The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-02-26 00:00:00

SKETCHES IN PARLIAMENT.—No. I.

the Liverpooldd
DEBATE ON(For
LORD MORPETH'SStandar
IRISH REGIS

TRATION BILL.—MONDAY, FEB. 22.
The " obstruction" of Lord Stanley's bill, for reforming

the present corrupt system of registering voters

in Ireland

commenced this evening in the house of Commons, and the
gallery and the space below the bar, was filled at an early
hour. An unusual degree of excitement was raised by the
announcement, which had been pretty generally circulated
by the ministerial party, that upon the issue of this evening's
debate would depend the fate of Lord Melbourne's govern-
ment. With their usual adroitness, the ministry had suc-
ceeded in gaining, for their own measure, precedence over
that of the member for North Lancashire ; and should they
fail in procuring a majority for its second reading, it was
deemed scarcely probable that they would attempt any fur-
ther serious impediment to his lordship's bill, the second
reading of which is fixed for Wednesday.

The Speaker had taken the chair, and some preliminary
business had been disposed of before I succeeded in getting
into the house. Amongst others, the petition from Liver-
pool, signed by 27,000 of the inhabitants, had been already
presented by Lord Stanley. From the usual sources of in-

formation, I find, however, that the petition in question, so
far as regards the number of the signatures attached to it
is nothing compared with what the O'Connellite ministry can
produce upon any Irish question. One petition had been
previously presented, in favour of the ministerial bill, from
Dublin, signed by 200,000 persons ! and two from Cork
signed by 78,000 each ! ! The " hereditary bondsmen " will,
some of these days no doubt, be mustering their full com-
plement of seven millions of signatures to a petition for
repeal, which would perhaps be a document quite as genuine
as those from either of the places in question.
The coup-d'ceuil, presented by the house, when, the order
of the day having been moved for the second reading of Lord
Morpeth's bill, the noble member for North Lancashire,
arose to move that it be read that day six months, was ex-
tremely imposing. The ministerial and the cross benches
were moderately filled ; but the attendance of members on
the opposition side of the house wag overwhelming. There
is little in the interior of the Houie of Commons itself to
excite interest. The associations attached to those walls,
which have re-echoed the stirring eloquence of the leading
spirits of the last generation—of Pitt and Fox, of Burke and
Chatham—no longer exist. Yet it is impossible to gaze upon
such an assemblage as that which was last night met together
within the walls of the present House of Commons, without
feeling proud of our native land, and of her noble institu-

At one moment the eye would rest upon the lofty
features of a descendant of the old nobility of the land—of
one whose sires had fought at Cressy or at Agincourt—whose
name had descended in the page of history, from the wars
of the rival houses of York and Lancaster, to rise again in

undying lustre in the present age; at 'another upon the more
homely and less distinguished face of one whom his talents,
his industry, his enterprise, or his gallantry had contributed
to place in the senate of his native country. In either case
the object of contemplation is almost equally gratifying. In the
one we are made to feel that the " aspiring blood
Eugland's ancient chivalry will not " sin

in the ground

and in the other by the working of our glorous constitution,
the prize of a noble ambition is still attainable bv the hum-

blest of our fellow subjects.
I will not attempt to follow in detail the arguments, or to
characterise in its general features; the splendid effect of par-
liamentary eloquence, with which Lord Stanley occupied the
attention of the house for a period of nearl;• three hours.
Although upon a question necessarily filled with statistical
details, and to be handled only with sober and somewhat dry
reasoning, the interest which it excited in the able hands of
the noble lord never flagged for a moment. One after ano-
ther, the misrepresentations which ministerial ingenuity and
mendacity have endeavoured for the last six months to attach
to the measure, brought forward by his lordship last session,
were stripped from it by his trenchant and keen eloquence,
and their authors held up by his relentless gripe to the
mockery of the house and of mankind ; whilst, at the same
time, every sophism, which the utmost stretch of ministerial
cunning has endeavoured to hang around their own com-
peting measure, was torn from it by the force of irresistible
argument, or chased away by playful, yet cutting satire. Not
a shred of concealment was allowed to cover the features or
the limbs of the changeling, which the, impure hand of cor-
ruption is endeavouring to substitute for the present de-
nounced and demoralising system. The " spirits blue,
white, and Grey," by whose art it was to be clothed in gaudy
and enticing colours, shrunk from beneath the waving of the
enchanter's wand, and left their charge—" monstrum, hor-
ribile, ingens informe"—to emerge to the contemplation of
the world in his naked and impure shape ; whilst the darker
spirit which animates the great prompter of the ministerial
puppets, for a moment, seemed to desert his impenetrable
front, as at the magic touch of omnipotent truth, another
kindred spirit of old " fled howling; and with him fled the
shades of night."

A great portion of your readers have already enjoyed oppor-
tunities of listening to Lord Stanley, and of estimating his
tart as as orator, beyond the walls of parliament ; but it is
indispensably necessary to listen to him within, to be enabled
to form a just idea of his transeendant powers. As a debater
his lordship is admitted to be without an equal in the present
day; and it is almost impossible to imagine that on any pre-
vious occasion he can have excelled his display of last night.
However difficult it may be to particularize any portion of an
address—which was forcible and effective throughout—as
being more than ordinarily striking, yet there were undoubt-
edly such portions, which in the delivery gained additional
force from the manner of the speaker and the evidence which
it afforded of their being prompted by the circumstances and
the position of the moment. Amongst these I may mention
his calm and clear display of the close analogy between those
parts of the ministerial bill which affect the registration and
the clauses so vehemently opposed in his own measure of last
session. When collating these similarities and reminding the
occupants of the ministerial benches of their former recorded
opinions in opposition to them, as disfranchising and as op-
pressive to the people of Ireland, the excruciating satire con-
veyed 'by his speaking features, as he glanced his eye from
one to another of his late fierce denouncers, was calculated to
increase the crushing severity of his language, and even Lord
Morpeth himself, the jaded and servile tool of a shameless
and tyrant master, appeared to wince under the merited cas-
tigation which it inflicted.
The most effective passage, however, was that in which

the speaker exposed the analogy between the appropriation
clause of the Melbourne ministry and the £5 qualification
" tacked" to the present bill as a definition of the franchise,
which he showed to have been,adopted in order to secure the
measure from the possibility of being passed into a law, and
by this means to perpetuate the iniquitous alliance by which
ministers are at present " propped" up in their unstable
seats. It is difficult, indeed, to conceive how any of the
ministerial party could escape the conclusion, so full of hu-
miliating recollections, to which his lordship reluctantly
dragged them ; origet rid of the degrading consciousness that
by giving their support to so palpable and transparent a trick
as the measure before them, they were in reality pandering to
dishonest and mendacious legislation, and doing their puny
utmost to uphold one of the most fertile systems of fraud and
collusion which ever was permitted to blacken the face of a
civilized and Christian country. . .

Most deeply do I regret my inability to convey within the
limits of this imperfect sketch even a tolerable idea of its
most prominent subject. In part, however, that object can
be effected by a careful perusal and study of the entire ad-
dress of the noble lord ; and to such a perusal I would
earnestly invite those of your readers who desire information
of the entire details and principles of a question, the decision
of which is, in all ,probability, destined to be productive of
such important results to the social welfare, and, perhaps,
to the peace, of the empire.
The noble lord was succeeded in the debate—it would be
a mockery to say that he was replied to—by one of the most
feeble and shallow of his party, Mr. C. Wood, the member
for Halifax, and brother-in-law of Lord Howick. This gen-
tleman, or rather these two gentlemen, it will be remem-
bered, enacted together during the last session the character
of a parliavaentary see-saw ; and of Mr. Wood himself I may
candidly express my regret that his person has so far out-
grown his mind as to render indecorous the innocent recrea-
tion afforded by a plank or a hobby horse, for which he is so
eminently qualified. That his rambling and faltering vindi-
cation of his own consistency was listened to by any portion
of the house can be attributed solely to a curiosity entertained
as to the why and how far he is disposed to jump round during
the present session; and this feeling was fully gratified. The
mental optics of Mr. Wood have, by some strange process,
arrived at the discovery that the bill of Lord Morpeth, so far
as the registration clauses are concerned, is identical with
that of Lord Stanley which he himself supported last session,
and the noble Secretary for Ireland as vehemently opposed—
a conclusion highly flattering no doubt to the consistency (!)
of the latter; and, with respect to the tack of a five pound
qualification, Mr. 'Wood is prepared to consider the propriety
of altering the amount in committee. Does the poor young
man imagine that the ministry, or their master, will ever
allow him the oppOrtunity of making the attempt ? The
glimmer of even his feeble intellect, however, has not been

---- -
without its use. A. straw thrown up will serve to shew the
direction of the wind ; and the present oscillation of the
member for Halifax is a sufficient indication that the passing
of Lord Morpeth's bill in its present shape, even through
the House of Commons, is a hopeless impossibility.
I must pass over the intervening speakers, (although to one
of them, Mr. Litton, it is an injustice to do so,) and proceed
to the concluding speech of the night, that of Lord Morpeth.
Of this remarkably inefficient effusion the reports of the
daily Papers have conveyed a fair and just idea ; and I will
not fatigue Your readers by entering into a detail of its various
inconclusive attempts at reasoning. I doubt if any of your
readers had ever the gratification of seeing the celebrated
comedian, Mr. Liston, perform in a tragedy. If they could
have done so they might arrive at a tolerably accurate notion
how far the substance of a speech from Lord Morpeth could
be adorned by the graces of utterance, or enhanced in interest
by the dignity of demeanour possessed by the noble speaker.
Differing in these essentials from that of Lord Stanley, the
speech of the Secretary for Ireland is infinitely better in the
perusal than it was in the bearing; and yet under these un-
equal circumstances I should be quite content to leave the

question at issue to be decided by the result of the same at-
tentive perusal which I have requested for that of the noble
lord.

The speech of Lord Stanley leaves not a feature of the
whole question unreviewed, is characterised by calm reason-
ing and logical deduction ; that of Lord Morpeth searches
nothing, decides nothing ; is neither calm nor dignified ;
abounds in the frippery of ornament, in personal invective,
in dolorous attempts to be merry and sa'tirical, and is altoge-
ther unsustained and artificial. In one part, and one alone
—the concluding part of his address—is contained anything
worthy of serious notice ; 'and even that portion was listened
to by a majority of the house with evident repugnance.
The passage to which I refer is the implied threat held out
over the heads of the supporters of Lord Stanley's ell, of an
outbreak in Ireland as the result of its being passed. How
well and how briefly might an English conservative reply :
" You fostered by your misrepresentations of the principle
and operation of that bill the repugnance which you allege to
exist in Ireland against it. You fostered the agitation of
repeal as its alternative, from which you now affect to anti-
cipate danger to the constitution. You now sit upon those
benches the acknowledged slaves of that very traitor who is,
you presume to hint, prepared to precipitate a bloody rebel-
lion, and you shall not be suffered to shelter yourselves be-
hind your own wrong. If a necessity exists for the conces-
sion of such a measure as the present—if it can be shewn to
be required by justice or to be boneficial to the interests of
the United Kingdom—let it be conceded. But a British le-
gislature, mindful of the past, must not again grant to the
threats of a ruffian, his priest-led millions, or his crawling
and abject ministerial slaves, what they are not satisfied to
yield to reason and to the demands of the constitution.

" Once before, let it be remembered, such an unhappy
concession has been made, and mark its results. You, Lord
Morpeth, and your unprincipled colleagues, are now, by this
very bill, attempting to-trample upon the last and the most
important of those securities which were guaranteed to the
people of Great Britain as its accompaniment, by endeavour-
ing to -hstitute for the disfranchised forty-shilling free-
holders of Ireland A -FIVE-POUND PAUPER CONSTITUENCY
Beware, my lord, lest England be driven to put forward HER
claim for JUSTICE!"

I am warned by my space to conclude, although it was my
intention to have trespassed upon your readers with a further
portion of the debate. I will, however, be enabled, 1 trust,
to give you the remainder of my observations for your Tues-
day's publication.

THE PROTECTOR SOCIETY,

" Neither a borrower nor a lender he.".

'-HAMLET.

We had proposed adding a few more observations to those
we made last week on the legal doctrines propounded by this
society, and by Mr. Bretherton, in his pamphlet ; but since
then Lord John Russell's new registration bill for England
has been read a second time, and as it proposes to do away
with the condition of paying the Queen's taxes altogether,
and alters the time for the payment of rates, it is a fair pre-
sumption that the reformers have felt that the existing law is

too much for them, and cannot be overleaped by any such
contrivances as the Protector Society has attempted to make
use of in Liverpool. Their champion, Mr. Bretherton, it is
true, has been fighting their battle through forty-eight mortal
pages ; but we have already shown that he fights shy of the
question in front throughout. We have now done with his
law, which being no better than a mere gossamer thread of
sophistry from first to last, could not really endure a second
attack, even the weakest, from the fortress of common sense.
It may be well to notice, however, those general powers of
reasoning, as well as argument, with which he has essayed to
defend the cause.

Desirous to put the Protectorites on the vantage ground of
virtue and patriotism, he argues (p. 30) that it is an honour-
able act to " stimulate men to profit by the privileges which
the constitution offers to their attainment." This being
granted, we arc to learn how the Protectorites apply the
stimulus, or what is the sort of instrumentality they use for
the purpose of stimulating ? The answer is, lending men
money to pay their rates; that is the "stimulus," according
to Mr. Bretherton. Why, we would call this not stimulating
at all, but DOING that act for another which he ought to do
himself. He is not stimulated to work ; his work is done
for him. And this lending and borrowing system is what
Mr. Bretherton champions, recommends, and eulogises as
the most constitutional and patriotic proceeding possible.
He disapproves of giving the poor man the money to pay his
rates out and out; that he conceives would be " bribing and
corrupting him ;" nor would he have the poor man pawning
or disposing of his goods in order to pay them ; that he con-
ceives would be allowing him to be too hard run. No, neither
of these methods will do ; the Protector system of lending is
the only thing. His words are these :

" I conceive, and, I think, rightly, if there is any one
mode of rendering assistance to the worthy, which can be
held justifiable, it is by loan, when, by the undertaking to
repay the amount advanced, the party incurs a responsibility,
proportionate to the benefit received, and is not bribed, to
seek a franchise he will make no sacrifice to possess, either
directly, by a gift of the money to him, or indirectly, by his
receiving the amount, and handing over some worthless
chattel."

There is a little of that obscurity which belongs to the
sublime in the latter part of this sentence ; but we content
ourselves with being able to perceive that the gentleman
means to say, in plain language, that there is " nothing like"
—not leather, but " lending." This is certainly something
new. Some of our old moralists have laid it down, that for
every shilling a man borrows he forfeits so much of his inde-
pendence, and becomes pro tanto the slave of the lender ;
but the advocate of modern protectorism maintains that this
is the very way to make him independent, and to raise up in
the community an independent body of electors It would
be unpardonable of us to waste time or space in refuting non-
sense like this ; besides, as we have already observed, the
question is virtually given up by the introduction of a new
registration bill, in which the payments at present found so
inconvenient to " Reformers" are excused. The following
notice of its details, from the able speech delivered by Sir E.
Sugden on the occasion, may be interesting to our readers:—
" The practice of registration would in future not be con-
fined to one particular part of the year, as now, but would ex-
tend, at the will of the registering barristers, over the whole
year, interfering with quarter sessions, assizes, Parliament
itself, and the other public business of the country. Nor
was the claim to registration to rest, as heretofore, on the
period of the payment of rates and taxes, but on the particu-
lar period of time at which the judge should think proper to
give notice of his intention to register the voters of any par-
ticular district. The right of voting was, moreover, to be
placed on an entirely different footing to that on which it was
placed by the Reform Act, under the noble lord's newfan-
gled bill. The bill before the house contained a clause by
which it was attempted to alter the franchise in England. It
would have been well if the noble lord had done his work in
a more manly, open manner; he, on the contrary, had at-
tempted to effect a great and radical change in the most
skulking and secret manner, by leaving out certain words in
the former franchise bill, and putting in others having a di-
rectly contrary effect, though so insignificant as not to catch
the eye. The 26th clause of the bill contained a provision,
altering altogether the Reform Bill, the noble lord's " final
measure"—(hear)—by rendering it no longer necessary to
have paid the Queen's taxes in order to be entitled to be put
upon the registry."