The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-05-25 00:00:00

RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES AT COLLEGE

The usual chapel hours are seven in the morning and six
in the evening. At Oxford, where the morning chapel is
compulsory, it is the common practice to come in a night-
gown, and run to bed again the moment the service is over.
It is not quite so bad at Cambridge, but the greater part of
the auditory are always half asleep, and gape sufficiently to
satisfy the most orthodox preacher. The appearance of this,
however irreverent, is nothing to the scene in the evening.
After all, the usual practice is to retire to some party, large
or small, and there use the Englishman's indulgenec of
lounging over his cake and wine. The last circulates pretty
freely—jests and stories, not remarkable for their moral
tendency, fly about on all sides—conviviality is at its height
—when all at once the clock strikes—up jump the men in
the most violent hurry, throw on their gowns, and dart into
the chapel. There the fumes of wine positively taint the
air. One man, in his haste, has brought his cigar in his
mouth, and another puts his gown on the wrong way ; some,
rather drunk, by way of showing that they are quite sober
and at their ease, put themselves in a stradling position to
the full extent of their legs; others, more drunk, get them-
selves in the form of the letter S, with their shoulders against
the upper forms, by way of keeping their balance. And
though the majority may be sober enough, yet the indifferent,
drowsy, or, perhaps sneering look which plays upon their
countenance—the assumed listlessness with which they
stand—the eternal yawn, in which, by the way, the dons
themselves are in the habit of joining—all this must create
a very edifying impression on the mind of a stranger, who
wishes to see how the youth of this country are taught to
worship their Creator. Then, as soon as they are on their
knees, and, in consequence, less overlooked, there arises a
general hum—the utterance of the remains of an unfinished
story, or of some joke born during the reading of the abso-
lution. The chapel clerk is sent to various parties by the
deans, with orders to attend them after chapel and be repri-
manded, but the chapel clerk almost always goes to the
wrong person. Hence you have a contest of ingenuity dur-
ing the whole service ; the undergraduates contriving to chat
at their ease, to be heard and not seen, and the authorities
to find them out, to the mutual religious advantage of both
parties. The master of one of the colleges used to repeat
the responses in a very loud and most exceedingly nasal tone ;
and it used to be a standing joke to repeat the responses after
him in his own way, in a tone equally loud and equally nasal,
to the extremeamusement of the whole religious community.
The authorities themselves are not particularly fond of the
service, and generally contrive to choose a fast reader. In
one college they used to have two readers, one for one week
and the other for the next ; because, as they said themselves,
horses always work the faster being changed. Now this is
really no exaggeration. One or two men were wont to get
into a particular corner, behave with decency, and repeat
their responses in fair earnest, but the immense majority be-
haved just as we have stated.—College Life at Cambridge,
in the Westminster Review.

Jusr IN TIMII.-A few days ago the wife of a man em-
ployed at the Lyceum of Manheim, having, as it was be-
lieved, expired, and her death being duly certified by a sur-
geon, who at the same time practices as a barber, was about
to be buried ; but at the moment of screwing down the coffin
she opened her eyes and smiled ! She has since remained in
a weak state, but is gradually getting better.

ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OP ENGLAND
ANNUAL MEETING AT LIVERPOOL.

A meeeing of the members of this society vc as held in
London, on Saturday, Earl Spencer in the chair, when an
interesting report from the council was read. The following
are some extracts relative to the approaching visit of the so-
ciety to Liverpool :
"The council, having selected Liverpool as the place of the
annual country meeting to be held this year, have decided on
additional prizes to the amount of one hundred pounds, to
be given at that meeting for agricultural horses ; and have
also agreed to the mode in which the £2OO to be awarded
this year for implements shall be distributed into classes.
The Liverpool prize sheet, containing the details of these ar-
rangements, as well as the general regulations for exhibitions
has been printed, and a copy sent by post to each member of
of the society.

" Mr. Earle having consented to act as the society's re-
presentave in directing the progress of the arrangements on
the spot, a deputation was sent by the counsel to the autho-
rities of the town, and was received by Mr. Bolton, the pre-
sent, and Sir Joshua Walmsley, the late mayor, with every
mark of interest and respect. This deputation reported to
the council the result of their personal inspection, when it
was resolved that tho piece of ground termed the old infir-
mary yard, and offered by the mayor and corporation, should
be accepted as the site for the dining-hall ; that Falkner's
Fields, offered by Mr. Falkner and Mr. Lace, should be se-
lected for that of the cattle-yard ; that the rooms of the Me-
chanics' Institute should be accepted for the use of the
finance and dinner committee; and Mr. Lucas's Repository
for the purpose of the Wednesday's dinner.
" Having ascertained from Mr. Manning, the contractor
for the Cambridge works, that his present engagement would
preclude his undertaking the works this year at Liverpool,
the council decided to appoint a surveyor of works,- who
should report the progress of their erection; and Mr. Wild
having been elected to that office, he has proceeded to Liver-
pool for the purpose of making arrangements with the con-
tractors to be employed.
"The council having decided that there should this year
be two days for the exhibition of the stock, instead of one, as
formerly, the exhibition of the implements will open on
Wednesday, the 21st of July, and that of the cattle on Thurs-
day, the 22d, the stock remaining open till two o'clock on
the Friday. The dinner of the society takes place on the
Thursday. They have also directed that catalogues, contain-
ing a list of all the subjects of the exhibition, shall be pre-
pared for sale before the time of meeting; that only the
printed forms shall be allowed for the certificates of the-exhi-
bition ; and that the awards for implements shall be an-
nounced at the same time as those for cattle. They have
decided that the sale of dinner tickets shall only take place
at Liverpool, commencing on Tuesday, and continuing open
to members in general on the two following days; each day,
however, a certain number of tickets being reserved for old
members—viz., for such as were elected by the 24th of March
last ; and that, after the first week in July, no further elec-
tion of members shall take place until after the meeting.
"The council having maturely considered all the compara-
tive advantages offered by various places for the next year's
meeting, have decided in selecting the city of Bristol as the
most suitable locality for the annual country meeting of 1842.',

SIR ROBERT PEEL AND THE MANCHESTER

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

(From the Times.)

In the debate on Lord Sandon's motion, Sir Robert Peel,
as eur readers will doubtless recollect, alluded to a conversa-
tion which he had recently had with a quaker gentleman
named Ashworth, who had waited upon the right bon. Bart.,
as part of a deputation from the Chamber of Commerce at
Manchester. Under the manifest conviction that Sir Robert
is on the eve of assuming the reins of government, the depu-
ties were anxious to lay before him their free opinions upon
trade in all its multitudinous branches : and in the progress
of this discursive lecture, which was conducted in the most
amicable spirit, Mr. Ashworth, by way of fortifying the
Chamber's hostility to prohibitory duties, requested the pre-
mier elect to peruse a certain pamphlet by a Mr. W. R. Greg, '
on the unanswerable force of whose reasonings, as inevitably
insuring the right hon. baronet's assent, the worthy quaker
declared that he was quite willing to stake the entire question
of an unfettered commercial intercourse. With no small
misgivings lest his long-established sentiments might be tho-
roughly overturned by the lauded pamphleteer, Sir Robert, in
his usual candid way, agreed to give it his best consideration.
A careful perusal was immediately bestowed upon it—when,
to his utter astonishment, the sharp-witted statesman dis-
covered that ,the production recommended to him by Mr.
Ashworth afforded in truth a strong confirmation of his own
views: and as lie had apprised the deputation that lie should
reserve an explicit developement of those views for his place
in parliament, Sir Robert felt at perfect liberty in the course
of his speech on Tuesday to detail the particulars of his in-
terview with the deputation. and especially the grotesque
effect of Mr. Greg's pamphlet in absolutely annihilating the
dogmas of its free-trade panegyrists. This he did, in a strain
of graceful and good-natured satire, which convulsed the
house for several minutes. The unctuous and refined ten-
derness of Izaak Walton in impaling his dear little worm
upon a comfortable new hook was nothing to it. The Cham-
ber of Commerce at Manchester has bad some untoward pas-
sages in its time. It has, before now, been cruelly burlesqued
by its own chairmen, as Mr. G. W. Wood can testify : but
never till Tuesday night was that unfortunate corporation's
capacity of endurance tested to its full extent. Altogether
it was a scene of the most courteous and insupportable tor-
ture which the Chamber has yet experienced—its own depu-
ties, as a perverse fate decreed, having been once more the
principal instruments of the infliction. Wherefore, it is not
unlikely, we think, that deputations may stand some chance
of going out of fashion.
That Mr. Henry Ashworth, the chief leader in this species
of " chambering and wantonness," must have felt sorely
chagrined at the tremendous retribution which it led to, was
only to be expected: and accordingly, lie has sent a very
egotistic letter to the newspapers, i n which, what with expla-
nations, disclaimers, and non mi ricordos, the highly estima-
ble gentleman has, as is usual, with talkative ignoramuses,
placed his case considerably more in the wrong than when he
first submitted it to the eagle eye and frightful talons of Sir
Robert Peel.

What,
_then, does the worthy quaker say for himself?

Keeping in mind that his main ,subject of discussion witl

the right hon. baronet had reference to the necessity of
adopting free-trade doctrines, and that, on a parenthetica

•
o
allusion to slave-traffic (in regard to which he " was bu
too much delighted to hear Sir Robert's expressions of in

dignation,") I;e.earnestly recommended a particular pamphlet
for his distinguished friend's perusal—adding, that " he

would abide b. the decision which Sir Robert-might come
to upon it," let us now recur to the exact words of Mr.
Ashworth's explanatory letter :
" Upon our recent interview, as an anti-slavery man, I

•
was but too much delighted to hear thee express so empha-
tically thy indignation at the horrors of slavery and the
slave trade ; and not being in the secret of what might be
the import of Lord Sandon's amendment of the following
day, I did not hesitate, as an individual, to draw thy atten-
tion to the observations of W. R. Greg on the cruelties of

Cie middle passage, as well as the loss of British life and
money in the preventive service on the coast of Africa ; also
on the recent embarkation of still more life and property
engaged in the Niger expedition. My note, accompanying
the pamphlet, also directs thy attention to this point, and not
to Mr. Greg's leaning to protection,' which, when 1 read
four months ago, 1 esteemed unsound, and not expecting
Lord Sandon's amendment, bad entirely forgotten."
Now, does it not seem marvelously odd, that after being
delighted with the right hon. baronet's anti-slavery views,
this respectable deputy should have proffered to him the pe-
rusal of what he deems a convincing pamphlet for the express
purpose of converting him? Nay, is it not perfectly plain
that, knowing Sir Robert's entire concurrence with the pam-
phleteer on the slavery question, Mr. Ashworth was desirous
that some subsidiary views in the same performance, on
which the conservative leader was believed to be less sound,
should receive from him an equally full assent—an assent so
confidently anticipated, that the excellent deputy declared
his willingness to abide Sir Robert's own decision. Our
manufacturing friend could scarcely be so fond of superfluous
undertakings as to insist upon a much-occupied statesman
reading a work on the main facts and reasonings of which he
already agreed with the writer. Neither can we well imagine
that the proverbial caution of the Society of Friends could
be so dormant in Mr. Ashworth as to have betrayed into the
indiscretion of staking his free trade case upon a pamphlet
whose views upon that subject he had, four months ago,
known to be unsound, but had very strangely forgotten them.
Our own conviction is (though without impugning Mr. Ash-
worth's shrewdness to any greater extent than he himself
impugns his own memory), that up to the day of Sir Robert
Peel's speech on the subject of the said pamphlet, the free
trade deputy had blindly imagined it to be all on his own
side. To his extreme surprise and mortification, Sir Robert's
superior acumen has shown him his egregious mistake. Mr.
Greg, on the soundness of whose fiscal opinion the repre-
sentative of the Manchester Chamber so complacently re-
posed (his anti-slavery views having been avowedly coincided
in by Sir R. Peel), expresses himself as follows :
" This country is not called upon to exclude cotton, be-
cause it had never been excluded ; but it was bound to exclude
slave-grown sugar, because since the enactment of negro
emancipation it always bad been excluded, and the admission
of it now would be the greatest possible incitement to slavery
which Europe, for thirty years, had been lavishing her trea-
sures to abolish. * * * The only-method of abolishing
the slave-trade was by destroying the demand for slave pro-
duce ; that object could only be attained, and would be at-
tained, by encouraging in the West India colonies a superior
cheapness of free productions ; and the prosperity of those
colonies would be insured, and could only be insured, by ex-
tensive and systematic emigration, and by a temporary con-
tinuance of the present discriminating duty on sugar!'
So much for the boasted pamphleteer, on whom the Man-
chester Chamber relies as the Coryphceus of free trade !
Viewed on its own merits, Mr. Greg's pamphlet, we own, is
scarcely deserving of notice ; but as indicating the unbiassed
opinion of the cottonocracy ." four months ago" (before the
present crisis was thought of), and as showing the doubtful
competency of that wealthy class to comprehend the suicidal
pamphleteering of:their own members, and, finally, as fur-
nishing incidentally a new proof of the blundering diplomacy
of deputations, Sir R. Peel has certainly laid the country
under additional obligations to him, by deigning to point out
to Mr. Ashworth and his associates the extent of their igno-
rance and dogmatism.
In the worthy Quaker's letter, though very communicative
on points whereon his opinion is unsought, not one word
does he utter in reference to the government's encourage-
ment of slave-grown sugar. Now, friend Henry, we must
respectfully tell thee, that this is sly and shifty. If the Qua-
kers blink the slavery question at the approaching general
election, their high character as a religious society is irre-
trievably ruined.