The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-07-19 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

which have so many different interests ? "!! ! We will
not add another word to increase the humiliation of this
confession.

On Monday the West Indians met again, to receive the
report of the deputation ; and passed the following reso-
lution :

" Resolved—That a committee be appointed to draw up a
petition to the House of Commons, which (while it expresses
the anxious desire of the proprietors of Jamaica to give every
support to the principle of slave emancipation, according to the
resolution of the West India body of the 7th of June last, in
which they as a constituent part fully concurred,) shall at the
same time point out the peculiar objections which they enter-
tain to the manner in which it is proposed by the bill introduced
by Mr. Stanley to carry the same into effect, and shall pray to
be heard by counsel at the bar of the house against the same.
"That the gentlemen composing the deputation to wait on
Mr. Stanley be appointed the committee to prepare the pe-
tition."

Yesterday was again fixed for a meeting to agree
upon, sign, and present the petition ; which will urge
powerful objections to many of the enactments of the
bill. Thus stands this affair. We wait for, and shall
watch its further development with undiminished anx-
iety.

When we first surmised that the Trades' Unions, as
they are called, had political as well as other objects in
view, and that their leaders were the tools of the
THORNELY party, the supposition was doubted by some,
and denied by others. Having been at some pains to ,
discover the truth, we have procured a list of the most
active members of these unions, and, on comparing their
names with the polled votes at the last election, we find
that every freeman who voted for EwART and THORNELY
belongs to the list. Of masons, bricklayers, painters,
plasterers, joiners, and cabinet-makers, being freemen,
upwards of four hundred voted at the last election, one
half of whom voted for the radical candidates ; and of the
whole number nearly two-thirds are members .of these
degrading, dishonest, and illegal unions.
To these men, whether they have been innocently en-
trapped, or corhpelled by threats to enter the associations,
we beg to offer a word or two of advice. To the revolu-
tiOnary members of the unions any admonition from us
would be like throwing pearls before swine, and, there-
fore, we leave them to their own reflections, if they be
capable of reflecting. They are the worst characters in
the town—the scum of the most worthless class—and a
sure fate, beggary and ignominy, awaits them.
But with regard to the more deserving portion, those
who have been duped, who are not revolutionists, who
have hitherto respected the laws, and rallied round the
constituted authorities in moments of emergency, we beg
to remind them that while they are sapping their own in-
terest at home, a faction of their fellow-townsmen is stir-
ring heaven and earth before a committee of the House
of Commons to deprive them of their political rights, and
degrade them in the face of the world as corrupt and un-
principled drunkards and slaves. This is the character
which certain liberals, men who call themselves patriots,
men, some of whom are not Englishmen either in heart or
in manners,—men not one whit more abstemious, intelli-
gent, honest, or useful than themselves—this we say is
the character which these men wish to stamp upon the
whole body of the burgesses of Liverpool. Meanness and
selfishness—upstart arrogance and an insatiable love of
aggrandisement—urge these persons, in the prostituted
name of liberty, to spoliate their poorer townsmen, trample
upon the weak and the' defenceless, and brand with oblo-
quy the humble operative, in order that they may obtain
uncontrolled power and resistless influence in this the
second town in the empire.
The freemen to whom we address ourselves must see
that joining in this-combination, the pretended object of
which is a rise of wages, but the real object of which is
political influence, is fraught with certain ruin to them-
selves, and opens an avenue to that monopoly of power
which . Messrs. TIIORNELY, WM. RATHBONE, WYBERGH,
and the Unitarian and Deistical party, bave long aimed
at, and now seek to obtain by the most unwarrantable
and arbitrary means. By joining in these unions the
well-disposed :operative must perceive that he is not only
making himself the vile instrument of these men's ambi-
tion, but that he is also signing away his own freedom,
and giving himself up to slavery foolishly and thanklessly.
What would a burgess, a.member of one of these unions,
say, if Mr. RIGBY WASON, (by the bye, we have a secret to
tell of this gentleman some of these days,) or Mr. MARK
PHILIPS, of Manchester, who seems inclined to billy-
roller us of Liverpool,—what would a freeman say. if
either of these, or any other equally honourable member
of the reformed Parliament, were to rise up in the house
and contend that the burgesses of Liverpool deserved dis-
franchisement on the very ground that a large portion of
them are active members of these illegal and infamous
combinations ? It would not surprise us if such an ar-
gument were used. MARK PHILLIPS has steam enough
for any enterprise directed against Liverpool ; and RIGBY
WASON would not be sorry if all the debts due to the Cor-
poration were obliterated by the sponge. As to Mr.
THORNELY, our constitution of King and Nobles, and of
Church and State, must be a nuisance in his eyes—a com-
bination of affinities which his refined intellect cannot
possibly comprehend.
But a word more : we are, in all likelihood, upon the
eve of a new election. It is impossible, even if it were
desirable, that ministers can long withstand the repeated
discomfitures which they now receive in both houses of
parliament. They have, within a few days, been twice
defeated in their own darling House of Commons, and
other defeats await them of greater consequence. Incom-
petent and imbecile, shallow and dogmatical, grasping
and unprincipled, as ministers have proved themselves to
be, and of which the nation is now fully convinced, they
must resign, and then comes an election. It must come,
for no set of men would ever be mad enough to attempt
to govern the country with such a House of Commons as
the present. At least two hundred of its members must
be swept into oblivion before any sound measures of po-
licy can be brought forward, or any remedy applied to
past errors. When an end kput to this blundering and
chattering parliament—to this assembly of natural cu- •
riosities, sent up to London, like M'Lean's caricatures,
for sale or return—then will begin the tug of war, and
the real trial of strength. In this trial of strength the
freemen of Liverpool, we trust, will be allowed to take
their share; and if allowed, we are confident they will
acquit themselves as before. If not allowed, the blame
be upon the patriots—the liberty people—those aspiring
philanthropists who make white only the outside of the
cup and platter, whose dupes they are as the members of
these unions. If, therefore, the operative burgesses be
anxious to regain the position they have hitherto held in
this vast community, they 'must come out of these illegal
clubs, absolve themselves from impious oaths, dissolve
the unseemly connection which exists between them and
the secret agents of the discomfited candidate, and send
the tippling schoolmaster on his travels—they must do
all this before they can regain their former respectable
position in society, and revive those kindly feelings which
until lately subsisted between the workman and his
employer.-

The MorAing Herald has sent forth one of its stock
articles on the " sanguinary character of our criminal
code," in a Jeremiad over the luckless fate of some high-
waymen, in the following plaintive strain :

"At the Northampton Assizes three young men, named
Lloyd, Newell, and Marsden, convicted of highway robbery,
have been left for execution. Their case presents no feature of
peculiar atrocity. Their violence consisted in dragging the pro-
secutor off his horse, and holding him on the ground while the
robbery was committed. While atempting to resist lie was
kicked on the side, but it does not appear that, beyond the in-
dignity, any personal injury was inflicted. The persons, in-
deed, made use of very violent language ; but hard words are not
hard blows. The culprits carried no deadly weapons, nor is it
alleged that they carried weapons of any sort. They had life
in their power, and they spared it—even the life of him who was
the only witness of their crime. By the commission of a greater
crime they might have destroyed all evidence of the lesser one."

In the first place, we would wish to ask, who is thebest
judge of the propriety of remitting or inflicting the ex-
treme penalty of the law, the Judges on the circuit, or
the Editor on the Morning Herald ? Who best ac-
quainted with the facts of the case, these learned person-
ages, or the Herald, who can at best have but a very
imperfect knowledge. of them ? According to the ideas
of the la tter, highway robbery, unattended with murder,