The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-03-15 00:00:00

THE MAYOR'S SOIREE,

The celebration was brought to a most gratifying ter- ,
mination by the soiree given in the evening at the Town-
hall, to which the Mayor had invited upwards of a
thousand persons. The company began to arrive shortly
after nine o'clock. The scene, on entering the Town-
hall, was remarkable for brilliancy and tasteful effect.
The grand staircase was profusely decorated with fine
exotic plants. At the entrance of the reception-room
was a portrait of Roscoe, and also a portrait of Mr.
John Gore, bookseller, the individual in whose
shop Mr. Roscoe served for a month. The enter-
tainments commenced with a selection of music, by a
few members of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society,
under the direction of Mr. Sudlow. At ten o'clock the
promenade commenced for the purpose of examining the
specimen and microscope tables. There were eight tables,
presided at by the following gentlemen :—lllustrated
Books : Mr. Picton and Mr. Fernihough.—Miscellaneous
Zoology and Botany : Dr. Dickenson and Mr. T. C.
Archer (two tables).—Local Antiquities : Dr. Hume and
Mr. Mayer.—Rare Manuscripts and Books of Art :
Joseph Brooks Yates, Esq.—Original Letters of• Roscoe
and Articles of Vertu : Mr. Boardman, whose property
these relics are.—Architectural and Mechanical Models
and Stereoscopes: Mr. H. P. Horner, Mr. Newlands,
and Mr. John Grantham.—Microscopes : Drs. Newman
and J. B. Edwards, and Messrs. Byerley and Canty.
Mr. Boardman's mementoes included a letter from Miss
Felicia Dorothea Brown (airs. Herons), written in 1809,
to Matthew Nicholson, Esq., of Liverpool ; a letter from
Lafayette to Roscoe ; and various autograph letters of the
historian. The local antiquities included several speci- I
wens of Liverpool printed pottery ; a large volume of
sketches by Gibson ; and a snuff-box made from a I
beam of the house in which Roscoe was born. The
zoological curiosities were exhibited by Mr. Francis
Archer and Mr. Robert McAndrew. The refreshment-
room was thrown open at eleven o'clock, when an ample
supply of the creature comforts were supplied. The com-
pany began to disperse shortly after one o'clock, the
latest visiters leaving about two—every one delighted
with the kind and graceful manner in which his Worship
the Mayor and Mrs. Holme had dispensed their hospitality.

PORTRAIT OF RICHARD COBDEN.

(FROM THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.)

We once asked a bluff, hearty specimen of the old
English Radical, " What do you think of Mr. Cobden ?"
We shall never forget his reply. His answer was terse
and emphatic, and the sequel has shown it to be true—
" You may rely upon it, Cobden is sharp and shallow."

To a clear head and an active temper, Richard Cobden
united a fluent tongue and a vulgarly ambitious nature.
Bred in Manchester life, he possessed the flippant and
ever ready adroitness, the familiarity with current facts,
and proficiency in the skin-deep political economy, which
is ever found in the half-read sciolists of the saucy and
sectarian school of Manchester politics, lie came upon
English political life at a time when there was a want of
an effective tribune and active popular speaker. Cobbett,
in talent worth a thousand Cobdens, had died in 1835.

, Henry Hunt was, in all senses of the term, no more. Mr.
, Joseph Hume had no talents for stirring popular assem-
blies or exciting the multitude; and the only exaggerations
in which he was proficient were of the arithmetical kind.
Mr. George Grote, with all the convictions, had none of
the capacities specially required for an English Radical
reformer, and, greatly to the advantage of historical
literature, abandoned the impulses of progressive Liberal-
ism for the interest of permanent literature. Mr. Henry
Warburton was a mere superannuated encyclopedia in
breeches, full of facts that had lost their significance,
sometimes consulted, but generally neglected. Mr.
Thomas Duncombe was a mere dandy demagogue, a plea-
sing declaimer of platform platitudes—a well bred, good-
natured, political humbug, that laughed at himself and all
mankind. Mr. Thomas Wakley, his colleague, had more
talent than truth, more cleverness than character ; a man
whose tongue was often listened to, but rarely trusted.
In those days, 1834 to 1841, there was only first-class
democratic genius, one far-famed popular speaker, but a
host of influences, which, over his recent grave, it would
be invidious to characterise, interfered with O'Connell's
influence over democracy in England.
It was at such a time that Mr. Cobden entered into
public life, the parliamentary spokesman of the factory
interest, the guide and tribune of the Manchester party.
The Whigs could not estimate the results of their own
Reform Bill. The scions of their vaunted families were
more skilled in figures of rhetoric than arithmetic—their
boasted Russells, Normanbys, Morpeths, et hoc genus,
had far more talent for similes than statistics, for com-
posing declamations, than for calculating budgets. With
some fifty members to his back in the interest of the fac-
tory lords, with the want of a good popular " cry" at the
time, with a substantial monied interest behind him, and
the showy clap-traps of an ad captanduns question at his
command, full of practical details, and flushed with
antagonism to a " proud aristocracy," Mr. Richard
Cobden, a third-rate tribune, who could not have lived
for an hour in rivalry with the Girondist chiefs of the
French Revolution—a man without genius of intellect, or
greatness of heart—sharp, quick, but superficial—was
enabled, by the blunders of one party, the bullying of
another—by trimming here, and tergiversation there—to
aid in carrying a much disputed question. Nothing contri-
buted to this overrated man's notoriety more than the artful
compliment of Sir Robert Peel, who, foreseeing that Lord
John Russell would more suo endeavour to appropriate to
himself the settlement of the question, by his allusion to
" the unadorned eloquence of Richard Cobden," at once
advertised the success of the Manchester agitator, and
balked the monopolising ambition of the baffled and out-
stripped Whig leader.
Fired by his triumph, and yet perhaps having an uneasy
sensation at heart that his success was felt to be more
accidental than deserved, Mr. Cobden has now aimed at a
higher mark, and aspires to inaugurate a new popular
party with dubious designs in politics. The Quixotic
quietism which this unEnglish demagogue now professes
must not induce us to treat his machinations with con-
temptuous ridicule or listless apathy. In the times in
which we live there is a propensity to inflammatory folly,
as if mankind were " drunk with words ;" as if the phre-
netic flatulence of popular declaimers had a more than
customary spell in disorganising and debauching those
many-headed masses—" semper avidi novarum rerum."
Let vigilance be maintained, and we do not despair in the
least of the democratic designs of this Manchester agitator
being overcome.

FOREIGN SHIPFING.—An account is given in a parlia-
mentary return of the sums paid out of the Consolidated
Duties of Customs, under the Act 59 Geo. 111., c. 54,
and subsequent orders of the Treasury, in the year 1852,
for the difference of rates and charges due to corporations,
companies, anies, or individuals for foreign vessels which, under
treaties of reciprocity or otherwise, are admitted into the
ports of the United Kingdom at the same rates of charges
as British vessels. It appears that the amount paid under
the reciprocity treaties up to the 31st of December, 1851,
was £802,202 19s. 6d., and in the year ended the 31st of
December, 1852, £41,857 Gs., making X 844,060 52. 61