The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-07-13 00:00:00

ELECTIONS FOR SCOTLAND

(From the Scottish Standard.)
We rejoice to he fully enabled now to announce that the
conservatives will have no reason to complain of the part
Scotland has taken, and will take, in the all-important con-
test now rapidly drawing to a conclusion. The burgh elec-
tions have terminated in a gain of two seats to the conserva-
tives, and a gain of one seat to the whigs. We lament the
loss of Kilmarnock, and sincerely regret that so able a man
as Mr. Colquhoun should be excluded, for however short a
time, from Parliament. In Church matters, undoubtedly
we differed from him ; and we have no hesitation in assert-
ing that his extreme non-intrusion views, by operating on the
minds of many moderate men, and exciting the envenomed
hostility of the dissenters, was the main cause of his defeat.
The majority against him—eleven,--is such as to leave ample
room for a more successful result under different circum-
stances. The gain of the Haddington and Falkirk burghs, and
the return of Messrs. Balfour and Baird, must afford the
highest gratification to the friends of the Church and consti-
tution. These gentlemen have succeeded as real conserva-
tives—their political and ecclesiastical views being strictly
in unison with those avowed by Sir Robert Peel. In those
burghs, which the conservatives have contested unsuccess-
fully, we can point to a vast increase in the numbers of the
conservative party. In Glasgow, the conservatives polled at
the last election 300 votes more than at the former election.
In Greenock, they have augmented their force from 202 to
307—a gain of 103 votes ; and their can be no doubt that at
this rate Sir Thomas Cochrane will very soon turn out Mr.
Wallace, of Kelly. In Aberdeen, we find that Mr. Innes re-
ceived no fewer than 513 votes, an increase of nearly 200
since the last contest; nor is it quite certain that Mr. Banner-
man would have carried his election, had he not yielded to
the squeezing of Mr. Adam, of the Aberdeen Herald, who
forced him to recant, of course insincerely, most of his ex-
treme non-intrusion dogmas. Mr. Duff, in Elgin, has lost
the election by a majority only of 14 ; and Colonel Agnew in
Wigton has been defeated by the comparatively small majority
of 28. The seeds of future triumph are evidently laid in all
these burghs ; and we therefore say that Scotland must not
be judged by the actual gain and loss in the burghs ; but by
the demonstrated progress of conservative principles—a pro-
gress which the coming registration may ripen into a positive
superiority. One burgh contest remains to be decided—
Wick; in our next we hope to be enabled to record the
triumph of Mr. Demptser, but whatever be the result, the
issue cannot be any loss, though it may be a gain, to the
conservatives. Caithness is surrendered for the present,
from circumstances which we believe will prove but
temporary. But to counterbalance this single loss, the
the conservatives have already driven the whigs from Mid-
Lothian, Argyll, Dumbarton, and Roxburgh—a gain of three
counties, which, added to one seat from the burghs, gives us
at this date a gain of eight votes. Stirlingshire, Banffshire,
and Kirkcudbright, hitherto in the possession of the whig,s,
are yet to be decided ; but we have little doubt that at least
in the former, if not in both the latter counties also, the con-
servative candidate will be returned. Renfrewshire, Wigton-
shire, and the combined counties of Elgin and Nairn, previ-
ously held by the conservatives, are contested by whigs—the
former two pretty keenly, the latter very feebly. In none of
these cases, however, is loss seriously apprehended. Bute-
shire has been the scene of a most unseemly collision ; but
the good sense of the electors enabled them to triumph over
all attempts to delude them. We say deliberately, had the
return of Sir William Rae been prevented, it would have
been a national loss and a national disgrace. From this brief
view of the elections in Scotland, it is fully evident that we
are gradually making up with our English friends in the
march of conservatism. A few years, we had almost said
months, longer, and we shall be fairly abreast of them.