The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-05-12 00:00:00

TO CORRESPON DENTS.
s, that fur the first week in April last, the
n isso miles of railway was at the rate of 6i millions
per annum ; and supp3sing• the cost of construction to be or
an average £25,

A correspondent E

) per mile, it would give 45 millions as the
cost of that length of railway. Ile deducts 4 per cent. for
the cost of working, and it leaves g .5,1:00, which will pay
a dividend of St per cent. The first week in April, he consi-
ders, will be under the average rate per annum; and of the
1800 miles, the traffic of the greater part is not yet developed.
On the who e, the result is such as to lead hum to believe
there is not mue'i cause (whe, the really bad schemes are
swept away) to fear any ill effects from railway extensi n.

Ebt Ribtrpool tanZiarZi.

TUESDAY

MORNING, MAY 12, 1846

The statesmen who compose her Majesty's pre-
sent Administration are, no doubt, individually and
personally, men of the highest honour and truthful-
ness; yet it is strange to observe what a large
amount of the very opposite qualities they are occa-
sionally tempted to display. In their private capa-
eity they would revolt at the slightest approach to a
mis-statement of a fact, or a disingenuous colouring
of an argument ; but when breathing the atmosphere
of Downing-street, or engaged in party conflict
within the walls of St. Stephen's, their whole men-
tal and moral economy seems to have undergone a
transformation. The man is sunk in the Minister;
and weapons from which he would have shrunk with
loathing, if used to advance his private views of
interest or emolument, are seized hold of and used
without compunction, when the object is to advance
the interests of a party or to secure a parliamentary
triumph. Does an opponent make a slip in debate,
how readily it is taken advantage of, and tortured
from the sense which it was intended to convey I
Has a Minister inadvertently allowed his personal
convictions to ooze out to the detriment of his con-
sistency as a public man, how promptly his col-
leagues fly to the rescue, to repair the injurious con-
sequences which may accrue to the measure which
he is bound by his official capacity to support in
defiance of such convictions ! Disingenuousness
has taken the place of straightforward dealing ; and
the search after truth, as the basis of legislation, is
postponed to the longing to shine as a successful
parliamentary tactician.

The episode of the error in a recent return of the
souse of Commons is not yet forgotten. The pub-
lic bear in mind that invariably such errors are in
the right direction, They serve their temporary
purpose of bolstering up a ministerial argument and
swaying a majority; and any subsequent correction
comes too late. The case in question was a bad
one

. It looked suspicious at all events; but there
was a subordinate official to hear the blame, and
ministerial honour was left untarnished. An in-
stance, however, of similar perversion of fact by a
cabinet minister has just occurred, where there is no
such rea,), escape by the ordinary mode of trans-
ferring the onus to another. lii the debate on Wed-
nesday week upon the Factory Bill, Mr. Fielden
quoted the father of the Premier as having demanded
a great limitation in the hours of labour—as having,
in fact, contemplated a term nearly approaching to
that proposed by the advocates of the ten-hours
bill. Sir James Graham, in his reply, gave utterance

to the followi g assertion :
"All that Sir Robert Peel ever proposed was, not that
ten hours should be the limitation, but twelve, which is
now the law. The limitation proposed by Sir R. Peel only
applied to children of eight or nine years of age till the

age of sixteen

Now here is a statement, deliberately made, with all
the supercilious self complacency of the right hon.
secretary's manner, uncontradicted at the time, and
which, therefore, answered its purpose. Sir Robert
Peel sate by and heard his father's views of the sub-
ject thus propounded. There were, moreover, mill
owners in the house old enough to remember what
those views were. Yet, what is the fact ? We give•
it in the words of a hitter which has just been ad-
dressed by Lord Ashley to the Short Time Com-
mittee:—

" I have now lying before me a copy of the bill intro-
duced by Sir Robert t'eel in 1815, when the labour, as you
)resent day. That

Weis much

ss severe than at ti:

bill passed the first and second readings, and was amended
by the committee. Here is the clause :—`And be it
nacted, that no person, being under the age of eighteen
be emp`oyed in any such mill, manufactory,
for more than ten hours and a half in any

years,

or buildi ne

one day."'

The misstatement here is glaring enough, and Sir
James Graham would do well to purge his reputa-
tion by explaining how it arose, or at least by con-
fessing that it was one of the too-frequently recur-
ring ministerial ruses. Another assertion, how-

ever, of the same speaker, on the same occasion, is
startlingly opposed to the trinth, that we can only

_er how the requislte amount of assurance was
.ummoned up to enable him to venture upon its
Sir Jan
' An hon.

utterance,

tleinan observed that the working classes
were greatly disappclnted by the course which had been
pursued by the house in reference to the proposition for
the reduction of the hours of labour to 10 hours. I abso-
lutely deny that this house ever pronosmced for a ten-
hours measure.

We give here Lord Ashley's confutation of the

rnpuitient statement

On Wedoesday afternoon las', we heard this positive
uage from the Secretary of Stale : I absolutely

deny that this house ever pronounced
.for a ten-hours
measure' Let me put before you the amendment that I
moved in March, 1841. Hansard,' page 1.073, vol. 73.
;Id series, Lord Ashley rose to propose the amendment
of which be had given notice :
" That the word night' shall he tllcen to mean from
in the evening to six o'cbck in the following
and the word mealtime' shall be taken to mean
an interval of cessation of work, for the purpose cf rest
and refreshment, at the rate of two hours a day, with a
stew to effect a limitation of the hours of labour to ten
is the day.'

six O'CI

morni

"This amendment I moved at the personal request of
Sir James Graham. He stated to me in private previ-
ously to the debate that I should much oblige the govern-
ment by raising the question of my proposition at the
very earliest pohsible period in the bill, and suggested an
amendment on the word `night' in the first or interpreta-
tion clause. I saw the difficulties of such a course, but

to oblige the Government I complied with their request,
and drew up that form of amendment which Sir James
Graham approved (so far as it would raise the whole
question) before the opening of the discus4ion.
" Hansard's pages will confirm my statement :--` The
form of my amendment,' said the noble lord, ' requires
no preliminary explanation. I move it in its present
shape a._ the request of my hon. friend and the Govern-
ment, though I fear that in adopting that course I subject
myself to some disadvantage.'
Two divisions were then tokrn, and both were in.fa-
your of my amendment, after which (I again quote from
Hansard, p. 1.260), ' Sir James Graham said that the
decision which the committee had come to upon the noble
Lord's amendment was a virtual adoption of a ten-hours
MR without modifieatibn.' "

Is it not melancholy t) find the Minister of a
great nation—the Minister, too, who is especially
entrusted with the improvement of the morals of
the people and the supervision of the admistration
of justice—thus placed in a position so humiliating ?
All the world remembers how the Commons of
England, at the dictation of a minister, stultified
themselves by negativing a principle which they
had twice affirmed. The printed votes of the House
prove the fact. The pages of Hansard record it,
and the acknowledgment from the lips of Sir James
Graham himself, that "'1 he decision which the House
had just come to was a virtual adoption of the Ten
Houri Bill without modification." By what miserable
abufing can he reconcile with such evidence his pre-
aerit " absolute denial that the house ever pronounced
fin. a ten hours measure r'

We are sorry to perceive the constant recurrence
of such outrages upon the truth in high places.
They degrade the character of statesmen in the eyes
of that public, before whom it ought to be presented
unspotted and above even the suspicion of blemish.
We may forgive apostacy and tergiversation—even
great as have been those of the Right lion. Baronet
—we may forbear in our oppositicn to measures which
we deem dangerous to the public and subversive of
the true interests of the people. But when we see
ouch means resorted to for promoting their passage
through the legislature; when we see men thus
crawling beneath the feet of a faction—throwing
from them the feelings of high honour which ought
to animate Englishmen—condescending to misre-
present facts, and even to eat their own recorded
words—such forbearance and forgiveness itself be-
come almost a crime.

We live in strange times ; amidst events which
would be startling to the most lethargic, if we had
not been partially prepared for them by "shadows
cast before." We are, as a nation, day by day
progressing, and each day faster than in the one
which preceded it, towards one of two extremes—
the establishment of Popery as the ruling influence
in the state, on the one. hand, or the repudiation of
religion altogether, as having any Ruled ground in
our institutions, on the other. The middle and safe
way of tolerant Protestantif-rn we have long ago
deserted ; and we are drifting now between the
Charybdis of Romanism and the Scylla of infidelity.
We have enfranchised our Roman Catholic fellow-
countrymen, and admitted them to a share in the
councils of the nation. We were making up our
-minds to see carried by an apostate Ministry and a
too subservient Legislature, the endowment of their

priesthood. There were few men, however, who
thought that the temper of the tidies would at pre-
sent permit of our going further. The majority of
the public were wrong. They had not measured
the depth and breadth of legislative and ministerial
faithlessness. They could not see into the recesses
of the laboratory of Downing-street, or estimate the
power of the Members of our two estates to live
under the fumes emitted, and gulp down the results
of the Ministry.
We have lived to see the first experiment made
upon our endurance by the Bill of the Lord Chan-
cellor in the Upper House, and the Bill of Mr.
Watson in the Lower, both having for their object
the further removal of the landmarks of Protest-
antism, as the distinguishing feature of the British
Constitution. We will not say that we were quite
prepared for either of these measures. We should
not have been surprised to see some Member of the
Ministry, inflicted by the cacoethes of conciliation,
proposing the repeal of a few obsolete statutes,
directed against members of the Roman Catholic
religion in times when our fathers were more ear-
nestly Protestant and jealous of the truth than we
appear to be in the present day. But we certainly
did not expect to see the introduction of the Bulls
of the Pope into this country made legal, or the
order of the Jesuits, which has been denounced as
a pest by every government in Europe, recognised
in this once Protestant country. Our Legislators,
however, it seems, are more forbearing towards
this order, and more forgetful of past events con-
nected with its history, than ourselves or the ma-
jority of the public. In the debate on the bill, in
the House of Commons, on Wednesday last, we
heard the Jesuits styled the purest of the most
spotless. They were learned and calumniated
men, upon whom the House was challenged
to fix the odium of a single crime. Yet where was
the professing Protestant member found to accept
boldly so impudent a challenge —to scatter to the
winds, by a reference to the page of history, which
is blackened by the crimes of the order, such au-
dacious denials of fact, and misrepresentations of
character ? There was none such found ; there was
only a hesitating and hinting demurrer where there
should have been a bold and indignant assertion of
the truth, which nine-tenths of the world would
recognise.
Alas, how fallen off is this House of Commons
of the present day, from the faith and the courageous
assertion of that faith of former Parliaments ! The
manliness of Protestantism is gone. It shrinks
now from the expression of its convictions, lest it
should be twitted with the crime of " illiberality"
or " intolerance." It dare not denounce what even
Roman Catholic popes, priests, and monarchs,
have denounced. It dare not throw a stone against
the order of Jesus, lest it should alight upon the
head of a Jesuit in disguise in the shape of a Ca-
binet Minister, or a professing Protestant member !
The Jesuits are a learned and a pious order--so
runs the cant of the day in Parliament and out of
it ;—an order devoting itself exclusively to good
works,—to the spread of education, to the prose-
lytism of the heathen, to the enlargement of the
boundaries of Christ's fold, and to nothing secu-
lar—nothing besides. They walk our streets hum-
bly fixed on the ground, and not a trace of spiritual
or temporal pride to be discerned in their features
or their carriage. But is it so in lands where the
Church of Rome is more rampant than it is as yet
in our own land ? We quote the following from
the Paris correspondent of the Cheltenham Looker-

on as our reply :
" As the Jesuits are forbidden in France, I know not
how it happened (especially as their own recent acts have
lately revived the law which had slumbered in their fa-
vour), hut, happen as it might, the fact is, a Jesuit
preached to the Qaeen, the royal family, and the densest
multitude that ever crowned St. Ruch. Al,king allow-
ance for angry feelings at the law revived against his or-
der, for the death-blow struck by " llich.det" against
the undue influence of priesthood, concede all that is pos-
sible, and it still will be difficult to believe that this Jesuit
glanced from his pulpit at politics, and insinuated, if not
spoke against, the reigning family ! The following Sun-

day, emboldened, I presume, by impunity, or lashed to
wrath by angry rneditat;on, he dared to speak of the
reigning family as the origin of evils, as a curse, rather
than a blessing, to the land. But, said he, who was the
father of the King who reigns? Was it not one who
styled himself ' Egalit 1' and can it be wondered that the
son of such a man should follow the footsteps (suivi les
pas) of such a father!!! The Queen sat in silence till
the sermon ended. Insult, gross and unprovoked, had been
offered to one dearer than her life ; to one a hose fair
fame is to her more infinitely precious than the crown
she shares. She sent for the Cure, and told him
that St. Rech could he her parish church no more.'
The Cure, as may be supposed, was desoleY—penitent,
and grieved beyond measure. He assured her Majesty
that the Jesuit should never be suffered to preach again."

This is surely significant enough with respect to
the dangerous character and the insolence of this
order. The following, which we quote from the
Morning Herald, is equally to the point :
The Journal de Rouen publishes the following letter
from a Paris correspondent on the subject of an address
to the King of the French, on his recent escape from
assassination :

" The King had received, the evening before his fete,
the Archbishop of Paris, who came to pay him the custo-
mary compliments. The archbishop's addre's was little
enough in conformity with the necessities of the moment
—with the turn of men's minds—with the ideas of the
Court—and even so unsuitable in form, as to astonish all
who heard it. The King was much offended ; and during
the evening, in the midst of his family and household, he
several times manifested his displeasure and his emo-
tion."

Surely when an order cannot repress its arrogance
in the presence of a crowned head, on an occasion
such as that which called the Archbishop of Paris
into the presence of Louis Philippe, viz., to con-
gratulate him on his escape from the bullet of his
assassin, it is not likely to continue very forbearing
and humble in a country where its members are
petted and fawned upon as " learned men," " ca-
lumniated men," " pious and persecuted men,"
and where they see that every fresh claim is met
with an increased measure of conciliation, and that
they have only to ask a little to receive more than
the amount of their demand.

We have been most gratified to observe the cor-
diality, with which the proposition of Mr. Procter
to appropriate the Wavertree-hall estate, purchased
by the Council as the site of a new Prison, to the
far more fitting purpose of providing, in conjunction
with the Botanic Gardens, a park for the recreation
of the inhabitants has been received. We shall thus,
at a cheap rate too, provide for the keeping open
permanently of one lung to the eastward of this
rapidly increasing town. We shall prevent this
beautiful portion of our out-skirts from being over-
run and deformed by those jerry-built erections
which, though when first run up with their goo:11y
outsides and their lath and plaster internal arrange-
ments bear the appearance of decent dwellings, and
are eagerly occupied with respectable tenants, be-
come in a very brief space dilapidated nests of dis-
ease and fertile disseminators of impurity. Inde-
pendent of the uses of such a park as might be
formed in this locality, its being secured by parties
who would lay down a stringent building plan, in
case of a portion of it being appropriated for build-
ing purposes, would be a boon of no ordinary
value; and the removal of the prison, with which
the neighbourhood was threatened to be injured, to
some other available site is an event for which the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood will be duly

grateful.
In connexion with this subject the suggestion of
Mr. John Stewart that, in the laying out of this
property for the use proposed, some broad and com-
prehensive plan should be devised, by which it
might be worked along with the Newsham-hall estate,
purchased last year; and a broad belt of open space
secured round the Lancashire outskirts of the
town was excellent. We trust it is not yet too late for
Mr. Stewart's views to be carried out. With the
Prince's Park and the Dingle at the south end of the
town, the Wavertree property and the Botanic Gar-
dens, the Newsham-hall estate on the east, we are al-
ready more than half provided for the wants of the
town in this respect. The only further desideratum
would be a similar property to be laid out as a park
for the northern end of the town, which might pro-
bably be found somewhere at the back of Everton
and Kirkdale, provided with which it could scarcely
be said that the town is unprovided with ventilating
outlets, or the inhabitants with places of healthful
recreation and enjoyment. By laying out such laws
judiciously for the erection upon a portion of them
of Villa residenees, handsome streets or squares,
the venture on the part of the Corporation would
not, we conceive, be a costly or a dangerous one.
Had some such effort been made ten or fifteen
years ago, the Corporation would at the present
time have been in the receipt of a large surplus of
interest upon their investment; the outskirts of the
town would not have presented their present strug-
gling and unsightly appearance, and the health of
the population would have been materially preserved.
The effort may, however, be made safely even yet.
Liverpool is not doomed to see her rapid extension
checked.