The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-11-17 00:00:00

forefathers has imposed upon us ! We live in an era
of enlightenment ; and provided he have the ordinary
faculties of mankind, and is of right liberal principles,
what matter if the man of our choice be a Musselman
or a Hindoo. The nearer to the church the further
from any chance of whig-radical preferment !
We must repeat our confident expectation that this
appointment is one which cannot but be advantageous
to the cause of true conservatism. It is high time that
professing churchmen and Protestant dissenters should
see the tendency of their alliance with popery and infi-
delity in political matters. In the abstract it may be
easy to argue that religion and politics have no con-
nexion with each other; but in practice it will one day
or other be found that their connexion is intimate.
There are few men who would boast of their connexion
with a community of which an. Infidel is the elected
head ; and between Infidelity and Socinianism the
choice is only one of degree. The point of the wedge
admitted, the entrance of the entire instrument will be
matter of easy accomplishment.
As a whole the proceedings of the present session of

the council, so far as it has gone, will, we trust, not be
lost upon our fellow-townsmen. We ourselves were
quite prepared for this, and are prepared for furtler
outrages upon decency. Whig-radicalism, although
still supreme in the council, is at the last gasp. The
head of the incubus is bruised, but the tail is still lively
as ever ; and it is the nature of all venomous things to
sting with the more deadly effect the nearer they ap-
proach extinction. We fully anticipate from the ma-
jority of the present council a more marked disrespect
for public opinion and a more insulting tone towards
their political opponents than has distinguished the
party in their more " palmy" days ; and we are there-
fore the less surprised at the various impertinencies
which characterise the proceedings of Monday and
Tuesday's council.

The Mercury of Friday last has a long, dull, and
verbose article on the subject of the corporation
schools, in which the writer endeavours to prove that
the Bible neither is, nor ever was, excluded from those
schools. This question lies in a nut-shell, and may he
disposed of in a very few words. The Education
Committee, some five years ago, decided upon adopting
the Irish system of national education in the corpora-
tion schools. This system notoriously excludes the
Bible from its schools, and only permits an hour to
be set apart for separate religious instruction, not under

the schoolmaster's inspection, but under the voluntary
superintendence of the various ministers of religion.
The resolution adopting this Bible-excluding system
has never, to this day, as far as we are cognizant of
the matter, been rescinded by either the Committee or
the Council. Let that resolution be first rescinded,
and then we shall be prepared to enter into an argu-
ment with the Mercury. Until that is done, all the
assertions of the Mercury are not worth a rotten nut.

We dare say that our readers have occasionally met
with some male or female tabby, whose -on dits have
passed invariably for law—whose jokes have been re-
peated again and again to admiring circles—whose
pilfered wit has always met with the ready laugh—and
whose superhuman displays of learning have furnished
a theme for the wondering comments of gaping auditors.
Woe to the unfortunate might whose daring tongue
should venture to disturb the complacency of such an
oracle=to question the correctness of her word—to
doubt the originality of her witticisms, or deny the
accuracy of her note-book !
We ourselves are unluckily in this predicament. We
have offended the nice sense of delicacy which distin-
guishes the respectable old lady whose editorial lucu-
brations adorn the pages of the Liverpool Mercury.
We have rudely impugned the verity of her oracular
wisdom ; and are not to be honoured with more of her
sweet conversation until we have learned to clothe our
remarks in more gentlemanly language. Mercy on us !
How are we to survive under so lamentable a depriva-
tion ?

Sad, however, and cruel as we feel it to be, we are,
nevertheless, bound to submit. In the performance of
our duty to the public we cannot avoid being sometimes
cruel, but are never willingly rude. On the occasion
which has given such heavy offence to the Mercury we
convicted that veracious print of having presented to
its readers a mass of senseless misrepresentation, pur-
porting to be a report of the proceedings of the late
municipal election : and, in proof, we particularized an
instance in which the reporter had studiously omitted
the details of a judicial inquiry, in order that he might
be able to falsify the result. We did this in plain lan-
guage certainly. Our object was to spew, and we did
shew pretty distinctly, that, however ingenious its quips
and cranks, its riddles and charades, the reports of
passing events which that paper contains are rendered
utterly worthless by being distorted, and even falsified,
•
to serve the pnrposes of party.
It was matter of difficulty to rebut what we had ad-
vanced, and therefore it is that our contemporary takes
refuge in—his gentility ! Even in that refuge, how-
-1 ever, we shall be compelled to disturb him, by bringing
before his notice an instance of gross and flagrant lying
in his last publication. In a leading paragraph, headed
" North Toxteth Ward," after alluding briefly to the
melancholy decease of Mr. W. W. Currie, the writer
goes on to say, "The tories, with their usual disregard
of decency, on the same day, and almost immediately
after the melancholy intelligence was known, called a
meeting, organized their canvassers, and commenced
at once by sending out thirty of their body, who were
at work until one o'clock in the morning !" Now,
reader, what " taffeta words"—what silk-paper phrases
can we possibly find to characterize such a statement as
this ? We have the authority of the candidate himself,
and of a numerous public meeting of his committee
and friends, for declaring that, from first to last, the
Mercury's statement is the very reverse of true. The
disregard of decency spoken of was evinced by Mr.
Rathbone and his friends, who were busily engaged in
convassing the ward before Mr. Smith's friends took a
single step to secure his return !
We will not be so uncharitable as to say that our
contemporary was aware of this fact. It served the
purpose of his party, however, to circulate the slander,
and to do this the Mercury is the ready and servile
tool. The lie is now in every tap-room and beerhouse
in the ward ; and, on what Mr. Thomas Bolton would
term the authority of an anonymous editor of a news-
paper, Mr. Alexander Smith and his friends are to be
twitted at every step of their canvass with inhumanity
and indecency. The sole end and aim of the slanderer
will thus ever be answered whilst conservative supine-
ness allows this locomotive register-office for clerks
and servants out of place to boast of its "extensive
circulation," and to poesess the power of scattering its
venom so widely.

The alarming frequency and the fatal consequences
of railway accidents, within the last few weeks, loudly
demands the interference of the legislature. The public
will not rest satisfied unless something is done in order
to obviate, as much as possible, such lamentable ca-
tastrophes. •

It must be evident that the paucity of accidents on
the Liverpool and Manchester, the Grand Junction,
and several other lines, when compared with what has
taken place on the lines on which so many lives have
been recently sacrificed, must be taken as a proof of
superior care and management on the former lines.
Culpability must, therefore, rest somewhere in con-
nection with the recent accidents. There must be some
lack of judicious management, some imperfection in
the regulation and superintendence of certain lines, to
account for the great disparity in the number of acci-
dents to which we allude. It behoves the directors of
those lines which have of late been so much prejudieed
with the public, to institute the most rigid inquiries
into the subject. Amidst the conflicting statements
which have been published respecting the causes of the
late accidents it is frequently difficult to point out
where the blame rests; but that blame does attach in
some quarter, we feel justified in assuming, from the
circumstance that accidents are of such rare occur-
rence on some of the old-established lines. The
directors of the lines which have obtained so melancholy
a notoriety within the last few weeks may rest satisfied
that a material loss of public patronage will eventually
result, unless they adopt some better regulations for
ensuring the safety of their passengers. Justice and
humanity, as well as the dictates of common sense,
loudly demand an inquiry into this subject.
The frightful and heartrending casualties recorded
in our paper of this day afford additional reasons for
pressing this subject upon the minds of railway direc-