The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-22 00:00:00

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.

[The following beautiful verses were communicated by the
Poet Laureat to Sir Egerton Brydges. They were intended
to be interspersed, with others, in his " Colloquies on the
Progress and Prospects of Society," but this design was
abandoned, and they remain a fragment. .The.mind of the
poet who wrote them is now, we grieve to say, in ruins.]
My days among the dead are past,
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old :
•
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.
With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe ;
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedew'd
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the dead ; with them
I live in long past years ;
Their virtues love; their faults condemn;
Partake their hopes and fears ;
And from their lessons seek and tiucl
Instruction with a humble mind.

My hopes are with the dead ;
My place with them will be,
And I with them shall travail on

Through all futurity ;
Yet leaving here a name I trust
That will not perish in the dust.

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE ABOMINABLE LAW OF LIBEL.
_ (From the Preston Chronicle.) _ _

_
We are rejoiced to learn, that an influential body of
gentlemen, connected with the newspaper press of this
country, are making arrangements for the purpose of
bringing before Parliament, in a shape likely to obtain
for the subject the attention it merits, the present un-
just and mischievous law of libel,—with a view, of
course, to its thorough revision. We need scarcely
say, that with such an effort we most cordially and
most keenly sympathise. There is not an editor in the
kingdom, who understands anything of his profes-:
sion, and who has in his composition the spirit of a
man, and the honest pride and high-minded independ-
ence of a gentleman, that does not, with a perfect ha-
tred, loathe and detest these envenomed enactments.
Much as we differ in other respects, and though, on
almost every other theme under Heaven, we.present to
each other the attitude of strife and alienation, we all
agree in the utmost concord of fraternal esprit du
corps in our inexorable hatred of the infamous libel
laws—for the huge drag chain .is hung alike around
all our necks like an accursed incubus. Questionless,
then, it is the high duty of all of us who are sensible
of the danger and degradation to which we are all ex-
posed in the present state of the law, and who feel
that it is unmerited in our own several cases, to join
heartily and zealously in the pursuit, now opened by a
portion of our brethren. Of one thing we may be
well assured, that if we do not urge our own cause, it
will not, whatever they may promise, be urged by
others. Peers and members of parliament, judges and
lawyers will not protect us if they can help it; they all
impartially and indiscriminately hate us, and wish to
retain us in that state of subjection and abasement to
which we are condemned by the present state of the
law.' This may be saying a hard thing, but it is, as
every day's experience proves, the plain and incontro-
vertible truth. Strange, anomalous, and unjustifiable
as it may seem, hatred, to the press and to its conduc-
tors, is a point upon which all ranks of public men and
all political parties are agreed : they feel that the press
has some power to expose abuse, and to punish disho-
nesty in spite of them; and they prefer to check the
increase of that power by degrading laws, to giving it
a right direction, by placing us in our proper position.
The public may not know this, but those who are be-
hind the scenes know it full well and experience it
constantly. There are men who would almost crawl
to a newspaper editor in private, that is, in the place
where favours are now and then asked, and yet who
would not deign to recognise him in public; still less
to render a kindness which could 'be detected, or to
pay a mark of esteem justly and richly merited. One
of our great, perhaps our greatest, poet, soliloquised,
in his unrivalled style, upon the inquiry " to what base
purposes may we descend ;" it appears, however, to
have been reserved for the enlightened churls of the
nineteenth century, to discover one solution to the
query which far escaped even his keen and penetrating
eye. We do not recollect, that in all his catalogues of
criminals and crimes, he makes any especial mention
of our et present proscribed order,—an order indeed
to which it was once considered the highest praise and
merit to belong. And will any one believe that in this
our day, the interests of the country, to say nothing of
the interests of justice, do not suffer by the persecu-
tion to which we are subjected ? That they do. suffer,
and that most grievously, requires little argument to
prove. There is no higher aim can be proposed to a
pure and honourable ambition, than the direction of
the public mind to ends, which, in the judgment of
those to whom the opportunity offers, seem to be just,
and conducive to the public good. In a country like
this where so much freedom in other respects pre-
vails, and where consequently so much depends upon
whatever impression is made upon the public mind,
the attraction of this most ambitious aim must be
most powerful. The press, therefore, notwithstanding
the toils incident to its service, and even were it pro-
ductive of a less recompense to its labourers than it is,
would naturally engage the first talent and the best
dispositions of the country, were there not some pow-
erful principle counteracting the natural tendency.
But the question is, does the press engage the first ta-
lents and the best dispositions of the country ? If it
does, why is the press degraded—why are all connected
with it studiously insulted in the courts of justice, and
proscribed as a polluted caste elsewhere ? If the press
does not engage, as rationally it ought to engage, the
first talents and best dispositions in the country, but
engages a class of men whom it is proper to insult and
proscribe—how does this happen ? The answer is,
the libel laws—laws infamously iniquitous in them-
selves, but made worse as they are administered.
Let us, however, leave the hypothesis, and do justice
to the press. There are connected with it, even under
the discouragements to which all are exposed, some of
the ablest, the most learned, and the most honest men
of which the country can boast. It is, and always has
been, a vocation with which many of the most splendid
names in literature and politics, that have adorned the
annals of our country since the invention of the art of
printing, are associated. In justice to our cloth, and
from that feeling alone, we state this fact broadly and
fearlessly. We assert, that looking at the writings of
many of our contemporaries (particularly those of the
metropolitan press) without at all regarding the diver-
sities of political opinions, the periodical press generally,
as one great department of literature, exhibits at least
as much talent, knowledge, argument, and eloquence,
applied to political controversy, and to the science of
government, as even the debates in the imperial parlia-
ment disclose. But to those who would wield arms
against our order—those who doggedly defend the
present conduct pursued towards the press, let us again
put the-question—how happens it that respectable men
refuse to undertake the office of guiding the mind of
England ?—and if the men who undertake the office
are respectable men, why do you treat them as outcasts ?
We care not how the question is answered, and we
have at least the consolation of knowing, that such
injustice and folly is not committed in any other
country. In despotic states indeed, the press is alto-
gether in bond; but nowhere, save in England, is the
absurdity committed of letting the press enjoy freedom
and power, and then of insulting and degrading
,it.
Let, however, the libel code undergo a salutary and
searching revision, And then with one accord we will
speedily purge the insult and wipe away the degrada-
tion. True, there will always be a few croakers, cynics,
and charlatans, to bellow out their miserable railing,
but happily it is of little consequence to a well-con-
ducted press, what such persons hate or love, admire
or despise. Such a press can return their hatred with
interest, and return their contempt in the forgiving
spirit of scornful generosity.

ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE PROTES-
TANT ASSOCIATION AT SHEFFIELD.
(From the Dublin Evening Mail.)
We have been reluctantly compelled to defer the re-
port of this 'meeting, which was held on the 3d inst.,
from the impossibility of procuring the important do-
cuments adduced there by the Rev. R. J. M`Ghee,
except through the medium of the Sheffield Mercury—
Mr. M`Ghee's engagement to proceed to hold a similar
meeting at Whitchurch having precluded the transmis-
sion of them to our office ; and, as even at Sheffield,
the editor of the Mercury could not procure them in
time for his paper of the sth—Mr. M`Ghee's speech
having occupied four hours in the delivery—but was
obliged to defer the half of his report till Saturday,
the 12th, it will be seen that we present our readers
with the earliest report that could reach this city.
There was considerable interest excited in Sheffield,
in consequence of the charge made by the honourable
member for that borough, Mr. Ward, in the House of
Commons, against the Rev. Messrs. WlSTeile and
M‘Ghee, that, at the meeting of last year, they had
propagated calumnies and falsehoods there, and his
being consequently invited, by the latter of these gen-
tlemen, to substantiate his charge on the platform at
Sheffield. This, as may .well be supposed, the hon.
member thought proper to decline; and, having writ,
ten to Mr. M`Grhee to that effect, and his letter being
delivered just at the commencement of the meeting,
the answer to this letter, and the exposure of his
sophistry and evasion, will probably be heard more of
at the next general election—having been received, as
the first part of the report specifies, with the greatest
enthusiasm by the most crowded auditory that the
Music-hall could contain.
But the part of Mr. M`Ghee's speech, the report of
which was deferred till Saturday last, is of an interest
so far transcending all local considerations, and extend-
ing in its application so intimately to the vital existence
of British empire, that we deliberately exclude every
other section and topic of that gentleman's address,
and confine ourselves to that which is to be found in
the report of Saturday ; and we feel no hesitation in
adopting Mr. M`Ghee's own language, that " the sub-