The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-10-14 00:00:00

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Lord Holland, and yet supports his argument in its en-
tire theory, as the practical means of realizing the ob-
jects sought for—" the end of all government," says
Hume, "is designed for the protection of " lift, pro-
perty, and liberty." We have a third proposition, in the
authority and governing principle of the Roman Catho-
lic Church, inseparably allied with the supreme authority,
power, and declared infallibility resting it the person and
spiritual office of the Pope, the same being held un-
changed and unchangeable, in essence, and that all go-
vernment upon earth is decreed to the use and perpetuity
of that church, to which all princes and subjects are lia-
ble, whenever and wherever her authority may extend ;
and even although they may not be strictly within -her
pale, but, according to Bellarmin, " in rebellion against
her authority." This power also maintains the necessity
of a fixed rule, for the preservation of life and property ;
but the principle of liberty of conscience it imperatively
denies to the laity ; and liberty of opinion and of action
is entirely subject to the control of its ecclesiastic au-
thority ! The authority of which we treat, is comprised
and defined in the creed and oath of Pius IV., and in
the decrees of the eighteen general Councils of Trent,
which are declared to be " strictly obligatory on the
whole body of the Catholic Church,"vide Bull, dated
Nov. 13, 1654. This is the rule of despotism, for the
objects propounded•in the canon law; and according to
the authority of Walmsley, " the Catholic Church speaks
but once, and her decree is irrevocable. The solemn de-
terminations of general councils have remained unalter-
able, and will ever be so." The constituted rule then of
the temporal government of this power is in the Church
of Rome, and centres in her ecclesiastic dominion. It is
necessary well to understand these points, for the purpose
of illustrating how far the present acts of the Romish
hierarchy in Ireland, and their agents are compatible
with the objects declared to he needful in the great scheme
of social government long established in Britain, and
which, we presume, is one of the constitutions of slow
growth described by Lord Holland, established for the
ends contemplated by Hume; and this brings us to our
main object, the conduct of the existing administration,
in sustenance of the position assumed by Lord Holland.
The constitution of England is the growth of time,—
it has slowly and imperceptibly adapted itself to all the
circumstances of time and change, in the course of our
political history downwards, and is, in the ever memora-
ble words of the learned President of the French Coun-
cil, Montesquieu,—" a sublime phenomenon in its re-
sults." is the policy of the Melbourne cabinet calcu-
lated to preserve this phenomenon ? We say decidedly
that it is not; but we will go a point further, and assert,
that it tends to its certain destruction. We further main-
tain with Hume, that under this constitution the end of
all government is obtained—namely, security of life, pro-
perty, and liberty. Is that policy then justifiable, main-
taining as we fearlessly do, that the exigency required
by the defined views of this liberal writer, is fully pro-
vided for, which exposes the " system of experience,"
according to the phrase of Lord Holland, to a sudden or
violent termination, in favour of the democracy of the
radicals on one hand, or the absolutism of popery on the
other ? for from that system we must substract liberty
altogether

Let us now consider how far the Whig cabinet has
carried out the principle of an established time-matured
institution, as contemplated by Lord Holland's defini-
tion, and given in his own words, at the commencement
of this article. Has there been any thing like the con-
servation of measures needful for such an object, even
on the part of the noble lord himself? We deny, that
any one act of the ministry, since the government was
most unfairly usurped—wrested from Sir Robert Peel,
has been in keeping with his lordship's own recorded
sentiments, and which certainly partake entirely of our
own views, in the necessity of a calmly established
medium of social security: On the contrary, the whole
career of the Cabinet—the entire policy of its members
has been that of inverting the constituted rule laid down
by Lord Holland, when under the premiership of Earl
Grey, although the necessity for maintaining his theory
has been increased four-fold proportionately with the
un-English measures propounded by O'Connell or at his
-"demand. But Lord Holland's theory would not suit the-
interests of the Melbourne cabinet, nor its capability of
retaining office; and therefore Lord Holland himself is
content to forego his own conclusions—to stultify his
own argument; while the sapient band of statesmen
with which he now is identified, are prepared to throw
even the liberal historian of England overboard, by aid-
ing principles of extreme democracy at one time and
the views of the papacy at another, and merely to un-
settle the entire tenure by which property has been held
for centuries in this kingdom ! \Vas there ever such
gross inconsistency—such tergiversation on the part of
men claiming the suffrages of an intelligent people ?
Lord Holland, then, has warred with the democratic
principle of perpetual change, and we have briefly shown,
that the absolute views of popery are utterly irrecon-
cilable with our free constitution, long established, per-
fectly incompatible with the act of settlement, and at
variance with all history and all . experience, in the
science of free government. We may then freely ask
with Blackwood, in a former number of that ably-con-
ducted Magazine—" whither are we tending Y" In
plain terms, does not the entire policy of the present
Cabinet aim a death-blow at the permanency' of the '
British constitution, take t hat policy which ever way you
will, and conducted as it is on opposing principles—or
by a desertion of their primary object ? If we can form
any rationale at all of the system of the Whigs it is that
of perpetual inflection—it is democratical without autho-
rity—revolutionary without principle, and dignechical,
without wisdom. It is however pre-eminent in two
things—it ably supports the mask of hypocrisy, and is
no less distinguished for its presumption, than it will
figure in history for its selfishness. And what a subject
for the living generation of Englishmen to contemplate
in its sober movements—that it should allow itself to be
governed by an administration, the leading passions, and
the only qualifications of which are based upon a foun-
dation so worthless ! We repeat what we asserted in
our last number, that the conduct of this clique of reign-
ing unaccountables, in driving Sir Robert Peel from
office, will be, in the end, a national benefit. It has
roused the spirit of England to a sense of its danger;
and we may yet illustrate this a little further, for the be-
nefit of the admirers of irresponsible " cheap govern.
went."

The incompetency of this ministry, or the total want of
sincerity on the part of its members, to carry out reform
policy on anything like a safe foundation, has been fully
manifest since they grasped the reins of government.
Considering this to be an indisputable fact, demonstrable
by their own acts in the eyes of an intelligent people,
fondly attached to their, ancient laws and institutions, the
benefits of which have been made manifest to them through
a long succession of ages, is it for us to be guilty of a
derelictionlof our duty to that noble community with which
we are associated, by passing unnoticed that course which

honour and conscience, history and experience, and the
authority of Lord Holland himself, alike assure us is
pregnant with danger to the continued well-being of the
state ? Are we to stultify our own judgment, and be
guilty of a suppressio yeri, to gratify the views—to serve
the ends of individual selfishness, or aid the cause of the
revolutionist, when a nation's hopes and interests are
hanging in the balance ? Such meanness, such shrinking
from principle, forms no part of our mental composition,
nor of our political education ; and when we cease to be
honest in this respect, we sincerely hope we may cease to
write. • The ministry which took upon itself the respon-
sibilities ot office, as the issue of its factious opposition to
Sir Robert Peel, and at the hands and instigation of an
alien faction, bartered with the first principle in•'the Eng-
lish constitution, as the price of its support, has a weighty
account to settle with the English people ; and it is our
determination, despite of all the fine sophistry which may
be put forth by the Whigs and their partizans, and all the

abuse which may be heaped upon us by radicals and
papists, to aid the settlement of that account, or the ex-

posure of those items of designed or ignorant malversa-

tion which justice to the empire at large requires at our
hands. Envy we expect from the whigs—malice at the
hands of the papists—and, we think, honest opposition

from the radicals, who possess the merit of not fighting
under false colours. We are fully prepared for all this,
and therefore assert that the Melbourne whig cabinet,
in its unprecedented usurpation of office, was bound to
the production of a more efficient administration than
that it supplanted, by means which three fourths of the
people of this country consider to have been unjust in
theory and unprincipled in practice. Now the grave and
simple question on which the whole argument depends
is this, has the whig cabinet produced such an adminis-
tration ? This important question may be answered by
its recorded public acts during the last eighteen months,
comprehending two parliamentary sessions, and under
three general heads, in the negative. Its colonial policy
displays its utter inefficiency—its foreign policy betrays
an entire ignorance of diplomacy and of the capacity of
wielding the interests of this great nation, in the present
state of Europe—and its domestic policy is fraught with
eminent danger to the internal repose and to the esta-
blished institutions of the land ! On what then does it
rest its pretensions, as an equitable foundation, or general
.title to the national confidence ? We have yet to learn
this profound mystery.
And now we tell the mighty oligarchs and their time-
serving supporters, that the administration of Sir Robert
Peel will go down to posterity with unclouded honour,
as an administration tharhad not sullied its reputation
by holding out to the people of England hopes and ex
pectations which, in the complicated Machinery of our
social system, and the varied interests it embraces, could
never be realised without violence, fraud, or injustice, to
one portion or other of that vast community which reposes
under the shelter of a mixed monarchy, a tolerant reli-
gion, and a well understood combination of free institu-
tions. The administration of Sir Robert Peel was
destroyed by the fatricidal hand of an Irish papal party,
in the British House of Commons, on a question on
which it,had no right morally to legislate, and princi-
pally from the conviction that the measures of that
administration, in their practical working of reform,
would be the death-blow to the hopes of the agitator, the
ambition of radical-whiggery, and, above all, the enemies
of the Irish protestant church. Thus it was fiercely con-
demned by a dominant faction, before its measures should
become developed, which would have effectually prevented
its enemies establishing against it any substantial accu-
sation. And these are the worthies—the pure unspotted
patriots shout " justice for Ireland" in their hypocritical
zeal, until they are hoarse with their own bellowing, and
who talk of the open legislative opinion of the conserva-
tive peers, and their constitutional opposition, as an act
of injustice, who call loudly for the " fair trial" they
denied to ethers ; whilst they have not shown in any one
act of their governing sy stem, their capacity of sustaining
the integrity of that compact, which one of the ablest of
their own body in the government has asserted to be an
indispensable object. The administration of Sir Robert
Peel pledged itself, not merely to principles, but to mea-
sures of practicable reform and undeniable utility, as
rapidly as the forms of parliament admitted ; but the
leading object of its opponents was the prevention of that
development. The whole machinations of the united
faction were directed to this end. The public wish that
the system introduced by the reform bill should be fairly
tried, with a view to the illustration of its practical
efficiency, was met by Sir Robert Peel at the onset, in
his address to the electors of Tami.vorth ; and if the de-
clared objects of cheap and popular government, could
have shown in the working, in his hands they would have
had a fair chance, whereas they have been kept in abey-
ance, by the obstinacy and avarice of those who have done
little else than expose their own ignorance of those first
great principles on which all reform should be founded.

It may be asserted without hypothetical presumption
that the great conservative meeting of Northamptonshire
has irretrievably sealed the doom of the Melbourne whig
cabinet. This county—the freehold of Spencer, North-
ampton, and Fitzwilliam—has answered Wicklow with a
peal of thunder. Yes, indeed, this conservative peal
vibrates from the very centre of whiggery itself, and pro-
claims a terrible reaction against the apostacy of princi-
ple which the ministers of the crown have manifested in
their most nefltrious policy with reference to the protes-
tant church in Ireland;7-it is the death-blow of their
hopes with regard to English opinion. Let them do
what they will, the voice of England has proscribed them.
They may, it is true, cling a little longer to the Irish
tail, and even hope to increase its length by the addition
of a few joints through the all powerful bribery influence
of the justice rent; but will the English nation, in its
now imposing attitude, suffer itself to be borne down,
trampled upon, nay, its intelligence treated with posi-
tive contumely by those whom the majority of its own
freely chosen representatives has decreed to be unworthy
of confidence ? . The question is in a nut-►hell,—Are the
Irish representatives, at the bidding of O'Connell, to
pass laws hostile to the interests of the united empire
and fatal to the church establishment to the exclusion of
that conservative power which is seated in the people of
the British empire at large, and of which Ireland forms
at best but a component part ? Is the whole frame-wot k
of our great English society to be broken up solely that
the vanity or the ambition of a knot of splendid incapa-
bles—a dozen or so of men who have proved themselves,
incompetent either to comprehend or to carry out the
elementary principles of our constitutional system—may
be gratified by their power to retain office, and thereby
deluge the land with a never-ending category of patron-
age and commissionerships ? Let the meeting at North-
amptonshire answer this question for the government,
if that government be not entirely deaf to the remon-
strance of reason—dead to the impulse of duty and
propriety.

And here we would beg leave to tell Lord Fitzwilliam,
who has deemed it expedient to take shelter in the
mountains of Wicklow, that in the eyes of a British
community the votes of the four independent members
returned for his own English county are more valuable
in the estimation of that community than all the votes of
the Grattans, the Parnells, and the Fitzsimons who
figure in his lordly train, or hallo forth his weak philoso•
phical speoches in favour of abstract justice and Roman
Catholic legislation with regard to the property of the
protestant church and to municipal reform. The inde-

pendent electors of Northamptonshire, by tili7ir popular
return, have shown a fair estimate of the value they at
tach to such doctrines as those propounded at Wicklow
and Waterford.

Northamptonshire has done her duty to the great cause
of constituted freedom, and the meeting of Thursday may
be viewed as the signal for marshalling the strength of
every county in Britain for a similar object. The legiti-
mate pride of inheritance—the pride of possession through
a long series of descending generations—must naturally
render us tenacious to retain those privileges for which
our ancestors fought and bled with the most generous
devotion for their posterity—for their religion—for li-
berty itself ; and never, whilst the warm blood of native

feeling and kindred attachments flows in our teins, shall
we be prepared to sacrifice our English,independence
into the hands of a perverse and intractable oligarchy,
nor that religion in which is centred the greatest conso-
lation and the purest hope, to the dominion of a tyrannous

foreign priesthood, and to the exclusion of that worldly
pre-eminence which, under the authority of the word of
God itself, and the declaration of our blessed Redeemer,
we hold to be the fair possession—the fee-simple of our
church. Nor have we the smallest doubt of securing a
moral victory over the fallacies which have been put
forth, whilst we are enabled to record and comment upon
the opinions expressed by gentlemen possessing the in-
telligence of those who addressed this immensely congre-
gated assembly in the very centre of the kingdom. Mr.
Maunsell, Mr. Cartwright, and Sir Charles Knightly
have " dealt a heavy blow, and given a great discourage-
ment to" whiggisnt : it is a protestant Roland for the
popish Oliver of Lord Melbourne, and we hope our neigh-
bouring whig-radicals and our " free-trade-in-religion"
folks will be fully satisfied of its potency. The speech of Mr.
Maunsell was truly English; and if sound understanding
and constitutional feeling, combined with a due regard
to the interests of out' church and state, be calculated to
create a powerful sensation beyond the range of his own
county, that speech will effect it. Were the cause not

OcT. 14, 1826,

common, jealous, indeed, should we be of such displays
but we inform our Northamptonshire allies that our con-
servative artillery is in good order—the gunners are in
full training, and we shall in a very few days, we hope,
return such a fire as will by no means occasion them to
feel ashamed of our alliance.

Whilst we endeavour to do justice to the Conservative
cause throughout the kingdom, it would ill become as to
pass over the efforts of our noble and influential friends,
nearer home. A lengthened commentary on the pro-
ceedings which took place at Chester on Monday even-
ing, will not be expected from our readers, seeing that
our space is necessarily devoted to a concentration of
that mass of intelligence which is interesting at this
time. The chair was filled on this occasion, by that
noble patriot and gallant soldier, Lord Combermere, re-
presenting in his own person, the choicer virtues of the
Roman citizen, fully prepared to defend in peace, as to
maintain in war, the just freedom and the constitutional
guarantees of his fellow-citizens. The dinner was in-
deed a baronial feast—it left nothing to be desired. The
spirit which the noble Chairman infused into the assem-
bly, was altogether unique, and the gratification expe-
rienced by Lord De Tabley and Lord Delamere, com-
plete. The scene at one moment was particularly
imposing, embracing the warm glow of enthusiasm with
which the rising company received the toast of " the
Church, the King, and the Constitution." Lord Com-
bermere has had his " gloriotis days," but will venture
to affirm, that moment was the proudest of his life ; and
when he sat down, apparently overpowered with the
thunders of applause, the fire of innate satisfaction
flashed from his eye ; and when he rose to address the
company the second time, the reaction of the warm
English blood flowing in his veins; was marked and
powerful; and if justice be the " order of the day.-
this uncompromising soldier did..ample justice to the
" Conservative associations of England." As we have
given elsewhere a list of the noblemen and gentlemen
of fortune who attended this Meeting; we need only add,
that every toast received its due share a attraction—two
especially so, " The House of Peers," and "the Con-
servative members of Cheshire,"—to the first Lord De-
lemere responded—to the latter Sir Phillip de Malpas
Grey Egerton, Bart. M.P. The reception given to the
noble lord, and to the independent constitutional Com-
moner, must have amply satisfied them. The health of
our own Wellington, as usual brought a burst of ap-
plause ; and what true English heart could deny its meed
of approbation ? We are truly happy that many of our
neighbours and friends attended this dinner. We too
must have—will have our emblems our standard of
" Church and King." The compliment paid by Lord
Combermere to our Protestantism, is not likely to be
lessened by the forthcoming display ; but we hope he will
come and bring his warm breast into the bosom of our
constitutional gathering; and we will show that the men
of Lancashire are prepared to do justice to that compli-
ment; and to " stand or fall" by the principles he has
declared, and which,our own noble representative has so
strenuously maintained throughout the late arduous
session.

It will be seen, by our report of the proceedings in
Council on Wednesday last, that the improvement com-
mittee find it impossible so far to mystify the public as
to the disreputable transaction respecting the Globe
Chambers, as to induce the belief that the Tradesmen's
Bank Committee have been fairly or honourably dealt
with. There can be no further doubt that the parties
who were represented by Mr. Rotheram have been able
to exercise some undue influence in the business. It
seems that jobbing, in its most sobjectionable shape, is
not considered by our reformed .town councillors to be
incompatible with their reiterated and zealous profes-
sions of purity. Never mind—=a day of reckoning is at
hand, when these worthies will be taught that their re-
cent contempt of justice 'and decency is not likely to
conciliate the affections of their constituents.

' We confidently anticipate that one of the most important
public dinners ever given in this town iirilFtalce place on Tuesday
next—important when we consider that 4t is designed to cele-
brate the reunion of those principles, amongst a large and
wealthy community, which 'were the sheet anchor of this nation
and people at one of the most trying and critical periods of our
history. The opulent merchants and tradesmen of Liverpool,
now only second in commercial importance to the proud capital
of the British empire, could not possibly have long remained
insensible to those many and varied benefits which have pro-
gressively accrued to them from the long established authority
of well defined laws, and that freedom of intercourse and general
confidence which were the national result of good government
in the state—of government based on principles of general sta-
bility, by which alone property and industry, in the hands of
individuals or associated bodies, can be made to tell to individual
advantage or national improvement. They cannot be insensible
to the fact that, under the protecting aegis of our free constitu-
tion, aiding them in that legitimate moral exertion and indi-
vidual enterprise which are the especial characteristics of the
English population, taken as a whole, they have attained to that
station in their own families—in their local intercourse, influ-
ence, and general importance as an integral portion of our
great English society, which entitle them to exert a loud voice
in favour of that constitution which has enabled him who ex-
ultingly declared himself "the son of a cottOn-spinner" to fill
the proud office of prime minister of England, at the bidding of
its King, and under its free and perfect liberal institution of
government---they cannot forget that this "cotton-spinner's
son" was born in their own county, and that his father's indus-
try alone, under the protective privileges they have long and
equally enjoyed, enabled him to give that son a fortune sufficient
in itself to eclipse half the petty princes of the European conti-
nent—nor will they rashly kick from under them the ladder by
which many amongst them have reached the house top of a com-
fortable an independent elevation, for themselves and their
posterity, entitling theta to a full share of consideration and of
influence, in the legislative securities and immunities of their
country. The merchant tradesmen.uf Liverpool are about to
assemble for the purpose of marking their attachment to the
ancient institutions of their native land, and their determination
to maintain those fundamental principles. of religion and mo-
rality in the state which are intimately blended with their own
continued prosperity and happiness—the happiness of their
families, and the safety and repose of the empire at large.

It is said, with what truth we do not pretend to determine,
the probable return of Lord Brougham to public life is contem-
plated by the whip cabinet with chagrin ; at least, that its
leading members are in the dumps at the prospect of having to
encounter the fiery sarcasm or intractable meddling of the noble
and learned lord, during the approaching session, when, if he
be not consulted on the various measures which they in their
sapient discretion may put forth from their reforming, or,
rather, unreforming cauldron, he may prove to them a greater
annoyance, under his presumed liberal opinions, than if he
were decidedly opposed to thesis in the hostile ranks of toryism.
Be this as it may, it is said his lordship may be expected, to,
come out from his slumber like a " refreshed giant;"' and,
should such be the case, we know sufficient of the mental com-.
positioti and temper of " Henry Brougham" to feel satisfied
that he who tore the note of Earl Grey, which ogered him the
attorney-generalship when he expected the mastership of the
rolls and trampled upon that note and .spar upon it, in the lobby
of the House of Commons, and was only .appeased by the sear
of the chancellorship, will not quietly pass over any real or pre-
sumed slight put upon him by, a caerie of self-conceited gentle-
men, to make the best of them, far below him iu tact, talent,
and enterprise. Lord Brougham has, however, sorely disap,
pointed the great radical clan of Edinburgh; and, so far, we
cannot but commend his prudence—by preserving his indepen-
dence in this respect, he will be better enabled to avenge his
own personal wrongs, if he has experienced any, thereby iden-
tifying himself with a party of which he was always shy of
forming a direct alliance. Lord Brougham, therefore, will twt
dire with the radicals of Edinburgh, whilst he cunningly
smoothes them down by an apology, on the score of the medical
advice be is still under the necessity of pursuing, and by assur-
ing them that he is still deeply impressed with the necessity for
the progress of reform principles, and " the benefit of equallaws," as the " imprescriptable tight" of all classes of thels
people, whilst he adds a saving clause, that cart
doubt none of us
doubt the necessity of not merely repairing, bet amending, and
thus preserving (!) and perpetuating our institutions, by eve,',l!
safe measure of improvement and by all reasonable despatch
We do not know how our radical thorough-Pingfriends will
relish these conservative hints of the ex-chancellor W
s
; but we
. ts
should imagine they will not prove very eatable the
noble
sit
office; and, certes, they would lead one to 'infer that thei
ien n
and learned lord has reflected in his temporary ret ire
the vagaries of the latter part of his political career, h
brought him down from of
that pedestal on which some hisc
,_
warmest admirers bad elevated him, as the second Bac,4on net:
rvs 'oe
ht .
English history. Lord Brougham has presented the,. b,'
means isolated, fact, that a man may possess truly splendid__,,en.
talents without having compass for their direction.
such is the case, we may expect their possessor to dazzle the

83 6,

i displays
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