The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-07-15 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 15, 1851.

THE LESSON OF TWENTY YEARS.
AFTER twenty years of desperate struggle, the
principle of TRUE CONSERVATISM—broadIy dis-
tinguished from that which Sir Robert Peel so
named—is again on the eve of a signal and lasting
triumph. Half a century of labour, intrigue, and
factious overreaching, was required to bring the
Radicals into place in 1831. There was no outbreak
too seditious, no " movement" too selfish to find
advocates amongst their leaders. To-day the
tribunes of a plundering mob, to-morrow the pro-
tectors of a profligate Queen. Now appealing to
the canaille of Spa Fields, and now flattering a
Prince of Wales sufficiently despotic and dissipated
for the decaying time of the Roman Empire. This
upright party, its memories graced by the decency
of Fox and sustained by the character of Sheridan,
threw for office in 1830, and won the cast. The
Reform Bill was a " Revolution," doubtless, as the
Whigs declared it, but' as like the Revolution of
1688 as a Portuguese emeute is like the struggle of
"Washington, or Saldanha like William 111. It is

the only " Revolution" on record that never pro-
duced one great man. NIL Parkes, the Birmingham
attorney, was made a taxing-master; and Plaice, the
tailor, of Charing Cross, became an " Elector of
Westminster," by which title they say he was
received with royal honours at a German Court,
the worthy Mynheers never supposing that an
Elector of Westminster was an individual who
earned a trifle by giving his vote under a heavy fire
of turnips and dead cats in Covent Garden. These
were the great results of the Reform Bill. Power
once gained, the aristocratic leaders began to
scramble for their places. The mobs that were to
" march" attorney-led in the metropolis were con-
signed to the workhouse ; and to Henry Brougham,
who alone took the Whig party from the kennel in
which he found it, and raised it to power, they
offered the office of Attorney-General. The Rus-
sells and the Lansdownes, and the Greys, were far
too hungry. It had been a long fast since Fox's
profligate coalition ; and a system of nepotism
began, unrivalled even at the Court of Charles 11.

The Radicals came in with a majority of more
than three hundred votes.

Satan, now grown wiser than before,
Tempted by making rich, not making poor

Their strength was their destruction. In five years
after having their majority of three hundred, they
were forced to sneak to Daniel O'Connell to assist
them with a hired brigade of political Swiss.
Brougham, to do him justice, " broke his wand,
and quitted the camp." To hold office at the
pleasure of the nominee of the vulgar and
seditious Popish Priesthood of Ireland did not
suit the spirit of the great opponent of Slavery. It
was a fatal exchange—Brougham for O'Connell.
From that hour the genius of Dan was upon them.
Their measures must all be anti-Protestant, and
their patronage all for Irish Papists, from the chief
seat in Equity for a nominee of O'Connell to the
lowest judgeship of Sierra Leone given to an orator
of the Corn Exchange, with his funeral expenses
paid in advance. The spirit of England revolted
at this slavery ; and Sir Robert Peel, with profes-
sions that never cost him much, was ready for
the flood that led to fortune." A wise man, the
proverb says, may be deceived once, but it requires
a fool to be deceived twice. The Conservatives of
England must choose in which category the conduct
of Peel has placed them. When, after repeated
defeats and humiliations—after taking refuge in the
pomp of a Royal marriage, and in the assistance of
women of the bedchamber—the Radicals, as they
could not marry the Queen twice, were compelled to
resign, Sir Robert Peel came in with a great
working majority. His professions were all that
could be expected ; but neither he nor the Parlia-
ment had adopted any true steadfast principle.
His tariffs assailed the poor working artizan by
letting in, not the raw material, but the made-zap
article ; and his legislation for Ireland was based
on that folly that we hope and trust is gone for
ever—the expectation of conciliating the daughters
of the horse-leech who do the work of the Italian
Pontiff in that country.

We need hardly trace the humiliating story of
the last Peel administration. If it is true that "the
reputation of able men is the property of their
country," we might give our property in the
Peelites as a bargain. The evil that men do lives
after them, and Sir Robert Peel has left of it a
considerable legacy. The direct injury he did to
British industry wise counsels may repair, and his
scandalous concessions to Popery the returning
vigilance of Protestants may easily resume. But he
dragged with him public men not long raised to
great position—men of whom there were high hopes,
and in whom there was great trust—some that the

Country Party looked to to hold the helm when the
old generation had passed away—men

Who, born to high emprise,
For Britain's weal were early wise.
And as the time is past for speaking in riddles, we
must say that the political character of these men
Peel has utterly destroyed. The great principles of
Conservatism, however, he could not destroy. Like
the familiars of the Inquisition, he forced from his
followers a compelled conversion, and then aban-
doned them to their fate ; but principle outlived
his treachery and their apostacy. The great doctrine
of Conservatism, truly understood, has with various
fortune, throughout the twenty years that are past,
still kept alive and held its ground. The clergy,
untainted by Roman follies, and a part (we regret
to say only a part) of the press faithfully opposed
the grant to Maynooth, the Dissenters' Chapels
Bill, and the various other measures in which Sir
Robert Peel seemed to riot in the abandonment of
former opinions. The cause has had much to
suffer, but has triumphed, Internal treachery and
extraneous opposition,
Malice domestic and foreign levy,
we have beaten them all, and at length the nation
is to be appealed to on grounds that the most
obtuse can understand. Doubtless the time-
honoured tactics of Whiggery will not be forgotten.
The sagacious reptile that makes the water muddy,
that he may escape, has many imitators, and it will
be attempted to blind the nation to the true matter

now in question between the Country Party and
those who are given to change—the persons who
for ever exhibit to the eyes of discontent the ignis
fatuus they please to call popular power. But
bitter experience has taught men what, it is on
which they have to decide.
At length the contending parties in the State
have come to some agreement as to their causes of
difference. In the words of the lawyers, they have
" cleared the issue." On one side we shall soon
see arranged all those who advocate the two great
doctrines which it becomes Englishmen to main-
tain—Protestant truth, and protection to labour.
The first is not one whit more firmly founded on
Christianity than the second, for the condemnation
of him " who provideth not for his own house" is
as clear as that of those who remain " partakers of
the sins" of Babylon. On this issue, and on no
other, must the battle be fought, and both states-
men and candidates ought to be prepared for the
fact. The " wrath of man" has done great service
to the cause of the truth ; and if the national mind
of England has been roused, and her Reformed
Faith asserted, it has been chiefly owing to the
arrogance of the enemies of the Country and of the
Church.

But surely we are not to let the lesson of the
last twenty years go by without improvement.
Can we afford to follow questionable leaders,
or to seek for guides among the professional
apostates that made common cause with Peel ?
Neither in Parliament nor in the press must this be
done, or the disasters of 1846 will be again upon us.
Those who went with the stream in '46 made their
choice, and they cannot blame constituents if they
leave them to it. Let us by all means not imitate
the Whig, who said (as he wished) that history was
an old almanac. We know who betrayed us, and
if we trust them again, on whom is the blame ? To
two things men at the hustings should be pledged
—to resist the advances of the Popish heresy, and
to give the English market back to English labour.
And by pledging we do not mean the vulgar tender
of a declaration to he swallowed and forgotten :
let the candidate's previous life be the security of
his future conduct, and as far as practicable let us
avoid adventuring strangers. Converts to our
opinions who are sincere deserve all credit, but for
the best of such the post of honour is a private sta-
tion. The country party have too long encouraged
people of this class. Whether through apathy or
intention of the really honourable and earnest men
of a party, noisy people get into prominent place,
and we confess we do not think that having been in
the Anti Corn Law League is the best qualification
for aspiring to he in the Derby ministry. To vary
the warning of Brabantes :
They have deceived their party, and may you.
If within our sphere a mistake such as we point
out be made by a constituency, it will not have
been done before the LIVERPOOL STANDARD has
warned them. The struggle is imminent, and we
have not the slightest fear for the result; but this
is an argument not for negligence but for activity.
Those whom we have to meet have infinitely more
at stake than we have in the contest—their very
existence even as a faction in England. They have
shown themselves to be prepared for any course,
and anxious to obtain any kind of assistance, by
their abandonment of all previous professions to
advocate the cause of Popish dCmination, and by
consequence of absolute power. The duty of the
Country Party however is not at all obscure. To
restore what has been recklessly destroyed and to
protect what still remains. In the words of the
Roman Captain, Hic optime rnanebinzus