The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-05-03 00:00:00

THE THEATRE ROYAL,

This theatre was opened by the regular company yesterday
week. Mr. Dowton and Mr. Kean have also appeared each
successive night in most of the characters for which their
names are deservedly esteemed by the lovers of the drama.
Shakspeare's plays of " Henry IV," " Hamlet," and the
" Merchant of Venice," (the two former having bee❑ twice
acted,) have drawn tolerable houses on each night of then re-
presentation. Mr. Kean's engagement was for twelve nights,
seven of which have already expired, and which will be conclud-
ed on Saturday. Dowton, who for a long time has been a
favourite in Liverpool, took his benefit on Friday evening,
in the comedy. of " Town and Country" and the " Hypocrite."
The latter piece, although it affords an opportunity for the dis-
play of Mr. Dowtun's ability as a comedian, is, nevertheless, a
most licentious and reprehensible performance. Two nights
previously it was chosen as an after-piece, and, if we may be-
lieve the announcement contained in the playbills of Friday, it
was then received " with the most enthusiastic approbation."
The " approbation" of Wednesday evening, however, was not
the means of drawing together a crowded audience to witness
its second representation; for, when the curtain was drawn up,
there were not more than from seventy to eighty persons iu both
the pit and boxes together; and, during the remainder of the
evening, empty benches were to be seen in every part of the
house. The whole went off in a very flat and spiritless manlier.
No respectable female, we are sure, could sit and listen to the
double entendres and libertine ribaldry with which this piece
abounds without feeling herself grossly insulted. The public
did well to mark their disapprobation of this mass of obscenity
by all but deserting the theatre on the night when it was last
presented, although the principal characters in the comedy were
supported with more than ordinary ability. Mr. Dowtou has
since, no doubt, discovered the mistake which was committed in
taking the " Hypocrite" for his benefit evening, in preference
to a character in which he is without a rival and which he has
made peculiarly his own—we mean Sir John Falstaff: Had
that been done, the result would have been far different—far
more gratifying to the public, and more beneficial in a pecu-
niary respect to Mr. Dowton. . .

. „
. _
Yesterday evening, " Richard the Third" ( Richard by Mr.
Kean) and the inelOdrama of " Tekeli" were performed. To-
night, the admired comedy of a "NeW Way to pay old Debts"
(Sir Cue, OcerregeAby Mr. Kean) will be bronght out; and
to-morrow " Othello" will be produced; Mr. Kean and our uunt
tragedian, Mr. Stuart, will sustain the principal parts, of Othello
and logo.
Mr. Dowton left this town for America on Sunday, in the
packet ship New England.

LIVERPOOL TRADESMEN'S CONSERVATIVE

Sod ET V.

At a monthly meeting of the Liverpool Tradesmen's Conser-
. vative Society, held April 25th, 1836, the following address was
unanimously agreed to:—
" We, the conservative tradesmen of the borough of Liver-
pool, impressed with a sense of our duty to our country, our
King, and our God, and anxious for the preservation iu uniut-
paired integrity of our glorious constitution, feel ourselves called
upon to avow the principles which have impelled us to enter
into a righteous confederacy for the protection of our rights and
privileges as free-burn Britons, as wed as for the purpose of
resisting the mote effectually the destructive encroachments of
an unprincipled baud of infidel democrats, and to express our
firm resolution never to desert the sacred cause which we have
deliberately espoused, but to redouble our exertions for the deli-
verance of our unhappy country from the merciless grasp of the
united radical and popish factions, by whom its laws, its liberties,
and its religion ate threatened with annihilation.
" We avow it as our conscientious belief; that upon the main-
tenance of our protestant church depends in a great degree the
prosperity of the British einpit e, and that its tolerant genius has
procured for the people of this country the enjoyment of a mea-
sure of rational freedom unparalleled in the history of the world;
and we, therefore, canout but view with alarm and indignation
the treacherous attacks frost which our protestant brethren in
Ireland are now suffering. We believe that the measure of
church spoliation which the present ministry, by the assistance
of a tyrannic majority in the House of Commons, endeavoured
to foist upon the country, was introduced by them at the dicta-
tion of that reckless demagogue, by whose parliamentary but
uticonstdujional influence they are enabled to retain that power,
for the sake of which thee have compromised their characters
and sactiliced their principles. We 'are convinced that the ie-
sistance now offered in that country to the payment of tithes is
prompted by the uninitigable violence of the popish priesthood
and their agitating minions; and that they are accountable for
that loss of life which has of late years ensued froin the adoption
by tile superstitious peasantry of their diabolical counsel. Whilst
we cannot withhold our pity from the ignorant and priest-ridden
insurgents, we must declare that the unhappy consequences oc-
casioaed by the lawless violence of the sufferers must be viewed
as exactly on a par wills the deathwounds received by the deter-
mined burglar who struggles. to retain his plunder. We consi-
der that the Irish clergy, iu common with the clergy of the
Established Church of England, have an unalienable and an
unimpeachable right to the whole of that property which the
piety of our ancestors has conferred upon them for their main-
tenance, and to which the law has recognised their claim; and
we pronounce the attempt to alienate any portion of this pro-
perty, and its appropriation to any other than strictly ecclesias-
tical purposes,ao be sacrilegious in its nature, and equivalent in
atrocity to Abe destruction of protestant places of worship, to
which it may ultimately lead. The ministers in their attacks
upon protestantism, which they have introduced under the spe-
cious disguise of church rejOrm, seek only to conciliate the
Burnish priesthood, whom they will find it impossible to satisfy
until they are able to erase protestantisni from Ireland, and to
supersede its beneficent sway by the iron bondage of popery.
" With equal alarm do we contemplate the measure of Irish
municipal reform recently passed by the House of Commons.
This is another sop thrown by our liberal ministers into the
insatiate jaws of the Rornish monster. The effect of this mea-
sure in its present shape will be to transfer from the hands of
protestants that power with which they have been invested for
the purpose of preserving the integrity of the empire into the
hands of the degraded slaves of a rough-riding priesthood, who
will compel them by the terrors of excommunication to vote ex-
plicitly as they may direct. By this means-a numerical majority
of inhabitants of Irish towns, confined to a single sect, moved
by an undivided spiritual power, embracing., indeed constituted,
in a great part, by the ignorance, the superstition, the pauperism,
the disci fiction of the place, will be permitted to e::eicise uticon-
, trolled dominion over its intelligence, property, and love of legal
order. We trust that the House of Lords will resist to the last
the creation of such an authority to be vested in hands which
can employ it no otherwise than for purposes subversive of en-
lightened liberty, of protestant security, and of British power.
On this subject a factious, confederate, self-discordant majority
iu the House of Commons has certainly outvoted the great con-
servative party; but there are resources in the constitution of
this monarchy for redeeming what has thus been lost, and for
vindicating what, through an impulse of momentary rashness,
or a scheme of calculating selfishness, may be temporarily in-
jured; and we earnestly hope that the House of Lords, unde-
terred by the brutal threats which have been levelled at them,
will avail themselves of these salutary resources for the purpose
of once more frustrating the knavish designs of the arch-agitator
and his perjured satellites.
" Believing, as we du, that the balance of power in the Bri-
tish constitution, has been so. nicely adjusted by the wisdom,
prudence, and foresight of our ancestors, as to secure, in their
greatest amplitude, the benefits of good government and en-
lightened liberty, we proclaim our hostility to the preposterous
schemes which have been recently avowed fur reforming the
House of Lords. Any attack upon their independence we view
as an indirect attack upon the throne itself: and the moment
any reconstruction of the House of Peers takes place—that
moment will seal the doom of the monarchy, and secure the
eventual triumph of republicanism. The industrious and in-
telligent people of this great country will soon discern that the
peers of England are emphatically fighting the battle of the
people, and it is no less certain that they will be soon requited
for their patriotic exertions by the spontaneous tribute of a
nation's gratitude.
Though much has been conceded to the incessant clamour
of the democratic party iu this country, the inroads which they
have been enabled to make upon the constitution have only
encouraged them to be more ut gent and inure unreasonable iu
their demands.

"'They now insist upon the further extension of the franchise
to all householders, whether they may have paid their taxes or
net; and their next cry will be for universal suffrage, divested
of every qualification. .To this the conservatives are decidedly
opposed, inasmuch as the principle of a property qualification
is instinct!), recognised by the British constitution, and because
its abolition would superinduce evils it remediable in their
nature, and incalculable in their extent.
"To vote by ballot and annual parliaments (two other
crotchets of the radical party) we are equally opposed, be-
lieving that the one would lead to the destruction of that inde-
pendence of feeling and of action, which, we hope, will ever
constitute the proud characteristic of a British voter; and that
the Gtier would keep thisgreat commercial community (already
too much distracted by party spirit) in a state of perpetual poli-
tical excitement, without increasing, in the least degree, the
responsibility of our representative legislators.
" We have nu interest in the perpetuity of abuses ; and ou
this account we avow ourselves as the onlygenuine iitia rational
reformers in the country, though our opponents
,ridiculously
assume that appellation to themselves. But we wish to reform
fir the purpose of renovating and preserving the decayed por-
tions of the social or political fabric. To all ascertained and
proved abuses in church and state, which may have crept in
through the lapse of time, and by the operation of other causes,
we are willing, ready, and desirous of applying an effectual and
seasonable remedy: but we do not consider demolition to be
equivalent with reform—nor ruthless destruction to by synony-
mous with needful improvement.
" We also wish to draw the attention of our townsmen in
particular, to the painful and humiliating fact, that one of our
representatives has been guilty of the greatest dereliction of
political principle. Introducing himself to the notice of the
free burgesses of Liverpool as a friend to the constitution, he
obtained from them those suffrages and that trust which he has
subsequently so faithlessly forfeited, We deem it be our impe-
rative duty to strain every nerve for the purpose of superseding
him by a staunch Conservative. While thus alluding to the re-
presentation of Liverpool, we wish to express our perfect satis-
factio❑ with the consistent, sedulous, and dignified deportment
of Lord Sandon, in the House of Commons. We are happy to re-
cognise in him a steady friend to the monarchy and the established
religion of our country, and are only sorry that he has not the
co-operation of a more worthy associate, and a man of more
congenial sentiments.

" Finally, we strenuously urge all true conservatives to unite
in one firm phalanx, for the purpose of rescuing our country
front the baneful domination of the whig-radical popish cabinet,
and of returning into the Commons house of parliament men of
sound constitutional principles • men who will stand in the
breach, and boldly stein the rushing torrent of sedition and re-
publicanism ; and by so doing, avert the horrors of anarchy,
and establish, upon a more permanent basis than ever, the peace
and prosperity of this mighty empire."

DREADFUL ACCIDENT.—On Friday, a fine boy came by his
death in the following distressing manner: his father, we under-
stand, was a farmer in Gloucestershire, and had come over to
this port with his family and domestics for the purpose of pro-
ceeding to America; the deceased child was in company of his
little brothers and sisters walking out with a servant girl, when
passing over the bridge at the Prince's dock, the on fortunate
little fellow stumbled against the rail of iron which separates
the foot-path from the cart-way, and a cart crossing the bridge
at the time, passed over part of his body and his head; when
taken up he was literally crushed to atoms, the contents of
the brain and bowels had protruded. Au inquest was held the
same day on the body, and a verdict of accidental death re-
turned.