The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-04-20 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

Can any gentleman of the committee inform us why we were
not furnished with a ticket to the dinner to Commodore
Napier until the eleventh hour, and then only on our appli-
cation, and after all the local and London morning papers
had been supplied ? We have a letter iu our possession,
too, which will require explanation.

Zibrrpool Aqinatarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 20, 1841

It is a highly satisfactory circumstance, that owing
to the error of the clerk of the County Court, M‘Leod
has obtained a postponement of his trial, and that his
life is in no immediate danger. For this agreeable
piece of news, we are indebted to our last intelligence
from the State of New York ; but as it is natural to
the human mind to look forward to some new object
the moment it is satisfied by the possession of that
which it has primarily sought after, we should cer-
tainly like to know how long our British fellow-sub-
ject is to remain in an American jail, upon a charge of
being only too faithful to the commands of his own

government ?
Commissions for the examination of witnesses have
been granted, which, we are told, it will take a good
deal of time to execute—and this change has certainly
come o'er the dream of our free and enlightened citi-
zens, that they are no longer, as heretofore, in any
haste to take that vengeance which at first they seemed
eager to inflict, in the most summary manner, on a
British subject caught straying within their border,
unconscious of any crime, and unsuspicious of any
attempt being about lo be made on him.
This is all that has been gained by the remonstrance
of our government, and it is plain that the republicans
treat us with the coolest possible indifference, if not
positive contempt. It is said that M'Leod will cer-
tainly be able to prove an alibi to the charge ; but
what is that to the purpose ? A national affront has
been put on us by his arrest, and is continued by his
imprisonment—and no acquittal can cure it. Truly
may we he taunted with being valiant only towards
Chinese, and small deer of that description; but ex-
tremely placable and peaceable towards those who use
our own language, if this affair be suffered to go off
in a manner so little creditable to us. We hope Lord
Palmerston will be prepared to answer all necessary
questions relating to the subject, on the re-assembling
of Parliament.

There are no men who entertain such exalted no,
tions of the powers of Parliament as your dealers
cheap-corn-agitation—there are none, at least, who b:

their conduct give more just occasion for predicating
such a proposition of them. Our writers on constitu-
tional law have certainly encouraged the growth of
these ideas, for it is a colieeded point among them,
laid down, indeed, with axiomatic confidence, that

Parliament- can do everything but make a man a wo-
man, or a woman a man—or, in short, is only a little
less than omnipotent. It would be extraordinary if
our Parliaments did not sometimes avail themselves
of a prepossession that so greatly favoured any desire
they might have felt to make themselves irresponsible
to the people, and to " cut fantastic tricks before high
Heaven;" and so they have done not unfrequently.
But neither Parliaments, nor writers upon the lex et
consuetudo of Parliaments, have carried these extrava-
gant conceits so far as the cheap-corn agitators of this
day evidently do ; for it is an essential ingredient in
their system that nothing makes the poor man poor,
but the terrible efficaciousness of an invidious act of
Parliament, and that nothing else is wanting to seat us
all, each under his own vine and fig tree, but the same
magic power exercised under a more favourable con-
juncture of the stars. " Give us," say they, " free
trade in corn, and all will be right ; bread will then be
plentiful, and each man will have his share." The ex-
isting order of things, therefore, and all who defend it,
are with them a proper subject for invective and detes-
tation.

The question has been long and minutely discussed ;
but not much impression seems to have been made on
the agitators, and, what is worse, we fear, never will
be, though to our mind, they have not been left a leg
to stand upon in the fair field of argument. The rea-
son of the phenomenon we take to be this—that these
gentry labour under a state of mental, or mensal delu-
sion, a sort of oven monomania, for which there is no
remedy in the pharmacopoeia of secular policy. The
disease is a serious and, not unfrequently, an alarming
one, and different opinions prevail as to the best mode
of treating it. Some are for humouring the patient to
the full extent of his wishes, in order that he may dis-
cover their vanity and emptiness by actual experiment;
others run into an opposite extreme, and are for no-
thing less than putting him into a strait waistcoat at
once. But, for our part, we prefer a medium course,
and would try, to the last, mild and soothing mea-
sures, always endeavouring to draw away the attention
of the sufferer from the unhappy subject of his delu-
sion, by engaging him as much as possible in some
useful employment. But, to return to the supposed
powers of legislation, we would remark, that if it he
an ordination of Providence that we shall have the
poor " always with us," then it must be in the highest
degree absurd to imagine that any law of man can pre-
vent it. Our omnipotent Parliament might, we may
suppose, by its fiat, put all men on an equality in point
of property at a given time ; but no man, not an idiot,
would believe that the equality thus produced would
last a week, no, nor an hour. This, to be sure, is a
slight limitation on its power, but.one too certain to ad-
mit of dispute. So also might they abolish the corn
duties ; but they would not " remove the poor out of
the land," nevertheless. They cannot say to the ocean
wave, thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, nor can
they'undo that which the decree of Providence says
shall be done. But the agitators seem to think other-
wise; at all events, their doctrine pays much more re-
spect to the assumed self-sufficiency and all-sufficiency
of Parliament, than to those insuperable barriers which
the Eternal has set up, and which man can never pass.
The corn duties are, in our view, a fair and reason-
able adjustment between conflicting, or apparently con-
flicting interests. We look upon them as indispensa-
ble to the well-being of the community, and feel as-
sured that the poor man is just as much interested in
maintaining them as the rich. We cannot but per-
ceive the fallacy and delusion sought to be promul-
gated by those who are agitating the humbler classes
with a view to their repeal. They would persuade the
poor man that it is the laws of his country which make
him so, whereas we believe there is not a country on
earth which gives freer scope to the exercise of talent
and industry in every possible form than those of our
own. Sometimes, through the blundering of some
oblivious exhibitor amongst the " reformers,,, more
aged than wise in his generation, a little truth, harmo-
nising exactly with these sentiments, escapes from their
own lips—as when old Colonel Williams last week
told an admiring crowd how much good corn was
wasted in the manufacture of ardent spirits, and how
much might be saved from the still for the oven, if