The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-02-21 00:00:00

poionninitii to %;,iiit

creatures as these ?

Ara «'C to lio

inactivity, whilst these mountehankp play put their
farce ? We say, distinctly, o ! :t;ch is not the
course which the mercantile body of this great town
ought to pursue. 'We have a duty to perform, not
only to ourselves and to our children, but to the com-
munity in which we live—aye, and to the God who
gave us wealth and influence to be used for the benefit
of his creatures! That duty is to place ourselves in
the path of this insane agitation; to say to these
reckless men, " You shall no longer be permitted to
obStruct the commerce of the empire ; you shall no
longer sow mistrust, and stir up revolution; you shall
no longer dash the cup and the food from the lips of
famishing men, to speed on a frenzied and selfish poli-
tical object !"
This is the duty—the plain and palpable duty of the
Conservative merchants and tradesmen of Liverpool;
and its performance is an easy one. Let a meeting be
called at the Amphitheatre—never fear that it will not
be a crowded meeting !—and let the voice of this great
community be heard expressing its confidence in the
Conservative government of Sir Robert Peel, and de-

precating, as the main hindrance of a return to a state
of healthy commercial activity, the incendiary agita-
tion, with which we are surrounded, and the obstruc-
tive policy with which that government is threatened
in Parliament. Let that voice be fearlessly and stre-
nuously raised; and we venture to say that it will be
echoed, and blessed, by nine-tenths of the industrious
and deserving population of Great Britain, and do
more, in a single day, titan all which mere legislation
can effect, to save the land from the anarchy into
which it is rapidly sinking !

Unqualified disgust and indignation must have been
the uppermost feelings in the breast of every right-
minded Englishman on perusing the report; of the epi-
sode which occurred, during the debate in the House
of Commons, on Friday night. The organs of the
Anti-Corn- Law League will attempt, we doubt not,
to explain away the circumstances and expressions out
of which it arose, and to divert from that body the
storm of execration which it is calculated to call down,
and has already called down upon them. But we ask,
let the people of England look attentively and dispas-
sionately at the facts; let them look at the atrocity of
language, at the atrocity of action by which that lan-
guage was followed up, and by which the life of an
amiable and exemplary servant of his country was sa-
crificed; at the attempt of an eminent leader of the
offending body to suppress the publicity of the fact
that such language had been uttered—(by a threat le-
velled against an independent member of the legisla-
ture)—and, lastly, weigh the tendency and spirit of the
remarks of that reckless man himself, on Friday night,
in which he held up the prime minister of Great Bri-
tain as the party alone "responsible" for the existing
sufferings of the people. Let the public weigh these
things well, and then say if any contemptible and
shuffling palliative can, or ought to, divert from the
authors and abettors of a course of conduct so revolting,
the disgust of a Christian community.
For the information of, and as a warning to, the
thoughtless amongst our fellow-townsmen and towns-
women, who have suffered themselves to be entangled
in the agitation of the seditious body in question, we
shall briefly place the whole case before them for their
serious and calm contemplation. On the 17th of July,
then, a convocation of Anti-Corn-Law delegates held
a meeting—if we remember right—in palace-yard,
within a stone's throw of the houses of parliament, then
sitting. At this convention a certain Rev. (!) Mr.
Bailey—a minister of the Gospel I—represented the
Leaguers of the large town of Sheffield; and in the
course of his remarks gafe utterance—according to
the Morning Chronicle—to the followiug atrocious lan-
guage, which, for the benefit of dim-sighted people who
can only see one side of a controversy, we print in very
readable type. Hear, then, the Rev. Mr. Bailey, of
Sheffield :

"IT WAS NOT WORDS WHICH WOULD MON'

PARLIAMENT, BUT FORCE ; THIS SHOULD HAN

EFFECT IF THEY DID NOT CHANGE THEIR SYSTEN
HE HAD HEARD OF A GENTLEMAN WHO, IN A PR]

VATE COMPANY, SAID THAT :F A HUNDRED PEI

SONS CAST LOTS AMONGST THEM, AND THE LO
FELL UPON HIM, HE WOULD TAKE TH
LOT TO DEPRIVE SIR ROBERT PEEL 0
LIFE." ( ! !!)

Most Christian sentiments these, ladies and gentle-
men of the League party ! a most patriotic and Chris-
tian character this Reverend Mr. Bayley ! If WORDS
could not move, FORCE should. What kind of force ?
The answer, which we gather from the subsequent
sentence of the reverend dissenter, is scarcely sought
to be cloaked. There cannot be the shadow of a doubt
as to the interpretation which would be put, by igno-
rant and brutalized men, upon the word " force," re-
ferred to by the reverend gentleman. But he pro-
ceeded, as if startled

" Even at the sound himself had made,"
to deprecate such a mode of advancing towards the
achievement of a political end as follows :—We give
it in the same type.

"HE FELT CONVINCED THAT NO SUCH ATTEAIR

OUGHT TO BE MADE ON ANY PRETENCE WHAT-
EVER"—(the consciousness of his clerical duty told
him that the doctrine of killing no murder'—the doc-
trine by which regicides had sought to defend their
crime—was not defensible on scriptural grounds, or
even on scriptural morality; but mark the gingerly
and delicate terms in which he virtually counterpoises
the denunciation to which he had been constrained !)
" BUT HE WAS PERSUADED OF THIS, THAT
WHENEVER SIR ROBERT PEEL WENT TO
HIS GRAVE, THERE WOULD BE BUT FEW
TO SHED ONE TEAR OVER HIM"! !! How
irresistibly this conclusion reminds one of the great
Daniel ! " Don't hurt him, boys ; but if ye kill him,
there will not be a wet eye at his funeral."

Well, this seditious, this inflammatory' speech, was,
according to the Morning Chronicle, made on the 17th
of July, and on the 18th of the same month was duly
reported in that journal, from which we have copied
it—shorn, perhaps,' by that organ of the League, of
somewhat of the baseness which characterises it. In
August parliament was dissolved. Shortly afterwards
her Majesty and her Royal Consort, accompanied by
Sir Robert Peel and the Court, proceeded on a visit to
Scotland; and there it appeared that the carriage of
the Premier was an object of attention to an individual
of the name of M`Naughten;—the carriage in ques-
tion, however, being occupied by his secretary, Mr.
Drummond, who, throughout its route, from the city
of Durham to Glasgow, was mistaken for the right
hon. baronet himself. Upon the return of the royal
cortege to England, the party was dispersed; the
premier proceeding to his seat in Staffordshire.
Shortly afterwards, it would seem that the individual,
previously mentioned, betook himself to the Metropo-
lis; and, in the beginning of January, began to pa-
rade the neighbourhood of the Government Offices,
with a regularity which acquired for him the reputation
of being a police officer. On the 20th of January,
the secretary of Sir Robert Peel—the same gentleman
who had been mistaken for him in Scotland by the
miscreant before alluded to, was, treacherously as.
sassinated in Parliament-street
.by that individual,
M‘Naghten; and subsequently, during his confine-
ment, the intimation was made by him to the police-
man in attendance, that it was his impression that he
had shot Sir Robert Peel—the same party who had
been pointed out as one whom a band of Sheffield
patriots had marked for assassination, and over whose
grave "THERE WOULD BE FEW TO SHED ONE
TEAR."

The world set down this attempt as that of a maniac.
We admit this much of the apology offered for his con-
duct by Mr. Richard Cobden. But this maniacal
alba was, by a character no less illustrious and re-
splendent in talent and worth than Lord Brougham_.
by a Whig Exchancellor—denounced in a recent de-
bate, as incited by the speech of the Rev. Anti-Corn-
Law Leaguer in question; and what was the course
pursued by Mr. Cobden ? The dignified denunciation
of Lord Brougham had cut deep into the withers of
the Anti-Corn-Law League; and the apostle of that
body—Cobden—having learnt, from a private conver-
sation with that gentleman, in the library of the House
of Commons, that Mr. Roebuck had determined to
defend Lord Brougham from an attack to be made
upon him, by referring to the passage which we have
quoted, to-which Lord Brougham referred during the

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/ould bring upon himselt the hostile interference of
the league in Bath—the city which he represented'
with a view to oust him. by tracts and " the holding of
tea parties," (!) from its representation. The honour-
able ultra-radical, however, was too chivalrous an or
ponent to be thus put down. He detailed, to a startled
house and country, the atrocities of the Rev. Mr'

Bailey, and, as well, the threats held out, by the paltry
mart of cotton, in the library of rile House of COI'
mons ; aid by so doing, we maintain, rendered in'
famous, to all future ages, participation the most slight
in the sayings and doings of the Anti-Corn-Law

League !

The climax, however, it remained for Cobden him"
self to perpetrate. Since the opening of th 3 present
session the gentleman in question has not made his ar
pearance upon the arena of political agitation. A do-
mestic bereavement, we regret to say, has been the
cause. Well, on Friday night, for the first time, he
made his appearance; and, fresh from the bed of
death—with one assassination before his eyes, the re-
sult of the murderous appeals of a ferocious agitation--
he proceeded fo the utterance of the following language
directed against Sir Robett Peel :

" It was the duty of every individual member of the
house to throw on him" (the Premier) " the INDIVIDUAL
AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY of the present

state of affairs."

The hungry and starving, maddened by the sedi'
rious appeals of a revolutionary faction, are to bold
Sir Robert Peel,—not the Government, but the Premier
himself,—individually and personally responsible for
their sufferings ! But proceed—
" He w::•ould tell the Right Honourable Baronet that
the whole responsibility of the present lamentableland
dangerous state of the country RESTED UPON 1118
SHOULDERS I"

Need we wonder that the response of nine-tenths of
the House, before which this infamous language Was
uttered, was a perfect shout of indignation ? There
was not, we venture to say, one member present who
did not recognize it at once in the sense in which 11
was understood by Sir Robert Peel himself, As
THREAT—an attempt to turn that statesman from /116
course by the fear of personal consequences.
Now we ask the dispassionate consideration of our
readers—we ask the attention of the female portion of
this community who have given their countenance to
the agitation of the Anti-Corn League—to the case
which we have placed before them. Can any humeri
being, from this time forth, esteem it an honor to have
to do with a party which fights with weapons so atro-
cious ? Surely no Englishman can ? Surely no Me"
ther, or sister, or wife of an Englishman, can in future
countenance an agitation so cowardly and disgraceful!
With reference to the speech of this Mr. Bailey the
Times of yesterday says that "if he had intended to
suggest and familiarize men's minds with the idea of
assassinating Sir Robert Peel, without directly, or al
least, without avowedly flying in the face of that re'
ligion from which we suppose he derives his sustenance,
he would probably have said jnst what he did ;" and in
relation to what fell from Mr. Cobden, the same journal
remarks as follows, " We must observe, that we do net
impute to Mr. Cobden an intent to murder; but we
do impute—we cannot avoid imputing—to him this--
that with his eyes open, knowing fully the threaten'
ing consequences to Sir Robert Peel's life of popular
odium, with no other purpose than to increase his
own credit and power with the most violent class Of
politicians. he feels no scruple at recklessly and un"
teasingly labouring to direct that odium " personally
and individually" on the Minister whose life has been
once already attempted. If he is not anxious to Ptly
the Premier out of the world, like the "gentleman''
that lie wots of, he cannot by the extreme of charity
he fancied very careful to keep him in it. And further,
his movement in favour of Mr. Bailey, taken with
all its circumstances, makes it difficult to avoid the
suspicion that, though he has no intention to use the
pistol himself, he does not find himself at liberty l'3l
affront those who have."

Well, the debate on Lord Howiek's motion, laid'

at one time threatened to

" drag its slow length along"
to the end of the session, has at last been conclude";
and, we ask, what.has it added to the previously e:il4'
ing stock of human knowledge,
,beyond a somewbil
better acquaintance with the morality and designs 0?
the Anti-Corn-law League furnished by Mr. Cobden'
Not a single stray fact, or conclusion, with which We
were not acquainted long before the various philoso:
phers who. have exhibited during the week, left their
various homes to enlighten the atmosphere of the me-
tropolis ! Yes—we beg pardon—one fact we have
learnt ; and that fact an astounding one : the fact that
one hundred and ninety-one members of the House °I,
Commons entertain the opinion that an enquiry, by
committee of that house, into the distress of the nai
tion, and the propounding before such committee-4f
the whole house, mind—of all the various nostrums °f
its assembled sages ;—the interruption, during thetr
performances, of the entire business of the legislature',
—the interruption of every negociation in which it°
vernment may be engaged with foreign nations; tile.
unsettling of the public mind, and the stop put to all
commercial transactions, by the uncertainty 'Oleo
must exist as to the result of its deliberations :—suc
a course we have learnt is, in the opinion of the tnin°,
~,
rity in that house, the course most likely to relieve
eaisting distress of the country, and to snatch the cod'
merce and industry of the nation from its state °i
stagnation and difficulty!

Surely, this is a fact worth recording ; for only as
ourself, kind reader, what must have been the pro'
,ical result of the success of Lord Howick's wise Pre;
position. Imprimis the Speaker must have left the
chair, which would have been forthwith taken by IViP
Greene, the chairman of committees, and then
what ? Was Lord Howick prepared to propose are;
medy for the national distress, and what was that
remedy ? Perhaps he was so prepared. We should
have been told, in very general terms that we roust
" unfetter the commerce of the country"—the last
new recipe propounded in a very elaborate article 1.
the Edinburgh Review, just published—and, in party
cular, we must change our present corn-law for a
fixed duty. And then up would have bolted the meni;
hers for Stockport and Manchester, and Bolton, and I
host of other places—about half of the Whig-radicai
phalanx—and kicked the fixed duty proposition out °.
the hands of the heir of the house of Grey, and si:it,
upon it. Then William Ewart, perchance, would ha
proclaimed the repeal of all protecting duties—Ali.ree
annihilation of customs and excise, and ten millions of
annual revenue—to be replaced by "direct taxation
and at the mention of these words—

" unpleasing to a Whiggish ear".

we should have been treated to such a storm fromrho
eft of the chair as would have set the very hairs uP"no
;he Speaker's wig

bristling on end,
Like quils upon the fretful porcupine,',
whilst from some Dumfries baillie, in the Strang-to,
Gallery, a groan would have burst, at the horrid Pro
position of the member of his choice, which wotl
to
have melted the heart of a stone or a philosopher
seen
hear. And all this time, whilst this amusing geof
was enacting in the House of Commons, not a piPetto
wine, or a hogshead of sugar, or a cargo of tea 6101
have been sold for love or money; our merchants %ir
brokers must have looked on with folded hands; jy
vessels must have been laid up in dock ; exery ►
910
ported article must have been bonded on arrival,
ow
the lawyers and bankruptcy officials become the °
trtt
busy people in the community ! A hopeful way -
of relieving the distress of the country !
a_. of
Such must have been the result of the sucee-i'ial
Lord Howick's proposition. There was no Pr° eao,
good to which it could possibly lead. It was a jt
and despicable party movement ; an attack ' _vbic
ea,/
wanted the quality which makes its author respect .it
boldness. It said to the Government against `vtilt
co:)ic•
it was levelled, " Your policy is erroneous ";
-
proposed, for the decision of the house and the
of t gill'sa.
try, no plans of its own. It was, in fact, one t
efforts of obstructive policy, which we fully exPeactirioX
be the policy pursued by the opposition party
the present session

Do we regret, however, that it was made t reel
'or it drew from the Government of Sir It°l3e; be
;everal declarations of opinion which we 11°I." to

aztramaly trapartant—in particular,
that, in, (ollowl out, in legislation, the doctrines of
free trade, care must be taken to regulate the degree of
their application to the capacity of the community to
sustain that application, without throwing established
interests and institutions into disorder. Nothing, we
submit, can be sounder than this principle. It drew
forth, too, from Lord Francis Egerton, a more striking
explanation of the cause of that revulsion of their
hitherto prosperous condition, which is just now visit-
ing the manufacturing classes, than we ever remember
to have met with in so brief a form of expression. The
cause, or at least a leading cause, of that revulsion, his
Lordship maintained, and truly maintained, is to he
found in the fact, that the power of steam—the great
arm of our manufacturing industry—developed them-
selves during a period of almost universal war, when
Great Britain alone was in a position to avail herself of
them, and to apply them to the aggrandizement of her
manufacturing interest; and, by the return of the
World to a state of peace, the monopoly which we
possessed of that giant instrument is compelled to be
shared with competing countries. Th.
amount of the truth of our position, as a nation, 21/
that one sentence, than in all the laboured statements
of the exclusively enlightened liberal faction.
Another declaration of opinion, too, it drew forth
from the same noble lord—one which, on the part of
this great commercial community, we can with confi-
dence second. We believe, with his lordship, that
no measure—no occurrence within the reach of proba-
bility—would be so efficacious in promoting the return
of the country to a state of healthy prosperity, as the
cessation of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, and the dis-
solution of the League ! And more than that, we be-
lieve that such is the deliberate conviction of nine-tenths
of the people of this part of the empire !

ere is a greater