The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-22 00:00:00

principle—your thorough Whig always has "principle"
upon his lips, but jobbory in his. heart-Lafter all the
Mawworm cant of voluntaryism, the real, substantial
objection to this application of the River Weaver fund
is, that it touches the pockets of these saints, the funds
being now applied in aid of the county rates of Che-
shire, thus saving to the Cheshire landowner a few
paltry pence per annum, which he may possibly be
called upon in future to contribute.
Of course the second reading of the bill was strongly
opposed in the house, and, in particular, by that
shining luminary, Mr. George Wilbraham, whom we
hope our Conservative friends of South Cheshire will
get rid of with all convenient speed. His exhibition
on Tuesday evening will probably afford as poor a
recommendation to the favour of the yeomanry of
Cheshire as his Jim Crow performance upon the Corn

LAWS.

Well, the Ministry of Lord Melbourne is again
beaten, and upon a vital question. After three nights
of debate, after exhausting every effort which baffled
fraud could suggest, after appealing in vain to the in-
terests and the fears of the House for support, Lord
Melbourne's Administration is in A MINORITY OF
'minim in a division upon the Registration Bill of
Lord Stanley—a bill the passing of which is acknow-
ledged to carry with it the certain destruction of the
Whig faction, and the loss to those pure and patriotic
gentlemen of all the snug pickings and the pet places
to which they have clung with such devotion for the.
last ten years !

We certainly cannot pretend to guess at the course
which Lord Melbourne's incapables will take upon the
occasion. An honourable party would at once resign
office; but that the despicable faction which now mis-
governs England will take such a step is more than we
dare predict. It is hard, very hard, to drag a Whig
from his plunder, and harder still when he happens to
be a degraded and a hungry one. Shame has no
blush for a Whig cheek. Scorn and derision recoil
from the impenetrability of a 'Whig breast. One only
• method there is by which he can be driven to disgorge,
and that method—the application of the foot to his
dorsal extremity—we have little expectation of seeing
adopted so speedily as the people of Great Britain de-
sire and fervently pray for.
We do not then expect that Lord Melbourne will be
guilty of any such madness as a resignation of office
would be in the eyes of his coadjutors. There are still
devices to be tried, appeals to be made, trickery to be
attempted, in the hope of staving oft' the day of reckon-
ing. - A majority of three, in a house of 599 members,
is no :nighty afiltir for Whig ingenuity to surmount ;
and we have no doubt that every means which faction
can suggest will be adopted to defeat the measure
which that majority has declared its intention to carry
• into a law. We have no doubt that by the present re-
formed House of Commons the attempt will be made,
and as little doubt that the attempt will be made in

The debate upon this bill, prolonged to three nights
'or a factious and dishonest purpose, has not been

without its effects throughout the country. The minds
of the public have been disabused of those gross delu-
sions which it has been the unceasing effort of its

opponents to throw over it.

The MONSTER EVIL by

which Ireland is degraded and enslaved, is now un-
masked; the veil is torn from before the face of Ro-

mish corruption, and its hideous features presented

naked to the world, glaring in all their horrible defor-

nity. No Ministerial trickery will now be permitted
.o replace that covering which the hand of Truth has

lrawn aside.

No ruffianism of the mendicant impos-

tor who has fed from its pollution, will succeed in sti-
fling the indignant feeling with which the people of

:ngland have regarded the disclosure of its demo-

ralising and soul-destroying tendencies.
But it is not alone the progress which sound prin-
ciples of legislation appear to have made in the estima-
tion of the public and of parliament during the discus-

ston of this measure, upon which we are disposed to
congratulate the country. We have never feared that
such a measure would not eventually be passed, al-
though we may have doubted whether in the present
House of Commons, or during the present session,
such a consummation could be realised. The princi-

pal gratification which we derive from the debate, is
caused by the admirable illustration which it affords
of the unutterable meanness by which the proceedings
of the present Whig faction are characterised. With
what loathing—with what ineffable disgust—would a
Whig of the school of Fox and Burke turn away from
contamination such as that which the Whigs of the
present day submit to and court ! How such nien
.would scorn to herd with the O'Connells and Humes
of the Reformed House of Commons !—to hold office
by the kind permission of those vulgar demagogues,
and at the price which they choose to exact as a re-
muneration for their venal votes ! Yet such is the

position of the present Whig Administration. They
dare not walk " cleanly" ; they dare not turn aside
from pollution ; they must swallow the potion, nasty
though it be, which is held to their craven lips, and
are not even allowed the privilege of making faces !
The debate on Lord Stanley's bill has displayed
fully to the public this disgracefUl bondage, and the
ready zeal with which the supporters and members of
the Government enter into the factious views of the
beggarly impostor who dictates the terms of their ex-
istence. *How otherwise could the discussion of a
question, already worn bare, be prolonged for three
nights against the recorded wishes of the majority of
the House ? How otherwise could Lord Stanley be
refused permission to proceed at once to forward his
bill one stage in committee ? liow otherwise, we ask,
than by a disgraceful collusion between a contemptible
Administration and an equally contemptible faction of
traitors and bullies ?
It is no doubt true that Lord John Russell attempted,
at the last moment, to disclaim any connexion with the
disgraceful attempts made by Hume and O'Connell, as
recommended by our Clayton-square orators, to impede
the progress of the bill by repeated motions of adjourn-
ment. " I have no power," lisped Lord John, "to
control the party from whom these motions proceed!'
We are well aware that Lord John Russell has no con-
trol over the sayings and doings of Daniel O'Connell,
and for the simple reason that Lord John and the
members of the administration are the slaves, and
O'Connell the tyrant. Lord John control him ! Fudge.
But one thing we predict Lord John will find that
he can do, and that, •if he hopes to receive the con-
tinued support of the Agitator, he must do. He will
be required to oppose, by every factious manoeuvre in
his power, the progress of Lord Stanley's Bill in com-
mittee. We can assure him, however, that in doing s°
he will only be sinking himself and his party more
deeply in the estimation of the people of England•
The bond fide constituencies of this protestant counts'
will not any longer endure that their franchises shag
be swamped by the perjured and fictitious coniti'
tuencies of popish Ireland. The corruption of the
system of registration in that country must he rooted
out, not glossed over. The measure of Lord Stanley
will effect that object, and it must be passed, till;
weakened in its provisions, and undiluted with any of
the fraudulent and spurious patchwork which Lord
John and his Radical allies would gladly be allowed to
be mingled with it !

In our remarks on Tuesday, upon the Liver#
Mercury's misrepresentations of Lord Stanley's pill'
we promised to return to the subject and to expose
the calumnious spirit displayed by our contemporary
towards one of the speakers at the Amphitheatre meet-
ing—the. Rev. Hugh M‘Neile. We are sorry that we
made the promise. The task of exposing falsehood
he
le
not to our taste, although it is a part of our duty to
public ; and we enter upon it on the present occaso
with the greater reluctance from knowing that our OP,
ponent is unworthy of the notice we have already
bestowed upon him, or he would probably have re;
ceived before now a castigation from a hand whieh!
well able to inflict it, upon a " foeman worthy 01-
i,s

steel."
The Mercury accuses Mr. M
'Ne--e of suggesting
falsehood, by quoting from the speech of. Mr. Erners°ll
'Cement, at the Belfast meeting, a passage which asserts
that by Lord Stanley's bill the claimant to
"the registry brought to his own parish- an .register ha
d his own
door, for the first time, instead.of being
dragged from
the farm to the quarter sessions' town." Now, we do
not pretend to saw, and neither Mr. M‘Neile nor Mr.
Emerson Tennent meant it to be understood, that lite-
rally and strictly the bill enabled the claimant to COfl
plete his registration at so cheap a rate and with :0 little