The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-07-24 00:00:00

FRIDAY MORNING, JULY 24, 1840

We have received a copy of the Halifax (N.S.)
Journal of the 22d of June. The news which it con-
tains has been anticipated by the arrival of the Great
Western. Very genial weather had been experienced
throughout the province. The crops were looking re-
markably well.

We have received a copy of the St. John's (N. 8.)
Weekly Chronicle of the 19th of June. It contains no
news of importance. The province had been for some
weeks favoured with the most propitious weather that
the farmer could desire. There was every prospect of
an early and abundant harvest.

Our files of the Sydney papers reach to the 28th of
March. They contain an account of a destructive fire
which occurred there on the 18th of March, and 'which
destroyed property to the amount of £20,000. It broke
out on the premises of Mr. Blanch, an iron-foutider,
and afterwards extended to the Royal Hotel, the Old
Theatre, and several other buildings.
The United States ships Vincennes and Peacock had
arrived at Sydney after a successful voyage of discovery
in the southern seas. The Peacock obtained soundings
in a high southern latitude, but the Vincennes ran
down the coast of the southern continent from. 154
deg. 18 min. to 97 deg. 45 min. of east longitude, about
1700 miles, within a short distance of the land, often so
near as to obtain soundings with a few fathoms of line.

Since our last another West India mail has arrived,
bringing papers of a few days later date than the last.
In another column we have given a summary of the
news. We learn from the Demerara papers that the
first instalment of immigrants had arrived at George-
town from Baltimore, through the instrumentality of
Mr. Carbery.

We addressed a few words in our last publication to
the moderate or constitutional reformers of Liverpool,
urging them to pause and reflect before they embarked
in a new course of agitation. Our immediate object,
we need scarcely remark, was to prepare them for an
approaching election ; to prevail upon them to look, at
such a crisis as the present, not to the mere watch-
words of party—not to professions, however plausi-
ble—but to the measures placed before them for their
approval, the means by which those measures are pro-
posed to be carried out; and THE MEN with whom they
are to be associated in securing them.

It will be admitted, we think, that there.never was a
period in the history of our country which more im-
peratively called for the formation of an able, an honest,
and a strong government, than at the present crisis.
Abroad and at home we are alike beset with difficulties
which require such a government ; and the question
which the moderate reformer will have to decide at the
approaching election is, whether that government shall
be one of an ultra democratic character, or conserva-
tive of the entireness of the empire and its institu-
tions ; whether we are to push forward the progress of
the movement beyond the pale of our Protestant con-
stitution, or TO MAKE OUF. STAND NOW, AND TO

STAND FAST UPON THE ROCK OF THAT CONSTITU-

TION WHICH HAS BORNE US lIITHERTO SAFE AND

UNSCATHED, AND FROM WHICH, BY THE BLESSING

OF GOD, WE HAVE BERN ENABLED TO DICTATE

PEACE TO EUROPE AND TO THE WORLD

This is, we maintain, the question which the mode-
rate reformer will be called upon shortly to decide. It
is no longer one of mere party interest—whether the
existing constitution Khali be administered by Sir Ro-
bert Peel or by Lord Melbourne--but whether, for the
purpose of perpetuating whig rule, that constitution
shall be broken in upon—whether the government shall
he allowed to ally itself with those who are actually
seeking a dismemberment of the empire and its power
to be wielded by a traitor, the foul libeller of this coun-
try and the tyrant of his own. This question, then, we
call upon our fellow-townsmen calmly and dispassion-
ately to weigh and to decide upon ; and if there be still
that high-toned-moral feeling in the British character
which was handed down to us from the better days of
the constitution, we have no fear that the result will
not be one of triumph to every true lover of his father-
land.