The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-10-09 00:00:00

'RE tIVERPOot STANDARD.

done. It is not that the constituents are not
offended at the votes of Mr. Samuel Holme, Mr.
Aikin, and other Pike advocates; but that they are
more offended at the dictation to which the Con-
federation would submit them. The public, more-
over, cannot bring themselves to admit that the
choice of members to serve the general interests of
the town in the Council chamber should be de-
termined solely by the opinions of candidates upon
the single question of the mode of procuring a sup-
ply of water. It must be a strong and decided
feeling, which will lead the majority of the burgesses
to close the entrance to municipal honours and use-
fulness against members of the leading families
amongst our mercantile community, on the ground
of their opinions upon this question alone, and we
must have some materials to supply their place,
other than the very pliant gentlemen, who are con-
tent to place their free-will and their consciences in
the keeping of the Confederation clique. It may
be that many of the candidates to be brought for-
ward in this interest are personally unobjectionable.
We are aware that two or three, already announced,
are so. For example, Mr. Jones, who is announced
to contest Rodney-street Ward against Mr. Samuel
Holme, is a most fit man to possess a seat in the
Council ; and we have no doubt that, had he come
forward upon his own merits, for any other ward,
he would have had a great chance of success. But
the contest will not be regarded, here or elsewhere,
so much in the light of a personal question as one
in which the constituency has to decide whether it
will be dictated to by the Confederation, or exer-
cise its own deliberate judgment.
Another most damaging fact, bearing upon the
political leanings of that body, we referred to last
week, without, however, mentioning names. The
question which was then put has not been answered.
The fact itself, however, is now notorious enough.
It was Mr. Richard Harbord, whose name was
proposed, seconded, and carried, as a candidate for
St. Peter's IN and ; and at a subsequent meeting
set aside by the Radical section of the Confedera-
tion, expressly on the ground of his general political
opinions. The case is, in all points, a repetition of
the factious and partizan trick by which Mr. Thos.
Dover's claim was last year set aside, in favour of
that of the present Whig member, Mr. Freine.
Thinking men must, aftei such evidence of the
thoroughly partizan proceedings of the body, arrive
at the conclusion that this anti-Pike cry is a mere
stalking-horse to enable them to fill the Council
chamber with men or their own political leanings,
and thus once more to restore to the Radical
faction amongst us that ascendancy in the conduct
of our local affairs, from which a few years ago
they were hurled by the indignant voice of nine-
tenths of their fellow-townsmen.

HER Majesty's ministers are trying the public
patience very hard. Whenever a deeply engrained
feeling is found to exist in the national mind, the
probe of Whiggery is forthwiti, inserted. This is,
however, more especially the case where that feeling
is based upon a regard for keeping God's law.
Religious education, Sabbath observance, and other
similar questions, based upon devotional feeling,
and a regard for the eternal interests of man, and
the honour of the Creator, are old men's fables—
vulgar and short-sighted prejudices—in the eyes of
this pattern Whig administration. They seem
humpered in every movement by the fear of the
scoffs of infidel philosophy, and the anger of Mam-
mon worshippers. "Liberalism" and religious
feeling are in a state of antagonism. The State
dare not even ask of the people—because the State
is in terror of the floating of the dregs of the ma-
nufacturing towns, and the metropolitan suburban
coteries—to do what three-fourths of the worth of
the nation has already done, or is doing, viz., to
bend the knee in humble acknowledgment of the
dreadful scourge, which has recently desolated so
many homes, and spread widowhood and orphan-
age throughout so many portions of the land.
But a do-nothing and infidel neglect of its duties
is not all, of which we have to accuse the present
government. The religious mind of the country
has just been further outraged by a proposition for
a further step in legitimatized Sabbath violation by
our post office. It is urged that inconvenience is
felt at the detention—a rare occurrence—of the
foreign mails arriving in London on the Sabbath,
and, by the present arrangements, detained there
unsorted until the Monday's mails. This is an
injustice, it is urged, upon the mercantile commu-
nities of Liverpool, Maneinster, Leeds, Glasgow,
and other large towns, as allowing London enter-
prise to steal a march upon them. Strange that
from none of the towns a complaint has ever been
uttered on the subject of the alleged hardship r We
are one and all perfectly willing to allow London
this vast advantage over us. Our merchants are
so far inclined to enjoy the allotted day of rest,
free from the cares of business pursuits, that we do
not think one in a hundred of them ever avail
themselves of the opportunity of receiving the
communications which reach them on that day.
The proposal to intrench upon it at the St. Men-
tin's le Grand Establishment is merely an offering
made to the infidel feeling of a small section of the
commercial world ; and, as in many such cases of
unsolicited advances, we question much whether its
authors will receive for their pains the thanks of
half-a-dozen members of the community.
On the contrary, we suspect that they will find
they have stirred in, a matter, with a view to for-
ward progress, in which they will'be compelled-by
the voice of the nation to retrograde. When we
see such men as the Mastermans, the Laboucheres,
and Buxtons indignantly repudiating the wish for
Sunday deliveries, we need not wonder that the
cry is echoed from provincial communities. York-
shire and Lancashire, we are proud to observe,
protest against the necessity of their present Sun-
day deliveries. In these days of rapid locomotion
we can surely spare the desecration of that day,
and allow the tired post-office official the same rest
that we enjoy ourselves. Her Majesty's ministers
have stirred the straw. We trust it will be taken
up ; and that in the provinces, as in the metropolis,
we shall be spared the favour (I) of a Sunday de-
livery of letters.