assist her
Majesty the Queen of Spain—they found their general returned
to this country foiled and disgraced, and the remnant of
their countrymen who remained there left to the tnercv of the
man they had gone t 6 oppose, or to (lie and moulder under the
pestilential influence of the climate—( loud cheering)—and,
though last nut least, let them look to Canada. If he wanted
to find an argument to justify the conduct of the conservatives
towards Ireland, he would point to Canada. The population
of Ireland had been asking fur power, and they had refused to
gtantabein it, not because they wished to deprive them of the
rights of citizens, but because they believed, and with reason,
that they were not sufficiently enlightened, advanced, and mu-
ral to possess those powers they were so anxious to obtain. Just
.80 it appeared to him to have been with Canada. 'The legisla-
ture too early gave political power to the uneducated popula-
tion. They gave power to men who by rank and by fortune
could possess no claim to legislative power. What had been
the consequence? What must be the consequence so long as
this world should stand? At that very moment they were battling
in order to crush the licentiousness which had been produced by
that line of conduct. And the consequence to the Canadians
must be, as it seemed to him, that they must take from them the
powers, they had abused—that they must limit the liberties of that
country beiore they could govern her with anything like peace.
They must allow him to tell them as operative conservatives—for
as he had said on many occasions, that man calling hitnself
conservative who was not an operative was of no use to the con-
servative cause—they must allow him to tell them that however
imposing an appearance like that was, that the great battle was
to be fought in 'districts mute unseen and less occupied. He bad
had the privilege of addressing in this and the adjoining comity
very nearly 307000 operative conservatives to about he would do
the justice to say that they had proved themselves imperatives,
atm if the state of the times had produced no other good effects, it
had called forth a spit it of inquiry among hundreds and thousands
of persons in this kingdom who were attached to our constitu-
tion, because they had walked round its bulwarks and made
themselves acquainted with its advantages and hid in conse-
quence become the foremost and best friends of the constitution.
:(Hear.) It might be said that some among them were very
humble individuals, moving in a very humble sphere of life.
They might say " what can I do." Each individual might do
nrOcia and they must allow him to tell them as Sir. R. Peel had
stud on another occasion that it was in the registration courts
that the battle was to be fought. He hoped to see by the
strengthening of their cause by these means the return of some
coadjutor worthy of the gentleman on his right Major Mars-
laud.—(Loud and continued cheers.)—When they looked at
the overwhelming expanse of ocean they were too apt to
forget the tributary streams that added to its importance? So
it was with conservative associations. As a whole they were
great dud overwhelming, but their greatness must arise by the
coluregation of individuals. Ile would exhort everyman when
he left that room to consider himself an operative couservative—
to read, to write, or talk, or. walk or do something or other to
promote the cause they had in hand. Above all things he would
say to them, if they would listen to'a young man, "'fake care
always to be careful of your own strength—to be acquainted
with the number of your force in the field." When a general
krew the discipline of his army—its courage and its numbers,
he went out with confidence into the field; and they knew that
confidence was half the battle. Conservatism was not confined
to a meeting like that. It did not consist in merely returning
Major Marsland to parliament, or in forwarding the cause in
that' own town, but it had for its object the greatest results. It
eiaended its influence to the highest as well as the lowest indi-
vicuals. And if he (Mr. W.) wanted for a living evidence of
what conservatism was--if the hon. baronet on his right would
allow him to quote him—" Conservatism was the same principle
that wrested at Runnymede front the hands of a tyrant the
choler of English liberty. It was the same principle which
arrested front the aristocracy freedom for the oppressed serf,
ant which tore the mask from cant under the garb of republican-
ism. It was the same huts cause which substituted protestantisin
for popery, and which set the national mind free and exulting
in the freedom wherewith heaven had made it." (Loud cheers.)
Cuaseryatism now was ready to act as a bulwark to our institu-
hots when attacked by the most dangerous of all tyrants, the
unity headed monster—the mob. This he took to be con-
seratism. It was not the intent of faction or party; and taking
it it be such, he was proud to call himself—and especially in
these days of danger to conservative harristers—a conservative
banister. (Cheers.) It seemed Lublin that the greatest retard-
mett to sound legislature at the present day was the factious
conduct of the people of Ireland. He knew Ireland well; he
knee her physical resources; he knew something of her na-
tional mind ; he knew her generosity ; he knew her credulity
andsuperstition; and, above all, he knew her abject misery;
audit' he might be allowed to hint at patriotism alter what hail
beet said by the hon. baronet, when he saw a man tiding in the
biratts in a cal riage paid for by the pence of starving children,
andcalling himself a patriot, lie could not joke on such a sub-
jecta-,lt roused feelings of indignation within him to which he
(fatal not give expression.— Ile would exhort them to be firm and
wait and to fear nut the threats and intimidations of their ad-
verstries, and when they made unreasonable demands to resist
theu even to the death.—Wheu outer opponents asked them to