The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-09 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Our contemporary of the Mercury, baffled and angry, at the
exposures to which we have subjected him, took leave of
us on Friday with a most melancholy attempt at the mag-
nificent. We can readily excuse any little ebullition of
soreness in the Mercury, and be amused at the mixture of
vanity and inflated silliness which our ancient friend en-
deavours to palm upon the world for wisdom. But it
would be really cruel to allow him to leave us under the
delusion which still seems to possess him with regard to
the identity of the editor of the Standard.
Speaking of that individually, the Mercury says " at
Present he is safe ; but there are some who know his se-
cret, and to their contempt we leave him !" From this
and former remarks of the same sort, it is evident that the
worthy twaddler has some very odd notion about us. We
can just conjecture the possibility that some of the illu-
minati—some of the `• lesser lights," who have been accus-
tomed to revolve round the orbit of Mercury—may have
fallen under the displeasure of that planet, and be sus-
pected of irradiating our columns with his borrowed intel-
ligence. We are perfectly ready to admit, with our con-
temporary, that nothing could equal the atrocity of such
conduct. After having hobnobbed with the Mercury,—
punned with him—quibbled with him ;—for such a man,
who for anything we know, may even be a minister and an
LL.D.. to turn round and expose him is too bad ! So
complete a pagan, however, we assure our contemporary,
does not exist ; and we entreat of him to moderate the ran-
cour which he at present entertains against the supposed
Culprit- Liverpool could not afford to lose two Such shin-
ing lights as the Mercury and his quondam friend ; and
we fear that were they to meet under the present mis aken
impression of our contemporary, a tragedy similar to that
of the Kilkenny cats might unfortunately be the result !

(17,br klbrrpoot -;-z,tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 9, 1840.

We have received intelligence from China to the 22d
of February, inclusive. It appears that Admiral Kwan
had determined upon the formation of a navy some-
what different from that hitherto possessed by China.
engagement with the Valve and, Hyacinth must
have satisfied him that his miserable kinks had no
chance whatever before an English man-of-war. We
find him, therefore, determined upon possessing as
'natty large merchantmen as he can lay his hands upon,
for the purpose of having them fitted up as ships of
war. He is said to have purchased one large English
vessel, and to have been, in. treaty with the owners of
several other vessels. He is also said to be anxious to
contract for the building of a number of gun-boats
after the European models.
The Imperial Government had.continued to express
its entire confidence in the proceedings of the High
Commissioner Lin, who had been invested with ad-
dftional,authority as Governor of the Kwantung and
k‘vangsee provinces.

A letter received at Lloyds' brings accounts that a
large body of Chinese soldiers was approaching Macao,
to seize Captain Elliot and other English subjects. The
°!Ily ships of war in China were -the Volage and Ilya
einth. The ships Syeden and Vansittart had been
seized at Whampoa, the Chinese considering the sale of
these vessels as fictitious. The ships Danshe Konige
and Norden had also been confiscated.

„ The Pekin Gazette states that piracy was carried on
extensively on'the coast of Shang Tung and Leaou
rung. "IneVeiy-e-re-ek and—corner of this coast (lan,
gers await the unwary, and before they can utter a cry
10r help the whole cargo is gone. The Fokien and
Clinton junks are accused of committing these depre-
dations. Strict orders had, been issued to the autho-
rities to discover and punish the mauraders.
Several opium smugglers had availed themselves of
the passage bOats and proceeded , with the pernicious
drib .to the provincial city and other places.

- In.another column we publish several important doc-
linlents relating to the intercourse of the British with
The. overland mail may be daily expected
With much later intelligence.

Grey hairs are certainly an honour to the good man;
but when we find them associated with vice in its most
loathsome and repulsive shapes—when we find them
covering the head of a man who has uniformly devoted
an his energies to the prostration of all that is great
and virtuous—whose whole career has been marked
by unmitigated villany and unparalleled hypocrisy—
and whose bloated existence is almost a libel upon hu-
kanity—then " the frost of age" not only ceases to
iaspire us with any degree of respect or veneration,
but serves to augment our disgust, and to swell the vo-
lume of our indignation.
The reader, in perusing the foregoing remarks, in-
voluntarily thinks of the hoary, mendicant agitator,
Who is emphatically the curse of Ireland and the arch-
enemy of England. He is right. This " bold, bad
Inan" is in " the sere and yellow leaf " of life; hut
does not that very circumstance tend still more to rouse
,every feeling of virtuous indignation against the tur-
"Went miscreant ? How can we feel any regard for a
;Ilan who, like the Jesuit O'Connell, has spent his whole
fellow-creatures,
in plotting against the peace and happiness of his
'llOw-creatures, and the very pabulum of whose exist-
ellee—the loathsome food upon which he has fattened
----has been treason of the darkest hue ? The longer
°'Connell lives, the more aggravating are his crimes,
and the more appalling. his guilt. Tottering on the
brink of the grave, with all his sins " uncancelled,
Unannealed, and unconfessed," the aged miscreant
seems more inveterately bent upon mischief than ever.
He omits no opportunity that offers itself for vilifying
and traducing all that is great or good in the land.
There is no occasion, however unsuitable for such an
unhallowed occupation, that he neglects availing him-
self of, for the purpose of pouring forth his viperous
slander on the heads of his Protestant fellow-subjects.
Our radical contemporaries are fond of construing the
exposure of Popish abominations into abuse of the
Papists ; and loud and long are their denunciations of
tuch men as Mr. M‘Neile, Mr. M'Ghee, &c., for this
irnputed animosity : but they forget the truculent,
filthy, cowardly, and murder-inciting language of the
man who, through his despicable tools in the cabinet,
now rules the destinies of England. Let them look a
little more into the addresses of Daniel O'Connell—let
them wade through his abominable tirades against
Nland and Englishmen let them examine the
coarse, vulgar, and mendacious epithets which pervade
every epistle that emanates from the pen of this great-
eat and "most incomprehensible of all vagabonds"-
11(1 then let them learn to moderate a little their vim-
"lA declamations against those who would teach the
?°or deluded Papists of Ireland the error of their ways,
and who would rescue them from the galling oppres
41°0 in which they are held by their priestly tyrants.
When we reflect upon the atrocious character of the
language and proceedings of Daniel O'Connell, espe-
eiallY in reference to the people of England—when we
reflect that he has repeatedly designated us as a nation
er "alien, Sassenach oppressors"—when we call to mind
EN foul slanders against the wives and daughters of
Iglishmen—we need not be surprised that his pree-
Zictlee in a respectable assemblage of Englishmen and
;11glishwomen should be regarded as odious as that of
crawl
host filthy and repulsive of all the vermin that
:awl upon the face of the earth. The presence of such
Illan in such an assembly must be felt to be an into-
lerabletii_ nuisance ; and it was so felt at the great anti-
OnrY meeting held last week at Exeter Hall. The
ihutrusion of his brazen face on a meeting graced by
e Presence.of so much that was good and lovely, and
which was presided over by the youthful and amiable
Other
of her Majesty, could not be regarded in any
light than as a premeditated and unpardonable

insult. The meeting, as our readers are already aware,
took care to let O'Connell know that such was the

light in which his conduct on the occasion was viewed.

He was told, in language and by gestures too plain and
unequivocal to be for one moment mistaken, that his
company was not wanted. This impatience of his pre-
sence seems to have stung the old serpent himself to
the very quick, as was, indeed, evident from the fright-
ful contortions of his countenance. Nor was the tor-
ture inflicted on the mind of the wretched old sinner, by
the openly expressed contempt of the audience, a tran-
sitory pain. His feelings of mortification accompanied
him to the seclusion of his closet, where, in the agony
of wounded pride and thwarted ambition, he set about
devising the best means of revenge. His usual resource,
the venal ministerial press, he knew to be at his com-
mand. Through this medium, therefore, he determined
to retaliate upon those who, at the Exeter Hall meeting,
had treated him according to his deserts. His letter to
the editor of the Morning Chronicle, which was repub-
lished on Saturday in that congenial vehicle of slander,
the Liverpool Chronicle, was the result of this determi-
nation. In that precious epistle, O'Connell has " out-
heroded Herod himself," or to express the same thing
more classically, " banged Banagher hollow." It is an
ebullition of concentrated spleen and malice to which
O'Connell -himself has never furnished a parallel.
While writing it we can readily imagine that his blood
was careering with tremendous velocity through his
veins, and that he was almost choked with rage and
fury. At first, however, he appears to have struggled
for the mastery over his feelings. •He commences by de-
nying the " soft impeachment " that he had attempted
to address the meeting, and proceeds to allege that his
sole object in going to the meeting was " to testify by
his presence" and his "ready co-operation, if required,
his participation in (what at least appeared to be) a great
movement in favour of humanity and religion." After
thus insinuating that the ostensible object of the meet-
ing was not the real one, he prates about " partisan
trick or dexterity," and the " paltry underworking of
national, religious, and personal malignity," and says
that it was not well "to treat Prince Albert in such a
manner as to make him appear a party to such culpable
feelings." Here is the rub. What has evidently gra-
velled O'Connell more than anything else is, the cer-
tainty that the Queen would, for once, be made
acquainted with the real estimate of the mendicant's
character, formed by the people of England. The idea
that THE TRUTH should at length, penetrate into the
recesses of the Royal closet, caused him to writhe again
in the agony of despair.
O'Connell asserts that he attended the meeting
"that Ireland might be represented, at least by silent
acquiescence, in the great work of annihilating slavery;"
and yet this self-constituted " representative of all
Ireland," is but the mouthpiece of the Popish priests
of Ireland, who keep the miserable peasantry of that
country in the most galling, abject bondage that ever
could befal humanity. Truly, the tool'of these priestly
tyrants was a very fit deputation to an anti-slavery
meeting. His cant about freedom is just as tolerable
as the same language would be if addressed by a
Virginian planter to his writhing and lacerated slaves,
while under the torture of the whip.
After complaining, in a mawkish, puling, and whining
tone, about the exclusion of Ireland from participating,
in his person, in the proceedings of the meeting at
Exeter Hall, O'Connell gives vent to his feelings in
the following exclamation :—" We do live in a strange
world, in which benevolence and hypocrisy, tuft-hunting
and ingratitude, mix so well together, that the anti-
slavery prelate cannot distinguish the ingredients one
from the other; but swallows the whole dose with
heaven-turned eyes and earthly alacrity—' of the
earth, eartby.' " If we tightly comprehend this strange
emanation from a bemuddled brain, we must apply
the charge of tuft-hunting and ingratitude to Mr.
Fowell Buxton and his friends, and the charge of
hypocrisy to the distinguished prelates, noblemen, and
gentlemen who took a conspicuous part in the pro-
ceedings at the meeting. We leave Mr. Fowell Bux-
ton to answer the former charge for himself. As to
the latter, we fling it in the face of the mendacious
scoundrel who has had the audacity to bring it forward.
We defy O'Connell to instance a single individual
among those who surrounded Prince Albert at Exeter
Hall to whom such a charge is applicable. Hypocrisy,
indeed ! Never was, there hypocrisy more barefaced
than that of him who would rivet the chains of Papal
tyranny on the, whole population of Great Britain
while. he, cants most
,glibly alsout annihilating negrU
slavery.

We have neither space nor inclination to wade through
the whole of the nauseating compound. of. cant and
hypocrisy, slander and abuse, which is presented in
this letter. We look upon it as thi,malignant effusion
of a man who has been taught a salutary lesson, from
which he refuses to profit, and which has mortified him
to the very core. He has been taught his proper
position in society, and he accuses hiS teachers of giving
way to the "low, grovelling, paltry littleness of sectarian,
national, and personal malignity." He has, been. told,
in a manner that must have flashed conviction to his
inmost soul, that Englishmen little tolerate his
cant as they can brook his bloated insolence; and he
forthwith yells out a mad shout of defiance, and calls
them " knaves." Does lie apply this epithet to Prince
Albert ?

The House of Commons resolved itself into a com-
mittee on the Colonial Passengers Bill, on Thursday
evening last. In the course of the discussion which
took place on the subject Lord John Russell explained
his views at some length with respect to the introduction
of the Hill Coolies into the Mauritius. He gave it as
his opinion that it would be absolutely unnecessary to
maintain the principle of the order in council as far as
the Mauritius was concerned ; but he disapproved
entirely of the policy of permitting their emigration to
the West Indies. On the whole question, however,
he professed himself to be favourable to the freedom of
labour. How he can reconcile this avowal with his
positive refusal to confer on the West Indies the privi-
lege which he is disposed to accord to the Mauritius,
appears to us a complete enigma. If there were any
material difference in the climate—if the West Indies
were proved to be more fatal than the Mauritius, or
than Hindoostan itself, to the constitution of the Hill
Cooly—if the treatment which the few immigrants of
this class who have reached British Guiana have met
with had been worse than that which they have expe-
rienced at the Mauritius—if, in short, the experiment,
quoud British Guiana, had proved a failure—there
would then have been some show of reason for making
the distinction.

We quite agree with Lord John Russell when he
says that " it would be a strange thing to say to a man
almost starving, you must not quit your own country,
in which you can get neither employment nor food, to
go to another, in which your services are needed, and
in which they are likely to be so amply rewarded as
that you might soon expect to return to your home in
improved circumstances." But we maintain that it
would be an equally strange thing to say to this
starving man, "you shall not go where you like to
procure that remunerative employment. It is true
that your labour is needed in the West Indies, and that
it would be better rewarded there than in any other
part of the world; but the only market we shall permit
you to take it to is the Mauritius." The one restric-
tion must be as unreasonable as the other, as must be
evident to every one but a purblind Whig legislator.
But, then, "look at the distance," says the clear-
sighted and consistent Secretary for the Colonies. If
two months difference in the length of the voyage
is to be considered an adequate reason for excluding
the Hill Coolies from the West Indies, what shall we
say of the emigration of the natives of Great Britain
and Ireland to the Cape of Good Hope, to Van
Dieman's Land to New South Wales, to South or
West Australia, and to New Zealand, the whole of
which places, with the exception of the Cape, are far
more distant from this country than the West Indies
are from Hindoostan ? If the reason is good for any
thing, it ought to put a complete stop to the colonisa-
tion of the Australasian territories. Lord John Rus-
sell, like many other shallow reasoners, has, in this
case, spoiled his argument by proving too much.
The most plausible plea which Lord John Russell
has introduced, as an excuse for denying to the West
Indies the advantage of a supply of Indian labourers,
is, the objection to the introduction of a third race of
inhabitants. Unfortunately, however, the same objec-
tion holds good in reference to the Mauritius. It must
therefore fall to the ground. It is a silly distinction
without a difference.

The Colonial Secretary then alleges " the extreme

difficulty of the Hill Coolies returning to their own
country" from the
.West Indies. This objection, like
the rest, is the most futile imaginable. Lord John
Russell well knows that the planters of British Guiana
have pledged themselves to obviate this fancied diffi-
culty,
We should like to be informed of the names of the
parties to whom Lord John Russell alluded, when he
said that " he bad lately had a conference with some.
very considerable West India proprietors,"• and that
" they stated to him very strongly their objections with
respect to any introduction of a new race." We hap-
pen to know something about the sentiments of the
West India proprietary in this town, as well as in the
metropolis; but we have never heard any of them start
such an objection. We suspect that the " very consi-
derable" personages referred to are the maggots in the
Colonial Secretary's own brain. We might search in
vain through our files,,of the colonial newspapers for
such a preposterous Objection.. The absurdity of this
plea was amusingly exposed by Mr. Hobhouse, when
he asked " where could there be a more mixed race
than in the House of Commons ? They were descend,
ed from Saxons, Normans, Celts, Flemings, French-
men," and, he might have added, Irishmen (who claim
to be descended from the Phoenicians), Dutchmen,
Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Swedes,
Danes, and even from the African negroes ; " and yet
the result was (might be, we should say) advantageous."
Mr. Ewart, jealous no doubt of his reputation as an
adept in the classical art of blundering, availed himself
of the earliest opportunity that presented itself, on
Thursday evening, for eclipsing the Colonial 'Secretary
in absurdity. He said that "he did not object to
emigration to any place, but to that sort of emigration
where the emigrants know nothing of the place they
were going to." This objection would put an extin•
guisher on almost every "sort of emigration." What
do the poor shepherds of the Highlands of Scotland,
or the starving bogtrotters of Ireland know of Canada,
the United States, or Australia ? Just as much as the
Hill Cooly does of the West Indies, that is, what he
is told.

We must enter our solemn protest against the
assumption of Mr. Warburton, when he says that
" the object of the parties who sought these emigrants
was to make good the deficiency of labour, occasioned
by the immense mortality in the colonies." Where has
this immense mortality taken place ? We look in vain
for any evidence of this alleged fact in the statistical
tables of the West Indies. As far as British Guiana
is concerned, we have the conclusive testimony of Mr.
Schomburgk in favour of its extreme salubrity.
It is no mean argument in favour of the scheme of
immigration into the West Indies, for which we have
so long contended, to find such an ultra-liberal as Mr
Buller. .confessing his astonishment at the conduct of
some of the eager advocates of the abolition of slav'ery,
and asserting that they could only " put down the
curse of slavery and the slave trade over the world; by
raising produce by free labour, and coming forward td
support any expedient to introduce free labour into the
colonies." We perfectly agree with him that " the
friends of abolition ought to evince the utmost readiness
to bring free labour into competition with slavery," and
"to drive slave labour out of the market by the introduc-
tion of free labour." This is a concise expression of
all our arguments against Mr. Scoble, Mr. Sturge, and
the rest of the anti-slavery agitators.
Equally valuable is the testimony of Mr. Macaulay
(whose lather was a principal coadjutor with Wilber-
force and Clarkson in seeking the abolitionof slavery)
in favour of immigration to the West Indies. He
confessed that ht. was now so far from looking upon
those who had been proprietors of slaves with any un-
friendly feeling, that there was no interest . in whiclrhe
felt a deeper concern ; " for he felt," lie said, " that
upon it depended the fate of an experiment of the
deepest importance to the whole civilised world."
" If," continued Mr. Macaulay, " our colonies sank
into obvious inferiority as regarded arts and agriculture
to countries where slavery continued—if it were in the
power of countries in which slavery existed to point
out- colonies in which it was abolished, as countries
where agriculture was abandoned, and where the sugar
cultivation was at an end, and those engaged in it earned
hardly enough for a bare subsistence, we might have re-
moved from England the pest of slavery, but it would
be questionable whether we had lessened the extent of
calamity." From these emphatic words—to which we
beg the eii•nest attention of our readers—we derive
fresh incburagemOnt to go on in our agitation for
JUSTICE 'TO THE WEST. INDIES. We shall .stoutly
maintain our ground on this subject until the laSt slave
on the face of the
.earth is enfranchised.

The arrangement entered into by the Council anti the
Dock Committee, with the opponents of the proposed bill
for the euction. of warehouses on the dock quays, is one of
the-most glaring instances of party dishonesty which it has
ever been our misfortune to notice. Of course we ourselves
never'expected_ any great amount of patriotism, or care for
the true interests of the town of Liverpool, 'from the mem-
bers of its
yeformed corporation.
.We' knew the ingrained
corruptness of the Whig character too Well to look for hny,
other result, than that the long courted possession of inuni•-•
cipal power would be used for party and corrupt purposes,
and for these alone. We must confess, however, that we
never even dreamed that, in the pursuit of those objects, a body
of men responsible to public opinion, and professing to re-
present the interests of the people of Liverpool, would have
dared so far to outrage decency and honesty. We never
dreamed that even these men, politically worthless as we know
them to be, would have ventured calmly and deliberately to
propose to their fellow-townsmen a sacrifice, the result and
the extent of which must be so disastrous to the future pros-
perity of the town.
The price at which these modest and patriotic gentlemen
propose to secure to themselves the patronage and political
influence, which will accrue to them in their new character
of warehouse owners, is, in effect, the transfer from Liver-
pool, as a town, of the benefits to be derived from any future
increase of its commercial and maritime importance. Give
this corrupt Corporation faction the privilege of trading with
the dock funds,—of competing ...against private enterprise
anti capital with the public money. Give them the power
of tyrannizing over the trades of the town—of monopolizing
the employment of the porters, coopers, carpenters, weighers,
and labourers, required by our immense commerce, and they
are perfectly willing to sell their constituents, and to betray
the interests committed to their keeping. Runcorn, War-
rington, and Manchester, are to be exempted from their
present liability to dock-rates. The right to construct docks
is to be conceded to the owners of the strand on both sides
of the Mersey ; and the privilege of bonding foreign pro-
duce, to be extended to such inland towns as are able or
willing to erect warehouses for the purpose. Liverpool, in
short, is, for the future, to be allowed to stagnate in her
present position, whilst new capital and enterprise are
creating the means of dstroying, by competition of every
description, the commercial supremacy which she at present
enjoys.

We are told by the apologists of the corporation, that the
concessions, which they have been obliged to make, are such
as would, under any circumstances, have been insisted upon
by the legislature. We are confident, however, that our
townsmen will not be misled by such a preposterous fiction.
Where were the evidences of a disposition to invade the
privileges of Liverpool, previously to the barefaced attempt of
her corporation to encroach upon the business and •property
of individuals? Our local faction went before the legisla-
ture to ask for its sanction to as corrupt a job as ever was at-
tempted by any public body, and the attempted aggression
upon the privileges and prosperity of Liverpool, sprung out
of the flagitious nature of their demand. They invited
aggression. They were too weak to repel it, and too no-
toriously and avowedly dishonest to allow their dissent to
have any influence in retarding it, even had they possessed
the inclination.

Let the electors of Liverpool watch the proceedings of
these gentlemen—these pure and patriotic liberals ! The in-
habitants of Manchester, Warrington, and Runcorn,—the
owners of land upon the shores of the Mersey—will laugh,
we dare say, and wonder at the readiness with which a con-
cession so important to their interests has been submitted to
by the people of Liverpool. But our townsmen have no
laughing matter in hand. To them the sacrifice meditated
by the council is pregnant with results more important than
any which they have hitherto had to consider; and we are
afraid that it will be consummated—so indecent is the haste
with which the proceedings of the faction are distinguished—
before the public have had an opportunity of manifesting their
opinion. The day of reckoning will, however, arrive, and the
electors, we trust, be prepared to visit upon the advocates of
jobbing and corruption their proper reward.

CHEAP TRIP TO WaLEs.—Such is the almost unexampled
competition at present existing between the rival companies
which have established steamers on the line between this port
and Menai Bridge, that the public are now informed they
can visit the principality at the expense of others, a notifi-
cation having positively been given that the deck passage is
" free," whilst the comforts of a cabin are afforded for the,
ridiculously low charge of one shilling.
The celebrated Abernethy gave the following as his opinion
of the merits of Robins's Royal Filters :—" I consider these
Filters a valuable invention ; and when patients, whose
general beverage is water, finish their catalogue of the horrors
of indigestion, I say, "Go to Robins's and get a Royal
Filter."—See advt.