The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-03-23 00:00:00

the cunning and the duped—into instru-
out her own long and deeply

Fellow Protestants—can you perceive any mode of escape

from the ruin—the cer

a and inevitable ruin—towards

which an unprincipled faction is hurrying the destinies of thi

great nation Can any merely ordinary exertion on the part
of British constituencies arrest permanently the flood of de-

mocracy which is about to be let in upon us, through so many
rents and seams in the once boasted, constitution of our
country ? No, no !

• .—you cannot. The vital principle of that
constitution—the principle of Protestant ascendancy—is
gone. We
el.:institution possess now only the mangled remains of that
; and, although we may now denounce the bin d
Lord Morpeth—although we may point hereafter to those
mangled remains, and exclaim with the Roman, Mark
Antony—. See what a rent the envious Casca made

We must conclude with him that it was the sword of Brutus
which struck to the heart ; it was at his fatal stab that the
spirit of the mighty Cesar fled. Yes, the fatal measure of
1829 it was which laid in ruins the fabric of the British con-
stitution ; and in a further and a final letter I will endeavour
to show that its repeal alone can ultimately repair the, in-

jury, and that THE PASSING OF LORD MOM

MUST BE THE SIGNAL FOR EVERY PROTESTANT CONSTI

TUENCY TII,ROPGBOUT TUE EMPIRE TO AGITATE FOR TuAr

REPEAL

A PROTESTANT ENGLISHMAN
Liverpool, 20th March, 1841.

OUR PORTRAIT GALL

ERY.—No. 1

SIR JOSHUA WALMSLEY, KATT.
We have long had an ambition to hand down to posterity
a few of the illustrious worthies of which our good old town
Can boast; and if we must confess the reason why we have
decided to make our first essay upon the Oxford knight,
Whose name we have affixed in good bold type at the head of
this article, it is because, in spite of our Tory predilections,
we cannot but consider that loyalty demands of us to honour

him firstwl;;;;;(iiueen has " delighted to honour."
We did purpose to present to our readers, in addition to
our own laudation, the " facial developments" of the subjects
of our sketches ; but what pencil less talented than those of
Cruikshank or of Phiz could have done justice to the classical
features of such individuals as those whom we destine to im-
mortality in our columns? Could an ordinary dauber—a
man whose whole soul was not absorbed in his art—paint
the vivida vis animi displayed in the face of an Earle, a
Bolton, or a Rathbone ? He could not; and, despairing of
our ability to find an artist, sufficiently talented, we have
abandoned the attempt, and determined to rely upon the un-
aided strength of our descriptive powers.
Sir Joshua Walmsley—knight ii pra.senti, and M.P. in

embryo—is not a large specimen of humanity ; and we may
remark, that few'men of the high order of intellect to which
Sir Joshua unquestionably belongs, have ever ranged beyond
the ordinary standard of drummer boys in a marching regi-
Napoleon himself, although, " like a Colossus, he did
bestride this narrow world," was but a morsel of a man.
Byron, Moore, and Leigh Hunt, amongst our poets, never
stood in their stocking feet much above five feet nothing ;
and, " last and least"—the quotation doesn't serve exactly—
Lord John Russell himself—the patriot, the statesman, and
the philosopher—has been very justly compared to what
lawyers term " the smallest coin in the realm" -

P.
—a farthing—

a mite—the " widow's mite !" Let no man, therefore,
sneeze at Sir Joshua on the score of hp deficiency in longi-

tudinal proportions

There is nothing very extraordinary to a common observer
in the features of our knight, which are somewhat juvenile,
and altogether void of that spiritualised expression which
commonly may be traced in the features of genius. When
pursuing his every day avocations, his toute ensemble is that
of a plain and plodding man of business. But it is when
seated upon the judicial bench, or upon the platform, that
you see in all his glory the man who at no distant day is
destined " the applause of listening senates to command."
It is when unravelling some knotty case at the Sessions
House—when having listened attentively to the swearing of
some enlightened Patlander, and the counter-swearing of his
brother of the hod, Dennis or Murphy—he " assumes the
god—affects to nod, and seems to shake the spheres ;" at
that moment of awful pondering it is that an acute observer
of the workings of the human mind may trace the convictions
Which are pictured upon those anxious features, and read as
plain as noon-day the solemn judgment which is being formed
within—that " there is a good deal to be said on both sides"
—a judgment, we may remark, which " nobody can deny."
Indisputably, it is in the performance of his public duties,
as a magistrate or as a politicio, that Sir Joshua is most to
be admired. Often when viewing his dignified demeanour,
in presiding over some of our public meetings, we have been
transported back in imagination to our school-days, and
fancied ourselves an admiring listener to the stern accents of
rebuke with which the " king of men" was wont to rule the
stormy councils of his host. The " godlike Agamemnon"
has shone forth to our rapt gaze in the person of the worthy
knight ; although we have looked in vain for Diorned or Ajax,
:Nestor or Ulysses, in the wiseacres who bowed before his
mighty nod.

To those of our readers who have listened to him at such
Uatherings, we need not expatiate upon the consummate
Powers of eloquence with which Sir Joshua is wont to throw
a light and a grace upon every subject which he touches.
No man can be so affecting upon the subject of the corn-
taws ; no man can so forcibly declaim in support of the rights
of the poor. I-1 is eloquence is not Ciceronian or Dernostbenic,