The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-09-26 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

al pressure of advertisements has crowded out

Cbt Etberpool &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, SEPT.

26, 1543

A more striking evidence of the changed spirit of
the times we do not know than that afforded by the

recent visit of the Queen of these realms to the
Royal Family of France, and her present visit to the
King and Queen of the Belgians. In days gone by,
a similar interchange of friendly greetings between
royal personages would have been watched with in-

finite jealousy, as the harbinger of some great change
in the relations of their respective nations. Our
greatest poet has said, " there is a divinity doth
hedge a king ;" and our forefathers, and some even

present generation, would have carried the
expression even further, and maintained that a fata-
lity, or at least some portentous event, must follow
the withdrawal for a moment of that 66 hedge" of

ceremony with which sovereigns have ever been
surrounded. That feeling has now, it seems, passed
Sovereigns, however mighty their domi-
nions and vast their empire, are beginning to be re-
garded as portions of our common humanity. They
may exchange the ordinary civilities of society, and
even entertain its friendships, without any very dis-
astrous result occurring to disturb the world. They
are no longer regarded as mere diplomatic machines,
or the kingly and queenly personages on a chess-
d, who approach each other only to check-mate

Ito be check-mated

must confess that we cannot view this change

with either fear or distaste. On the contrary, we
trust that it may tend to bring about results of in-
finite value to the whole civilised world, by intro-
ducing into the diplomacy of nations a better and
more candid spirit. When the sovereign of a great
nation does not hesitate to unbend in her intercourse
with a friendly power ; when kings and queens
begin to regard each other as friends, instead of
meeting as rival competitors for power and influence;
when the amenities of the social circle take the
place of the stiff formalities of diplomacy, we may
hope for a more speedy and peaceful settlement of
those ever-recurring international questions which
so largely affect the welfare of their people.
On this ground we are prepared to cast away as
an obsolete and unworthy feeling, that jealousy, with
which, as Englishmen of an old school, we might
have been disposed to regard the recent visits of
her Majesty and her illustrious consort to the courts
of friendly powers. We have no wish to mew up
the occupant of the throne of Great Britain as we
would cage a bird ; and to insist that, of all the in-
habitants of Great Britain, the Sovereign alone shall
not he permitted to enlarge her intellect and tastes,
and store her mind, with that knowledge which ex-
tended intercourse with the world is calculated to
afford. Her Majesty we know is an Englishwoman
—proud of her position, and wedded to her people's
happiness ; and we have no fear that a visit to Louis
Philippe, or to King Leopold, can make her love her
subjects less, or render her less resolved to maintain
their liberties, or those Protestant institutions which
form the best guarantee of their security.

A change appears to have come over the temper of
the Welsh agitator, " Rebecca," which we fear must
shortly lose for her the sympathies of our contem-
porary, the London Times. From merely agrarian
matters—tolls, tithes, rents, &c.—she has lately
been bestowing her august attention upon political
matters ; and, should so unfortunate an event occur
as the retirement of Mr. Feargus O'Connor from
the exercise of his talents as a demagoguo, which is
threatened, we are provided, in the person of Re-
becca, with a Chartist leader of the first water—one
who is not afraid to add the exercise of " physical
force" to the " moral force" tactics of that most
wary, and yet unlucky, patriot.
At a recent meeting of the Rebeccaites, held at
Mynydd Mawr, and presided over by a Chartist
attorney, we find a petition to her Majesty proposed,
which, after praying for the consolidation of turn-
pike trusts, the repeal of the new poor law and the
tithe commutation act, proceeds to demand, amongst
other matters, the appointment of assessors to regu-
late the adjustment of rent between landlord and
tenant

a leaf out of the great Irish agitator's volume
of specifics,) and " the assembling of a new Parlia-
ment." (.9 A demand which may with reason be
suspected to have been suggested by some itinerant
member of the Anti-corn-law League. And amongst
the speakers at the same meeting we find one, an
opponent of tithes, declaring that it was " shocking
to think that under the name of religion they should
be the means of crushing the farmer to the earth,"
a sentiment which might have been nursed beneath
the broad-brimmed beaver of John Bright himself.
Another gentleman, who was in a tuneful mood,
sung (doubtless to a harp accompaniment,) the fol-
lowing very significant effusion : " Oh, would that I

could see an end of misery and a hope of renovation,
reviving arms after destruction," (a species of reno-
vation of old gun barrels, we suppose,) and the rights
of man !" Tom Paine could scarcely have beat this
in his most rabid moods.
Is there no lesson to be derived from such a change
objects sought by this Rebecca agitation,—
se of daring and presumption? We sub-
is ; that it warns us of the danger of

in the

this incre

mit that

for any purpose, and reminds
us how soon that organization may be converted, by
designing leaders, from an originally insignificant
pursuit of objects dangerous to the
very existence of the nation. As a mere local out-
burst of resistance to local malversation we have
hitherto regarded this movement of the people of
South Wales. We see it now deliberately proposed
that " the pot be taken down for Carmarthenshire,
and be made to boil on for Glamorganshire," that
the system of outrage and intimidation which has
disgraced one portion of Wales for months past be
transferred from county to county ; and at the same
time that its objects be altered and its demands ex-
tended to the verge of threatened rebellion and war
against the throne and the constitution. Surely it
is now time that a stop should be put to a state of

extensive o

nization

purpose to th

things so dangerous !
Whilst upon this subject we may take the oppor-
tunity to remark upon the somewhat anomalous po-
sition occupied towards this conspiracy by our con-
temporary, the Times. That the grievances of the
\Velsh people, whatever they are, should be made
known through the press may be, and no doubt is,
very proper. That the claims of the Welsh people
for justice should be advocated by the press is also
right. But that a leading Conservative journal
should intrude itself as the uninvited mediator be-
tween that people and their landlords, or the British
Government, is both unseemly and impertinent.
And still more so it is when we find that its repre-
sentations of fact even are given in the spirit of a par-
tizan, rather than in that of a faithful witness. With
the recent eccentricities of the Times reporter before
us we can scarcely doubt that a Jack Cade in Eng-
land, should such a character arise in the present
day, or a Captain Rock in the sister country, would
be duly honoured, in their destructive movements
by the presence of a reporter from Printing-house