The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-04-27 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE ELECTION PETITIONS.
(From the Leeds Intelligencer.)
The sittings of the Hull Election Committee, which
. were expected to continue throughout the Easter recess,
have been, for the present, rather unexpectedly inter-
rupted.
When the committee met on Monday morning, the
chairman, Sir George Strickland, announced that he had
received a letter from Mr. Frederick Dundas, one of the
members of the committee, stating that in consequence
of the dangerous state of his mother's health he had to
leave town for Brighton. Under the circumstances it
was impossible to proceed, as the Grenville act prohibits
election committees from adjourning for a longer period
than twenty-four hours, or from proceeding with the in-
-quiry committed to them in the absence of any one of
the eleven members sworn, unless, upon report made, the
house grant permission, As the house now stands ad-
journed, the nine menib.-.!rs present (one of the original
eleven, Mr. Muskett, having been already excused at-
tendance) were obliged to adjourn till the afternoon of
the 25th instant, on which day the house resumes its sit-
tings; meanwhile all the witnesses have returned into
Yorkshire, and there is, for the present, a cessation of
the enormous expences which have been going on for the
last four or five weeks.
In reference to the general election sixty-seven peti-
tions were presented, and regarding subsequent elections
there have been four petitions presented, namely, from
Tipperary County, Devizes, Maidstone, and Sudbury,
making a total of seventy-one. Of these, eight were
'discharged for want of recognizance, thirteen have been
withdrawn by the petitioners, thirty-one have been de-
cided, and nineteen, including that from Hull, still re-
main to be disposed of.
The result, as we have already stated, is, that the con-
servatives have gained seven seats and lost three, being
. equal to a gain of eight votes on a division. The rela-
tive strength of the two parties. in the house at present
is—supposing the late Mr. Hart Logan to be replaced in
WeSt Suffolk by another conservative—three hundred
and twenty-one, conservatives, and three hundred arid
'thirty-seven whigs and radicals, including the Speaker.

SIR FRANCIS BURDETT AND THE RADICAL
PRESS.
( From the Morning Herald.)
The spiteful ribaldry with which the ministerial prints
so unsparingly assail Sir Francis Burdett, and all those
who being once reformers are not now destructives, will
be best appreciated by a little calm investigation of the
.circumstances under which all this venom is engendered
and spitten forth. Divesting the attacks to which we
allude of that exquisite wit. and most becoming sarcasm
which are directed against the years and bodily infirmi-
ties of Sir F. Burdett, we come to but one direct and
examinable charge—namely, that in contending against
popery, against meanness and pusillanimity in the di-
rection of public affairs, and against destructive princi-
ples in politics, he is an " apostate." What does this
word mean ? In modern acceptation an apostate is one
who has abandoned the religious or political principles
'which he formerly professed. Does this charge apply
especially to Sir Francis Burdett, and are they who so
loudly and so bitterly bring this charge against him en-
titled to do so by their own perfect innocence of any such
fault? These are the questions for rational men to look
at; while empty fools and thoughtless bigots indulge
• 'their nature by repeating the coarse abuse which minis-
terialists level at all who have the manliness to speak of
then] and of their doings in plain terms.
.Sir Francis Burdett has always been, of enthusiastic
• temperament, but with a foundation of British honour
and justice, and a healthy detestation of meanness and
equivocation, which were sure to secure him from the
vices of political life, though they did not save him from
its imprridencies. -But he never set up for a man of deep
pianSand careful circumspection. He threw himself with
•s ardour into what seemed to him to be the cause of Bri-
tish liberty and British honour, and he never stopped to
Calculate upon contingencies. He was always deficient
in that Whig radical virtue of seeing exactly how far his
exertions in favour of liberty were likely to serve him-
' --Self.
To serve the cause of civil and religious liberty was
. _
.the passion of Sir Francis Burdett's life, and we see no-
'thing in-his present conduct to lead to the belief that it
iv -not so still. The foes that threaten civil and religious
liberty are not now the same as they were thirty, or
'ten years ago; but with the foes of civil and religious li-
. 'berty Sir. Francis Burdett still wages war, and war of the
most determined description. He is not a man for coin-
:promises. As a young man, and afterwards in his mid-
dle age,-the foes of civil and religious liberty were—in
'the' estimation of Sir Francis Burdett—they who resisted
the reform of parliamentary representation, and they
• who resisted the emancipation of the Roman Catholics.
Sit F.- Burdett's exertions were of very powerful effi-
cacy in determining the mind of the British nation in
'fivetu• of, both those great measures, and eventually lie
• caw them accomplished in spite of all the resistance
.which he bad for long years contended. He saw and
Areard•those with whom 6e had acted proclaim that with
•' 'these measures they were satisfied, and more than satis-
The Roman Catholics of Ireland declared that the
emancipation they had obtained was much more full and
unrestricted than they had even ventured to hope for
• -,iand the friends of parliamentary reform loudly pro-
..shamed,- from one end of the empire to the other, that
all their fondest hopes were accomplished, and that the
,peoplewere, at last, fully and fairly represented.
. , Sir,Francis.Burdett saw that he and his friends bad
.soda great victory, and he hoped for the natural result
• ;Of ,rictory—peaceand quiet, and -honourable and just
'enjoyment of that which had been arduously fought, for
and triumphantly obtained. But here lie was disap-
pointed, for civil and religious liberty bean to be me-
naced by other foes. They who had asked for an equa-
lity of civil privileges in the Protestant state of Great
Britain, now turned those privileges against the Pro-
, testantism of the nation. In gross violation of all their
,:pledges, either expressed or implied, they endeavoured
•40 gcr beyond an equality of civil privileges, and con-
"lemtled for the overthrow of the Protestant church este-
. 'tilishment. Sir Francis Burdett, instructed by history,
..each in this conduct the greatest danger to. the civil li-
,berty of Britons—that liberty whereof Protestantism has
• • ever been the best guardian, and lie manfully girded him-
self for battle with the Popish enemies ef the established
'Protestant church. Is this apostacy ? Is the friend of
civil liberty to be called an apostate, because he opposes
Popish encroachment, and is.this reproach to come from
those who bend and crouch before this Popish tyranny
- for the sake of the gain it brings, calling themselves all
-the while the friends of liberty ? Who is the real apos-
tate, the man who remains firm to his pi inciples, gaining.
. -nothing thereby but the satisfaction of his conscience, or
•ilie man who-afrandons his principles, gaining thereby
official place, and patronage, and salary, and court fa-
_your, and all the pumps and vanities with which weak
'people reeotnpense themselves, when they have earned
the contempt of the honest and the honourable ?
Sir Francis Burdett contended for a restoration of a
- fair representation of the British people, but he never
-contended for the establishment of a sordid democracy
.upon the ruins of the British constitution. The men
who pretend•to.consistency, but who seem to have been
consistent only in never losing sight of their own selfish
interests, were at one time with Sir Francis Burdett, in
deeming that the reform of 1832 was a complete and
satisfactory adjustment of the reform question—a settle-
, ment of the balance of the constitution, which ought to
be as permanent as any other great and fundamental ar-
•• cangements by which nations consent to be governed.
' Bat,ingead of the political peace which he had reason
to exp.o, he finds the very men *vvlio obtained the. con-
sent:or-the nation to the reform bill, on the ground that
it Was *great settlement of .a great question, now join-
. ingwith•the disturbers of this settlement, and in requital
• • for being suffered toretain the emoluments of office, suf-
• '--"fei-Ing'in their turn these disturbers toleep the nation
ajoonlinual ferment, gradually weakening it by A poll-
. final fever. in.order that they may eventually triumph
aver its.noblest and freest institutions. Who is in this
ease the apostate? Is it the man who contends for ho-
`, until.** abiding by the-national settlement for which he
strove Kiang, and for peacefully reaping the advantage
of that settlement, or the man who still cries for further
• •thange, because only in the ferment' of change can he
hope- to keep that elevated station which lie owes to the
force of faction and not to any confidence in his virtue
or his ability ?
Lastly, is he more likely to be.really an apostate who,
Rs his change of position, has every advantage (inde
pendently of honour) that a vain man could desire, or
he who, in his change of position, has nothing by it but
the public appreciation of his virtue and his spirit ?

XRISH Wane* ts.---At a late meeting of the Geological
Society of Dublin, Mr. Mallett exhibited specimens of Irish
minerals, some of them applicable to economic purposes, and
explained their uses. The most important were—ochres from
Howth and Lambav, fit for making pigments, of which eight
specimens were exhibited; fuller'4 earth, from Lambay ; por-
. celain clay, from the Sutton side of Howth; sand for moulding,
from Belfast Lough, said to be superior to the English, and
quite equal to Scotch ; a mass of conglomerate, cemented by
arragonite, from Salt-hill. Kingstown ; and a specimen of
sulphuret of nickel from Sheffoy Hill, county of Mayo. It is
the first time that this latter mineral has been discovered in
Ireland.
IGNORAMpi AMONG THZ LOIVREI CLASS OF IRlSH.—Yes-
tarday, at-the New Bailey, in the course of a case in which Ro-
bert Garner was charged with stealing a brass tap from a &hop,
an Irish boy, named. Michael Kelly, was called on to prove that
he saw Garner take the tap from the counter. The magistrate,
Mr. Maude, asked him if he knew what the book was on which
he was'about to be sworn; he replied that be did not; and, in
answer to further questions, said he was ten years of age; he
did not know what the bible was, and he could not read; he
tlitt lint go to school, but he went to the catholic chapel; he did
' tot know bow to say his prayers. nor what prayers meant! Mr.
Milne asked the boy's father why he had not instructed him in
• these matters,- and he replied that he could not afford to send
him to school. Mr. Maude said he could not admit the evi-
• deuce of a boy like that; and, as he wics the only material wit-
. nest in the case, the prisoner was discharged.—Manchester
Guardian.