The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-18 00:00:00

LAST WEEK

rinHE EXHIBITION of the WORKS of MODERN
ARTISTS, Postoffice-place, WILL CLOSE on SA-
TURDAY next, the 19th instant.
Admission, Is. Catalogues, ls.
Also, every Evening, BRILLIANTLY. ILLUMINATED
BY GAS, from Seven until Ten. Admission, ls.

SAMUEL EGLINGTON
Exhibition Rooms, Postoffice-place,
14th December, 1840.

CONCERT.
WARRINGTO Ar.
UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF
Sir R. BROOKE, Bart., Norton Priory,
Miss BROOKE, and
Mr. and Mrs. THOS. LYON, Appleton Hall.
MRS. ST. ALBIN most respectfully announces to the
Nobility, Gentry, and Inhabitants of WARRINGTON
and its Vicinity, that her CONCERT takes place, at the
LION HOTEL, on WEDNESDAY, the 30th instant.

MISS MARIA B. HAWES,
(From the Philharmonic and Nobilitees,Concerts, London ;)
MISS J. CLQUGI,
(From Manchester ; her first appearance ;) and
Mr. FRANCIS.
Mrs. ST. ALBIN, and Miss ST. ALBIN,
(Her first appearance.)
In the course of the Selection, Miss HAWES will .sing,
" He was despised," by Handel ; " The Mermaid's Cave,"
by Horn ; and her own Ballad of " I'll speak of thee."—
Miss CLOUGH will sing the Recitative et Aria, " Dove
Sonno."—And Mr. FRANCIS will sing the Ballad of " Love
and the Seasons," as sung by him at the Melodist's Club, in
June last, and which gained the Prize presented by Lord
Soultoun, by Blewitt; also " Adelaide," by Beethoven ; and
" Black-ey'd Susan."

Mrs. ST. ALBIN will perform Hummel's Rondo Brilliante,
with Band Accompaniments ; also, Thalberg's celebrated
Prayer, from " Mose in Egitto."
Single Tickets, ss. each. To be had of the Booksellers,
and at the Lion Hotel, Warrington.

Just Published, Price 45.,
A POLL BOOK

FOR THE LAST
MUNICIPAL ELECTION ;

Skewing the Duplicate Qualificationseof the VOTERS,
and the WARDS in which they polled. The Lists
have been examined with the ,Polling Papers in the
possession of the Mayor. This publication, which
has been compiled with the *Most care, will be found
of great utility as

A BOOK OF REFERENCE,

and will be found of service to the several Ward
Committees in carrying on the Canvass for the ensu-

zng year

Printed and sold by LACE and ADDISON, Standard-
office; and sold also by other Booksellers.

TO CORRESPONDENTS

We have received a donation of 5s from "A. E." towards
the " ease of distress " recently advertised in our columns.
Two typographical errors occur in the letter of the Rev. B. A.
Marshall, inserted in our last. Instead of " external in-
terests " read " eternal," and instead of " to a conclu-
sion " read "to draw a conclusion."
We have received a letter from " John Duckett, Highfield-
street," stating that he never publishes such accounts as
those mentioned by a " Lover of Good Order," in the
Standard of Friday last. Our correspondent never stated
that he did.

Ebe Ettnti3oot &tanbarb.

FRIDAY

MORNING, DECEMBER 18, 1840.

We are glad to find that the spirit of rational reform
is beginning to make its way into the Dock Committee,
and that, in future, instead of monopolising the func-
tions of stonemasons, ironsmiths, carpenters, quarry-
men, &c., all new works, alterations, and repairs, will
be submitted by that body to a system of competition
by open contracts. This is just as it should be. The
Dock Committee might with equal propriety become
their own stationers and newspaper publishers, as con-

tinue any longer to exercise the functions of the nume-
rous classes of tradesmen to which we have alluded.
The thanks of the public are principally due to Mr.
Chapman for introducing the reforms which have al-
ready been determined upon. But, in making this
acknowledgment, we must not forget the obligations
under which the public have been placed by the
spirited exertions of Mr. Robertson Gladstone, in pro-
curing the admission of reporters to the sanctorum of

the Dock Committee. The salutary effects of that step
are already becoming more and more visible. We
trust that the resolutions to which the committee
arrived last week will be followed up by others
which will prove equally acceptable in a public point
of view. The abandonment of one monopoly may,
possibly, prove the prelude to the surrender of many
more. We do not see with what consistency the Dock
Committee can adhere to their resolution, to become
wholesale warehouse owners and warehousemen, while
they consent to relinquish the trade of dock builders
and shed manufacturers. Let the building of ware-
houses on the dock quays be thrown open to public
competition. Perhaps Alderman Evans may think it
worth his while to add to his laurels by taking the
initiative in so desirable a reform-. It is a pity that the
tories, in their attacks upon monopolies, should become
the monopolisers of every useful reform hitherto intro-
duced into the Dock Committee.

By the bye, while upon this subject, we may as well
ask why the river wall at Clarence Dock was built out
so far into the river, thus destroying the straight line ?
Why, again, were the gates pulled down at Clarence
Dock ? TheSe questions naturally arise out of the pro-
ceedings of last week.

It is now becoming almost an admitted fact that the

ministry of Lord Melbourne cannot last above a few
weeks after the meeting of Parliament ; and there are
not a few, even amongst the whig party, who are ready
to exclaim " Why should it ?" Twice within the last
fortnight we have read amongst the announcements in
the Court Gazette, the departure of Lord Melbourne
from town to his seat in Hertfordshire ! His lordship
has at length, it seems, received intimation of the ne-
cessity of putting his house in order, and providing his
knife and fork at his own expense and in his own de-
lightful companionship. The Court, we are told, is to
leave Buckingham Palace during this month, and to
rusticate at Windsor until April or May. The snug
family party is to be broken up, along with the Cabi-
net; and Sir Robert, and the conservative members of
the ministry which will succeed it, must be content to
pick up the lost meshes which whig negligence and
inefficiency have left in the national policy, uncheeied
by the smiles of gratitude which Royalty ought in jus-.
tice to beam upon those who undertake so onerous and
disagreeable a task.

There are some, indeed, who doubt whether minis-
ters will meet Parliament at all on the 26th of Janu-
ary, and who are inclined to believe that they will ten-
der their resignations some day or two after the sth of
that month, which we believe is quarter-day ! The
prospects of the various "little wars" in which we are
engaged are not so flattering as they were a week ago;
and it is thought that not a few of the whig party are
disposed to " shirk" the disagreeable necessity, which
is known to exist, of asking for a large vote of money
to repair the dilapidated state of the finances of the
country, and to place our army and navy upon a full
war establishment. It has often before fallen to the

lot of the conservative party to have to carry on wars
which their opponents have commenced, and to bear
the onus and unpopularity of measures which they
have rendered necessary. The next arrivals from the
East will probably decide whether the impending re-
signation will be immediate or not. A few trifling ex-

cesses in China may perhaps embolden Lord Mel-
bourne to perform the disagreeable necessity of pre-
senting himself, "in forma pauperis," before the coun-
try ; but there is little doubt that a contrary result will
induce the whole pack to raise the cry of "sauve qni
pout," and leave it to other hands to unravel the
tangled web to which they have reduced alike the fo-
reign and domestic affairs of the nation. Under any
circumstances, and the sooner the better, we shall be
well rid of them. Incapable we always thought them,
and incapable and dishonest the country has found
them.

Our French neighbours have a strange fashion of
turning every subject which they approach into some-
thing fanaastic and ridiculous. The most ordinary
action of a Frenchman's life cannot be performed with-
out a due regard to effect; and yet, strange to say,
this very striving to invest himself and his movements
with importance seldom attains any other result than
to render him absurd, if not absolutely contemptible.
This national propensity or failing was perhaps
never so conspicuously shown as in the ceremony
which has, during the present week, excited the atten-
tion of France, and of Europe. Napoleon, her Em-
peror, " slept well" in his far off grave. The barren
rock of Saint Helena--a speck amidst a boundless
ocean—was a fitting prison for one whose vast ambi-
tion had deluged Europe with blood, and carried deso-
tion and death to the hearths of millions of the human
race. The same small spot was his fittest grave; the
unbroken murmur of its expanse of waters his fitting
and never dying requiem. Few who had loved that
man—except a Frenchman—few who cherised his
glory and revered his memory, would have chosen to
disturb his repose. The place in which he slept held
him alone. His ashes needed no proud monument—
no pompous record there. The bare, seabeaten cliffs
of that desolate place told alike, to the passing mariner,
the fame and the fate of him, whom the world had
been compelled to chain down within its narrow
limits—like Prometheus of old—until the vultures,
remorse and disappointed ambition, gnawed away his
heart.

But this was not in accordance with the frivolity of
French taste. 'The people of that land of fiddling,
dancing, and piping, could not erase from the page of
history the record of that last victorious effort which
beat back their armed myriads from the battle fields of
Europe, and tore from amongst them the chief, whose
genius alone it was which for a time had led them on
to conquest. They could not wipe out the lines which
recorded the damning tale of their own desertion of
that chief, and of the zeal with which they flew to
worship another star, when his was obscured by the
coming darkness. They could not do this ; but they
could farcify the tragedy of history ! They could
substitute for the romantic interest which hung around
the eclipsed image of Napoleon, and in which the con-
temptible fickleness of their nature had stamped them
as unworthy to share, the temporary eclat of a fete—a
show !—a melodrame in which they might take part,
and grin and grimace before the eyes of applauding
thousands of tailors, petits maitres, and chefs de cuisine,
and amidst the suppressed laughter of all the world
besides ! _

In this laudable undertaking, accordingly, they have
been engaged for the last few days. The earth has
given up its dead ; the ocean has resigned her trust,
to provide Paris with a spectacle and a holiday—to
furnish to the yearnings of republicanism, amongst
her unprincipled: journalists, and her sans culottes
mobocracy, an opportunity of spurting forth their long
pent up venom against that people, whose armed heel
trampled them upon the field of Waterloo, and whose
hand tore down the tricolour from the towers of the
Louvre. Under a plea of sickly sentimentality, such
as might befit the hero or heroine of a tenth-rate
novel, the insensate bones and decaying flesh of the
spirit which has gone to his eternal reward or his eter-
nal doom, have been made the object of an unmeaning
pageant, have passed through triumphal arches, amidst
artificial evergreens, pasteboard columns, and claptrap
scenery of all imaginery devices—to furnish which
half the theatres of France must have been denuded
of their stage decorations; and the end of all this
blowing of trumpets, and beating of cymbals and
kettle drums—is what ? Napoleon's, ashes now rest
+l-- 14-e^, " in the
bosom of the people that he loved !" All that is grand
and ennobling in his memory still clings to that rifled
grave in the midst of the vast Pacific. The ashes
only of the great man, and the lead which encloses
them, are in the keeping of a fickle and frivolous na-
tion, which deceived and deserted him in life, and
would disinter him again a month hence to gain
another fete, and another holiday !

It is greatly to be feared that we have been giving
ourselves credit for a far greater measure of success in
our Syrian warfare than we have any just reason to
calculate upon. The treaty which has been entered
into between Mehemet Ali and Admiral Napier, if
taken as conclusive of the question in dispute, would
undoubtedly entitle us to believe that the question, as
between the Pacha and the allies, was terminated by
the unconditional submission of the former to the
terms imposed upon him. The army of Ibrahim was
to be withdrawn from Syria, and the Turkish fleet
given up, upon condition that Egypt was to be guaran-
teed to him as an hereditary possession. It has
transpired, however, now—and, although openly as-
serted by the London Times of Wednesday, the fact
has not been attempted to be impugned by the mi-
nisterial organs—that the Sultan is by no means a
consenting party to the granting of these favourable
terms to his refractory vassal. Lord Palmerston, it is
added, has guaranteed that England will not attempt
to use coercive means to prevail upon the Sultan to re-
cognise the possession of Egypt by Mehemet; and it
is plain, that in case of an obstinate perseverance on
the part of Turkey in her present views, the question
in dispute is still almost as far off settlement as ever.
It cannot, we think, have escaped the notice of our
readers, that throughout the whole of this Syrian
affair, Russia has, very unaccountably, abstained from
taking a prominent position. England, Austria, and
Turkey have each made themselves conspicuous during
the progress of hostilities ; but Russia has through-
out kept in the background, as if waiting her time.
This apparent incongruity can be solved by the sup-
position that Russia has been previously acquainted
with the fact that the Porte would ultimately, by her
obstinacy, neutralize the efforts of the other powers to
bring about a settlement; and whilst it is difficult to
account for this backwardness upon any other suppo-
sition, it is equally difficult to understand how the
Sultan could do other than readily accede to the terms
proposed and guaranteed by the allies, unless he had
been insidiously led on by Russia to persist in his
present course of obstinacy.

It must be evident then that in the event of a per-
severance on the part of Turkey in her present under-
stood policy, and her absolute refusal to recognize
Mehemet Ali any longer as the sovereign of Egypt,
the whole quarrel must take a different aspect, and the
war, if persisted in, become, on the part of the allies,
a war of aggression upon Egypt. In such a war,
England, as we have already stated, is pledged by Lord
Palmerston to take no share—at least as against Tur-
key. We cannot now turn round and compel that
power to accept, what must be considered the favour-
able terms which it is in her power to make ; nor can
we safely withdraw altogether from the contest, and
leave her to the tender mercies of a Russian army of
occupation. In such a case it is not difficult to foresee
that, whatever be the Policy of England, the right of
France to take a part in the quarrel, and to espouse
the interests of the Pacha, would become clear; and,
from the present ten-Ter of that people, notwithstand-
ing the temporary defeat of the Thiers party, we need
not doubt how readily the opportunity would be seized
upon.

The effect of such an embroilment—for to what
could it lead except a general European war ?—cannot
be contemplated without serious misgivings. Under
any circumstances we fear that such a contingency can-
not be avoided. France evidently burns to plunge
once more into hostilities, and with England especially;
and although we have little cause to fear her worst
efforts if directed against England individually, we
regard her hostile interference in such a quarrel as this
as pregnant with:extensive danger to the best interests
of our country. In such a struggle we could not
calculate upon the honest co-operation of Russia for
an hour. Her interest wfould prompt her to stand

aloof, and to seize upon the moment of our weakness
to carry into execution her own views of aggrandize-
ment, which are unhappily too well understood. With
Turkey in her hands as a submissive tool, it would
become, we fear, a difficult task for England, pledged
as she is, and even with Austria to aid her efforts, to
emerge from so hopeless an entanglement of warring
interests without sustaining a serious loss of expense
and blood, if not of honour. •

Our attention has been directed to a letter which
has been copied from the Albion into another journal,
in which the Rev. Fielding Ould, of this town, is
charged, upon the authority of an obscure dissenting
review, with having borrowed largely, in his late ser-
mon on the Unitarian controversy, from Fuller's well-
known work on the Calvinistic and Socinian systems,
without acknowledgment of any kind. Upon perusal of
this letter we turned to the sermon in question, and
before we had gone further than the first page of the
preface, we were satisfied that a more unjust or uncan-
did charge was never brought against the literary re-
putation of any author. The reviewer must have
known, and the correspondent of the Albion, so kindly
patronised by a contemporary, should have known, that
the writer of the sermon expressly disclaimed, in the
very first page of his work, any pretension to originality,
and freely and fully acknowledged his obligation to
former controversialists not only for the matter of his
reasoning but frequently for the. very words in which
the arguments were clothed ; and this in order to guard
himself against any advantage which might be taken
of a less carefully measured phraseology :

" It is scarcely to be expected that, on such a subject,
much original matter should now be elicited. The praise of
originality was not, however, the author's object, but rather
usefulness and edification. He has accordingly availed him-
self freely of the labours of those who have gone before him
in the controversy, not only in the adoption of their argu-
ments, but frequently' of their words; and being aware how
eagerly advantage is taken of definitions and forms of ex-
pression by those whose tenets are here impugned, he has
preferred rather to clothe himself in the verbal armour of
the tried veterans in this contest, than trust himself in the
weaker panoply of his own providing."—The Practical Im-
portance of the Controversy with Unitarians—Preface, p. v.
. .

It is only necessary to add, further, that in the ap-
pendix there is more than one express reference to
Fuller, and to authorities quoted from him; while in a
note at the conclusion of the sermon, the reader is
apprised that " The necessary haste with which this
lecture has been sent to the press, has prevented the
author from verifying sonic of the quotations which
have been taken from other works, by a reference to the

originals

How far the reviewer's charge of " plagiarism with-
out acknowledgment of any kind" has been borne out
by the facts of the case, we leave an impartial public