The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-11-03 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

:in consequence of a great press of local matter, we are obliged
to withdraw the commun.rations of several correspondents,
which would otherwise luiv..! appeared.

(Elle Kibtrpoot gPtanDarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, NOV. 3, 1846.

The result of the municipal election yesterday
slightly surprises us. A victory in any encounter
with Whig-Radicalism we know that we can win ;
but a victory with unprepared, and—thanks to Sir
Robert Peel—a divided force to bring into the field
against a well organised antagonist, is more than
we should have dared to hope for. Such, how-
ever, we cannot but consider the result of yester-
day's polling. Of the sixteen wards vacated, ten
have returned Conservatives. Three were uncon-
tested—Conservatives in two, and a Whig-Radical
in another walking the course—and two more being
postponed until to-day, owing to the inability of the
aldermen of the wards to preside, as required by the
municipal act. In three wards—Lime-street, St.
Paul's, and Korth Toxteth—the Whig candidates
have been successful, and in eight contests the Con-
servatives have won. _ _

If anything had been required to satisfy us that
the constituencies of Liverpool are essentially Con-
servative, the result of this election would do so.
We repeat that we had not sufficient preparation for
a contest. Had we been properly generalled, is it
to be conceived as within the bounds of probability
that Mr. Henry Danson would have been permitted
to represent Lime-street, especially with so respect-
able and efficient an opponent as Mr. Saunders,
For St. Paul's, we are thoroughly convinced a vic-
tory might have been won, had a candidate been
sufficiently early in the field. Mr. Briscoe is an
unexceptionable man. As a tradesman he is re-
spected by all who know him, and is most popular
in the ward. Three days more opportunity of
placing his merits befcre the notice of the electors
would have made him safe.
In North Toxteth, too, we lose, Radicalism re-
turning Mr. Robert Benn, to the exclusion of a
tried friend of the ward, Mr. John Sheppard. In
common charity, we hope the Council will autho-
rize Mr. Berm to weep over the Albert Warehouses.
Perhaps he can tell us why they cannot be insured;
or, it may be that his tears, preserved by Mr. Eyre
Evans, may supply the means of counteracting any
-confl-.2ration which may occur.
In Vauxhall, St. Anne's, and we expect to be
able to add Scotland Ward, we have put Conserva-
tives in the place of Radicals.
We must not conclude without directing attention
to the two wards which have to be decided to-day.
Scotland Ward is Our own if we choose to put forth
our strength. Mr. Thornhill must not, in these
days of sanitary interest, be allowed to walk over a
respectable-tradesman and a man of business. Mr.
James Holme and Mr. William Thornhill—Which
is the man best calculated to meet the present
emergency of the Council—to superintend the sewer-
ing - and ventilating of the town ? The electors in
Scotland Ward will furnish the answer to-day.
Of South Toxteth we have strong expectations.
We cannot afford to lose an amiable man a good
Conservative, and an active Councillor, like Mr.
Glazebrook. We implore the Conservative electors
to be early at the poll, and secure at the outset a
large majority. Cannot some of the active gentle-
men in other wards devote another portion of their
valuable services to South Toxteth to-day. Their
exertions will be highly prized, and may tend to
make the victory more triumphant.

His Lordship, the premier, is proving himself,
his own friends admit, unequal to the position to
which the cruel kindness of his astute predecessor

advanced him. A few ye rs ago Sir Robert Peel,
when engaged in the formation of his cabinet, in-
formed the world that " Ireland was his chief diffi-

culty." We well remember with what an amusing
display of self-satisfaction Lord John allowed it to
be inferred that, in his hands and by the use of his
specifics, Ireland could present no difficulty at all.

The utmost that could be required was the throw-

ing of a few sops into the jaws of the many.headed
Cerberus, who keeps watch at the gate of that social

Tartarus, to deny admission to everything like prac-

tical efforts to remove the evils under which her

wretched population labours, and to allay the fer-
ment of agitation by which they are stirred up to
outrage and to crime. Take Daniel O'Connell in-
to the councils and favour of the government ;
withdraw the ban imposed upon the leaders of the

Repeal agitation ; distribute commissionerships,
and create stipendiaries out of Whig-radical and
Popish materials in sufficient abundance ; threaten
a few heavy blows against the Irish Protestant
Church ; make the body of Irish Protestant land-
owners quake for the security of their rent-rolls,
and amuse the squatters in her bogs and upon her
fertile spots with an indefinable shadow of ultimate
appropriation of their holdings, under the title of
fixity of tenure; and all. would go well. Whig-
radical administration of the affairs of that singular
country would be an ovation—merry as a station,
a wedding or a christening, and almost as full of fun
as a wake itself.

Well, Lord John has entered upon the admini-
stration of Irish affairs, we grant a most difficult
crisis. O'Connell is his own. " Dear Ray "is his
_ _ __ .

particular friend. The " Head Pacificator is both
sober and well-behaved. Here were materials—
here was a corps d'action which, for efficiency, no
minister ever before possessed in that country.
Yet with the whole Repeal staff to aid him in his
efforts to administrate a remedy for the disaster
which has befallen Ireland, in the partial loss of the
potatoe crop --with a well-trained body of priests
to restrain the wild passions, and to guide the wil-
ful ignorance of the people—Lord John appears in
a state of hopeless bewilderment. He has pre-
sented to him an actual tangible difficulty. He has
to set a half-starving population to work. The
State has opened its purse-strings for the purpose
of providing the funds. Yet, with all his new alli-
ances, his lordship appears incapable either to act
or decide in the emergency. The arch mendicant,
powerful for evil, deserts him at his need, and bab-
bles of a convention of Irishmen in College-green.
The whole tribe of Repeal wardens and collectors
maintain a sullen silence, for the rent has become a
mere tenuity—an anatomy of its former self ; and
the priest'iood—the sworn allies of liberalism—
have been only active in deranging the working of
the machinery set in motion for supplying the wants
of the population ; brawling at presentment sessions,
and doing their utmost to render their proceedings
so many absurd and mischievous farces. The re-
sult has been what might have been foreseen—a
mass of abortive plans; the sanction of a host of
useless and unprofitable works—railways, roads and
canals, which might with quite as much propriety
be projected to the moon, for any chance which
there appears to exist of their teing either executed
or attempted. A crude and bungling piece of
legislation has been thrown upon the troubled
waters of Ireland's politics and social disorganiza-
tion, without a tongue to explain its provisions, or
hands or a head to direct their operation.
In the emergency in which he has found himself,
Lord John appears to have found it necessary, for
the preservation of his character for omniscience, to
have a fling at the landlords of Ireland. Truly un-
fortunate men, these same Irish landlords are.
They have abandoned during the present year,
some ten per cent., some twenty per cent., and some
the whole rental of their property ; but Lord John
appears to have expected from them something
more than a sacrifice of their property. They were
to have made up by their sagacity for his own short-
sightedness—to have interpreted at a glance his
own sorry legislation. The Act of Parliament de-
vised for the employment and relief of the peasantry
of Ireland, permitted public works to be projected
and c irried on by the aid of loans from the State;
to be repaid by the landowner. Lord John is in a
fever because the landowner is notable at once to
say how much of the burthen, and in what way he
can take it upon himself. "It had been," he says,
" Our hope and expectation, that landed proprietors
would have commenced works of drainage and other im-
provements on their own account; thus employing the
people on their own estates, and rendering the land more
productive for the future. In that case, it would have
been only the surplus labour which would have been em-
ployed on roads, and other works not immediate profitable.
"The act, however, was put in operation in the baro-
nies, in a spirit the reverse of that which I have described.
It was taken for granted that the public works were the
chief objects to be regarded, and proprietors began to
calculate, that as so large a sum was to be repaid from
their estates: they
.should not be able to commence or
even to continue private enterprises for the improvement
of their own lands."
An awful confession ! Lord John and his col-
leagues expected that the landed propritors of Ire-
land would have commenced works of drainage and
other improvements on their own account, with