The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-09-16 00:00:00

n young Whig senator
nt his house,

of the coterie who

to freciu

my blackguards;'

!roker is said maliciously to have quoted the

There's r

ru,
ald del

ght the old Constitution-monger to see.

:s" of the mode in which his pupils aforesaid
no longer young) have followed up the lessons
received. They have not, to be sure, altered

the English Constitution, from such motives of

benevolence as induced Jeremy to send a cut and
dry code to the Emperor of Russia at the imminent
risk of his messenger getting the knout ; but, when-
ever a difficulty of gaining or of holding office arose,
the Whigs nave been always ready to bid high with
offers of franchise and political power, certain, if
they could not get place for themselves, they could
make it uncomfortable to their opponents.
In pursuance of this system, they have planned
the new Reform Bill, on which Lord John Russell
has staked, " positively for the last time", his cha-
racter that the change shall be final; but unfortu-
nately, if we are to believe the Daily News, the
movement party do not recognize the value of the
pledge, and are not grateful for the proffered ad-
vantage. We need hardly say that the Radicals, do
not object to the supposed plan of the Premier,
because it favours too much the possibility of a
"Red Republic." On the contrary, they think
that the Landed Interest have too great a predomi-
nance still—that, in fact, that particular kind of

wealth which, must remain in the country, ought to
be represented less in Parliament than capital which
may be invested in England to-day and in Egypt
to-morrow. Lord John Russell and his new Reform
Bill are clearly doomed.

He dare not go to the

lengths to which his supporters wish to drive him,
and they will therefore take the advice of Caliban,
" get a new man." He is still endowed with a little
recollection of the fact, that the counties, and not
the towns, have been the strongholds of real liberty;
and that as they do not, ini proportion to the num-
bers of their population, exercise half the power the
towns employ, it is not fair or politic to make such
a distribution of the representation as will virtually
disfranchise them. All this is very distasteful to
the party, or rather faction, who think they have a
chance of ruling when they have put an end to the
Russellite Whigs. They are ready for a complete
bourgeois franchise—willing to make the mayoral
municipalists the rulers of whole districts, and to
pause all to fall down and worship the mere shop-
ocracy. All this, however, is of advantage. Such
:a dissension will destroy the clauses of the bill, and
honest men will for once come by their own. It is
•perfectly clear that "the people" are of opinion that
the Whigs are not exactly to be trusted, for already
they are calling meetings to aee that the new
Reform Bill does not turn out a compromise like
the old one. There has been an assemblage at the
Potteries, in Staffordshire, of which the great
speaker was Mr. Rupert Kettle, the barrister, and
from the tone of the proceedings it was left in no
doubt that the Whigs had not the confidence of
the Radicals. And why should such confidence be
' The leaders of the Conservative party
know very

given

yell that the Whigs in 1830 desired
anything but to grant what might be truly called
popular power. The Conservative party had much
for the asking and might have had more, At all
events, the distribution of the new members was not
what was expected by the wise men of Manchester
and Birmingham. The increase of the county
representation was volunteered by the " friends of
the people," and there is now no mystery in the
history of the "Chandos clause." Lord John
Russell means to perform another delusion. He
has been practising political hocussing too long to
retire from it now, and knows well the principle,
sung by Gerald Griffin, of the balloon :

Throw out more sand ! Throw out more sand !
We're not the first who'll rise
By scattering with lavish hand
Dust in their neighbour's eyes.
To men whose means of living they have conveyed
to the foreigner, they will give the advantage of the
franchise, and to a country whose business can
hardly be performed, from the mere fact of the
great number in the legislative assembly, they offer
a further extended representation, and all this for
no reason founded on the conduct of the present
Parliament. It has been in all conscience sufficiently
docile on those great questions to which the mind
of the country is chiefly directed. But that very
docility will be the reason that the nation will not
again return a similar assembly, and this the
Government well knows. Even if they should
be able to carry their Reform Bill, they will
only be arming the people against themselves.
Among the working class free trade has very few
advocates, and old Whiggery still fewer. 11,1