The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-09-13 00:00:00

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printed it
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winter, will make a much better disp!ay than the spring

sown ones.

" W. H. G. LUDLOW."—Uuleve!oped Fuchsia flowers are
flower-buds, but would be incorrectly called buds, which
term refers only to leaf buds.

Owing to the pressure upon our space, we have been compelled

to omit several interesting communications.
GEO. BONN-BING" may see full details in the London daily
papers of the day or two after the trial.

A LAYMAN," "G. H." and other Correspondents.—We
have been reluctantly compelled to postpone the insertion
of their letters, oNing to want of room.

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TUESDAY

MORNING, SEPT. 13, 1853.

THOSE who remember the mania which agitated
the country during the discussions on the Reform
Bill, will view the attempt to revive it in the next
session of Parliament with anything but feelings
of complacency. Then it disturbed all order, en-
grossed all conversation, paralysed the common
business of life, and excited the most extravagant
expectations as to its effects upon the social condi-
tion of the population. The common people, who
had hardly the slightest interest in the question,
clamoured for Reform with an eagerness which
betokened their firm belief in its beneficial efficacy,
and the majority were firmly persuaded that the
passing of the bill would enable them to have meat
for a penny a pound, and bread for nothing. The
collectors of small rents found their applications
for payment met with a stupid stare of astonish-
ment, and were told that "the Reform Bill had
passed," as an answer to their demand ; and so
general was the persuasion of some such substan-
tial advantages as the result of an agitation which
had been joined in with such enthusiasm, that the
mortification of the disappointment was correspond-
ingly great. The circumstances are now, how-
ever, materially altered : the people, on the whole,
care little or nothing about the question ; the
franchise which was then so eagerly coveted is
now thought of little worth, and any proposition
for its extension would excite very little en-
thusiasm, even among the classes it pro-
fessed to benefit. There would thus be less fear
of a Ministerial scheme on the subject disturbing
the public tranquillity in any great degree, but at
the same time it would serve to show the folly of
attempting to make any organic changes in the
representative system, when so few take any in-
terest in it. It is wilfully incurring a hazard for
no possible benefit, and forfeiting some certain
amount of good upon an adventure in which,
though much may be lost, nothing can be gained.
To be forewarned is, however, to be forearmed ;
and it would be as well that the real designs of the
Ministry were exposed, before Parliament is com-
mitted to a course from which it may be difficult,
if not impossible, to recede.
In the first place, the Government labour under
the consciousness of having done nothing, and of
not being able to do anything, to entitle them to
hold their present position. Last session their
sheet-anchor was Mr. GLADSTONE and his financial
scheme. It served to prolong discussion, and to
spin out the time ; but, for any purpose of practical
benefit, it was a total failure, and in whatever way
it may be viewed, it will not serve the same conve-
nience another session. A new game was, there-
fore, to be started, which might furnish a topic for
the recess, and a new Reform Bill has been pro-
mised, in the hope that it may serve the purpose of
getting through another session with many words
but few deeds. In the next place, the Ministers
are deeply mortified that the Freemen which
remain in the borough constituencies are for the
most part men of Conservative principles, and
insensible to the charms with which certain candi-
dates seek to obtain Liberal majorities. They
would gladly have disfranchised the Freemen of
this town, but failed in obtaining a servile com-
mittee to recommend such a course ; and, though
any measure of disfranchisement is directly in the
teeth of Liberal professions, they would stoop to
such degradation in order to serve the purpose of
party. The new Bill will, therefore, make a whole-
sale sweep of.the Freemen because they are Con-
servatives, and pretend to a compromise with their
principles by admitting a lower class of house-
holders as the best materials for a Radical majority :
so that a political agitation will be renewed, not for
any legitimate purposes of the Constitution, nor
even to gratify a demand for popular privileges,
for such has never been made, but in order to serve
a party which has not the slightest hold upon
public opinion, and the leaders of which endeavour
to maintain their position by a fictitious popularity
founded upon false pretences.
But whatever may be the details of the promised
scheme, it must to a certain extent be a failure.
The operatives who formed the staple of Lord JOHN
RUSSELL'S physical force in 1831 are now in a
very different position from what they were at that
time. They can no longer be made the dupes of
mob orators and political demagogues : they have
been taught by bitter experience the folly of ex-
pecting any advantage from political privileges ;
they are earning better wages, and when men are
better fed and clothed they care less about political
questions ; and many of them have the sense to
perceive that the prosperity of the working classes
depends upon the maintenance of good government
and the total absence of political agitation. Such
a threat as Lord JOHN RUSSELL made in 1831 of
bringing up a body of armed working men from
Birmingham to intimidate the House of Lords,
criminal as it was then, would be worse than con-
temptible now, as there are no materials available ;
and he must be content with a war of words within