The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-10-15 00:00:00

THE WHIG MES-ALLIANCE

That the anti-corn-law agitation, upon which the Whig
party has thrown itself for support, possesses no deep or per-
manent hold upon the public mind it would be a waste of

time to attempt seriously to demonstrate. For with whom,
in fact, does that agitation originate? Not, certainly, with
any great and influential class in the community. Not even
with the manufacturing interest as a body ; but with a section
only of that interest—a comparatively small and morally
powerless section—one which dare not unveil either the ulte-
rior objects which it has in view or the immediate moving
cause of its frantic struggles. The really influential portion
of the manufacturing body either scout altogether connection
with its efforts, or view them with a jealous apathy ; whilst
the working classes, for whose benefit they are ostensibly
made, regard them with open and declared distrust. These
classes, in the manufacturing districts at least, will not allow
themselves to be juggled by the specious plausibilities which
form the staple of its daily tirades. They know well the real
object which is concealed beneath the cry of " cheap bread
for the working man ;" and whatever may be their fondness
for the abstract idea conveyed by the term cheapness, they
have a goading and bitter experience which tells them that
the substance, if it could be realized, will never be permitted
to add one iota to the sum of the working man's happiness—
will never be suffered to place one comfort within his reach
which the reckless cupidity of his employer can abstract to

his own uses

As an engine of party annoyance, it is, alone, that the agi-
tation of the league can be regarded ; for to any other object

than the creation of a temporary effervescence upon the sur-
face of public opinion it is manifestly incapacitated from di-
recting itself. It is in possession of none of those elements
of strength by which the success of great questions are brought
about under a representative form of government. It has
neither leaders to whom the people look up with respect and
confidence, nor has it one powerful body amongst the people
upon whose support it can unhesitatingly rely. The factious
motives of unseating Sir Robert Peel's ministry set aside, we
question if the undisguised object of the league—the with-
drawal of all protection whatever from the agricultural body—
would obtain the support of one-tenth of the representatives
of the people in the present parliament ; and, most assuredly,
we can see no prospect of such a change in our system of re-
presentation—none, at least, which the league would venture
upon—as would consummate that object, in the overthrow of
our existing industrial interests and the transfer of the pro-
perty of the nation, and the substantial power of the govern-
ment as well, into the hands of an aristocracy of new poor-
law philosophers and manufacturing capitalists.
The infusion of new elements of democracy into the con-
stitution, the adoption of the ballot, the abolition of the rate-
paying clauses of the reform bill,—all or any of these expe-
dients would not, we are confident, produce such a parliament
as would be required to realize the dream of Mr. Richard
Cobden and his fellow leaguers. Such a parliament as would
be returned by the aid of these concessions to democracy
would doubtless be prepared to rush with all due haste to
the settlement of the corn-laws, the timber duties, or the
sugar duties ; but it is equally certain that they would also
be prepared to go much further—far, in fact, beyond the
point at which the league would have them stop. The mill-
owners of Manchester and Stockport are not disposed, for
instance, to trust the settlement of the factory question into
the hands of their own enfranchised operatives ; and yet the
working classes of the manufacturing districts would most
assuredly be prompt in demanding such a settlement. They
are scarcely more disposed to place the settlement of the
poor-law question iu the same hands. They are not anxious
to see the propriety of taxing mill machinery seriously
mooted ; or to witness the starting of a hundred other similar
questions, into the discdssion of which democracy would un-
hesitatingly plunge.
No, no; the manufacttring agitators, with the fear of
Chartism before their eyes, have assuredly little hope of
working out the objects for which they clamour so loudly, by
the infusion of additional democracy into the constitution;
and as little, we think, from any effort in a contrary direc-
tion. The parliament, which a reformer of the league school
requires, is one which will devote itself to the securing of a
free trade in corn, labour, and every other commodity ; but
will not enter upon the task of alleviating the pressure of the
new poor-law upon the poor ;—a parliament of Unitarian
philosophers—of men steeped in the heartlessness of the fac-
tory system ; and we venture to question, not whether the
materials for such a parliament could be found—(for they
are abundant)—but whether, until the character of English-
men be changed utterly, it is possible in this Christian
country to devise any system by which constituencies could
be formed to return such a parliament, or a power strong
enough to afford it protection from the storm of execration,
which its acts in one session would drawn.
That the government of Sir Robert Peel is not willing to
yield to the dictation, or to be terrified by the bluster of a
party so utterly powerless—so hopelessly isolated—so tho-
roughly bankrupt in the sympathy or respect of any influen-
tial portion of the community—is scarcely surprising; but
we may well wonder at the suicidal blindness of the whig
party—or of the respectable portion of it, at least, if any such
portion is remaining—in allying themselves with such a mass
of vapouring and conceited helplessness. Surely neither
Lord John Russell nor Lord Palmerston can have the pre-
posterous folly to suppose that such an alliance will shorten
by one day the period of their exile from the regions of
Downing-street ! Surely neither of these acute politicians
can ever dream of being borne into office upon the shoulders
of the paltry spouters of the anti-corn- law league, or floated
out of the " slough of despond," which they now so worthily
occupy, by any influence which can be exercised upon the
public mind by the malthusian supporters of those twin
abominations—the new poor-law and the factory system.

THE OPPOSITION TO SIR ROBERT PEEL'S

GOVERNMENT,

The system upon which the opposition to the government
of Sir Rober Peel has thus far been conducted by the free-

trade agitators in parliament and their allies throughout the
country, presents a remarkable resemblance to the practice

of Mr. St. John Long—a quack as eminent once in the me-
dical world, as Doctor Bowring, Mr. Cobden, or any other
corn-doctor, can ever hope to be in the world of politics.

The principle of the quack medical was, that disease of the

. _
corporeal frame was to be expelled by the creation of an ex-

tensive sore ; and the quack political appears equally san-
guine that a conservative government—in his eyes " the
rankling evil which afflicts the state"—can be removed b)

the creation of similar sores upon the body politic. There
is this material difference, however, in the course by which
the former practitioner arrived at his results, and that con-
templated by the latter. Mr. St. John Long looked for the

actual absorption of latent humours by the real suffering

which he produced ; and thus there was a spice of philosophy
in his practice, despite its quackery. His imitators, howe-
ver, in the spirit of the vulgar showman, are satisfied with
the profit to be reaped from the mere exhibition of the mi-
sery which they conjure up, and of the frenzied contortions
of the patient during the process of ulceration.
That the practitioners upon the body politic have been
moderately successful in their efforts hitherto, we are com-
pelled to admit. The virus in their possession has been
widely distributed; excoriation, bodily and mental, has been
abundantly produced; and a mass of misery and, withal, of
exasperated feeling spread through our manufacturing dis-
tricts, which it is distressing to witness in the heart of a
Christian land, and which. moreover, could not coexist with
a poor-law administered in any other than a Malthusian and
unchristian spirit. Nor were they less successful in their
choice of the exhibitors, by whose hands the veil was to be
withdrawn from before the dark picture of living horror
which their art had conjured up. What tongue more fitted
than that of a Cobden to dilate upon misery almost unendu-
rable—to paint it in due melodramatic colours, and with
proper conventicle solemnity ? Who more capable than Mr.
Thomas Milner Gibson to throw a dash of bitterness into
the picture—the bitterness with which the conscious spirit
of the apostate ever teems ? Or who more eminently quali-
fied to work out its details than the statistical, pure, and

patriotic Doctor Bowrina ?
And yet with all these appliances, and notwithstanding the
undoubted fitness of the instruments, the result towards
which they were directed has not been achieved ! The exhi-
bition was opened in St. Stephen's ; night after night the
curtain rose before numerous and respectable auditories ;
Mr. Cobden exhausted all his show-booth oratory—fumed,
fretted, and stamped—" tore his passion to rags," and
" split the ears of the groundlings ; the peripatetic doctor
dived into the cellars and alleys of Bolton with an alacrity
which is wonderful—since it is not paid for—to drag his
quota of famishing weavers upon the stage; we bad marvel-
lous stories, from others of the corps dramatique, of families
subsisting upon sawdust—a feat which the pigs of the sister
island, unfortunately for them, could never accomplish ;
and yet parliament has been dissolved, just at the precise
time when it would have been, had all this display of zeal
for the suffering poor, (!) on the part of the anti-corn-law
impostors, never been made; and the administration of Sir
Robert Peel, in despite equally of agitation and quackery,
still stands firm in all its integrity of purpose, and in all its
unassailable strength ! The onus of the wretchedness dis-
played has not recoiled upon his head, or upon those of the
great conservative party by whom he is supported ; but upon
that wretched and worthless faction by whose imbecility so
vast a mass of suffering—and that it is vast who can doubt?
—has been permitted to accumulate without even an attempt
at a remedy until at the last hour, when they felt that office
and its advantages were slipping from their grasp
But have these exhibitions been made in vain? Has an
observant and reflecting people contemplated unmoved the
scenes which have been revealed to them ? We say most
unhesitatingly it has not ! The people of England know
that for years past a tide of unexampled wealth has been
pouring into our manufacturing districts ; and they ask now,
with a start at the contemplation of these highly wrought
horrors—" Can it be that starvation and famine are so very
close attendants upon manufacturing prosperity ? Is there
no middle state between the Elysium of ample demand and
this dark and despairing picture ?" And well, indeed, may
they ask these, and even more searching questions. Well
may they pause before consenting to hazard their all—to rest
the sceurity and well-being of the industrial interests of an
entire community—upon a foundation so unstable and so
perilous !
The exhibitions, however, have now ceased for a time, upon
the metropolitan boards at least, and the performers have
returned to carry on their laudable avocations in the pro-
vinces. The process of excoriation will be recommenced;
fresh virus will be infused into each smarting sore ; and the
unhappy victim of their practices will be racked by his tor-
mentors to the extremity of human endurance, in the hope
of wringing from his misery some wild convulsive effort, in
the midst of which a reckless faction may be enabled to
scramble back into the occupation of those seats from which
an indignant and insulted people have so lately hurled them ;
but we ask, seriously and advisedly, have the reckless agita-
tors calculated all the chances of the game in which they are
embarking ? Are they sure that, even with the aid of the
reverend gentlemen, whose aid they are about to
they can controul the storm which they are bent upobrais-
ing ? Is it so certain that the rage of an infuriated anhd hun-
ger-stricken population may not at length turn upon t eigandd-
flies which sting them into madness, or lacerate the baud
which, to goad them into outrage, snatches the food from
before their expectant lips ? We have for a reply :
We certainly do not anticipate such an ebullition of feeling
as will hazard the safety of conservatism, however eagerly
directed to this end may be the efforts of the League and its
reverend allies, during the parliamentary recess., We have
that confidence in the good sense which pervades tee working
classes of Great Britain, to trust that they will not be seduced
into violent outbreaks, to further the designs of a faction in
whose inmost hearts they must know that they are the ob-
jects of the bitterest contempt, and whom they have never
yet trusted without being deceived and betrayed. But we
are by no means so confident that the endurance of a people
under torture and maddening agitation can be depended upon
by those within, the immediate,, reach of their first frenzy.
" The engineer' may be twist with his own petard," whilst
he, against whose walls the engine is directed, remains unin-
jured; and we warn the Cobdens and the Bowrings, and
some gentlemen, too, who are nearer to us than these cham-
pions of the League, that the course upon which they are
bent is one of which the danger to the operators is imminent,
although the results to conservatism we do Pot few