The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1832-12-04 00:00:00

TEMPLE V. PALMERSTON.

The folly and the wickedness of our present expedition
against Holland, and its cause, the ignorance and vanity
of Lord Palmerston cannot be more strikingly pourtrayed
than in the following extracts from the works of his illus-
trious kinsman, Sir William Temple. A few more such
' contrasts as we find between Sir William and Lord Pal-
merston, or the Lord Chancellor and Mr. Wm. Brougham,
would utterly subvert our belief that there is such a thing
as hereditary talent :
" It may be laid down fora maxim," says Sir William, "that
no wise state will ever begin a war, unless it be upon designs of
conquest or necessity of defence, for all other wars serve only to
exhaust forces and treasure, and end in untoward peace.
"One may judge, that if France will begin a war, it would
be naturally upon Flanders, unless discouraged by the same al-
liances which prevailed with them to end the'last. So, the plain
present interest of Prance is one way or other to break the con-
fidence or the force of that triple alliance which alone seems to
bound their prospect which way soever they look.
"Our interest, abroad, must lie inone of these points ; either
to preserve our present alliances, and thereby the peace of
Christendom, as it now stands, or to encourage France to an
invasion of Holland, with an assurance of our neutrality; or
else to join with France, upon the advantages they can offer us,
for the ruin of the Dutch. .

This was in 1671. Sir William anxiously endeavoured
to point out the danger and the infaMy of the latter alter-
natives. But the Lords Grey and Palmerston of that
day prevailed in the council. An alliance was formed
with France. A war was undertaken against Holland.
Of that war Sir William observes, in 1673 :

"The nations have been at war without being angry, and the
quarrel had been thought on both sides rather of the ministers
than the people. In England, some laid it to the corruption of
ministers by the money of France, but some that pretended to
think deeper, laid it to deeper designs. The Lord Clifford's
(not Palmerston's) violence in beginning it gave it an ill air in
general, and the disuse of parliaments, a cruel maim."

Before we proceed, ,we cannot but observe, that this
" disuse of parliaments," of which
,Sir William Temple
complains, is the only precedent for above a century and
a half, till the present time, of engaging the country in
a war, and yet not summoning parliament to meet and
decide upon it !
Sir William goes on—

"The subsidies from France bore no'proportion to the charge
of our fleets, and our btrength at sea seemed rather lessened
than increased by the conjunction of their's. Our seamen
' fought without heart, and were more afraid of their friends than
their enemies, and our discontents were so great at land, that
* * * §.

Here we stop. We shall only add, that Temple him-
self was despatched to
.the Hague, and had the honour.of
closing this anti-national war. Littte did he think that
another Temple would be the man to resume it !—Guar-
dian and Public Ledger.

. THE CRUSADE OF THE 10TH CENTURY.
It is a problem in human nature, that there are men
who, ,unless. in violent action, or.stimulated by pain, are
in a state of nothingness. A fierce taste of existence,
whether of pleasure or its contrary, is necessary to them,
• and they are never so much in their element 'as when
hitting out right and left, or being hit in their turn.
Peace and quiet are to their unhappy constitution but a
- state of living death. We have just seen this appetite
for cracked. crowns and bloody noses draw a crowd of
' French and English to Portugal, to bear a hand in a
paltry squabble, that has been so long pending, and with
such miserably indecisive success, that most people have
. ceased to care which side wins, or how the contest may
eventually terminate. Or if any rational person goes so
far as to have a wish on the subject, what would recom-
pense - him for periling his own particular person in a
service where the cannon-ball deals out, indeed, an effi-
cient, but so shabby a death ? Honourable matter for an
epitaph it must be, truly, to have died in vindicating the
' cause of a mincing dandy against an acknowledged scamp,
and to have found both (as some report) never a barrel
the better herring.
Is it in a fit of enthusiasm for the abstract idea of legi-
timate succession that a man is led to sacrifice his own
particular bowels upon its altar ? Or is it not, that pricked
on by poverty, idleness, or restless ambition, the volun-
teer' cares little on which side he fights so long as his pay
• and his prospects are satisfactory. In this case the chi-
• ;mirk spirit of the modern crusader is very considerably
lowered: Evpn the virtue Of courage can scarcely be al-
-1

lowed, when there is either ignorance of, or insensibility
to, danger ; for true courage consists in.a full knoWledge
of the extremity of the evil incurred, and boldly facing
it. There are times when it is necessary to hug death,
let it come in what shape it may, and when it becomes
the condition of a gentleman's existence that he must
tweak the nose of an insulter. But for fighting without
just cause of quarrel, we hid it to be a less respectable
eMployment than shoemaking. What is any indifferent
Englishmen or Don Pedro to him ? Where is their bond
of sympathy ? If the Portuguese will not eject their own
tyrant (which, if they were unanimous, they are so well
able to do,) it may be inferred, that he is les§ obnoxious
than has been reported. When conclusions are about to
be tried in which huthan life is at stake, there should, at
least, be a noble cause. The struggle of the Poles against
Russia, or resistance to the oppression and arbitrary-dic-
tates of the allied powers, would have justified the- active
exertions of any honourable man. But when there are
neither complaints nor Suffering, the case is widely diffe-
rent. We know we shall be answered, that the game of
liberty is playing in Portugal, and that swords are being
fleshed there Which- may be wielded to good purpose in
other fields. But the experience 'is hardly worth its cost ;
and a righteous war has always, at least, the satisfaCrion
of bringing honourable scars. Let us not be understood
to impugn the motives of every individUal who has
thought fit to join this expedition ; there may have been
inducements too exalted for our comprehension. Our
view is a general.one, and the result of it is certainly not
a feeling of profound ,admiration.—. Atlas.