The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-24 00:00:00

Ntb3

E PETITE CREOLE. Impromptu for the
. Pianoforte. Composed, and Dedicated to THOMAS
BLAKE, Esq., by J. M. WEHLI. Price 2s.
London : JOLLIEN and Co., 214, Regent-street.

" I)DASSED AWAY TO HEAVEN."—" Joy-
ful, joyful Spring."—" The Spring and the Summer
both are past."—" Say; my heart, can this be love." By W.
VINCENT WALLACE. Price 2s. each.

. _
" These four songs, within the compass of a moderate
mezzo soprano voice, are among the best English songs that
have been published."—Athenceum.

• - _.„_ _lf - ___,-0 -: _ _4O-11:...„--
" 0 lovely Penc,-, with plenty crowied."
NOVELLO'S CHEAP MUSIC is sold by
every respectable Music Seller and Bookseller in this
Town and Neighbourhood. Catalogues post-free on sending
six stamps to 69, Dean-street, Soho, London.

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD, AND GENERAL COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER.

only elements of strength to protect his own ter-
ritory, which is impregnable in its sterility and
wildness. He has never shown himself powerful
far beyond his own frontier, except in the arts of
diplomacy, for the simple reason, that the people
whom he governs, though strong in the defence of
their own wilderness, possess none of the qualities
—the bold daring, the chivalrous courage, and the
persevering endurance—which constitute an effi-
cient military power. Great Britain, on the con-
trary, has arms long and strong, which have not
only preserved her in peace, but carried the terror
of her military prowess to the remotest corners of
the globe. She has subdued a mighty empire in
India, wrested Canada from France, destroyed the
fleets of France and Spain, humbled the Chinese,
ivho outnumber all Europe and America, and
claiming the proud title of mistress of the ocean,
has vindicated her right to it against all oppo-
nents. Secure in the majesty of her might and
the justice of her righteous cause, she can afford
to be magnanimous, and even to sacrifice some-
thing for the sake of peace, because her honour,
her courage, and her power are unquestioned and
unquestionable. But should the EMPEROR of
RUSSIA, in vain reliance upon his hordes of serfs,
venture to dare England to the combat, he may
find that his vaulting ambition has o'erleaped
itself, and that his. project to convert the Black
Sea into a Russian lake is as unattainable as was
the design of NAPOLEON to similarly appropriate
the Mediterranean. He is not, however, destitute
of common sense, and it is, therefore, to be hoped
that, when he is fully convinced of the English
Government being in earnest, he will see the pro-
priety of making that concession peacefully which,
otherwise, will be wrung from him at the cannon's
mouth.

In thus counselling the exhibition of a deter-
mined front to what may be called Russian aggres-
sion against the territorial arrangements of Europe,
we by no means subscribe to the doctrine that
Turkey has, on her own account, any special claims
to the good offices of England. It is a blot upon
Christian Europe that a Mahometan Government
should hold despotic authority over a population of
whom the majority are nominally Christians, and
who are kept in a state of virtual slavery. Such
things ought not to be ; and, therefore, if war be
the only alternative, it can only be justified upon
the simple ground of restraining Russia within
her own frontier, and preventing that extension of
territory towards the South and East, which may
ultimately render her preponderance too great for
the safety of other States. The question at issue
is the preservation of the balance of power, which
is menaced by the occupation of the Danubian pro-
vinces ; and though this may be viewed with con-
tempt by the politicians of the Manchester school,
who cannot comprehend it, the wisest statesmen
have agreed as to its necessity, and the experience
of history has proved its value.

THE Freemen of Liverpool need be under no
apprehension as to the security of their electoral
privileges, notwithstanding the menace of the Radi-
cals, and the determined manner in which, by
placards and other means, the unwary are solicited
for signatures to the petition against them. Lord
JOHN RUSSELL has a pledge, unredeemed, to bring
in a new Reform Bill ; and so, in despair of any
other means of villifying their fellow-townsmen
who enjoy their freedom by birth or servitude, the
Radicals of Liverpool seek to get their wild
crotchet engrafted upon the Ministerial measure.
The motives which have dictated this petition, and
the act itself; emanate from the lowest pitch of
political turpitude, and can only be excused, or its
•vileness palliated, by attributing the movement
and support of it .to ignoriince. The Radicals of
Liverpool have placed themselves on the horns of
a dilemma, and they must abide the consequences,
Twice triumphantly defeated in the open contest of
our elections, they complained of bribery, which,
they lmew, was never practiced, and prayed for
those to be unseated whom they knew to be fairly
elected. Foiled in this, they would fain disfranchise
those whose votes showed their worthiness to en-
joy the privilege, but the Legislature will not
listen to the complaint; and now, with a long
•tirade of injurious falsehoods, they
,ask that all
freemen may be disfranchised, in order that those
of Liverpool may be included in a holocaust of
electoral rights to be offered to the Moloch of Radi-
cal spite. It was hardly.decent—certainly not
prudent—in these time-serving politicians to make
such a display of their real Motives, and at a time,
too, when their friends in office are on the eve of
an ignominOus discomfiture. It was possible that
a few individuals, reasoning from their own purity
of intentions, believed that Radicals, though mis-
taken, were, at least, honest in their designs ; but
the Liverpool petition must dispel all such illu-
sions, and render it necessary that those who
are still honest should publish to the world that
their signatures are not attached to the self-con-
victing document. Radicals, through all their
career, from the Corresponding Society of 1794,
who wished to fraternise with ROBESPIERRE and
the demons of the French Revolution, down to
those of our own day, whatever party name they
may have assumed, have always professed to agi-
tate for an extension of the franchise. The avowed
object has been the same, whether they have been
content with the compromise of a ten-pound house-
hold suffrage by the Reform Bill, in 1832, the
demand for Universal Suffrage by the Chartist
Convention, in 1839, the subsequent modified
claims for a household suffrage without limit, or
the five-pound qualific,ation which Lord JOHN
RUSSELL proposed in 1852. It was never a ques-
tion whether the results of the extension would
prove a gain to this or that party ; the demand
was simply for an electoral' appeal to a greater
number of- the _people, as he only means •of se-
curing a full, free, and fair representation in
the Commons House of Parliament. Yet, now,
in spite of all their professions, in the teeth
of all their previous statements, in unblushing
disregard of every sentiment of honour and honesty,
these time-serving, truckling politicians petition
Parliament to disfranchise a large portion of the
constituency of Liverpool, for the simple reason
that these men, whose title is far more ancient and
better earned than the ten-pounders, have the in-
telligence to prefer two Conservative representa-
tives to a political trimmer like Mr. CARDWELL, or
a rabid Radical like Sir ERSKINE PERRY. This
is the whole gravamen of the charge against the
Liverpool Freemen, for it is worse than absurd to
pretend that there is a syllable of truth in the
wholesale accusations about bribing and treating.
If such a charge were true that the Freemen were
accessible to such inducements, it would be the
strongest reason for the Radicals wishing to retain
them on the register. Money is the only influence
by which a Radical can hope to rise to distinction,
for he has no other recommendation, and that such
influence is unsparingly used has been abundantly
'proved at several Municipal' Elections, or certain
individuals we could name would not be now in the
Town Council. It is because the Freemen are proof
against such baseness, that their franchise is
attempted to be assailed, and this was demonstrated
in the most convincing manner by the investiga-
tion which took place last year before the Com-
mittee of the House of Commons.
We have alluded to this Petition for the simple
reason of exposing the disgraceful nature of the
transaction ; but we entertain not the slightest
doubt as to its fate. It is too preposterously absurd
to in lietuod to by thy Legislature, ij OM 14%4