The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-10-20 00:00:00

no more information than that fur-
e a very• definite reply. He had
The power to enforce the claim

Just stand over. It is generally im-
t any letters received on Monday.

Ebe tibtrpool &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, OCT. 20, 1846

It is an old game of the Whig Radical party when

they cannot win a fight in a fair stand up fashion,
to attempt to win it by guile. Their politics have
for years past been at a woful discount in this
borough—bear witness their miserable minority in
our Town Council. And now they approach us,
with oily tongue and bated breath, insinuating,
" good sirs,—kind sirs,—let politics be put out of
sight on this occasion. The important matters
which the Council has now to deal with are not po-
litical matters at all —have nothing to do with the
question,— Whig or Tory ?—at all. Return us on
our personal merits alone !" In dealing with the
merits or the modesty of this petition, we shall not
resort to the past, although it reminds us strongly
of the adage, " When the Devil was sick," &c.
We shall confine ourselves to the task of ascertain-
ing the amount of sincerity by which it is dictated,
and the prospect of any concession on our part
being justly appreciated.
We readily acknowledge that there is at present
before the Council, or likely to come before it, very

little business to which any difference of political
opinion amongst its members ought to intervene,
to prevent their applying themselves harmoniously,
and with the public good as their sole object. We
admit, too, that we want in the Council men of
practical business talent above every other qualifica-
tion, save that of honesty; and business talent and
honesty are confined to no party. But we must
ever bear in mind that there is a great question in
the distance, involving a great principle for the
maintenance of which the ward constituencies of
Liverpool fought through an arduous up-hill fight ;
and only rested when they saw it, as they thought,
permanently established in safety—we refer to the
question of scriptural education in the schools of
the corporation. Suppose, then, we lay aside all
political considerations as the test of fitness for
Corporate honours. Suppose—what we should be
very sorry to admit—that business talent is more
abundant in the Whig Radical party than amongst
the Conservatives, and that we strengthen materially
the former party in the Council ; is this quasi-po-
litical question of the schools to be considered a
shelved question—one which the voice of the con,
atituencies has already decided ? Or when we have
given Whig Radicalism an accession of strength,
are we to have that strength, of which, in our sim-
plicity they have beguiled us, by their insidious
business capability better than political

lotto—

principle"—turned against us ? No sane man can
doubt that the latter will be the result of such a con-
cession as that to which we are urged. Our oppo-
nents, and the opponents of the scriptural system,
know it and contemplate it. They feel the hopeless-
ness of an open attack upon the sound Protestant
principle of the people of Liverpool ; and they are
rr

king of sanatory questions, water questions,
drainage, sewerage, and other non-political matters,
a kind of Trojan horse, for their introduction to the
citadel, where the blow is to be struck against the
object of their intensest hatred.

But let us look at their own conduct thus far in
the present elections as a test of what our own ought
be. We want business men, par excellence, they
say, for the carrying of such measures as the Sana-
tory Bill : men whose services on committees will be
made valuable by the possession of practical know-

Ige. Such a man, no one will deny, is Mr. Samuel
Both parties admit his eminent fitness for
office at a period like the present, when there are
sueh questions to be dealt with. Well, so long ago
as in May or June last, this gentleman was requested
and consented to stand for the representation of
Rodney-street Ward, replacing a Conservative, who
retired from the council this year. He sought to
oust no man forcibly of his pre-existing claim to the
seat. What would have been the conduct of the
Whig-Radical party in this case, had their argu-
ment, that business ability, and not practical opinion,
in proper test for a candidate, been sincere? Mr.
—e's return would hare been unopposed. But
28 been their conduct ? Just what any one,
th their hollow hypocrisy, would have
as been attacked in ribald
wall throughout the ward and
gainst him as a trades-

1.1
Hoime

cquainted wi
Kpected

Mr. Holm

ards upon e

e borougi

man, in the execution of an important public
work, have been trumped up by the Whig-Radical
cress. And even, after he has triumphantly righted
iimself in the face of a public meeting of the ward
which he seeks to represent, the charges are repeated,
ais honest explanation is explained away; his straight-
brward English is tortured and twisted to give a
teeming fairness to the reiterated venom, and the

able before all the world that it is
,el Hohne, the excellent tradesman,