The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-12-10 00:00:00

every scrap of an account befOre 'Parliament and the
country, and fearlessly meet every charge of profligagY,
venality, and corruption, by an appeal to facts and dual'

ments.

For twenty-four days did that illlegal court pry
into
the archives and records ; the debts, sales, transfers,
public works, privileges, -usages, dues, charities, gifts,
patronage, income, liabilities, and expenditure of the
Corporation. Such an inquiry, we venture to say, never
was witnessed in England at any former period of its
history, in the worst days of usurpation, or the most
odious times of tyranny. It was an inquiry of the most
searching and inquisitorial kind, where the ten-times-
told stale falsehood had to be ten times refuted ; where,
when one calumny was exposed, another had to be met;
where charges were insinuated, not made ; where the
driveller was listened to in his narration of hearsay or
traditionary grievances; where men, and men of affluence
and reputation too, and whose honour as merchants or.
.private individuals is unimpeachable, but stimulated by
party prejudices, contended for a participation in the
privileges of the freemen, which privileges thesefreemen,
had acquired by birthright or servitude, and are as much
their private property as the merchandize in the ware-
houses of Mr. BOLTON himself, and which, if Mr. Bovrof
were allowed to obtain by an act of Parliament, or other-.
wise than by servitude or birthright, would be a dovvil-.
right, flagrant, and monstrous robbery of these freemen.
These attempts—these speculations, in open disregard
.
of justice, we witnessed with shame and sorrow, for they
are indiCationS of the spirit that is abroad, of the reck-
lessness which animates some of our public men, and the
levelling and destructive principles of modern patriotism-
The. question is not now—what is law ? what is right?'
what is privilege ? what is property ? These simile
elements of equity and morals are entirely thrown over-
board. What inspires the new reformer is, how can IF
at the least risk and expense, invade my neighbour's
property with impunity ?—how can I enjoy privileges to.
which I have no claim ?—how can I obtain, without cost,
those rights which others have acquired by birthright or
acrvitude ? These last appeared =to us to comprise the
grievances of the leaders of the party opposed to the
Corporation. They complained of being excluded from
the privileges of the borough ; and yet, although the
authors of their own exclusion, they have not stooped to
avail themselves of those privileges in the mode pre-
scribed by law, open to all men, and by which the pre-
sent burgesses acquired them. If there were no possible
avenue to civic offices or borough immunities, except to
certain families, or certain names, we should be as ready
to decry such a system as the loudest declaimer amongst

them ; but when the fact is-notorious that the BOLTONS
and RATIIBONES had the same path open to them as the
ASPINALLS or BRANCEERS, and might have acquired
their freedom as other men have, of equal claims to con-
sideration in the state, we can come to no other condo-
sion than that their grievances are groundless, their
objections untenable, their opposition factious, and their
demands an unjustifiable attack upon the rights of private
.
property, thereby holding forth an example to the law-
less and the less discreet, of which, one day, perhap9,
they will bitterly repent. He who invented the guillotine
perished under it. The locksmith who contrived a new
gallows for Edinburgh was the first who was hanged

upon it ; and there is an adage about men living in
glass houses which it is unnecessary to repeat. It would
be well for him who is disposed to remove his neigh.
bour's landmark to look well after his own !

It was, we regret to say, for these purposes of spolia-
tion, so characteristic of the spirit of the age, that 50
Searching and so tedious an inquiry into the alleged
abuses of the Liverpool Corporation was instituted. and
attracted around the commissioners so many candidates
for office, and so. many gratuitous, interested, and eager
witnesses. It was a humiliating sight, so far as they
were concerned, and the only compensating gleam of sa-
tisfaction which passed over the whole investigation con-.
s:isted of the frank, manly, unstudied answers of the
TOWN7CLERK,—the readiness with which he unravelled all
apparently abstruse details; the facility with which be
met every cavil and objection; the clearness of the Cor-
poration books and accounts; the satisfactory arrange- •
went of his documentary evidence ; the candid manner
in which he met every challenged item ; the reproof he
invariably gave to insinuation; and, to sum up all, the
triumphant and unanswerable defence he made for the
Corporation. Never did a maligned boriv-,-beset by acr -
many enemies, and assailed by charges Take(' together
by an attorney, apparently hired for the purpose, and
under circumstances approaching to something like a-
breach of professional confidence,—never did a corpora-.
tion so assailed and so victimized in public opinion, so
rancorously attacked by the revolutionary press, and set
odiously misrepresented in a revolutionary Parliathent,
come out of a public ordeal with hands more clean, or:
with reputations more unsullied. We appeal to Mr- • •
THORNELY, who, opposed as we are to his political prinCk
pies, we will do the justice of saying, conducted hitnselr
with greatmoderation and gentlemanly propriety through-
out the whole inquiry,—we appeal-to Mr. TIIORNLEY, who
owes us no debt but that of candour, no due but that of
honour, no partiality but what springs from integrity,---
we appeal to him, our political opponent, whether be
could have imagined, after all the calumnies 'he has lis-
tened to, all the fictions which have been palmed upon,
him as truths, and under the oppression of an easy cre-
dulity, which must have become to him a second nature,
—whether he could have imagined that the Liverpool. -
Corporation would make such a noble and satisfactory
defence ? We are not speaking of their defence in taw'.
—for that was not attempted,—but of their defence at his
own favourite bar of public opinion. The questioner
exclusive privileges we shall not discuss' with Mr•
THORNELY ;—we do not ask him to compromise any one
of his opinions ;—we shall not deny his competency,
duly elected, to fill the highest offices in this borough
with honour to himself and advantage to the common-
weal ; but we call upon him to say whether or not as,
one charge of profligacy, venality, or corruption, on the
part of the Corporation, was proved before the commis-
sioners ? There were laid before him chartets bearing
the marks and wrinkles of centuries,—records older than
the oldest house in the town,—deeds of sale and transfer
in the times of our great-great-grandfathers,—all the
transactions of the Corporation from the earliest times
to the present day ; and we call upon him to say whether. - •
these charters have not been faithfully adhered to
whether the interests of Liverpool have, for a single
ment, been neglected ?—whether the books and accounts,
anti the various transactions of the Corporation, have net
been kept with an accuracy as strict and systematic es,
the books and accounts of the most honourable merchant •
We much mistake the character of Mr. THORNELY if ling
answer would not be as favourable as our own on these
the only material points in the inquiry.
However, harbouring these opinions, which we found
upon the results of the investigation, and hazarding 90
appeal to a political antagonist, we must confess we
were not prepared for the coarse and libellous attack
upon the Liverpool Corporation, which appeared i° *
London paper of Friday last—the Times. -The malice
of the article is hardly exceeded by the' ignorance which
it betrays, or rather the heartless falsehood which elle"
racterises it. It is evidently not of London manufac-
ture. The Times can lie with as much hardihood as
any professional and confirmed liar in Europe; but in
matters which concern itself, there is never any d°,
eulty in di covering the `a fine Roman hand," the gifted
falsehood of " old Priuli" of Venice. Its thunder, in
its own cause, is, at least,. genuine thunder. Not so the
contraband sulphur and stench of the article on Liver-
pool. That has been manufactured here. It would
not surprise us to learn that it was sent to town under
cover, and specially marked to the private care of Lord
BROUGHAM. It bears all the external signs of the do'
tard and the quack. , It appears to have been written.
upon a cut-throat day in . the end of November instead
of a homily. It 'contains the spleen of the disappoint'd
demagogue, the insolence of the ambitious libertine to
morals, and the still more ambitious reformer in re!
gion. We have the diverging glance and the male(/'
lent expression of the repulsive countenance of the ati-
thor in our eye. Vanity, there, is ridden by encY:
and malice crowns both. Talent, there, like a stray
lock, adheres to the loTer scalp, ashamed of its prusiti°ll'