The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-09-14 00:00:00

MARQUISES.

Headfort.
Clanricarde

EARLS.
Albermarle.
SCARBOROUGH
Camperdown.
Lovelace.
,CARLISLE.
Ilchester.
Ducie.
CRAVEN.

BARONS.
Vaux.
Stafford.
Methuen.
Sudeley.
Mostyn.
SAYE AND SELE
Brougham.
Hatherton.
Plunket.
, VERNON.
Wrottesley.
SEAFORD.
LILFORD.
Hereford.

Here, then, are 54 noblemen voting on an important ques-
tion, and only nine of them are not dependent for favours or
place; only six even of that number being completely free!
How earnestly desirous these Whigs have proved themselves
not to swamp or degrade the Peerage ! How chary of using
the influence of the Crown!" They have only made 60
Peers in eight years; they have only pitchforked that mode-
rate number to swell their miserable minority. We question
much if without those 60 men in buckram,
their largest mino-
rity, on the most important divisions in the upper house
would be 40; and we own, when we consider the vast machi-
nery and means of corruption now in use, and in unscrupulous
hands, we think the House of Lords has high title to credit;
seeing that despite all temptation to tergiversation and to
submission to the Whigs, the independent unpaid conserva-
tive majority, so far from dwindling away, is increasing year
by year. Whatever may be done in the House of Commons,
by baronetcies, ribands, commissions, peerages, exorbitant
estimates, domestic or colonial jobs, and augmented patron-
age, we cannot but rejoice, then, that we have yet a bulwark,
and a remnant of an independent Parliament; and therefore,
though a minister like Lord Melbourne may be enabled to
realize Lord John Russell's portrait, and compel the so-
vereign to retain him by holding in terrorem the threat of a
factious majority in the House of Commons, ready one year
to sanction, and the next to abandon, an appropriation clause,
there is at present no prospect of the same threat being em-
ployed with reference to any man's power in the House of
Lords. But that this prospect continues to us, is no fault of
Lord Melbourne's, and is no oversight of the whit,- party.
Both have done their best to extend corruption into the Upper
House, but hitherto they have signally failed. It only re-
mains for the people of the country to counteract the insidi-
ous and more successful attacks on the independence of the
House of Commons, by watching narrowly every job; by
rejecting every perpetrator at the poll ; and by adding con-
tempt to rejection in the case of every member who has sold
his vote for a baronetcy, or his silence fora brother's promo-
tion. Such men there may be, even in the reformed Parlia-
ment; such men there must be, for we can never believe that
independent or honest men would go down night after night to
the House of Commons to cheer a demagogue like O'Connell,
or to suppport a ministry that temps the scorn of Europe. We
can believe this of none but the venal, and, therefore, when we
discover whig,-radical corruption, we easily account for its ne-
cessity. while we heartily despise the ministers who will stoop to
hold Office on such mean and trembling grounds, th'at nothing
but venality can uphold, and none but the selfish defend them,
Still more heartily do we despise these puppets of statesmen
when we find them, with an hypocrisy only equal to their
avarice, pretend to a superiority of public virtue, and keep
more honourable men than themselves out of office, under
the fraudulent pretext that in so doing they are saving the
country
from unprincipled and corrupt rulers. Like Judas,
they keep the bag, and they keep it. for themselves. And
these, forsooth, are the tutu who prated about "the influence
of the crown," who deplored the increase of the peerage, and
who bragged that they would carry on the government on
Pure principles, without patronage! These, too, are the
liberals, the men of purity and economy, the reformers of
abuses, the opponents of corruption, peculation! and intrigue !

• In bewailing the influence of the Crown, Lord John Russell
b Russell
mourns the sad fate of a Lord of the Bedchamber, dismissed the
Ministry, in 1822., for his vote on the malt tax. What will he sa
having been a member of the Cabinets that dismissed Lord
Howe
Howe from his office of Chamberlain to the Queen, and Lord
Charles Fitzroy from his place of Treasurer of the Household, for
no greater offence ? It i doe be regretted that his Lordship ever be-
came an author ;he has damage to no one but his publisher
and himself.
+ One or two Peers are mentioned twice, first as placemen, and
afterwards as having received promotions in the Peerage, or eleva-
tion to it. But this is merely done for convenience sake, and only
shows that there are some held by a double bod—both of interest
and gratitude.