The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-29 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

DEATHS OF 'CHILDREN FROM THE INJUDICIOUS ADMI-
NISTRATION OF OPIATES.—In our report of an important
case of the death of a child, in our last publication, it was
inadvertently stated in effect, that the coroner, Mr. Curry,
in his remarks to the jury, had condemned the practice of
mere druggists " dispensing medicines." The mistake
would doubtless be apparent to most of our r:
much as all druggists are dispensers of medicines.
should have been reported in the strong language of the
coroner, that " prescribing druggists were a pest to
society."

tiers, inss-
lt

In the letter of " Pacianus," inserted in our last there were
two typographical errors. Instead of " such as reading
the seven penitentim psalms," read " such as reading the
seven penitential psalms ;" and instead of " the penitent
paying by his links," rea " the penitent paying by his
, works."

We have received the sum of ss. from the Rev. Mr. Bates
towards the " Case of Distress" recently advertised in
this paper.

Ebt &tanbarb.

TUESDAY

MORNING, DECEMBER 29, 1840

Whatever difference of opinion may exist upon Lord
Palmerston's foreign policy, it is not disputed by any
party that the Whigs have enjoyed a large share of
luck. They have had it in India, in Syria, in China,
in Canada—abroad more than at home, but everywhere
a little—and the year " eighteen hundred and forty"—
an annus mirabilis of good fortune in their annals—is
now about to terminate, leaving them in possession of
all the honours and all the emoluments of their posi-
tion. There is something, however, in this universal
and unanimous ascription of luck which must propor-
tionably substract from the " absolute wisdom" of
their administration. People may rejoice to find them-
selves happily delivered from dangers and perils which
put them in some alarm, and bless their stars that they
had a "lucky" ministry at the helm, who, if entitled
to little credit for nautical science, have evidently shewn
that there is a providence which, under peculiar cir-
cumstances, supplies what is wanting in the feeble and
incapable, or corrects the blunders 'of the rash and ob-
stinate. Success is certainly an admirable cloak for
error, and, like charity, doth cover " the multitude of
sins," At the same time we do not travel with those
who dwell with excessive complacency on the aspect of
our foreign relations. The amount of success attribu-
ted to the administration of that department seems to
us to be exaggerated; and whatever good fortune has
attended it, we attribute, not to the sagacity of Lord
Palmerston, or the foresight and preparedness of mi-
nisters, but to the reliquice of those institutions, and of
that admirable system which has long since raised this
country to that proud elevation which she holds in the
world—the first and foremost amongst the nations of
the earth. It is not to the men whose unpardonable
neglect of the Navy would have placed us in jeopardy,
had a war suddenly commenced, that we shall ascribe
the glory of a .great naval achievement. Let Napier
wear the laurels which he has fairly won. Assuredly
we shall not bind them upon the brow of Lord Pal-
merston. But is the Syrian, question definitively set-
tled ? Is the decheanee of Mehemet Ali indeed recalled
by the Sultan ? or would the most satisfactory ar-
rangement of the whole matter in dispute remove from
us the hazard of that "incident" to the affair which
was the only one of real consequence throughout—
namely, a collision with the French ? The collision,
indeed, has been avoided hitherto on our part happily
in such a manner as not to tarnish, in the slightest de-
gree, but to add fresh lustre to the glory of old Eng-
land; but surely it would he monstrous to tie up in
one bundle all the grand characteristics of the nation,
to which, under Providence, we may rightfully attri-
bute the avoidance in question, and fry them at the
feet of Lord Palmerston as an appropriation due only
to himself ! We know not what may be the precise
amount of influence which his lordship possesses over
the Press, or whether there be any more than the one
evening paper in the metropolis under the slightest ob-
ligation to laud his wisdom or extol his measures ; but
there can be no mistake on this point—namely, that
the tone taken almost universally by the English jour-
nals with respect to the bullying menaces and fanfar-
ronade of the French, came very powerfully in aid of
other demonstrations of British power, and that this
tone could not have been communicated to the Press
by any one member of the Cabinet, or the whole of
them together. How came the Press then to hit it so
nicely, and to adopt it so uniformly ? Very obviously
from this cause—that the Press consulted the feelings
of the nation, and faithfully and correctly expressed
them. Its conductors and writers might possibly have
consulted only their own feelings, and have spoken but
their own spontaneous sentiments; but they are Eng-
lishmen accustomed to think and feel as Englishmen
upon all great national questions which concern the
exterior relations of the kingdom; and when they
treated the pompous preparations, and all the noise
and bluster of the French with quiet disregard—when
they pursued the even tenour of their way undisturbed
by the furies of M. Thiers, and all that costly spectacle
which he was exhibiting before the eyes of astonished
Europe, they could 'not but be identified with, and
speak as the organs of the universal English people.
In fact, let us only weigh the foreign minister fairly
and exactly in the balance, and instead of bringing
down the scales clanking to the ground with the pon-
derous load of his virtues, we shall find him actually
kicking the beam from a marvellous lack in the most
essential qualities of a British statesman. We grant
him fortunate ; but there is no prestige accompanying
the individual : his good fortune is the mere accident
of his position. It is the eminent domestic virtues of
the people of England that constitute the strength of
their foreign policy. Brilliant victories and territorial
conquests, or even the most successful course of di-
plomacy, are not the true criterion of national great-
ness properly understood; and no rulers with whom
the cultivation and maintenance of the domestic cha-

ratter is not a paramount and primary concern—
Whatever " luck" may attend them in the administra-

tion of exterior concerns—are worthy of their posts.
Now in this respect, we submit that the Whigs have
not only a character to make, but a character to lose.
The world lays all before them " where to choose their
place of rest ;" the ground has to be cleared for their
exhibition; everything remains yet to be done; their
very " schoolmaster" is " abroad." The tastes which
heretofore they have exhibited are anything but na-
tional ; the education which they would impart to the
people is, as we have hinted, of foreign extraction, and
their very supplement to its deficiencies is the espio-
nage of a universal police system, copied also, we need
not say, from abroad. Are we to ascribe, then, to the
liberalism of Whiggery, what has been fairly earned

by the essentially conservative character of Toryism ?
The " luck" of Whigs . does not alter their character,
and can never reconcile us to their principles. What-
ever they have had, we trace up to the sterling virtues
and righteous sentiments still prevalent in the country,
which have stood firm against all the attempts of the
Whigs and their foreign-educated advisers—Popish
priests and Jesuits from Ireland included. We wish
to settle accounts at the close of the year, and, upon a
careful examination of the books, we are happy to find
that we owe them nothing. We set their domestic
against their foreign policy, and we take comfort in
discovering that the balance in' their favour is just—

When the mendicant impostor, who sways the coun-
cils of her Majesty's. ministers, makes sale of his influ-
ence to any party or cause, in the transfer is included
not only a parliamentary tail of some forty-odd joints,
hut an additional appendage of the same nature, and
of still more formidable length, which is not, however,
entitled to dangle from his most sweet person within
the walls of the House of Commons. The Roman
Catholic priesthood of Ireland—the reverend disciples
of Peter Dens and "John Tuam"--form the joints of
this auxiliary appendage ; and whilst Daniel and the

" tail portable" are pursuing their virtuous occupa-
tions on the ministerial benches, the supplementary
engine is left to work out the various engagements of
its proprietor in his own country—to wind its serpent
form over the face of unhappy Ireland, and to defile
with its impurities, or to goad with its venom, the
hearts of her wretched and debased population.
Amongst his other claims upon the consideration of
the weakheaded portion of the community, it will be
remembered that of late this shameless impostor has
paraded rather ostentatiously his connexion with the
Anti-Slavery Society; and expatiated loudly upon the
services which he has himself rendered to the cause of
the negro. Upon one .occasion, it is true, those ser-
vices were repudiated. The arch-agitator was not
allowed, on the occasion of introducing the African
colonisation scheme, to raise his voice in the presence
of the consort of royalty. But that temporary morti-
fication was afterwards abundantly rewarded, the suf-
ferer being received with open arms by the followers
of the Rev. Mr. Knibb, the persevering opponents. of
our West Indian colonists. Sir Thos. Powell Buxton
wanted the aid of moral influence and high personal
character to his colonisation scheme ; and that aid Mr.
Daniel O'Connell, M.P. for Dublin, had not to confer.
The Anti-Slavery Society, on the contrary,—whose
professions, reduced to practice, do seem to us to con-
t.,ist more in a bitter and deeply-rooted hostility to the
interests of the West Indian planters, than in any re-
gard to humanity in the abstract,—were satisfied even
with the advocacy of the betrayer of the factory chil-.
dren (on an occasion and for a consideration which
Sir Thomas Potter, Knight, late sham Mayor of Man-
chester, could explain); and according the Member
for Dublin (for another valuable consideration doubt-
less) is now the active and honoured (?) organ of that
society.

In this character, at a late repeal meeting held at
the Corn Exchange, Dublin, the " impostor" was
taken with a fit of virtuous horror at the recognition
by Lord Palmerston of the independence of Texas—a
slave-holding and slave-trafficking country. With
this portion of his performance, however, we have at
present nothing to do, although it may perhaps be-
come a question hereafter whether the Texan republic
is not as worthy of our alliance as another slave-hold-
ing republic, not far from it, which is held up as a
model for even Great Britain to imitate. Our object
is only to shew the readiness with which he makes the
Irish priesthood—the supplementary tail of which we

have spot

en—the agents and instruments of any
scheme upon the working out of which he has set his
mind, or for which he has " got his price."

It appears, then,—seipso testante,—that vessels are
at present being chartered from some of the ports of
Ireland, for the purpose of receiving emigrants to
Texas and to the island of Jamaica; and the " impos-
tor" is horrified at the prospect of his starving fellow-
countrymen venturing themselves to either of these
shocking places,—the former being cursed with the
actual presence of slavery, and the latter, although a
free British colony, being under the ban of Messrs.
Knibb and Co., and possessing in addition an un-
healthy climate—a clinnite, by---the way, in which the
same reverend gentleman and a number of his tribe
both live and grow fat, and which the present Gover-
nor Metcalfe, in his last address, describes as being
" in the highlands delightful and healthy for Europeans
and inhabitants of all countries." At any risk, how-
ever, emigration to proscribed Jamaica—we omit Texas,
for we do not think O'Connell cares a rush for it—

must be put a stop to ; the Jamaica planters must not
be allowed to avail themselves of the supply of free
labour which might offer itself, and the securing of
which is admitted to be the only means to ward off
imminent ruin from the colony, and to prevent the
favourite measure of the colonists being an utter
failure. A committee is accordingly to be formed in
Ireland—a committee of repealers—" for watching all
sea-ports, so that when vessels should arrive in them
looking for emigrants to Jamaica, the Catholic clergy
should be instructed to warn the inhabitants of the dan-
ger and horrible consequences (!) of embarking in these
vessels" !

Here, then, the supplementary tail is at once set in
motion, to terrify the poor benighted bogtrotter with
the awful story of danger and "horrible consequences."
How coolly and dictatorially the various joints are to
"be instructed" ! In what a state of absolute bon-
dage must be these spiritual instructors of the people,
who can be thus peremptorily called upon to become
the blind agents of this man's unprincipled ambition!
Yet it is plain that their aid is part and parcel of the
contract, whether it be made with the enemies of the
West Indian body, or with the Lichfield-house con-
spirators—whether its object be to cast further obloquy
and further difficulty in the path of an already impo-
verished class of our fellow-countrymen, or to precipi-
tate another " Rathcormac," whose tale of blood may
furnish to Whig-Radicalism a theme for electioneering
controversy, and filthy and unprincipled personal
slander. Faugh ! the contemplation is sickening.

We are sorry to perceive, from the last number of
the Limerick Standard, that a public meeting was held
in that city, on Wednesday last, for the purpose of
dissuading emigrants from proceeding to Jamaica.
From the imperfect report which our contemporary
furnishes of the proceedings which took place on the
occasion, we infer that the good folks of Limerick
have been egregiously imposed upon by a Mr. Moore,
who is described as one of the delegates of the Anti-
Slavery Society. Who this individual may be it does
not concern us to inquire; with his statements, how-
ever, we shall deal as we find them. 'Phis individual
undertook to denounce the " iniquitous system of
emigration to Jamaica," forgetting that all the iniquity
of that system consists in the opposition of free labour
in our own colonies to the system of slave labour in
foreign countries. This is the simple object which the
Emigration Society seek to accomplish; and in the
accomplishment of this object they employ neither
falsehood, force, stratagem, nor any other unfair
means. The plans of the society are before the pub-
lic; and we defy any. man of candour to point out
anything objectionable
in those plans. They do not
involve anything which is in the slightest degree dis-
reputable. They do not contain any statements which
cannot be verified ; neither do they hold out any pro-
mises which may not be literally fulfilled.
The anti-slavery delegate proceeds to state that the
" whole weight of the guilt " of encouraging emigra-
tion from Ireland to Jamaica "lay upon the legislative
council of that island, with Sir Charles Metcalfe at
their head." That body is accused of holding out
inducements to the Irish peasantry to proceed to
Jamaica, telling them that they will have to work hut
nine hours in the day. This is true; but we cannot
discover any thing "iniquitous" in such a repre-
sentation. But the delegate roundly asserts that "it
would be impossible for an European to work in the
open air four hours in the climate of Jamaica, and
live." This assertion can only apply to some of the
lowlands in the island, and in those it was never in-
tended to locate the Irish emigrants. These are
wanted for the more elevated districts, where nine hours'
labour in the open air is scarcely half so severe as that
which the Irish peasantry undergo in England during
harVest time. The manner in which this veracious
delegate seeks to prove his assertion is so unique and
original, that we cannot resist the temptation to quote