The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-12-30 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS:

We regret that we have no room in our present number for the
letter of "An Eye-witness." It shall appear on Tuesday.

Standard Office, Friday Morning, 2 o'clock.
Owing to the obstructions on the roads we have not re-
ceived the London papers of 7'uesday.and Wednes-
day, and are, consequently, unable: to furnixh our
readers with our usual amount ,of Foreign and other
intelligence. For the same reason we are short of the
Gazette and other commercial information. The latest
London papers that have reached us up to the hour of
going to press are the morning and evening papers.of
Monday last. We understand Mitt our Manchester
neighbours have had more recent arrivals. In our next
we shall be enabled, we trust, to give some account of
the unusual state of the roads produced by the recent
extraordinary falls of snow: The particulars that
have reached us as yet are very contradietory.

of iLiberpool

FRIDAY MORNING. DECEMBER 30, 783 F,

It indicates but little knowledge of the credulity of
human nature, and less acquaintance with the craftiness
of designing men, to suffer a hundred-times-confuted po-
sition to be put forth by one whose name gives it fresh
authority, and not to meet it with renewed exposure. If
" the last word," as regards the final judgment of time,
be " the word which lasts longest"—yet, as respects cur-
rent policy, that argument carries the point to which no
reply is made. We, therefore, think it would be a dere-
liction of duty, as public censors, to suffer the factious, or
self-deluded leaders of radical reforin, to trumpet forth
their specious declarations without adding a commentary
to them which may serve to rectify error, and to give
,a
correct interpretation to their meaning, . To this task we
are now called by some speeches delivered—as a:radical-
paper blazons it forth—at ti,!"-grand reform dinner at
Northampton." The triple star which dimly tWinkled on
that occasion in the Boeotian atmosphere of Northamp.
ton, was composed of Mr, Smithi M.P.; tutelary,deitybf
the place, Earl Spencer, and 'Earl Fitzwilliam—of which
Earl Spencer was evidently the nucleus.
,We say no-
thing of Mr. Peach, to whom the dinner was given, as
he was only Mayor of Northampton. A leading metro-
politan journal tells us, that it is in vain to reason with
Earl Spencer. We never intended it; but although Mr.
Smith, as well as Earl Fitzwilliam, uttered absurdities
enow to serve for comments for a dozen successive jour-
nals, we shall consider them as the minor feet in this po-
litical amphibrach, and endeavour to exhibit the folly dis-
played in the noble earl's speech ; and, by such exhibi-
tion to reason, if not with his lordship, at least with the
country, a large portion of which is too apt to regard the
dicta of such men with something little short of venera-
tion ; indeed, whilst it is worth while for radicals to pro-
mulgate pernicious errors; it must be the interest of con-
servative truth to expose them. Lord Chesterfield says,
a graceful entrance into a room almost infallibly stamps a
man's character in the estimation ()film company present,
and Cicero, we know, considers the greatest embarrass-
ment to belong to the exordium of a speech; but my
Lord Spencer gets over the threshold of his address ac-
cording to an artifice peculiarly his own—by thrusting
the posteriors of his oration forwards, and making his
prefatory bow after he has fairly wriggled himself into
the subject. He said, "I think it would be best, before
I preface that toast, to tell what it is I intend to propose."
Well, then, now for his lordship's pre prefatory observa-
tions—things so out of course may well be expected to
have something extraordinary in them. His lordship
declared, that he thinks ministers are neither "going too
far" nor " too fast"—that they are only carrying out our
(whig-radical) principles into effect"—that they are pro-
posing measures which he thinks beneficial to the coun-
try, and he believes the enlightened state of the country
will enable them to carry them." These, and such like
general expressions, uncoupled, and unincumbered with
a single argument, came from the lips of "second child-
ishness" of my Lord Spencer.
Whether ministers are going too far, or too fast, in the
career of constitutional destruction, we will not now dis-
pute—indeed it is with arguments, and not assertions,
that dispwations should be conducted—but these radical
orators know nothing of logical reasoning beyond the
major proposition—they entrench themselves behind ge-
neral declarations, which, however absurd, like all other
general declarations, are difficult of disproof. Three
words may affirm, that Caesar or Alexander never lived,
whilst a volume would be required to confute that affir-
mation. So theie .whig-radicals said, the reform bill
would prove a panacea for every political ill, which,
though calm, sober reason ridiculed, yet was one of those
things that ignorance or prejudice could . always vaunt,
fearless of detection.. But now the reform bill has passed—
it has had a fair trial--and we have a right to ask these
wholesale declaimers of reform why, instead of cheating
their deluded followers with " hopes deferred"—golden
days to come—they do not point to some single substan-
tial blessing, which every one confessedly enjoys, and
say, this is the fruit of reform. Let us suppose that my
Lord Spencer, instead of the unmeaning, and, therefore,
more pernicious verbiage, which he uttered on this Occa-
sion, had addressed his After-dinner auditory—the erect
ears of radical dissenters—in some such terms as follow,
there would have been sense at least in the riptiekl'i—
"My Friends—we meet here, this day, to express, with
unfeigned gratitude, our thanks to the leaders of reform
for the many great benefits they have conferred upon us.
It is to the reform bill that we are indebted for that uni-
versal superabundant activity of trade in every part of
the kingdom, but especially here in. Northampton, and
that immense diminution of taxation which, this day, oc-
casions the pockets of every one of us to be full—you
know, you feel, and can well appreciate that measure,
which has given every one present, and even the un-
grateful conservatives also—though they will nut acknow-
ledge
now sits
it—that
east
independence we all now enjoy ;
every man under his own fig tree—there is 'no
fcomplaining heard h
ei pao ourvv streets'
--poverty
e
r f
where finds full employment, and an ample reward for
his labour—his ' children are olive branches round his
table'—' corner stones'—polished, as one said, with hap.
pv conceit, by our radical veteran Lord Brougham's rub-
stone—our manufacturers are flourishing beyoud all ex-
ample—not a mill standing idle—like bee-hives, making
golden honey—and all gathered from the flowers and
fruits of the reform bill ;—and although, my friends,
there has been an amendment of the poor-law act, yet
you all know eery well it is quite a dead letter—a sort of
cure for leprosy, a disease which has ceased to exist—
for our workhouses are without inmates, parish officers
without duty, and the buildings themselves will soon be
turned into theatres for public diversion. All these, and
more, much "more titan I have power to tell," are the
genuine, well authenticated, consequences of the reform
bill. You yourselves know, by happy experience, that I
speak the truth."
Something after this fashion of speech would be bring.