The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-08 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

We must decline giving insertion to the second letter of the
Rev. W. Bevan. The manuscript is left at our office.
he Liverpool Times of Tuesday last, asserts that " the late
editor of the Liverpool Standard was dismissed by the
proprietors in consequence of not being allowed to speak
the truth with respect to the Corporation schools." The
editor of the Times must know, or ought to know, that
this charge is utterly false. In the first place, no editor
has been " dismissed" since this paper has been under
the control of the present proprietors. It is true that a
gentleman acting in that capacity left this establishment,
not, however, in consequence of " not being allowed to
speak the truth with respect to the corporation schools,"
but because a paragraph relating to those schools, appended
to a leading article, and stultifying all the writer's previous
arguments, was omitted. He left, in short, because he was
not allowed to make a fool of himself.

E-fits ktbirpool -.tanbarb.

FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 8, 1840.

Well has the Government of Lord Melbourne earned
for itself the title of " The Shabby Administration !"
There is no meanness of which its members have not
been convicted, and no degradation to which they will
not Submit in the hope of averting their approaching
f
an. Their very existence as a Government has been
°ne continued crawl from foulness to foulness, and it
will never cease to be such until the indignant spirit of
England shall be roused, and the filthy things carted
QI"Y, from Downing-street and 'Whitehall, to luxuriate
amongst, the congenial nastiness of St. Giles's or Seven
Dials.

r •
M e are not going to catalogue the long series of dis-
honourable and despicable tricks by which the whig
TiallY have for the last ten years contrived to fasten
themselves to place and pay—to place without power,
caPay without its equivalent. Our object is only to
ll the attention of our readers to their last trick_
their last shuffle of the thimbles. We have before
characterised their opposition to the passing of Lord
;aoley's Irish Registration Bill as a disgraceful aban-
donment of principle to serve the purposes of faction ;
nut we now find that an abandonment of principle
more flagrant than ever was attempted by even a whig
administration is not deemed a sufficient propitiation to
the truculent demagogue who controls and goads their
Proceedings, without being accompanied by a trick as
mean and and despicable as ever was resorted to by a_hafliccl
gamester to redeem a run of bad luck, or a pettifog-
ging lawyer to evade a just claim or bolster up a bad
cause.

It will be perceived, on reference to the debates in
Parliament on Monday evening, that the ministerial
,11.1411 of all work, Lord John Russell, brought in two
'4lB, having for their professed object a reform, upon
111ljg-radical principles, of the English system of re-
glstration of voters. We shall not here enter upon an
ex•
amination of the merits of these bills : our business
ly only with the motive which induced their being pre-
:ented to the house at the present moment. We cer-
-4111•
IY, in our simplicity, had no suspicion that the bills
14 question were any other than the ordinary attacks
;113°11 the substantial features of the reform bill, which
have been made session after session, and been session
after session defeated. We find, however, that we have
sadly underrated the Machiavelian tact of this jesuiti-
cal Homunculus, and that their object is as insidious.
43 their introduction is degrading—if any thing could
further degrade so despicable a thing as the present
government.
In the Dublin Evening Post (a ministerial journal)
°f April 14th, we find a report of an incendiary speech
del•
ivered by O'Connell, in which, after boasting that,
opposition to Lord Stanley's registration bill, he
Possessed the sympathising concurrence and co-opera-
ti
of ministers, he proceeds to say that " Lord John
Russell has brought in a bill to amend the law of re-
g?stration in England, which will give the house the le-
litt,linlate EXCUSE of postponing the Irish bill until the
English one be settled." The same language, almost
1;°41 for word, is reported in the Dublin Monitor, the
reeniait's Journal, and the Pilot, O'Connell's especial
Nan, and we can therefore entertain no doubt of its
substantial correctness. Now, we ask our readers to
f.atnine coolly this base and impudent effort of the
,chug to wriggle out of the dilemma into which the
measure;i of Lord Stanley has precipitated them. They
° not, they dare not, meet the discussion of this mea-
sure upon its merits. They dare not meet conserva-
tismin a fair stand-up fight, in the good old English
them, Artifice, trickery, and evasion are familiar to
tern, and these despicable weapons are resorted to in-
ttead of honest and manly argument.
But we must, in justice to the faction, examine a little
further' the motives of this shallow manoeuvre, and
Place before our readers the full measure of infamy
Which it displays. Our readers will scarcely be pre-
Pared to expect that, after the evils of the Irish system
Of registration have been so frequently admitted, and
especially the want of an annual revision of the regis-
ter ; after these evils have been over and over again
ilqinctly admitted by government, and a remedy for
the
evil—more especially as regards the principle of an
annual revision—attempted to be provided for by a bill
i
4°ught in by their own Attorney-General, the same
Rovernment should now be found endeavouring to as-
ilhilate the English system of registration to that cor-
:Pt and debasing system which they ham themselves so
Peatedly denounced ! Yet such is the fact. This is
tie e
EXCUSE which these mercenary slaves are afford-
" to the House of Commons for postponing the bill
Lord Stanley. This is the demons.!ration made to
Islead and mystify the country, and to give a loop-
:le of retreat, by which their degraded tools—the
iirieedy expectants of pay and patronage—may escape
e necessity of annihilating themselves, by cutting
4 thvay the ladder of corruption and perjury by which
eir " bad eminence" has been attained
eo Let Lord Melbourne, after this instance of shameless
Ins
-ion with O'Connell, deny—if the feelings of an
Inglish gentleman will allow him to do so—the en-
trnving nature of that compact, by which his adminis-
4tieu is bound hand and foot to the chariot wheels
Li that " base, bloody, and brutal" demagogue. Let
with Irish
Melbourne repudiate, if lie chooses, a sympathy
Irish treason. Let him disavow the rep
if eal cry
i!ze dare. The people of England will not hesitate to
Pute to his conduct and to his disavowal their pro-
it esignations ; and when the day comes—as come
hlvlll----that Ireland, inflamed, misled, and maddened,
il
in the blindness of her ignorance, :rush headlong
m° a desolating struggle, which will roll back for half
e4ekii tury the progress which civilization and truth is
of t‘ing amongst her benighted population, the people
ttle3/4ngland will not be slow to visit their due punish-
at upon the heads of that mean and degraded fac•