The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-06-14 00:00:00

JUNE 14, 1, G.

crown of England a law officer in the number of its
advisers ? is there at the present moment an Attorney-
General ? If there be, we beg to call his attention to
the following words of the member for Waterford :-
4' In the history of the empire it. has been recorded that
kings have been dethroned, and that lords hare been
voted.useless ; but I find that the Commons of England
are immortal !" Does this threat amount to a treason
able misdemeanour, or does it not? Such language
used to be considered seditious. Mr. SHIEL'S scream
Was harsher and more violent than usual, but we leave
him in the hands of Sir R. PEEL. Mr. O'CONNEI.L
raised the old cry of justice to Ireland, and called upon
the House of Commons not to submit to the degradation
of listening to the advice of the House of Lords. He
alluded to the alleged compact between himself and the
government. He denied any positive agreement, but
said there was an implied understanding between him-
self and ministers that they should pass this and other
similar measures, as the price of his support in parlia-
ment. We trust not ourselves to speak of this avowal of
*the connexion between the denounced of the King of
England and the ministers of the same King of England.
We leave him in the hands of Lord STANLEY, as we left
SHIEL in the hands of Sir R. PEEL. And it will be seen
that. the Irish ruffian on this occasion, as on other
occasions, is most mercilessly treated by that staunch
and noble spirited defender of our monarchy and ecclesi-
astical institutions—we mean Lord STANLEY.

We trust not ourselves to lac• before the public the
opinions we entertain in reference to the division on
Saturday morning. The numbers were—

For Lord John Russell's amendment 324
Fur the bill as amended by the Lords 238

Majority for ministers SG
We see more in the consequences of this division than
we choose now to tell. Never were the Whigs so low in
public estimation as this forced majority will make them.
Ia a very few days the whole matter will be out. We
Wait.

The readers of this paper will bear us witness that we
have never shrunk from a statement of our candid con-
viction of the utter fruitlessness of any attempt to secure
peace and gocd government to Ireland, by further con-
cessions to the papists of that distracted country. In-
deed, so frequently and so fearlessly have we recorded
our opinions on this subject, that we feel we should only
be tiring our readers, were we now again to enter on a
discussion of the moral propriety or legislative wisdom
of placing municipal power and patronage in the hands
of the DENS-taught and Maynooth-bred priests. But
while we thus refrain from noticing the real question of
debate in the House of Commons, on Thursday evening
last, we should not be doing our duty to the public, did
We not allude to the unmannerly violence and unconsti-
tutional menaces employed by the Secretary of State for
the Home Department, and his supporters.
We live in strange times! It is, indeed, a new thing
to hear the scion of a noble house abusing the hereditary
Peerage of the land, and to find a minister of the King of
England leading on a worthless band in a treasonable
-crusade against the monarchical institutions of the em-
pire. Yet these things are so ! We are told by Lord
JOHN RUSSELL, that unless the House of Commons be
the supreme legislative body, and its decrees paramount,
that the " well known principles of the constitution will
be impaired." He tells us that the House of Commons
had agreed to a certain measure, and that because the
House of Lords in the exercise of their undoubted pre-
rogative, and hitherto unquestioned right, thought fit to
Make certain alterations in that measure, therefore the
balance of the constitution was disturbed, and an insult
offered to the :representative house. Gracious GOD !
Sand is it come to this ? Are the nobles of the land—the
Men whose ancestors won for us Magna Charta—that
body whose absence from the senate was coeval with the
darkest pages in the history of Britain—are they to sur-
render their deliberate and unfettered opinions to meet
the commands of an Irish bully ? Forbid it Heaven !
Better that the sun of Britain's glory should set at once
and for ever, than that its lustre should be dimmed by
any compromise so odious, or any concession so base, as
Would be involved in the House of Lords, deigning to
comply with, or even listen to, the insulting and mena-
cing terms offered them by the miserable hireling of
O'CONI!IELL, who is by dint of 'a-lavish expenditure Of
treasury money, enabled to write M.P. for Stroud after
his name. Hear the rejected of Devonshire:—

" I should be deserting my duty were I, for the sake of any
Compliment to the proposals of the other house of parliament,
to propose to barter away the privileges of this house."
What does the miserable driveller mean by " barter-
ing away the privileges of this house ?" Far be it from
us to deny to the House of Commons their undoubted
right to a fair and honourable expression of their own
opinions—still less would we wish them to change those
'Opinions on every impulse. Let the representatives of
the people do their duty—let them legislate to the best
'of their ability, and with a due regard to the interests
they have to watch over—when they have framed a
Measure on these principles, they have done all that can
be expected of them until the other branch of the legis-
lature have given it their consideration, and returned it
to them with such alterations as it may have appeared to
them to require. Should the House of Commons on re
consideration find no cause to rescind their former opi-
nions on this subjeet, and see no wisdom in the suggested
alterations, it would then become their duty to demand a
conference with the lords ;
,or if the alterations be great,
41nd the bill, as remodelled, preserve but few of the
features of the old measure, it would be in their power
to reject it altogether. The independence of both
}houses would thus be preserved, and the object of our
constitution in its three estates fully answered. But will
.11c11 a course as this satisfy. Lord JOHN RUSSELL ? Is
this what the puny lordling of the house of Bedford
weans by the "privileges of this house ?" No. For
the real privileges of the House of Commons the Secre-
tary of State for the Home Department had little or no
anxiety. It is an infringement of the privileges of that
house to traffic in seats, but not one word does that noble
lord say in condemnation of, nay, he defends his mas-
ter's right to cheat the Jew RAPHAEL. It is an infringe-
'tient of the privileges of the House of Commons that
its members sell their franks by the session, yet such is
the constant practice of
.the needy paupers who form the
Joints of the Irish tail, and Lord JOHN knows it; still
not one word falls from his lips in censure of this viola-
tion of the standing. orders and parliamentary regula-
tions of the.house to which he belongs. Again, it is an
ulfringement upon the privileges of the House of Coln-
11°11s, that men should have seats there who possess no
property qualification, save and except a colourable title,
IL deed of lease and release obtained for a mere pepper-
corn consideration ; yet the ministerial majorities are
ersnposed of such men, and Lord SOHN is silent:. What
are the privileges then for which his lordship is so soli-
citous ? The privilege for which he now raves and
prates is none other than an exclusive right to BULLY
the
House of Lords. His whole speech is interlarded
vith flowrets of low blackguardism, borrowed for the
eeasion, from O'CONNELL, ROEBUCK, WADE, SAVAGE,
411 d CO.
The House of Commons, in its reformed state, has
already been guilty of acts of gross corruption, such as
would not have disgraced the long parliament; and it is
the object of those who pull the wires which set the mi-
nisterial puppets in motion, to assimilate the present
noose of Commons still more closely to that profligate
body which swept away the House of Lords and de-
throned a King. Lord JOHN RUSSELL does not scruple
t 0 threaten the House of Peers with a REBELLION IN
IRELAND if popery be not allowed to take the place of
Protestantism in that country. He calls upon the House
,':}f Commons—not to seek a conference with the other
house—not to throw out the bill altogether—but to insist
upon the submission of the lords !! He tells the lords
that unless they succumb to the mandates of O'CONNELL,
and do the bidding of the priests, they may " be assured,
t4ett as soon as the first cannon ball was fired again in
44rope, they would have to retract all their denials, and
i° make all those concessions which ill-founded prejudice
and a DETERMINATION TO CREATE DISUNION had led
them previously to uithhold !! ! Pretty language this