The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-10-12 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 12, 1841

The brilliant buccaneering exploit of Mr. Charles
Elliott has fallen like a wet blanket upon the dawning
hopes of the Whig faction. But a brief week ago the
plucked and well nigh plumeless members of that
faction might occasionally be met with in dark and
nameless localities, hurrying along with memorials in
each hand, and quills behind each ear, looking unut-
terable things, and croaking, ever and anon, like Barna-
by's raven, their monotonous ." never say die ;" they
were to be seen at pothouse gatherings and amphi-
theatre displays, "frighting the isle from its propriety,"
with dismal and horrific tales of starving weavers,
empty looms, grassgrown streets, factories stopped,
and banks and bank-shares at most lamentable dis-
counts. But, oh ! Charley Elliott ! most unfortunate
of plenipotentiaries ! thy ill-timed farce has prepared
the way for the damnation of as pretty and touching a
melodrama as ever was got up by mortal players ; and
" not all the blood of the Elliott's" could suffice to pay
for the now useless scenery, the goblins, the " spectres
and chimeras dire," and the stage thunder and blue
fire which must be utterly and lamentably wasted
The cause of " Whiggery and Free Trade," can no
longer be agitated together; for the absolute lack of
grave faces, to look without laughing upon so prepos-
terously ridiculous an association of things incongru-
ous; and the Cobdens and the Gibbons must, for the
future, vend their "cheap bread" under another banner;
and seek other partners in their firm,—who are not so
" discreditably known" to the people whom they seek
to dupe.

Seriously, we believe that there is not one man,
woman, or child throughout her Majesty's dwinionS

Ilogitrittfa

and utterly ,qinazed at the

rigled folly, indecision, and cowardice which has so

fay marked its progress. There is no rightminded
Englishman who does not at this moment blush for
the infamy which it has brought down upon the name

and character of British diplomacy. It was a smug-
gler's quarrel in the outset; and has been conducted in

Ike spirit of a buccaneer

But let us not, however,

allow the reputation of British arms to be tainted
by that of its diplomacy. Even in the waters of China
the valour and discipline of our soldiers and sailors
have shone out proudly pre-eminent. These qualities,
not even the wretched imbecility of the Whig " pleni-
potentiary"—who stopped them when in their mid
career of glory anti triumph, and snatched from before'
their eyes the laurel which they had already won,
whilst he drove his own hiatiring bargain, and sold
their blood for a paltry number of dollars=can either
obscure or diminish. As a nation, proud of its naval
anti military renown, we have reason to be satisfied
with the achievements of our gallant brethren in arms,
even as evinced in the paltry and sordid quarrels into
which -Whig imbecility and meddling have dragged
them. But oh ! in mercy save us—is the universal
cry of England—from
.the infamy of witnessing their
noble energies wasted and their spirits crushed in the
very hour of struggle, by the incubus of an Elliott in
the field, or the spirit of a chandler's shopkeeper in
the council by which those energies are directed!
The quarrel—such it was—with China was within
a few hours of being terminated at a blow. A handful
of British men had already within their reach the power
of coercing into reason and decency the emperor and
people of the most populous empire in the world.
Canton lay at the mercy of the British arms ; the gate
of her vast markets lay open to the industry of the suf-
fering artizans of our manufacturing districts, and to

the enterprise of our merchants; and yet ! hear it ye
clamorous dupes of Whig agitation ! Let it be sounded
throughout your mob gatherings and heard amid your
amphitheatrical &splays !—the treachery and avarice
of a Whig official deliberately sold this advantageous
position—bartered the prospect of these advantages
which British valour had achieved—for a paltry stun

of six million dollats, to be doled out amongst the opium
dealers of our Indian Empire, whose puppet and tool
he is. Our quarrel with China is at this moment just
where it was twelve months ago. • The flower of a gal-
lant armament has sunk beneath exertions which have
been frustrated as soon as they have been achieved.
We have incurred, and justly, the reproach of every
civilized people, as a nation of freebooters. And as
the price of all this disgrace and loss of life and money,
we can reflect only that five millions of dollars have
passed through the "itching palm" of the Whig re-
presentative of the sovereign in China! We have the
whole fight to fight over again,--thanks to the illus-
trious House of Minto and to the " government with-
out patronage" of Lords Melbourne, Palmerston,
Russell, and Company !

The close of the parliamentary session has enabled
those noble personages to crawl away from beneath
the public observation into their various rural obscuri-
ties. They have slunk oil, glad and thankful that their
factious outcry for inquiry into distress, produced by
their own reckless dishonesty, has, in mercy, been
visited only with contempt. But the public indigna-
tion excited by this disgraceful Chinese affair will dog
them to their hiding places. The memory of a gallant
British admiral, sinking on board his ship,—in pure
shame that he had not laid his bones beneath an ene-
my's walls before so irreparable a spot had tarnished
the honour of his country,—will, we devoutly trust,
haunt them in their very dreams ; and the boys in our
streets will never pass them without shouting in their
ears the words of Brutus—

" By heavens, I'd rather coin my blood fur drachmas,
Than wring from the hands of peasants their vile trash
By any misdirection I"

So gross, at least, as that of the Whig "Plenipoten-
tiary," who sold his nation's honour and the blood of
its soldiers and sailors for a buccaneer's ransom !

To be an " anti-corn-law man" implies such a
number of bad things, that we venture to predict all
persons who have any regard for their reputation will,
after a while, be careful to' eschcsw,such acts as wOtlld
be likely to entail the distinction upon them. It
implies that the individual keeps bad company, takes
some " reverend" of the dissenting convention for his
father confessor, goes to Saturday-night edifications at
which cobblers and porters are the chief spokesmen ;
and that here in Liverpool, for instance, he reads the
Mercury, and swallows with implicit belief all what
that most profound and veracious oracle may be pleased
to enounce. We know a man by the company he keeps;
we may know him also by the journals he reads ;
and if we can convict his associates or his favourite
paper of habitual disregard to truth, it is another very
serious inference which we draw against himself, that
he is a dealer in delusions, and loves to dwell in
them.

The party have tritely been making much ado about
certain answers given by Lord Stanley to a Mr. Brooks,
who attended at the hustings, at Lancaster, on the oc-
casion of his lordship's last election. These answers
they call " admissions ;" and, taking just so much of
them as suits their purpose, they parade them forth in
speeches and resolutions as an immense accession to
their stock ratiocinative, which, as everybody knows,
is rather slender and, unquestionably, susceptible of
improvement. The garbling practised in this matter
is of the grossest description. His lordship was asked
by his catechist, Mr. Brooks, " Is not bread dearer
here, in this country, than in any other, on the