The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-03-16 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE POPULAR CAUSE."
( From the Mornioy Hutuld.)
Among the various forms of congratulation in which
the delighted whig radicals have indulged, in conse-
(pence of the prospect of retaining office by means of a
majority of 29, the most impudent is their proclamation,;
that they have achieved a triumph for the popular cause.
It has been long ago established among the axioms of
cunning dabblers in political delusion,- that any thing
regarding public affairs, however contrary to truth, may
obtain very considertable footing, and even be admitted
as a principle of political action, if only it be persever-
ingly and extensively asserted. Let any fiction, how-
ever monstrous, be asserted in the newspapers week after
week, and day after day, for a long time, and the classes
who read these newspapers will come—not to believe
the thing—but to act upon it as an established truth,
without any rational investigation of tie thing asserted.
Of this mode of profitable decepti. the whig-radicals
have had no scruple in availing theNsel yes, and their fa-
vourite habit of imposture has been to represent the ad-
vantage of their party, and the furtherance of the po-
pular cause, as identical things.
Now this is so far from being true, that the very con-•
trary might with much more reasrai oe maintained. The
popular cause is that which the present ministers, and
the party upon which they depend, have ever neglected.
They have been, more titan any other men that ever pus-:
sessed influence in this country, hostile to the cause of
the people; for the tories, even in their f t ro rs, were not
so sordid and so selfish as to try to engross every thing
for themselves. If they endeavonte'l to grasp a greater
amount of political power than fait ly belonged to them,
they did not deem it necessary to grind the poor in order
to exhibit their philosophy. If they were often profuse
of the national resources, they at least allowed die po-
pillar body to dip in the running stream of waste.lt
-
was not their practice to pinch and pare in all things be.
yowl the sphere of their own enjoyment, but to gorge
and cram those connected with them, either as political
supporters, or as expectant relatives. This is the plan
of whig-radicals; and while jobs are multiplied, and
commissioners grow up like mushrooms from the Down-
ing street soil—while old places, ho:teret useless, ale
maintained, and new ones, however unnecessary, are
created,,the popular body is not a whit the richer. No
one thrives, except there be a cause shown in the shape
of a probable help to men whose political existence de-
pends upon a few votes in the Hous,n of Commons.
Borough mongering under another name is as rife as
ever ; and though a roan cannot go into the market and
sell the nomination to a seat in pal liament, he may show
in a certain quarter that his influence is considerable;
and he will find this to throw a wonderfully strong light
upon his claims to a conunissionership, or any piece of
patronage which may seem to him commensurate with
his merits.

But these ministers pretend that their success is a tri-
umph to the popular cause. What is the popular cause ?
Is it that of the political economists ? Is it the cause of
thos-e who consider compassion to be one of the infirtni •
ties .of humanity, and the indulgence of kindly feeling
to be a dangerous. excess ? Is the popular cause identi-
fied with the success of men who have reduced hard-
heat tedness to a science, and boast of hating gone fur-
ther than any other men in giving to regulated selfish-
ness a political elevation which, in.less enlightened times,
it did not possess ?
We should be glad to hear froM those who ascribe po
polarity to the cause of the Whig radical party, what
the popular body have ever derived from Whig-radical
measures. That the middling classes in towns have ob-
tained a greater share of political consequence, and are
more directly involved in the party strife of politics than
they were, and that these changeS are owing to whig-
radical measure 4, we admit. But beyond that—and we
can scarcely call that doing any thing for the mass of the
people—the whole scope and tendency of Whig - radical
policy has been the reverse of popular. It has been held
as a reproach to the tone of society in this country, that
poverty is ignominious; but the whig-radical govern-
ment has gone much farther than this, for its policy ap
peals to be founded upon the assumptbm of the same
thing; so that the ignominy of poverty is not merely. 'a
defect of the manners and worldly disposition of the
time, but it is made the foundation of laws. The free-
dom of human beings—that is if they he poor—is t reated
as a matter of very light account ; hut the fieedom of
capita. is insisted upon wi:h all the ardour of patriotic
emotion. The ri.4ll:s of riches never were more sturdily
upheld than they have been by whiz- radical politicians
the claims of poverty have never been more cruelly ne-
glected than by these same politicians, and yet they have
the effrontery to call their success a triumph of the po-
pular cause.
It is easy to call any cause popular ; but so long as
the cause of the people is that of nature and humanity,
and so long as the cause of the whig,r-radicals is that of
Capital and cunning, the whip-radical cause and the po-
pular cause will be wide as the poles asunder.