The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-02-14 00:00:00

TO CORRESPOND EN TS.

CROSS V. DAvIES--We have received a letter from Mr. Henry
Cross, attorney, of this town, stating that he was not the
plaintiff in the above cause, which was tried in the Court of
Passage, and reported in our paper last week.
JOHN DE LIVERPOOL.—We have no room for his letter this
week, owing to its great length, but will endeavour to find
space for it in our next.
63- We shall be happy, at all times, to receive communica-
tions on subjects of local or general interest.
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TUESDAY MORNING, FEB. 14, 18.34.

J.E. the public, in these exciting times, when all
are in expectation of a war with the immense Em-
pire of Russia, can turn their attention to the less
important subject of a Reform of the House of
Commons, they will find that it has already been
commenced in a manner which promises at least a
far more practical result than the proposed raid
against the old Freemen, because they are not to
be bought with Radical money or beguiled with
Radical promises. A committee has been granted
to investigate charges against Irish members, of
bartering places of honour and profit for filthy
lucre. These charges were made at a dinner in
Ireland a short time ago, by an ex-member and
another, who vouchsafed for the truth of the state-
ment, that in one case the paid office of an Irish
Poor-law Guardian was offered for 300 ; and in
another case the appointment of a Stipendiary
Magistrate was bartered for £l,OOO, although only
£5OO was paid. The groundwork of the enquiry
was an article in the Times, commenting on the
enormity—not the Times of to-day, earning the
long price paid by the Government for its advo-
cacy, but the Times of some time back, when it
was more anxious to show its independence of such
paltry considerations as a few thousands a year.
Mr. LUCAS, the renegade Quaker, who shows the
completeness of his conversion to Rome by blowing
the loudest trumpet of the brass band, declared
his belief in the truth of the charge, and read
another diatribe of the Times, in which the whole
Irish Brigade were charged with subsisting on the
petty patronage of the Government, which the
latter were obliged to grant fur the Parliamentary
support which ena.hlpd +born to retain office. Under
circumstances, Lord JOHN RUSSELL had no
alternative but to concede the committee, and if
the latter do their duty it ought to prove a step
towards a more wholesome reform than any change
in the electoral body. It is, however, an instruc-
tive corollary on the Ministerial trirlrory by ivi-anu
the votes were obtained to defeat the EARL OF
DERBY'S administration. The Irish Brigade were
said to have been promised an immunity from the
Income-tax, and cheated even in that little hope ;
but it appears that their desires were of a far more
tangible character, and finding that nothing was
to be got from a Conservative Ministry of the
little pickings to which they had been accustomed,
they adopted the coalition, and literally pocketed
the affront. For such arrangements, however, to
be successful, all parties must be agreed as to
secrecy, but the Brigade quarrelled among them-
selves as to the division of the spoil; and now
are enlightened, not onl3 as to the peculiar mode
by which the Whig-Radicals have contrived to
secure Parliamentary majorities in the face of
popular distrust, but we are more beneficially
edified by the discovery that the popular indigna-
tion against the bribery and corruption of poor
electors was thrown away ; for the charge really
attached to the representatives who gained their
seats by the intimidation of Romish priests, and
made them profitable by the corruption of a British
Ministry. A diversion was cunningly attempted
by reiterating the charges made against the ex-
railway king, of purchasing Parliamentary support
to his railway schemes by direct bribery of legis-
lators. Mr. HUDSON was then absent, but the
next day he indignantly denied the charge, and
denounced the accusation as being as false and
malicious as it is unjust and untrue ; asserting
that he had never committed a dishonourable act,
and was willing to submit his whole career to the
most searching investigation. If the charge were
intended, as it appears, to divert attention from
the far graver accusation of wholesale trafficking
in Government patronage in Ireland, it signally
failed ; and it is to be hoped that the committee,
which the Ministry dared not refuse, will pursue
the inquiry with full determination to ascertain
the whole truth. It will at least show a reason
for the disinclination of the Government to sup-
press the intimidation notoriously practised in
Irish elections, and ought to convince the House
of Commons that reform is far more needed in
,heir own body than in the borough Freemen or
:he qualification for the electoral franchise.

THE question of the difficulties attending the
present state of the mercantile laws of England and
Scotland is one of increasing importance, and
imperatively demands the serious attention of the
legislature. It is, therefore, satisfactory to observe
that it is now the subject of a Committee of Inquiry
into the expediency of assimilating the mercantile
laws of England and Scotland, and that it is pro-
posed to extend the inquiry to the administration
of the mercantile law in England and Scotland ;
and whether increased facilities ought or ought not
to be granted for the settlement by arbitration of
mercantile disputes ; and whether or not the ,
various tribunals in which mercantile law is now
administered can be usefully consolidated. As the
Commissioners are unpaid, the extension of the
inquiry depends upon their willingness to under-
take the additional burden which would be thus
imposed upon them; but it is to be hoped that the
zeal which induced them to undertake the first
duty will be a sufficient stimulus for them not to
leave so important an inquiry incomplete. It must
be well known to all who are familiar with com-
mercial transactions, that by far the great majority,
if not all the differences which arise could be set-
tled with infinitely more speed, economy, and
efficiency, by arbitration or by local commercial
tribunals, than by any appeal to the courts of
common law, which are dilatary and expensive,
and have the further disadvantage of neither the
judge nor the advocates being able to comprehend