The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-07-25 00:00:00

QrJ)t Eiberpool uibari.

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 25, 1848.

WE lave been requested to warn the Conser-
vatives of a snare which it is said is being laid for
them in anticipation of the approaching municipal
election in November. The Reform party are
already taking advantage of the Water question,
with a view to eject several supporters of the Pike
scheme from the Council on that occasion, and to
elect others of their own party. If this be so, is it
not desirable that we should at once be ready with
well qualified gentlemen from our own ranks, who
are able and willing to advocate the most econo-
mical plan of confining ourselves, at present at
least, to the local resources for our water supply ?
We now merely throw out the hint. We may
have something more to say on the subject by and
bye.

WE were extremely surprised to hear yesterday
that it is the intention to stop the working of the
engine at the Soho-street Water-works, for several
weeks, with a view to the repair of the machinery ;
more especially when we are assured that the repairs
could all be readily effected during the night, and
the daily supply of water thus continued to the
inhabitants as at present. This is of considerable
importance, as we believe that several hundred
thousand gallons are pumped daily from the well
n Soho-street, and the stoppage of this water for
a day will cause serious inconvenience to the rate-
payers.

THE Parliamentary session of 1848 may now be
regarded as nearly at its close, so far at least as the
business of legislation is concerned. 'We have an
arrear of routine business, of which the passing of
the estimates is the most important, sufficient to
occupy the attention of members for as long a pe-
riod as a House can be induced to sit; and the
sacrifice of Bills, in esse and in posse, must be tre-
mendous. And what has been the result of all
these months of long debates and late sittings—for
Mr. Brotherton has been in abeyance all the session?
What are the distinguishing measures—which is
the measure of the session ? There is no such
measure. The time of Parliament has been frittered
away without any useful legislative result at all.
A contemporary—the Manchester Guardian—w
observe, attempts to throw the blame for this non
legislation upon the Protectionist party; and seems
particularly to deplore the sad fact, that "the pro-
posal for the Repeal of the Navigation Laws has
not yet assumed the form of a bill; the most im-
portant portion of the Trish Encumbered Estates
Bill is still undiscussed in either House ; not a sin-
gle clause of the Irish Franchise Bill has been con-
sidered ; the Bill for the alteration of the Parlia-
mentary Oaths exists only in the imagination of the
Premier 69 ; and some minor Gevernment measures
have made no more satisfactory progress." Our
contemporary is conveniently oblivious, however, as
to the circumstances attending some of these hills.
Take the first mentioned—the Repeal of the Navi-
gation Laws—it was not until Government had
been badgered from all sides of the House that the
country was allowed to know what were their real
opinions on the subject, although it was one of the
most important of those mentioned in the Speech
from the Throne, and although its settlement was
alleged to be one of the conditions upon which our
colonists were willing to accede to the Ministerial
propositions with respect to the Sugar duties.
There are not wanting people who suspect, with no
slight warrant, that Lord John Russell never in-
tended, in bringing forward his motion, any thing
more than a mere demonstration ; and that if Par-
iament should sit for six more months to come, no
bill embodying the propositions contained in that
motion would he laid upon the table. The war-
rant to which we refer, is the more ultra Free Trade
views upon the question expressed by Mr. W. E,
Gladstone and a section of the Peel party. With
respect to the other bills, a portion of which our
contemporary admits to be altogether in nubibus,
we do not see how blame can attach to any other
party than Ministers themselves. The more rational
conclusion to be drawn is that deducible from all '
past experience, that, out of office a Whig states-
man has a panacea for every ill under the sun,
which, when in office, and called upon to make good
his bragging, he can scarcely ever produce.
Our contemporary forgets, also, how miserably
the commencing months were frittered away in the
consideration of their abortive financial project—a
project which did more to shake the confidence of
the country in their capability to conduct its affairs,
and to reconcile it to the retarding, no matter how,
of any other measures of their concocting, than the
most damaging efforts of their most bitter oppo-
nents could have done. We remember, too, the
time thrown away in the discussion of their Jewish I
Disabilities Bill, which might have been devoted
to the pressing forward of the Navigation Laws,
a question certainly more important to have settled
in some way or other, as affecting the entire com-
merce and a large portion of the industry of the
empire, than the 'question whether Baron Roths-
child was to take his seat in the-House of Com-
mons as the colleague of Lord John Russell.
Our contemporary, however, urges against the
Protectionists, that—
" During the present session, they have carried to an
extreme the practice of repeatedly adjourning debates,
which has been gradually increasing for several years past ;
and they have constantly obstructed the progress of mea-
sures to which they are hostile, by almost every means
which the forms of the house would allow. Four or five
nights have been occupied in debates which might as well
have been concluded in one or two ; discussions that might
have been brought to a termination before dinner, have
been spread over a whole evening ; and many an hour has
been wasted in preliminary discussions upon the question
whether theb usiness of the day ought to be proceeded with."
We are not at all aware that the party in question
have carried this practice to any greater extreme
than it has been carried by the Whig-Radical party
before them. Indeed we remember Lord John
Russell himself used to be an adept at the same
kind of thing. But, let us ask, what the major
part of these obstructions and adjournments have
been founded upon. Several of them, it is well
known, have arisen out of the well-merited in-
dignation of the house at suppressions and per-
versions of evidence upon important questions
before the house itself, or its committees. The
proved trickiness of the Board of Trade and the
Colonial Office have driven honourable members
to pause and to sift facts; and the country owes
them a debt of gratitude for so pausing, before
consenting to sacrifice important interests on un-
supported grounds.

WE are, it seems, to have an Irish rebellion in
Liverpool as well as in Ireland, with the most
modern accompaniments of barricades, &c., and,
as an addition, a little incendiarism—burning
down of warehouses, of shipping, and other pro-
perty. Authentic and tolerably detailed evidence
of the intentions of the parties is in the bands of
the authorities, who are very properly taking steps
to place the town in a posture of defence; which
object our would-be insurgents will perhaps find
to have been more completely achieved than will be
quite pleasing or convenient for them. The pre-
cise time only when the rebellion is to commence
is not yet ascertained. All we know at present is
that it has to be determined by the time selected
for the head movement on the other side of the
channel ; for ours is apparently only to be a kind
of flank movement—a diversion, an Irish sort of a
one, to distract our attention and that
of govern-
ment from the movements of the main army in the
sister country.
A stranger, unacquainted with the eccentricities
of the Irish character, would naturally ask the
What
have what has rebellion to do here ?
have the merchants and tradesmen of Liverpool to
do with the question, for the advancement of which
our Irish friends are so anxious to fight—the
Repeal of the Union ? How are these men so.
aggrieved by us that we are to have their pikes at
our throats, or their muskets pointed at our
breasts ? We have taken them from a country
which had no labour to offer them, and no bread
to give them. We have employed them in preference
t o our own industrious poor. We have placed them
in trust over our property ; enrolled them amongst
our police-force, given to their children the advan-
tage of education, provided hospitals and dispen-
saries for their relief in affliction, and from every
charitable effort undertaken by us as a community
they have been large and welcome recipients.
Whence this ungrateful return?—this savage eager-
ness to shed our blood and to destroy or plunder
our property ? It cannot surely be the result of
unprompted malevolence. Human nature is surely

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