The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-11-06 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

We were at considerable trouble in collecting the returns of
the municipal elections in many of the surrounding towns,
some of which appeared in our earliest impressions of
Tuesday, and the remainder were reserved for a second
edition. We are glad to see that the " product of our la-
bours" has been useful to a contemporary, who made use
of them in his second edition of the same day, though, un-
fortunately, he has fallen into an error which we uninten-
tionally committed, and which is repeated in the paper of
yesterday. The return stated to be from Wolverhampton
was really received from Congleton—the former place not
being a corporate borough.

Elie kiimpoot tttanbarb.

FRIDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 6, 1340.

The foreign news of the past week has been of a
more pacific character than that which has reached us
for some time past. The late change of ministry in
France has produced its anticipated effects upon the
public mind, both in this country and on the continent.
It is true that the French press, or at least a portion of
it, has been endeavouring to induce the belief that the
Soult and Guizot administration is prepared to act upon
the same policy as that which was insisted upon by
M. Thiers, and which led to his resignation. This at-
tempt to delude the public is, however, too glaringly
absurd to produce any real mischief. If Marshal Soult
and M. Guizot are prepared to demand from the allied
powers the same concessions as those which M. Thiers
required, where was the necessity of any change in the
ministry of France ? It is well known that the King
of the French was strongly opposed to the warlike po-
licy of M. Thiers, and that this opposition led to the
resignation of the latter. It is not, therefore, likely
that the Soult-Guizot ministry will adopt the very po-

licy which led to the rupture between the King and
M. Thiers. We do not. believe that there is any fear
whatever that the amicable relations which have so
long existed between England and France will be, in
the slightest degree, interrupted.

The repeal agitation in Ireland is beginning to as-
sume a truly alarming aspect. It is no longer a mat-
ter of doubt that O'Connell and his reverend coadjutors
have ulterior objects in view, beyond the mere dis-
memberment of the empire. Among those ulterior
objects, the restitution of the forfeited estates is une-
quivocally pointed out in the harangues delivered at
the repeal gatherings. The movement is, therefore,
not exclusively political in its nature. To treason the
repealers have superadded a wholesale system of rob-
bery and confiscation. This is the real source of
O'Connell's popularity among the masses. He dis-
tinctly holds.forth to them promises of future aggran-
disement, at the expense of the whole landed proprie-
tary of Ireland. This is the all-powerful bait by which
so many hundreds of tirusandS are enlisted under the
banner of repeal.

In fact, repeal is only a means for the attainrnei

the ulterior objects to which we have alluded. So long
as the union between Great Britain and Ireland is pre-
served, the re-forfeiture of the forfeited estates of Ire-
land can never be accomplished ; but let the connexion
be once dissolved, and then there will be little difficulty
in making a new distribution of the confiscated estates.
That we are not exaggerating the danger to be ap-

prehended from the progress of the repeal agitation, is
abundantly shown by the recent proceedings of the re-
pealers. Mr. O'Connell, at a meeting recently held at
Drogheda, distinctly announced the conditional for-
feiture of landed property as one of the ulterior objects
which he had in view. In addition to this open avowal
on the part of the truculent arch-demagogue, Mr. Bar-
rett, at the last meeting of the nicknamed Loyal Na-
tional Repeal Association, gave notice of a • motion, to
the effect " that books should be kept, with authenti-
cated records of the atrocities of landlords, and the
amount of the horrors they inflicted." The object in
view, in this " collection of facts," is too evident to be
for one moment mistaken. It is boldly avowed, that
the design is to procure a complete list of those land-
lords who are eventually to be plundered and reduced
to beggary.

Confiscation is henceforth to be considered as the
watchword of the repealers. But even confiscation will
not satisfy these traitorous miscreants. They will never
rest satisfied until the Protestant population of Ireland
is expatriated, and the Romish system once more asserts
its supremacy over the land. This is the great end at
which the priests are aiming. They expect to clutch
a large proportion of the plunder whenever the forfeited
estates are taken from their present possessors.

The government must be aware of the schemes of
spoliation contemplated by the repealers. The ulterior
objects which they have so unequivocally announced,
must be perfectly notorious to Lord Ebrington and the
Ministry. And yet we hear of no steps being taken in

_ ...
order to arrest the repeal agitation. The reas,

this apathy is but too evident. The present degraded
administration dare not move a finger in opposition to
the behests of O'Connell. They are his slaves and his
tools. He moulds them to his purpose,- and openly
defies their opposition. They could not carry on the
government of the country a single day without his
support. His tail constitutes their majority, such as it
is, in the House of Commons. O'Connell knows and
feels the stringent hold he has upon the Ministry. The
Ministers also know and dread the power with which
O'Connell is invested. This consciousness of his power
is quite sufficient to account for the impunity with
which the hoary traitor carries on his mischievous
agitation.

At the meeting at the Corn Exchange, on Monday
last, to which we have already alluded, an incident
took place which is deserving of notice, in con-
nection with the subject of these remarks. Mr.
J. L. Arabin, one of the speakers, produced a letter
from his father, addressed to the Association, in winch

the highest possible tribute is paid to the resident land-
lords and magistracy of one district of Ireland. They
are pronounced by Mr. Arabin to be " men of the
strictest honour," of the " most unimpeachable truth,"
and whose " patriotism" is unquestionable. And yet
these are the men whom the repealers intend to plun-
der. These are the men whose " atrocities" are to be
recorded, for future vengeance, in Mr. Barrett's black
books. These men, whose kindness and humanity are
so conspicuously displayed whenever an appeal is made
to them, are to be hunted down, persecuted, and des-
poiled. Was there ever witnessed such base and hor-

.e ingratitude ?

The pretensions which the repealers make to loyalty
are truly laughable. At a meeting recently held at
Kilrush, a priest of the name of Comyn boasted that
the repealers were " working for the government and
the Queen." It is rather an odd way to " work for

the Queen," to endeavour to dismember the empire
over which she rules. Mr. Steele, one of these
" workers for the Queen," declared at the Kilrush
meeting, that the late speech of Lord Ebrington was
" an emanation of imprudence amounting to fatuity."
This is rather strange language to be applied to the
Queen's vice-regent by one making loud professions
of loyalty to her Majesty. The same " worker for the
Queen" moved a " solemn declaration to the world,
that the accursed thing, by misnomer called the union,
is not an act of human legislature, and binding on

Irishmen, but a fiendish and fantastic juggle, not only
not obligatory on Ireland, but by reason of the baleful
and complicated iniquity of the means by which it was
perpetrated, it is now and was ab origine utterly void
and without obligation." This, again, is very strangely
at variance with English notions of loyalty.

The present week has furnished the most triumph-
ant proofs of the progress of that conservative reaction
throughout the country, the existence of which has
been so pertinaciously denied by the radical press. It
is a notorious fact that the greater number of those
towns to which the municipal corporations act applies,

have been, for the' last five years, under the domination
of the radical faction. At the first election which took
place after that act was passed the conservatives were
almost universally in a minority. This is true of
nearly every large town in the kingdom, including Li-
verpool, Bristol, Leeds, and many other places. But
what is the case now ? In almost every borough in
the kingdom the conservatives, at the recent municipal
election, have obtained the most signal triumphs. It
is not a few isolated cases that we have to refer to in
proof of our assertion. Conservatism is in the as-
cendant in every place where its strength has been pro-
perly tested. Our columns this day bear abundant
evidence of this cheering fact.

Whig misrule has been the cause of this universal
reaction. The people have been utterly disgusted with
the practices of the miserable faction that has so long
swayed the destinies of this great country. This is
the true secret of the change which has taken place in
public opinion, and of which the late municipal elec-
tions supply us with such an overwhelming mass of
evidence. The Whig-radical faction have always been
the loud professors of retrenchment and economy.
These professions they have completely belied in their
practice. Hence the loathing with which they are so
generally regarded. In our municipal councils they
have been found a set of pettifogging tyrants, and they
have, at length, met with the usual reward of tyrants—
they have been dragged from the pinnacle of their
power, and consigned, amidst the execrations of the
people, to that obscurity from which they ought never
to have been suffered to emerge. In very few places

11 they be allowed any longer to play their fantastic

tricks, and to tyrannise over the people. Their reign
is at an end. They will only figure in future in the
pages of history, and there only as examples of politi-
cal folly and knavery.

~...,.__•.M..er.Y•

When her Majesty's prime minister, Lord Mel-
bourne, made his solemn declaration that the govern-
ment, of which he was the head, possessed no longer
the confidence:of the country, there were few indeed
who doubted the correctness of his lordship's asser-
tion. In a few days afterwards, however, that govern-
ment, without having acquired any additional claim to
public confidence, once more took possession of the
power and emoluments which it had voluntarily relin-
quished. The personal predilections of the monarch
were allowed to outweigh the constitutional expression
of feeling on the part of her people; and it was but
natural to expect, that the men who could deliberately
place her Majesty in this false and dangerous position,
had in prospect some great and certain source of
strength, the developement of which was to justify the
apparent indecency of which they had placed upon her
shoulders the onus.

The entire proceedings of the session of Parliament
which ensued, abundantly proved that Lord Melbourne
and his colleagues were not in present possession of
any influence to entitle them to the confidence of the
country, or which could warrant their resumption of
office. Their strength was entirely prospective. Their
government was based upon court favour; and unless
they could succeed in drawing popular opinion towards
the court, its re-establishment was an insulting and an
impudent invasion of the principles of the constitu-

. .
The attempt was made at the commencement of

the session, and signally failed, the proposed allowance
of £50,000 a year to the consort of her Majesty having
been rejected by one of the largest majorities recorded
upon any similar occasion. This defeat was submitted
to, as were other and daily defeats, in craven silence.
The labours of the session were at length shuffled
through. The usual slaughter of ministerial measures
had taken place. The mountain had produced its
" ridiculous mouse ;" and the vapourings of whig-ra-
dicalism went out in smoke amidst the unextinguisha-
ble laughter of the people of Great Britain. But a

lurking mischief still twinkled in the eyes of the abor-
tion, and warned us that Whig-radicalism was neither
dead nor sleeping. " Wait," we were told, " the re-
sult of the annual registrations, and the appeal of Lord
Melbourne's administration to the constituencies.
Wait for the issue of a new election, when Whig-radi-
cal principles have been strengthened by the infusion

of Popery into the English registries."
We have waited the result of the registrations.
Popery has made her giant effort ; ministerial gold has

been showered down amongst the lower classes of the
electors, and vexatious objections have been as libe-
rally dispensed amongst the middle and conservative
classes. What, we ask, has been the result of this ex-
piring effort of the faction ? The reply must be, an
utter and complete prostration of whig-radicalism in
every borough and county throughout Great Britain;
and the certain prospect that an election upon the pre-
sent registries would return at least FIFTY ADDITIONAL'
CONSERVATIVE NIEMBERS TO TOR HOUSE OF COM-
MONS ! Under these circumstances we are afraid Lord
Melbourne will not be in a hurry to make his promised

appeal to the constituencies.
The source of strength then, upon which the pre-
sent government calculated, has manifestly failed them,
and an early dissolution of parliament is out of the
question. Have they, we ask, received any addition of
moral strength to enable them still to bear up against
defeat and disgrace ? Turn, we reply, to the evidence
of antagonist feeling displayed in the municipal con-
tests this week throughout Great Britain. Those
" schools of normal agitation"--those favoured depo-
sitories of enlightened liberalism—the corporations of
England, are fast returning to the sound and constitu-
tional paths of their forefathers. Our mayors, our al-
dermen, and our town-clerks will evidently not long be
found dancing attendance upon Whig-radical orgies►
fraternizing with sedition, and hugging dissent and
intolerance.

The inhabitants of our boroughs, old and new, have
plainly and unequivocally declared their detestation of
the party to which Lord Melbourne and his colleagues
adhere. Throughout Great Britain whig-radicalisui
cannot find one solitary spot in which it would be al-
lowed to plant the sole of its foot. The present go-
vernment, with the evidence of public opinion staring
them in the face, cannot dissolve parliament, except to
order to provide an excuse for resignation; and of that
course—the only honest and manly course which le
left to them—there arc few indeed of its members ca-

pable.
Not a week passes which is not signalised by some
proud display of Protestant conservatism, in which
some portion of our loyal population may not be seen
engaged in the noble efirt to beat back the advancing
waves of Popery and irreligion which threaten to bear
down and overwhelm us; and we doubt not that the

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