The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-04-30 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

Ebt Eiberpoci 'tanbarb.

TUESDAY

1110ILVING, APRIL 30, 1833.

At a late hour last night, we learnt upon authority that
may be relied upon, that the whole. of his Majesty's Mi-
nister's tendered their resignations to the King, on Satur,
day afternoon. The resignations were not accepted, and
Lord Althorp finally agreed to bring the situation of
Ministers under the notice of the House of Commons,
on Monday evening (last night.) The proposition to be
made on the part of the cabinet is said to be this, viz.
that the house shall either consent to the budget as al-
ready. propounded by the noble lord, or iagree to a pro-
perty tax. On these conditions the Ministers consent to
hold their present offices. If the terms are rejected their
resignation is inevitable.

Tilt French Chambers were prorogued by the King
of the French, on Thursday last, on which occasion his
Majesty delivered a speech which will be found else-
where. It is a well concocted piece of nothingness;
worthy of Louis Philip, and his piste milieu Ministers.
They do not condescend to inform the chambers, or the
people of France, of the progress of any of the foreign
,negotiations in which they are all deeply concerned.
The prorogation was a mere point of form, for the
Chambers were convoked again the next day—Friday
last. The fact is, that the Citizen King wants money
nearly as pressingly as our own illustrious Lord Althorp,
and the money could-not be raised without going through
the formality of originating a new session. This being
done, and the money voted, the Deputies will be sent
home as unceremoniously as they were called together,
The papers tell us that the King as he went in state was
cheered by his people—his people !

We received yesterday Morning the New Orleans
Republican of the 27th March, and a file of New York
papers to the 10th of April. The former contains no-
thing worth extracting, and the latter are chiefly
filled with descriptions of the terrible ravages of the
cholera at the H,avana. About the middle of March
from 75 to 130 persons were interred daily. The Bos-
ton Advertiser contains the following extract of a letter

from a correspondent :
" Thus far, four-fifths of the cases were among the blacks. A
dozen or more have occurred among the English and American
seamen in the harbour. The greater part of all the cases prove
fatal;—consequently the vulgar say that the physicians are kill-
ing them. The disease has made sad work in one of the large
hospitals, or rather alms-house—or still more properly, Black
Hale, carrying off 30 persons in one night. I fear it has not yet
arrived at its height. Two other hospitals, one of which con-
tains 500 miserable inmates, who are compactly stowed in ill-
ventilated and filthy apartments, remain to be swept. In one
room I saw 75 persons half covered with filthy blankets.—
Wishing to know what was doing at the burial-ground, I went
out to it a few days since. -While I- remained there, which was
about twenty. minutes, two loads 'of bodies were interred.—
They were .unincumbered by coffins or winding:sheets. The
naked corpses were thrown into graves and trodden . down; the
graves being filled level with the surface, say five to eight in each
grave."

TrlECommons have at length .begun their work in
Tight earnest ! Lord Althorp's drivelling has induced the
Douse to take the business of the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer into their own hands. They have thrown the tiles
and the soap, the clerks and the cotton overboard, and
have made a most furious attick upon the malt tax, voting
a moiety of it into oblivion, and leaving the woe-begone
and half-petrified minister of finance in a minority.
The .Whigs are in a state of dismay ! The average
produce of the malt tax, for the last two years, was
£4,600,000. The half of this is gone at one fell swoop
Poor Lord Althorp, who blubbered most piteously that
be could not afford a single farthing • more than the one
million- and a quarter which he Promised to reduce, has,
in the most unceremonious manner, been stripped of
more than two millions and a quarter in one night,
making an aggregate sum, which the house stands pledged
to repeal, of no less'than £3,600,000.- • Billvo; gentle-
men reformers! This beats the Irish drummer, who spent
half a crown out of sixpence a day !
But this is not all. To-night--" to-night at twelve"—
:Sir John ICey brings forward his motion for the repeal of
the whole of the house and windOW duties, and it is
generally believed that the motion :Will be carried. In
this case,•away would go upwards of two millions more
of the public revenue, leaving Lord Althorp to make
good a deficiency of about four millions.
ThiS is capital! It is the rarest sport which we have
witnessed for many a day. The House of Commons,
by these compulsory reductions, in the teeth of Lord
Althorp's *ara.tion, have passed
.the Most unsparing
censure upon his Lordship's competence to discharge the
duties of his office. • They virtually pronounce him to be
tin& fdr his-situation-,-ta be an incapable and an imbe-
cile—in whom neither the house ncr .the country have
any confidence. In consequence of these acts of reduc-
tion and mistrust on the part of the faithful Commons,
it is said that the noble lord will ..reSign.- It is even
asserted, that the administration is at-an end; and that
the reign of the Whigs .is over.. Great would be our
sorrow if this news should prove
.true. Nothing would
cause us-more grief than to learn tliat the Whigs had
'vacated their seats at the' commencement of their vexa-
tions-.—when their noses are being placed to their own
grindstoneshen the bitter 'cup is running over—when
they are beginning to reap the fruits of their innumerable
follies and blunders, and when the rabble constituency
which they called into existence, and which in return
cheered them on in their work of plunder and spoliation,
are now resolved to hurry on the country to. destruction,
and make their patrons either their instruments or their
victims. • •

'Resign, indeed'! No, no-; tve must • hear no more of
this. The very thought_of it is enough.to put the Grey
family into mourning. Such a catastrophe must nut be
imagined even for a singe niornent. What would Lord
Palmerston do in case of a break up. of. the ministry ?
What would become of poor Sir John . Cam llobhouse,
who is about to enter upc,n: his arduous duties fur the

pacification of Ireland? What would Sir James Graham,
do, who we observe takes infinite deligli in voting
against his former opinions ? As for Manchester it
would be ruined, if it were deprived of the official set.—
vices of Mr. Poulett Thomson. These would be griev-
ous.calamities, but we trust in the tenacity of the Whigs
that they will adhere to place and pay for at least another
year. . .

But supposing our hopes realized, what are His Majes-
ty's Ministers, thus deprived of the means of meeting the
annual expenditure of the country to do meanwhile?
Will they give up their own dearly earned salaries ? This
would be -parting with the very marrow of their exist-
ence. Will they rob the fundholder ? The fundholder
has some misgivings on this subject, for we observe that
he is beginning to sell out, the 3 per Cents having fallen
1 per cent on Saturday lust. One thing, however, is
clear, namely, that unless Ministers are provided with the
meaus to meet the just debts and engagements of the
country, our financial system must go to pieces. The
credit of the country will be destroyed, the national faith
violated, the widow and orphan robbed, and the House of
Commons proved to be, what Mr. O'Connell described
it, an assembly of six hundred of the greatest s--
rio, we beg pardon, of the most honest men that any na-
tion. ever produced. •

There are two. or three ways of meeting the deficiency
which the Commons have caused by their vote. A pro-
perty-tax has been suggested,—we mean one upon real
property. This, however, would be a most unjust tax
unless it were coupled with a tax upon income, and this we
have already tried, and found it to be .so oppressive, so
invidious, so hurtful to credit and enterprise, that we
were glad to get rid of it at the first opportunity. A
fixed tax upon corn is arso spoken of, at the rate of 12s.
per quarter for wheat ; but this alone would not supply
the deficiency, even if We imported a larger quantity of
foreign grain than we have hitherto done. A third plan
is to increase the custom duties on all articles of foreign
produce and manufacture; on wines for instance, silks,
brandy, fruits, and all luxuries. A fourth plan has been
hinted at in the house, by one of the members for Wor-
cester we believe, to tax the dividends, and all payments
and salarits made and paid by the government. We
pronounce -no opinion, but we beg to suggest to the
bewildered chancellor, the propriety of taxing all musical
instruments, from the flute upwards to the bassoon, barrel
organ, and the piano-forte. A swinging sum might be
raised in this way, and no harm done; for fiddles, as we
calculate, are articles which nobody has ever yet thought
of eating.

IN England we are cursed with a race of Sulons whose
microscopic vision is unequal to the task of viewing our
constitution as a whole, and who, from the littleness of
their minds, have acquired the habit of magnifying into
radical defects, blemishes of a trivial and unimportant
character.

One of these Lilliputian sages has discovered that
because it is just possible that a few electors may be
induced to vote contrary to their wishes, under the in-
fluence of those on whom they may be dependant we
must have " Vote by Ballot," in order ta cure this sup-
posed defect ;—in other words, the social compact must
be destroyed; the connecting link between the higher and
the lower classes; the motive for doing, and the power
of returning an act of kindness, must be abolished,
beCause, it may lead, by possibility, to a mere theoretic
grievance. The present is, of all others, the era when
the vote by Ballot is the least called for, because the
public voice is so omnipotent in the Senate, that it
becomes a matter of very little moment who elects or how
the HouSe of Conrimons is elected. We would ask Mr.
Grote before he marshals his forces for another attack
on what remains of the British Constitution, to what he
attributes the extraordinary industry, the literary, mili-
tary, and commercial greatness of his country ? We tell
him that it arises from the SPIRIT of our laws, which not
only encourage enterprise by securing the unmolested
enjoyment of its fruits, but also by attaching to the
possession of property, both directly and indirectly, pri-
vileges
which act as a powerful stimulus to individual
exertion, and consequent benefit to the community at
large. These we suspect form the mainspring of our
social system, which cannot be weakened without en-
dangering the safety of that complex machine. On
Thursday night the artillery of Mr. Grote's eloquence
was principally directed against the influence of pro-
perty, and towards the- close of his oration he said that

" If he had no other grourids to ask for the Ballot, he would
ask for it on this—that it was the only Schoolmaster of a
frivolous and self indulge,nt aristocracy."
It is lamentable-to beholda gentleman of. Mr. Grote's
attainments and station in society retailing. the slang of
Political Unions, the
.abominable vulgarity and coarse-
ness of which is only, equalled by its utter want of truth.
Language like this may suit the meridian of St. Giles,
The Coffee Shops, cr the pages of The True San : it
may for a time give him a little ephemeral popularity;
may enable- him to rival Gale Jones, Thomas Murphy,
Esq., or THE REV. Dr. WADE.—J3IIt does he enter Par-
liamee with no higher ambition than this ? In all sin-
cerity we remind him that his constituents of the city of
London will soon get sick of preying on this kind of
garbage. We had almost forgotten that Mr: Grote
PLEDGED vofe by Ballot before his election. Now that
he has strutted his hour in that, we hope he vvill.study
a better part.

TUE rejection of Mr. Attwood's motion has speedily
been followed by some " untoward events." It is singu-
lar enough that ministers.have been defeated on a ques-
tion of relief from oppressive taxation not many hours af-
ter they had firmly denied that any serious degree of dis-
tress existed to warrant such in inquiry. Why is the
malt tax reduced ?—why the soap tax ?—why is the re-
duction of the assessed taxes demanded, and yielded to at
a period when the revenue is unequal to the expenditure,
if the distress, which is complained of, have no existence ?
Ministers deny the distress, and they are supported in
their effrontery by a large majority of the House of Com-
mons, and yet, within forty-eight hours afterwards, the

same House of Commons not only embarrass ministers
by depriving the government of the necessary ways and
means, but insist -upon sweeping reductions which no-
thing but poignant and general distress could justify.—
Wonderful reformers! Consistent statesmen!

It is long since, and not without much reflection, that
we formed the opinion that the sustainment of the Cur-
rency Bill of 1819 would embarrass and eventually make
shipwreck of every ministry that should follow in the
wake of that of Lord Liverpool. It was the Currency
Bill, and the refusal to enquire into the existing die-
tress, far more than any opposition to Reform, which
brought that flood-tide of unpopularity npon the mi-
nistry of the Duke of Wellington, in which it was soon
afterwards swamped. The noble Duke resisted every
motion on the subject—Mr. Peel would listen to no
modifications of his favourite bill—and then, as was
natural, as in the case of maddened and despairing
men, began that clamour for Reform, which raised the
Whigs on the shoulders of the mob, and carried them
into power.

But it is pretty evident that the Currency Bill will
destroy them, if they be not defunct already, as it
destroyed their predecessors. We feel assured that no
ministry will stand which shall not devote its earliest
attention to this vital question ; and we are equally
confident that no practicable reduction of taxation, even
if it were practicable to the extent of ten millions per
annum, would confer any benefit upon the people at
large, unless it be accompanied by a rational, just, and
final adjustment of the laws restricting the use of
paper money.

A letter purporting to be written by one of Our
honourable representatives, Mr. Swart, was yesterday
exhibited as a curiosity to our townsmen on the Rialto
of Liverpool. We take leave to submit it to our
readers

"London, April 27, 1833.
"MESSRS. CROPPER, BENSON, AND CO.

"DEAR SIRS "I called on Lord Althorp this morning with
the memorial on the cotton duty.
"The important division on the Malt duty last night had
rendered Lord Althorn's presence necessary in a cabinet coun-
cil at the time I called.

"I, therefore, left the letters with his secretary, and called on
➢lr. P. Thomson at the board of trade.

"Mr. Thomson says that government will not alter the day
already prescribed in the Cotton duties Bill, the Ist of June.
"I am sorry that I could not obtain more direct information,
but the moment I receive an answer it shall be transmitted to
you.

"Lord Althorp may, perhaps, adlress his reply to yourselves.

" The division of last night has seriously embarrassed the ad-
ministration, I thought it my duty to vote against the ,repeal of so
large a duty; from a conviction that such proceedings shake pub-
lic confidence, that the reduction is too partial to the landed interest,
and that the administration is endangered by it.—l remain, Dear
Sirs, yours faithfully,

"WM. EWART."
INPPOWm. Ewart has very odd noticing of the duties
of a statesman, and 'a representative of the people.
He opposed the reduction of the malt tax because it
is "too partial to the landed interest." Bless our
simple hearts ! we always understood that it was the
drinkers of ale, beer and porter, who paid the duty
upon malt ; but it would seem, by Mr. Ewart's ac-
count, to be chiefly consumed by the " landed interest!"
T-lvetivitrtion42.f lax upon beer is considered, by
tet our iniellit, representative, to be no boon to his
constituents or the people of England. Who would
not be proud of such a representative !
But then, again, Mr. Ewart opposed the motion be-
cause it " endangered" the administration, and because
they have been " SERIOUSLY EMBARRASSED" by it. Is
the honourable member . looking out for a place, that
he takes so seriously to heart the embarrassments of
the ministers? . Was it to support any one particular
set of ministers, to the neglect of the interests of his
constituents, that he was returned for Liverpool at
the- last election ? We suspect not, and this perhaps
he will discover on the next occasion. 'What are the
ministers to us ?—what Lord Grey and his family ?
what all the Whigs, old and young, weaned and suck-
ling ? It is his duty, and the duty of every representa-
tive, to consult the interests of his constituents, hide-
pendent of party bias, and without regard to the people
in office. But Mr. Wm. Ewart is, after all, we suspect,
looking after a place, or has he, like Poulett Thomson,
or Mr. Manchester Philips, some snug speculation in
view ? T;me perhaps N. 11 tell.

We have been favoured-by our correspondent with a
few pages more of the evidence given before " the thir-
teen" Solons of the reformed parliament, relative to the
Liverpool election. We do not purpose to make any
comments upon it at present, being rather anxious first
to hear what Lord John Russell, it he still be the pay-
master of the forces, has to say " thereanent"—to use
an expression which Lord John, and Mr. Bannerman, who
has been sick ever since he signed the report, perfectly
well understand. But we cannot resist saying a word
or two.

It is hardly credible that any thirteen or fifteen men
could for five -long days sit patiently and listen to the
nauseous stuff, the glaring inventions, and the unsupport-
ed and frivolous statements which are designated by the
name of evidence. It is really a burlesque upon judicial
proceedings, out-heroding all the nonsense to be found
in Bombastes Furioso. When we have been enabled to
lay- the wnole of the examinations before the public, we
intend giving our readers, and the freemen of Liverpool
in particular, a rare treat, by laying bare the whole
details in such a way as has not been attempted in ana-
tomical schools, since the Whigs passed the bill for
sparing the bones of murderers, and restricting the
honour of
.dissection to the Duke of Sussex, and the-poor
who die in the hospitals. " Sweet is
.revenge," as some
poet, we:think Dr. Bowring says—" Sweet is revenge
in a good cause!"

One of our contemporaries, without having the courage to
attack the STANDARD in an open and. manly manner, has, for
some time, been indulging his love of eaves-dropping and per-
sonality, somewhat after the manner of a pickpocket. He