The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-09-05 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORAING, SEPT. 5, 1843.

We are not alarmists ; but we must acknowledge
that we cannot look forward with any pleasurable
feelings to the result of our municipal struggle in
November next. Of the members who this year
retire from the Council, we find that eleven are Con-
servatives and five Radicals. To hold our own, only,
will require all the vigorous energies which the
Conservative body can put forth; and we greatly
fear, not that in any quarter want of energy will
be displayed, but that there is no longer that healthy
spirit abroad among the constituencies, which will
ensure a response to our call, however loudly and
earnestly it may be made. Three years ago, it will
be borne in mind, we fought this same battle for the
same men, whose expiring tenures of office will
shortly place them again in the field. We remem-
ber well the energetic efforts—we remember well the
untiring zeal—which were put forth for the achieve-
ment of victory. The same efforts—the same zeal—
will no doubt be put forth again ; but will they suc-
ceed in rousing from their apathy, their coldness,
their pettishness, the masses without whose prompt
aid exertion will be in vain ? Alas, we fear they
will NOT !

It may be deemed injudicious in us to make this
confession—a candid one, however, and one not
formed without anxious examination. The Radical
faction will chuckle over it. Some thoughtless
Conservatives will sneer at it. Wrapt up in their
own self-sufficiency, some will perhaps laugh out-
right. We shall not, however, be deterred from the
performance of what we conceive to be a duty, or
from the utterance of what we know to be the
truth, by any dread of either censure or ridicule.
The cause is with us more revered than the men.
It was for that cause that we fought; and, when we
see it perilled, and even sacrificed, our faithful
warning shall not be held back. It is perilled now.
It is shortly doomed, we fear, to defeat and disaster;
and we must raise our voice to urge upon those
whose mistaken policy—whose neglect of the means
by which alone ends are obtained—have produced the
vast amount of disappointment and disorganisation
existing amongst the various constituencies of our
borough, to awake from their dream of security, and
to retrace the steps which have led them so far
towards the annihilation of their strength.
We may be asked what are the steps, the policy,
of which we complain. In what has the present
Conservative Council been found wanting. We
reply, the policy of which we complain has been
a:continual truckling to the dictation, the bullying,
or the sneers of the Radical minority. The quality
of which the Conservative Council has been found
wanting, has been boldness to assert, in their mea-
sures, those great Conservative principles, for the
profession of which, before their several consti-
tuencies, they were placed in the possession of office
and power. From an examination of the entire pro-
ceedings of the Council, since Conservatism ob-
tained the majority, the most telescopic vision can-
not detect more than a bare leaning towards Con-
servative principle. The spectacle indeed which it
most strikingly presents to us is that of a Conser-
vative government acting upon Whig principles and
with: Whig instruments. In every department we
jostle against the Whig nominees of the defeated
faction. In every portion of the working of the
machine we recognise the guiding of Whig hands.
Nor have the exercise of its patronage, and the ap-
pointments .of the Council, since the fall of Whig
domination, been such as ought to satisfy the Con-
servative party. We found, on our entrance to
power, every place of profit or honour filled exclu-
sively:by Whig officials. Through all its branches,
from the highest officer to the common policeman
or scavenger, the thing was Whig. With a gene-
rosity and liberality unparalled, we left it so ; but
therpublic did at least hope that, as time and oppor-
tunity offered, a little leaven would be infused into
the mass, and by degrees, however slow, Conserva-
tivism would be enabled to assert its right, as a ma-
jority, to a portion of the favours placed at the dis-
posal of its own representatives. Such has scarcely,
however, been the case. Most timid and niggardly
has been the hand which has doled out to the Con-
servatives the rewards which it had in its power to
offer to merit, although we have seen Whig reci-
pients of its bounty fondled and fed, whilst " Libe-
ralism" throughout its borders has rejoiced over our
excessive impartiality—our strict justice—our extra-
ordinary singlemindedness and purity !
All this is very virtuous no doubt, but at the
same time it is very unwise, and we fear will prove
so on the first occasion when the test is applied. It
has produced alienation of feeling and heartburnings
in many quarters, which sooner or later must inevi-
tably develope themselves, to the serious damage of
the Conservative cause within our borough.
To another point, however, let us briefly address
ourselves. How is it, we ask, that- Conservative
feeling amongst the community has so greatly dimi-
nished within the last two years ? That it has done
so he must be a bold or a blind man to deny.
Where, then, are we to look for the cause ? To the
fact that, when victory, after years of struggle, had
at length been achieved, the Conservatives threw
down their arms, and resigned themselves to the
enjoyment of an imagined jubilee ! Where, for
example, are our Conservative and our Protestant
Associations—those mighty engines of organisation,
to which so much of the success of the Conservative
cause is to be attributed ? They are either wholly
broken up, or have a struggling existence amongst
the loyal opeiative portion only of the'coris . ... u. .....
They were courted in the day of adversity; they
were troublesome in the day of prosperity ! They
might embarrass the Conservative government;
they might interfere with the eccentric vagaries of
wavering Conservatives in the Council. They were