The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-03-17 00:00:00

POLITICAL NOTABI LIA.

Ralph Neville, Esq., has been appointed a Lord of the
Treasury, and was re-elected for Windsor on Saturday
without opposition.

At a large meeting of the protectionist peers last week
it was resolved to offer the most strenuous opposition to
the government measure in the Lords.

Lord Ashley last week attended meetings at Bradford,
Huddersfield, and other places, to forward the short time
bill.

Sir Howard Douglas was prevented, by unavoidable
business, from voting against Mr. Duncombe's motion for
the release of Frost, Williams, and Jones.
Lord Fitzwilliam is returning from Rome to vote
against the government measure in the House of Lords,
his lordship being in favour of a fixed duty for the pur-
poses of revenue.
BIRMINGIIAM.—It is said that a requisition is now in
progress in Birmingham, addres,ed to Sir Robert Peel,
soliciting him to become a candidate for the representa-
tion of that borough at the next election.
On Friday, in the House of Commons, Lord J. Russell
gave notice that on Thursday, the 26th of March, he
would move that the house should resolve itself into a
committee of the whole house on the state of Ireland.

WIGAN ELECTION.—We believe little doubt now exists
that Mr. Gladstone will be'brought forward, it being un-
derstood that there will he no opposition on the part of
the Balcarras family to his return. in all probability the
right hon. gentleman will be elected without a contest.
A report has existed for some days that Government
were prepared to reduce immediately 10s. a load on
foreign timber, instead of a gradual reduction in 1847 and
1848. In reply to a memorial frmn Hull, the petitioners
have been informed that ministers adhere to the proposal
already submitted to parliament.
FOR AND AGAINST THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS.
—From the sixth report of the Committee on Petitions, it
appears that up to the 17th of last month there were 582
petitions presented to the House of Commons for, and
1766 against the repeal of the Corn Laws ! There were
also presented up to that time, 70 petitions in favour of
Sir Robert Peel's proposed measure, and 632 against it.
STRANGE TITLE TO OREGON.—The most singular and
exciting portion of the debate in the House of Represent-
atives, on the 9th ult., on the Oregon question, was the
speech of John Quincy Adams. After some preliminary
remarks, he requested the Clerk of the House to read the
26th, 27th, and 28th verses of the first chapter of Genesis,
and then went on to say, " That, in my judgment, is the
foundation of our title to Oregon, and of all the title we
have to any of the territory we possess. It is the foun-
dation of the title by which you, sir, occupy that chair,
and by which we are now called on to occupy Oregon, and
cannot do it without the termination of the convention in
which we have agreed that we will not occupy it." Mr.
Adams then requested the Clerk to read the 6th, 7th, and
Bth verses of the second Psalm, from which he said his
case found additional strength. The Times says on this
subject, " There are moonstruck madmen both in and out
of Bedlam, whose lunacy takes a colour from Holy Writ,
and is the more awful and distressing from the distortion
and debasement of the sublimest truths which are em-
bodied in human laittkusge ; but when we learn that the
ravings of one of these fanatics were listened to with in-
terest and excitement by one branch of the most import-
ant legislative assembly of the New World,—when we are
told that the text of Scripture, which was to be polluted
by this insane commentary, was read by the clerk at the
table of the House of Representatives at Washington,—
and when we remember that all this blasphemous extra-
vagance is uttered as the apology cr the pretext of an at-
rocious war, and that the promises of God are invoked to
justify the rapacity and the lawlessness of man, we look
in vain for any parallel for such an exhibi4ion except in
the midst of anarchy and revolution."

TO THE
RT. HON. SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART., &C. &C. &C.

Sra,—No minister that has hitherto wielded the desti-
nies of this mighty empire ever commanded appliances
more ample and means more potent for carrying on the
government of the country than you did on your advent
to power in 1841.

With overwhelming disgust prevailing from one end of
the kingdom to the other, at the unexampled imbecility
and criminality of a previous ten years' destructive Whig
government; with a total bankruptcy of the exchequer,
and an all but total bankruptcy of the country ; with the
experienced difficulty of shaking off the bloodsucking
leeches that clung to place with a tenacity that defied all
shame, that repudiated all responsibility to public opinion,
and resisted every attempt to dislodge them from the clutch
of office; with public favour running high in your behalf,
and an administration formed by yourself, and conse-
quently on your own model, there was nothing to prevent
your carrying any measure calculated for the public weal.
Without supposing you to be a profound, still we were
disposed to consider you, probably the best, but certainly
the most honest statesman of the age. With all these ad-
vantages it is little to be wondered at that so large a por-
tion of public confidence was yielded as to enable you,
without particular offence, to impose a property and income
tax, so generally obnoxious as well to that portion of the
community to which you looked for support, as to your
political foes, and also to carry other measures, including
your tariff, without jeopardising your own position, or
weakening the confidence of your friends. This was a proud
eminence to attain—one that any individual, however
exalted, might envy, and one well calculated to carry
down its fortunate acquisitor with honor to posterity,
and clothe his name and character with imperishable fame
in the annals of statesmen, and in the list of benefactors
to his country. Upon this high pedestal stood Sir Robert
Peel during the first and second sessions after his re-
sumption of office. From this apex could you look down
on your political opponents with unshaken firmness and
unblanched cheek. But, alas ! how short a period was
requisite to shake that pedestal to its base, to humble that
pride to its fall, to destroy that confidence, and to alienate
that affection which would have supported you against all
opposition, carried you through all difficulties, and vindi-
cated you against all defamation.
Your first act of delinquency was to desert your prin-
ciples by proposing and carrying an increase to the May-
nooth grant, notwithstanding the tables of the house
groaned with the number and weight of the petitions pre-
sented against even the original grant. This was the
more obnoxious, inasmuch as it was gratuitous on your
part, not only not being expected. but not even called for,
by the Romanists themselves. This was a stab to confi-
dence unworthy of you to give, unworthy of your party
to receive. Nothing could justify your wounding the
feelings of your supporters—the protestant, and conse-
quently the more enlightened and respectable portion of
the community—by an act so revolt ng to their minds as
this most iniquitous proceeding. If there were one hope,
one wish more deeply indulged than another, it was, that
you would stop that headlong career of destruction to the
Protestant Church which had formed the characteristic of
your predecessors, and brought upon them that distrust
and odium which ultimately overthrew them. This was a
proceeding that staggered your most confiding friends—
that robbed you of that countenance and support which
would have enabled you to carry a specific bill to put
down Ireland's agitator and agitation, and give the full
benefit of that prosperity which had set in for her in the
increased improvement of the times generally, and in the
erection of her railways particularly—to have crushed, by
another specific measure, the Anti-corn Law, and conse-
quently the anti-English, League. These prime and ne-
cessary measures might have been propounded and carried
by you with the greatest ease: the times demanded and
the country looked for them. These advantages and
opportunities were thrown away • nay, the very opposite
course of procedure was adopted. Steps antagonist to
Protestantism, and derelict of principle, were taken with
an avidity that emphatically proclaimed the desertion of
our leaders and the disruption of our party. Roman Ca-
tholic colleges were endowed for the •propagation of error
—more priests created to distribute the poison of diiaffec-
tion, which is now deluging Ireland with blood by the
midnight assassin and the face-of-day murderer, render-
ing that country a byeword and a proverb, clearly prov-
ing it to stand unequalled in ignorance and cold blooded
atrocities by any country of savages in the known world.
What crime and responsibility does this state of things
fasten upon these priests and that religion which can only
be maintained by keeping the people in a state of the
most barbarous ignorance ? What a still heavier respon-
sibility must attach to the minister who, knowing these
things, encourages them, not negatively only, but by act
of parliament, thereby destroying the integrity of the em-
pire, by making the non-consenting Protestant portion of
it parties to the crime.
I will not charge you with hypocrisy in religion,, but I
must confess my utter inability to reconcile your sincerity
in the belief of those articles of the church of which von
are a member, with that conduct in the state of which
you are the minister—conduct that depresses the one
church which you declare to be true—and that elevates
the other which you declare to be false. With all true
Protestants, this gratuitous and uncalled for countenance

and support of an heretical and idolatrous church and its
demagogues and incendiaries will be looked upon as the
crowning iniquity of your administration. By politi-
cians, however, the palm of guilt may possibly be yielded
to the last act of the farce: your attempt to withdraw
protection from the most important and overwhelming
interest in the kingdom—the agriculturd. Taken toge-
ther, they are monuments of man's contradiction and
weakness, and will denude you of that fair fame with
which you might, but for these two acts, have passed to
posterity. To prove your own dishonour and impolicy of
the measure, we need only look how whiggerv, radicalism,
and dissent, watch like vultures over a dead carcase, for
the consummation of this diabolical ovation of the anti-
corn-law league, by which they hope to realize their fell
intention to destroy the church in its temporalities. Well
might O'Connell say, that if he " did not succeed in car-
rying repeal now, it would be his own fault," and well
did his compatriot Bowring add, " that in four yours they
would rid the House of Lords of the presence of the
Bishops." These are declarations and signs of the times
too significant to be mistaken.
In another letter, I shall enter further into the subject
of your political conduct in still more recent days.
I have the honour to subscribeself
FAITHFUL.

\l.s.-11