The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-05-11 00:00:00

AN INCORRIGIBTE YOUTH

A genteel looking young mar., named Fitzcharles, pleaded
guilty to a charge of having stolen a quantity of silk cloths
from his master. He had previously been convicted at
Lancaster. and was there imprisoned. His conduct in that
gaol was exemplary, and through the governor had obtained
a good situation ; but had again resorted to his former prac-
tice. The recorder, who stated the fact, said that he had
shown so bad a disposition that he bad no hope of his being
reclaimed in this country, and sentenced him to be trans-
ported for ten years.

THE CALENDAR.—The calendar contains the names of
90 persons for trial on charges of felony, and 13 on charges of
misdemeanour ; total 103. Of this number, viewed with
regard to education, there are only three who are able to
read and write well, whilst the very large proportion of 31
have never been taught either; and 60 can read and write
imperfectly.

SERIOUS Loss OF LIFE AND PROPERTY.—During the
gale of Wednesday last, no less than eleven boats laden with
sea-weed, bound for this port, from Connemara, were lost,
and report says, the lives lost were fifteen.—Galway Ad-
vertiser.

It will be seen that the Bishop of Sodor and Man, a brother
of the Lord Chancellor, has been translated to the see of
Worcester. The annual value of the bishopric was formerly
estimated at £6,500 upon an average of years, but it has
since been fixed by statute at £5,000, and it possesses, be-
sides, the patronage of 17 livings, some of which, as Ripple
and Hartlebury, are of great value.

SENDING NEWSPAPERS BY POST.—The postmaster of
Lerwick, in Shetland, says,
" I had occasion to return as
many as from thirty to forfy newspapers at a time to the
dead letter office,' without any covers whatever ; I would
recommend that addresses of all
papers be written on the
papers themselves."—[This is a very wise suggestion ; but
if the newspapers were " without any covers " we should
like to know how they happened to get to Shetland ?]

THE SUGAR DUTIES.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S SPEECH IN

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THURSDAY NIGHT
(From our London Correspondent.),

In the commencement of his oration, his lordship alluded
very feelingly to the mistaken views with respect to.the cha-
racters! of himself and his colleagues, which had led the
public to suppose that the unsettling of the colonial and
agricultural interests of the country had been resorted to,
" on the spur of the moment," during the bitterness of their
defeat upon Lord Morpeth's bill, and to the difficulties un-
der which he laboured in having no " clubs," no " great
merchants combined and associated with their subscriptions,"
nobody, in fact, but the great mass of the people, to assist
them in unsettling those interests.
After a somewhat lengthy detail of the causes, or rather
the alleged causes of the present financial position of the
country, and the consequent necessitous condition of the go-
vernment, his lordship approached at length the real question
before the house—or rather that which was about to be
brought before it by Lord Sandon's motion—viz., the pro-
priety of admitting slave-grown sugar to compete with the
produce of free labour in our own colonies ; and attempted
to persuade the house that such a competition would have
an amazingly beneficial effect upon those colonies—that it
would introduce " improved methods of culture" into our
plantations, and " stimulate to exertion and energy" their
indolent proprietors. Having completed a short treatise
upon free trade and its advantages, his lordship next dilated
upon the gratifying success of the emancipation measure, and
contended that, having converted our various West India
colonies into so many black paradises, in which ebony ladies
and gentlemen sate " each under their own fig tree ;" having
done " every thing which humanity could suggest, and ge-
nerous legislation adopt, for the welfare of the people of the
West Indian Islands," the house ought here to stop, and to
withdraw any further exclusive protection from the produce
of those islands.

Let us pause for a moment, and ask if it really can be the
fact that the people of England have paid twenty millions
sterling merely to liberate from slavery the existing popula-
tion of our West Indian colonies, as the little mind of Lord
John appears to suppose. I have always thought that in the
success of the emancipation measure—nay, that in the pros-
perity of our colonies under the operation of that measure—
was involved the future happiness and the liberty of the
whole African race ! I know that there are thousands—
millions I may say—in Great Britain, who have looked to
the result of that noble experiment as one which was to de-
monstrate to the world that the products of the tropics could
be raised free from the touch of blood—that, by fostering in
its infancy that experiment, the abominable traffic in human
flesh might ultimately be rendered unprofitable and be put
an end to. But such it appears are not the views of her ma-
jesty's present ministers. No such enlarged notions enter
into their philosophy; and although no later than upon the
first of April last. I remember hearing the guns from St.
James's-park announcing the sailing of an expedition for the
purpose of civilizing and Christianizing unhappy Africa—at
an expense of £70,000.; yet upon the 7th of May, we are
gravely assured that the people of that land are no charge of
ours—that the Brazilian, the Spanish and the Portuguese
slavers are to be stimulated to plunge deeper in blood, to
wanton more recklessly in murder, in order that a whig
ministry may patch up a Budget, and an English " liberal"
save a halfpenny a pound in the price of his sugar. Mem-
bers of anti-slavery societies—hide your heads, if this small
ministry be one of your oracles !

I will not follow Lord John through the remainder of his
shuffling and artful harangue, but merely refer to two topics
introduced into it. Lord John claims for the whig party
the exclusive credit of every past effort for the abolition of
slavery. I will not here attempt to controvert his lordship's
position, which was assumed in order to prove that the mo-
tion of Lord Sandon was a factious party motion (I) ; I will
not deny to the ministry of Earl Grey the credit of having
originated and having passed a measure of emancipation, of
which a compensation of 20 millions was a distinguishing
feature, or to that of Lord Melbourne of having attempted
to make the grant of that 20 millions an act of wanton ex-
travagance, by defeating the great object to effect which it
was willingly paid by the British people. But I will just
suggest to his lordship whether his present course is not a
little calculated to strengthen the opinion, which some par-
ties have not scrupled to express, that the exuberant philan-
thropy of whig statesmen has been heightened, if not entirely
created, by a feeling of antipathy towards the West Indian
body. Such a suspicion is, at least, very natural ; and it
would be only politic in his lordship, before indulging again
in highflown panegyrics upon the exclusive humanity of his
party towards the negro race, to examine his own heart,
and ascertain whether that feeling has not all along been
debased with a dirty admixture of reptile spite against those
" clubs and colonial interests," which have ever been so
prompt in exposing the frauds, the trickeries, and the im-
becility of whig statesmen, and at the same time, through
good and ill treatment, so loyal to the throne and to the
constitution of Great Britain.

But let me come to the conclusion of his lordship's dis-
play, and here I must be allowed to quote his lordship's pre-
cise words. " I believe," said his lordship, " that not only
with regard to the Brazils and the United States, but with
regard to the continent of Europe, the example we are now
about to give will be of the utmost importance." And what
is that example? what is about to become the position of
this great country in the eyes of the world ? Why this : that
we, a nation of philanthropists, who have claimed and exer-
cised the right of interfering with every nation to put down
slavery ; whose cruisers, armed and manned for that purpose,
sweep every sea ; who have expended for the promotion of
that object millions of treasure—sacrificed thousands of the
lives of our fellow-subjects amongst the swamps and plains
of Fernando Po and Sierra Leone ; we, who but yesterday,
with a flourish and a swagger, paid down twenty millions
sterling to be enabled to stand up and declare to the world
that our dominions contained not one enslaved human being,
—have " flinched," to use the appropriate words of Lord
Sandon, " under the very first pressure of inconvenience,"
from our boasted professions, and amidst the contempt and
laughter of the world are " returning like dogs to their
vomit"—are returnine to nestle beneath the black shadow of
slavery—to mingle our daily food with blood—for the mise-
rable consolation of saving the fraction of a penny—a frac-
tion of that dirty god of the idolatry of whig statesmanship !
Yes, Lord John, we are about to furnish an example of im-
portance to the world ; but I do trust that it will be an
example more worthy of us than that to which your small
mind points. I trust that we are about to furnish an exam-
ple of a people who not only glory in their own freedom, but
who, so far as human means and example can effect such an
object, are resolved that the same freedom shall be extended
over every nation of the globe, until the day shall come when
the sun shall not shine upon one human being who is
branded with the mark of slavery.

By interlarding his speech throughout with clap-trap and
forced positions—such as that which assumes that because
we cannot exclude all slave products we ought not to seek to
exclude any—by merging the immediate and special question
before him in the general one of free trade, Lord John con-
trived to elicit something like enthusiasm, of a very cold na-
ture, however, in the minds of his party, in the midst of
which he sate down with about the same expression of dignified
self-complacency which one might expect from the very
smallest of the Roman geese after having saved the capitol.

AN APOSTOLIC LEGEND OF THE 19th CENTURY

Upon a certain day, in the season of " merry Christmas,"
in a certain locality within our good old town, four reverend
bachelors sate down to refresh themselves, after the labours
of the confessional, with supper. Of what " mortifying"
fare that meal consisted we do not think it worth while to
specify. It is sufficient forour purpose to relate that, what-
ever might be the edibles, they were sufficient to form a sub-
stratum for an after-course of hot whiskey punch—a liquid,
under the generous influence of which the most strict ascetic
is speedily warmed into the exhibition of human feeling, and
the most rigid saint lays aside for awhile his celestial attri-
butes, and becomes a mere mortal—a laughing, rosy being,
full of the milk of human kindness, mixed up with the usual
portion of human frailty, from which bachelor priests, not-
withstanding their direct succession from the apostles, are
not exempt.

We have no wish to chronicle the sayings—devout, no
doubt—during the progress of the reverend quatrain of their
jollification. Priests are but mortals after all; and bachelor
priests especially have in all ages, from the time of Friar
Tuck to the present day, been disposed, like the ancient
philosopher,
" Not to let the glass go round the board like a cripple,
But gaily to chat, whilst discussing their tipple."
Whether the superior merits of Mary, the cook, or of Betty,
the housemaid, had, amongst other subjects, been brought
upon the carpet, during the " sederunt," we know not ; but
certain it is that before the worthy fathers retired to their
rest, their kindliness and supereminent charity was evinced
by dispatching two brimming tumblers of undeniably rare
punch, compounded by apostolic hands, into the kitchen, to
comfort and nourish the stomachs of these worthy damsels
and their gossips, after which meritorious action our " ba-
chelors" retired to repose.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen below the mirth " waxed fast
and furious;" and, inspired by the right apostolic liquid, the
maids were speedily " O'er all the ills of life victorious,"
and, as is usual in such cases, a little noisy—so much so, in
fact, as to disturb the slumbers of one of the fattest of the
fathers, who, on listening attentively, was enabled to overhear
the delightful strains of " Jump Jim Crow," delightfully
warbled with a " jumping accompaniment," amidst peals of
female laughter, by the mellifluous voice of Mary, the cook.
For a while his fat reverence lay and listened ; but at length
an inclination seized him to look too.

" It was the witching time of night when spirits walk ;"
and Father thought that he too might walk—down stairs
to witness the scene of jollity which was enacting in the
kitchen. But what a scene it was which presented itself to
shock the eyes of his bachelor reverence! Into the black
" unmentionables" of one of his reverend brethren, (by what
means procured we know not,) the rosy cheeked cook, had
contrived to insinuate her lower extremities, and, thus attired,
was busy performing a saraband for her delighted compa-

titans ; and, as she " wheeled about, and turned about, and
jumped," as nothing human in those priestly garments ever
jumped before, his reverence contrived to creep up stairs
again and to wake, his three reverend companions, for the
holy object, no doubt, of assisting him to " exorcise" the
said unmentionables, and lay the demon which had crept into
them in the Red Sea.

Almost instanter the whole four were up and dressed ;
and dire was the dismay when they broke in together upon
the revel in the kitchen. In vain the sacrilegious cook strove
to escape,—into the scullery, into the passage, into the
washhouse,—in vain she endeavoured to " shuffle off the
coil" of broad-cloth which encased her lower extremities.
The fathers were too many for her. She was dragged back
to the scene of her merry exploits ; and compelled, whilst
blushing " celestial rosy red—cook's proper hue," to per-
form by way of penance the Jim Crow movement, in the pre-
sence and for the edification of the apostolicals themselves.
The scene we will not attempt to describe. We can neither
do justice to the agonizing laughter of his fat reverence who
first witnessed the performance, nor of his reverend breth-
ren; and we shall not at present disclose whether at St.
Anthony's or at Copperas-hill the unfortunate unmentiona-
bles, which were subsequently exorcised in due form, are now
religiously preserved for the inspection of the faithful. It is
sufficient for us to state the simple facts, which we know;
and we willingly leave to the future chronicler of this legend
to supply the details, the names of the actors, &c., after the
true, orthodox fashion. Perhaps Father Matthew may be
induced to try his hand upon it—or Dr. Butler can lug it
into his next lecture at St. Anthony's, if his reverence Father
is not of opinion that with respect to the little escapade
of his cook and his unmentionables the least said may be the
soonest mended.