The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-09-03 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

If Mr. R. Arrowsmith, Gloucester-street, Loudon, has any
intention of paying for his advertisements he can have
them inserted in the STANDARD by communicating with
any of our London agents; but without such a step he will
not find the provincial press to be gulled by his orders,
however ingenious be may be in the wording of them.

LIP Eibrrpoot &tanbatt.

FRIDAY MORNING, SEPTET BER 3, 1841.

The official career of the Whigs being now at an
end, we are under small temptation to say anything of
them but what truth and justice may require at our
hands. We can speak of them as of the departed ;
and the maxim in this case is not de mortuis nil nisi
bonum, but nil nisi VERUM. This is the more incum-
bent upon us, as Lord John Russell declared on Friday
night, that they died the " victims of misrepresenta-
tion !" Of no crime had they been guilty ; no faults
had they ever committed ; on the contrary, they had
done nothing but good in their day and generation ;
and they were then about to depart unsung, unwept,
the purest patriots, the wisest, best, most virtuous of
men, victimised,—aye, the victims of misrepresentation
alone. Lord John Russell is a bold man ; and, in-
deed, to utter such a speech as this, in the presence of
the assembled representatives of the people, must pos-
sess a power of face beyond the lot of ordinary mor-
tals. This misrepresentation he prudently charged, not
upon the leaders of the opposition, who were in the
House to defend themselves—no, he exonerated them
from any such imputation—but upon those who were
absent, and could have no opportunity of replying in
the quarter where the attack was made. " 'While the
" conduct of the leaders in this house," said his lord•
ship, " has been such as became an opposition in Par-
" liament, their followers in the country AND IN THE
" PRESS had resorted to misrepresentations and calum-
" nies never before equalled. Such means (said the
" noble lord) have been the principal causes of the suc-
" cess of the party opposite. (Cries of Oh, oh !' from
" the opposition, and cheers from the ministerial
" benches.)". No wonder that a noble lord who can
keep his face clean, (as they say in China,) after this
fashion, is a man of great importance to his party.
But quis tulerit Gracchos—who can endure a Whig
complaining of. misrepresentation ? It is a fact ac-
knowledged by one well acquainted with the secrets of
the party, that the Catholic Emancipation Act—a mea-
sure which, notwithstanding the decisive turn given to
the affair by the Duke and Sir Robert Peel, the Whigs
claim as their own—that that great act, we say, which
opened the door to all that important series of changes
which followed, was carried by "enormous lying"—by
the unceasing figments of Whig journals, Whig agi-
tators, and Whiggery at large, both in high and low
situations, in town and country. Such misrepresenta-
tion, we can truly say, in the words of my Lord John
Russell, was " never before equalled." Now we do
not presume to say that so vile an example would afford
any excuse for a similar practice, or anything at all re-
sembling it, by Conservatives ; but as the fact itself is
perfectly notorious, we should like just to know when
the Whigs began to leave off a habit which they found
on Many occasions so helpful to them ? With regard
to the victimising misrepresentation now charged on
the Conservative press, we would observe that whether
the attack be well or ill founded, the Whigs have been
thrust out of office by no misrepresentation at all, but
by truths, broad, open, and acknowledged. The Lich-
field-House compact was the sorest of all the Whig
decayers and destroyers. It infected their government
with dry rot in every department ; it was a plague-spot,
a leprosy, which tainted them from head to foot.
Well ; was this connection a mere fiction—a misrepre-
sentation--a calumny ;or was it a reality and a truth ?
Had the " victims" no tongue in their heads—were
they such dumb dogs that they could neither deny nor
disprove the charge if it were unfounded ? Only to
think of that silent sufferer—that injured innocence,
Mr. Daniel O'Connell, dying the death of a criminal,
and losing his enormous patronage through misrepre-
sentation—misrepresentation, too, which he was
.too
meek and modest to stand up and refute, while justice
and truth were altogether at his side ! That Daniel
O'Connell should lose his cause through modesty !
Oh, it is incredible !

Is Whig mismanagement of the public revenue also,
we would ask, a misrepresentation ? Surely the two
millions-and-half minus in the present year, and the
accumulated deficiencies of former years—constantly
increasing under the financeering of Whig Chancel-
lors—cannot be all a mere romance. It has not been
known till lately that the ex-Premier acted in the double
capacity of first lord of the treasury and private tutor
to her Majesty, and that her Majesty conceives herself
under great obligations to the noble lord for the pains
he took in instructing her; and on this head there was

certainly neither representation nor misrepresentation
by the Conservative press ; but something was known
of his lordship's facility of temper—of his constant
visits to the palace, and his everlasting presence at the
royal table, and there was no mistake as to his having
particularly introduced to the royal presence the founder
of that obscene and abominable sect—the Socialists ;
there was no misrepresentation here ; and the ex-Pre-
mier is condemned so far as concerns this matter—not
for a false accusation, but for a true and admitted one.

We believe it is a perfectly pure invention that the
Whig budget was ever thought of, until after the party
were beaten on their Irish Registration bill ; but the
budget itself had surely an existence—had arrived at
least at an embryo state—and no misrepresentation or
calumny did or could exist with regard to it ; but we
cannot go through all the counts of the indictment.
SutfiCe it to say that we are satisfied to abandon
everything that is in the slightest degree apocryphal,
and do rest our general charge against the discharged
upon positive, certain, and definite allegations, which
can be proved by the most unexceptionable testimony.
But it is too ridiculous to talk seriously of the bluster-
ing Whigs, with all their stage orators, partisan agita-
tors, and cheap information for the people—being the
victims of misrepresentation or calumny. The thing,
in its literal sense, is too absurd to be gravely dis-
cussed ; but there is a sense in which we can perfectly
understand the ex-Colonial Secretary, and in which we
quite agree with him. His lordship perhaps only
meant to say that the Conservative press did great da-
mage to the Whig cause, and particularly that portion
of it, which, like ourselves, labours obscurely in the
provinces. If this were his meaning, his lordship was
perfectly right ; there can be no doubt that the pro-
vincial Conservative press has played upon Whiggery
with tremendous effect, and that it has been a princi-
pal cause of that splendid success with which Conser-
vatism is at length crowned. But the weapons made
use of were not misrepresentation and calumny,"
but simple unsophisticated truth. What need of the
former when truth itself supplied an infinitely more

powerful armoury ? Let Conservatives, then, remem-
ber the saying of this noble 'Ord in the sense in which
we interpret it, and learn to bet a proper value on a
press which has rendered them such essential service.
True, it is our own common cause; but it is for the
interest of that cause we speak much more than for
any advantage we expect to derive to ourselves from
adverting to the subject.

It has been remarked a thousand times, but it will
bear r•e-marking again, that the tendencies of Liberal-
ism are any thing but patriotic ; that there is no heart
in the system, and that it never does, and never can
generate any thing resembling a warm, or generous
emotion. Under the affectation of caring for a great
many, it really cares for nobody ; under the pretence
of making the whole human family the objects of its
expansive solicitude, it only finds a greater facility of
applying with undivided attention to the definite and
limited concerns of " number one." A Conservative
prides himself on being an Englishman; a Liberal can
see no just reason for his entertaining any such feel-
ing. A Conservative looks to the interest and advan-
tage of his own country in preference to those of any
other; a Liberal takes the world at large for his coun-
try, and regards any more circumscribed patriotism as
a prejudice.

The Duke of "Wellington, in his speech on the Ad-
dress, piqued himself on belonging to a country in
which the way to wealth was open to every man—and
it was, we think, a legitimate subject of self-congratu-
lation ; for it proves two things in a very striking
manner; first, the perfect liberty enjoyed by the people,
and secondly, the prodigious advantage which they
may and practically do derive from it. His Grace's
words are worth remembering, and we repeat them
here':—

" He had in the course of his life," he said, " been in
various countries in different parts of the world, and had op •
portunities of knowing the circumstances of the various
classes of their inhabitants, but in his whole experience
England was the only country in which he ever found that the
poor man, if possessed of honesty and industry, would be
quite certain of acquiring a competence. Instances of the
truth of this offered themselves every day to everybody's ob-
servation, and it was only last week that a signal illustration
occurred. In the very lowest ranks of life, not only could a
competence be acquired, but immense riches might be accu-
mulated. This was a state of things which he had never
seen in any other country, and it was a fact which he would
entreat of their lordships never to lose sight of. He had seen
the happy results which followed from giving encouragement
to the cultivation of the soil, and he hoped every measure
would be cautiously avoided which would tend to decrease
that cultivation. (Cheers.)"

Many will think his grace rather a respectable witness
to the fact he speaks of, and will agree with him in
saying, that although every industrious man does not
turn out a Jamie Wood of Gloucester, yet that, so far
as the laws and constitution of the country are con-
cerned, there is nothing absolutely to prevent him. In
other countries the possession of wealth is either un-
attainable or insecure—insecure from the despotism of
their government, or the mutability of their institutions,
and unattainable perhaps as well from the latter cause

as from their general circumstances. His Grace states

what is a mere fact scarcely to be questioned; but he
states it as une who felt that it speaks volumes for Old
England, her free institutions, and peculiar blessings,
and he mentions it evidently with the view to enforce
the lesson that we should be slow to make changes in
a case where so much and so rare practical good, is al-
ready experienced. This is the Conservative mode of
looking at things ; but it only excites the indignation
of your Liberal, who has no notion of any man survey-
ing his own country with so much complacency. Mr.
COBDEN, it appears, was suite enraged by the Duke's
observation, and extremely smart upon his Grace for
making it. His commentary, in the speech which he
made on the 25th ult., ran thus :
" If he (Mr. Cobden) turned to a declaration made else-
where—in a place which, in conformity with the rules of the
house, he would not particularize, whe❑ he found an illus-
trious duke stating that the condition of the labouring popu-
lation in this country was enviable compared with that of
any other population in Europe, and that every labouring
man in this country, who had industry and sobriety to re-

commend him, could attain to a competence—what, he asked.
~,)ould be the feelings of the country at large upon hearing
such a declaration! Were hon. gentlemen disposed to re-
spond to that sentiment and accept it as their own ? Let
them remember that about ten years since the same illustrious
individual stated that the old boroughmongering parliament
under which we then suffered was the perfection of human
wisdom. (Loud cheers from the ministerial benches.) Yes,

and he should not be surprised if this doctrine of yesterday,
meeting a similar and still more remarkable fate, might be
the forerunner of a far greater change than that contemplated
by her Majesty's ministers. (Renewed cheering from the
same quarter.)"

This was rather sharp on the part of the oracle of
rnillocracy ; but, though it may seem a little paradoxi-
cal to say so, we are of opinion that the sharpness of
the language was owing in a great degree to the ob-
tuseness of the man. Cobby did not take--did not
catch the spirit of his Grace's observation : indeed we
fear, with his desperately bad education, it was quite
above his comprehension. Cobby could think only of
all the misery that the factory system has introduced
into the country ; of the undone handloom weavers—
of the pallid, half-fed, or perhaps drunken operatives,
whom half-work has reduced to a miserable emblem
of mortality ;—his mind, familiar with the reality, re-
flected only such pictures ; and when a noble peer
spoke of England's free institutions, and of the opu-
lence to which an honest and industrious man might
attain under them, poor Cobby rubbed his eyes, and
said, "Do I dream ? How is this ? " and for a while
the current of his ideas was altogether choked up; hut
at length he bethought him of his favourite schemes,
and the monomania of free trade set him once more at
liberty.
Thus Liberalism cannot enter into the luxury of
love of country; but it is quite as callous and insensi-
ble in other respects. Your " feelosophers," econo-
mists, and doctrinaires of the free-trade school will
sacrifice anything not their own, or anybody not of
their immediate clan, to the favourite theory. Speak
to them of the ruin which the withdrawal of protection
must produce to the protected classes, and they only
laugh. They tell you that the political economist, like
the surgeon about to amputate a limb, must be stern ;
and as he cuts away to save the patient, so they must
use strong medicine for the good of trade. For land-
owners and farmers they have no.more sympathy than
if they were a species of hear, or ourang-outang.
What matter about them ? say they ; we shall have
the more manufactures ;—down with them !
But the ruling passion goes even beyond this : your
genuine free-trader has no more consideration for the
suffering he may inflict in any case, than Majendie the
anatomist when dissecting a live rabbit for the ad-
vancement of science. Take as an example the answer
of Mr. John M‘Gregor, one of the joint secretaries of
the Board of Trade, to a question asked him by Mr.
Williams, which the reader will find in the evidence
before the Committee on Import Duties :
" Mr. Williams.—Take the case of a stocking manufac-
turer, a branch of manufacture in which the Saxons have
particularly excelled, and in which they have taken pretty
nearly all the foreign markets from us ; would you say that
the principle was a correct one, to admit the importation of
stockings manufactured in Saxony into this country free of
duty, which would as a matter of course supersede the trade
entirely at Leicester, Nottingham, and other parts of Eng-
land, where stockings are made ?
".Mr. M'Greyor.—.l certainly would admit them at 10
per cent duty, whether that would DESTROY THE TRADE AT
LEICESTER OR NOTINGHAM, OR. NOT ! ! It would be better
to subscribe and support the people, than to continue a higher
duty on the article !"
Such is the tenderness—the amiable ferocity, we
might call it—of your genuine free-trader. He would
rather reduce the people to beggary, and then sub-
scribe for their support in an alinshouse, than give up
his speculative beau ideal of " free trade." Happily
for us, the ministry which so much favoured and en-
couraged the breed is now displaced, and we trust
their heartless, headless, and unpatriotic system along
with them. The school has had its day, and a most
abominable school it was. May Conservatism never
imbibe the taint of its execrable philosophy.