The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-07-09 00:00:00

Ail I; Pcover of Ow P414g0 WM A ti: ,-v

beck, and the cry of the people went beforo them;
and yet where are these reformers now ? All chop-
fallen, or nearly so, and the very last of the Mohicans
soon about to follow them into the land of forgetful-
ness. The Duke of Wellington quietly observed, at
the moment of the revolution, that "he did not see
how the government of the country could be carried
on ;" and now one thing clearly appears, and that is,
that the authors of the bill could not do it. The rump
and their Papist associates will shortly be removed, and
then the interesting experiment will commence, whe-
ther Sir R. Peel and the Conservatives can work the
machine which the late improvers were forced Most
disgracefully to abandon. They must work it as they
find it. It is vain to think of restoring it to its former
That, so far as regards the reform measure, is
quite out of the question ; it is a political impossibi-
lity. The Duke of Wellington'S query, therefore, must
be answered—namely, how will you carry on the go-
vernment—how do you propose permanently to con-

duct the administration of affairs with such a quantity
of power residing in the lower parts of the machine ?
This is the knot for our political engineers to untie ; it
is one well worthy of the most profound attention.
It may be said, perhaps, that the country, now re-
turning a Conservative House of Commons, and giv-
ing Sir It. Peel on the instant a working majority of
fifty for sixty, or even more, is a sufficient solution
of the difficulty. So far we grant that this is
well; but unless some great Conservative and consti-
tutional movement be made--a movement which it
will take time to bring about, and render of any effi-
cacy—we must regard Conservative ascendancy as
precarious, and Sir R. Peel's premiership, or that of
any other Conservative statesman, insecure.
The Duke of Wellington's observation is founded
upon the difficulty which ke supposes to exist in a mi-
nister obtaining a House of Commons sufficiently fa-
vourable to him for all gubernatorial purposes, without
the aid of the excised boroughs or borough patronage.
But is it not manifest that this difficulty would be ob-
viated if the minister had a willing people to deal with ?
This we take to be the answer to the question. The
Reform clearly set up, or at least established, a new
principle, and, in order to make the machine work, you
must act upon this new principle. You cannot get rid
of it, nor overcome its force by any by-ends ; you have
but one thing for it, and that is, to take it, and work
it out.

Sir Robert Peel has wisely declared that he will do—
what the Radicals would not do, if they could help
themselves—namely, stand by the Reform Bill as a
final measure. But if that act is to remain—as remain
it must—then in order to have a good working Con-
servative administration under it, you must have a
Conservative democracy. The people must be looked
after—the poor must be cared for—the Church must
be extended—national education on Church principles
must be promoted ;—these are the conditions prece-
dent—the fundamental terms which must be fulfilled
before Reform and Conservation can work harmoni-
ously together, or Conservative government can be se-
cure or permanent. We know of no middle course—
no moderation—that will not be dangerous, as regards
these essential points. If a Conservative ministry he-
sitates.here, it is lost. If it think of conciliating Pa-
pists and Radicals by any compromising system with
respect to these important heads, it may " fret its hour
upon the stage," but it will be a short one, and then it
will depart, conscious only of its misused opportunities
and neglected means, and utterly hopeless as to the
future. If that course be followed which seems dic-
tated by true wisdom, the Reform Bill is capable of
being converted into one of our greatest political
blessings.

THE official declaration of the state of the poll for
Dublin on Wednesday evening, being the second day
of the election, is so extremely satisfactory that we
begin to participate in the presentiments of our Con-
servative friends of that city, and to feel confidence in
their predictions, that the Arch-Agitator, and his asso-
ciate will be deposed. This will be a matter of un-
speakable delight to the Protestant citizens of Dublin,
and of unfeigned pleasure, we may add, to the Con-
servatives of the empire. O'Connell has too long
usurped the seat. His being returned for it, was a
sort of living falsification. He did not represent the
aristocracy of Dublin, nor even the respectable middle
orders, both of which are Protestant and Conservative.
He represented nothing but the Trades' Unions, and
the rabble. His repeated returns are only attributable
to the reform bill before its operation had been properly
carried out by the Conservative party, and to uncon-
stitutional influences. Things are now at length about
to right themselves —or at least we hope so, and the
Repealer must sink down to one of his " boroughs."
His rejection at Dublin will be a bad pass-port to the
county electors of Carlow, and ominous of his fate
in that quarter also. He has " boroughs " enough
however to fall back upon—boroughs of which he
carries the key in perfect security. There is first
Kilkenny—which he sells or gives away as if it were a
certain amount of stock in the three per cent. consuls.
One of the "scions" has got it on the present occasion.
Then there is Dungarvan—which the Judge Advocate
General, Mr. Shiel, has just stepped into—denouncing
the county of Tipperary. Then there is Clonmel—
then Ennis—Ross—Dundalk, and we regret to add
Kinsale, which has just returned a Repealer in the
room of Colonel Thomas, a Conservative—cum multis
anis. There is no likelihood of the Arch-Agitator
being left without a seat, for however Reform may have
operated to deprive others of the nomination power, it
transferred it to him with extraordinary plenitude.
We do not, as we have said on a former occasion, ate=
ticipate on the whole, any alteration.nf consequence .in
the returns from Ireland. Under the existing system,
the priest-power is supreme, and where it has materials
to act upon, carries all before it. By the way, it was
a good joke to hear the Arch-demagogue enveighing
against Mr, Grogan, for having used the following
words at an electioneering meeting : "No matter
what condition in life he may be in, every man in this
country must have seen before this how the influence of
Popery is pervading every thing in the land, and was it
not time to resist the evil, and remove the withering
blight ?" Upon the strength of this passage he de-
nounced Mr. Grogan as an "exterminator, and a
preacher of extermination"—and Mr. West also for
having sat by and hearing such language in silence,
Mr. West, on his subsequent speech, endeavoured to
excuse himself, and talked a great deal more liberalism
than we at all like to hear out of the mouth of a Con-
servative candidate. There was nothing in the lan-
guage above quoted that needed palliation or excuse.
He was just right and true to the letter. Yes, every
man that knows any thing of Ireland will say, that the
" influence of Popery is pervding every thing in the
land," and that "it is time to resist the evil, and re-
move the withering blight." This is just the fact.
But the Arch-demagogue with his usual aptitude for
persuasion immediately cries out, " extermination !
you want to exterminate the people !" There he
argued from the Pope's practice and his own. When
his holiness issues a bull for the " extirpation of
heresy," his myrmidons are by no means particular
about the person of the heretic, and if the heresy can-
not be rooted up without destroying the heretic, away
they go both together. The learning on this interest-
ing subject may all be found in the authorised version
of Dens's Theology, which will be better studied by the
light of some of the Rev. Robert M‘Ghee's admirable
commentaries. But this is not the Protestant method
of proceeding ; we wish to cure the fault, but spare the
man. Extermination makes no part of the Protestant
creed. We shall not waste words, however, in com-
bating any allegation that falls from the lips of so
notorious a falsifier as the arch-demagogue. The man
who comes up to Dublin fresh from a crusade of no
metaphorical, but of actual extermination in the County
of Carlow, there to charge an opponent with a crime
not only never practised, but never even thought of or
alluded to by him, is just that sort of disgusting hypo-
crite who is best treated by silent contempt. We shall
only add, that if Popery—the metaphysical falsehood
which men call Popery—be irremediable and immove-
able in Ireland, then the Emerald isle is certainly a
doomed land. We do not pretend to say, that it is in
the power of man to remove it; but we do say, that
the removal should never be despaired of—that all
proper methods for removing it should be resorted to
and that, last of all, should any compromise be entered
into, as if it were intended to abandon the country to,
or share its dominion with it.