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

coxcomb and the most mendacious blockhead we have
ever met with. We cannot understand how even the
Times, characterless as it is, should have suffered its co-
lumns to be polluted by so many deliberate and scanda-
lous falsehoods. Six weeks of this sort of swagger would
sink it as low as any of the penny magazines. In the
first place there was no charge of venality or bribery
made or sustained before the commissioners, except in
the case of one of the dock masters previous to 1825, and
the pat ties who administered the bribes are gentlemen of
liberal principles and not members of the Corporation !
The charge of bribery, therefore, against members of the
Corporation, or against the freemen generally in the
elections of Mayors and Bailiffs, is unsupported by the
slightest shadow of evidence. -
The assertion that the " administration of justice is
ignorant or corrupt," and that " jobbing and collusion
pollute the sources of justice" is one of a still graver
kind, which the writer, if he be not, a coward as well as a
scoundrel, would do. well to follow up, in order that we
May know who the guilty parties are. We affirm that the
charge is an infamous libel, and we dare the Times or its
scribe to point out an instance when; or a functionary by
whom, the sources of justice or the administration of jus-
tice have been polluted or corruptly influenced. Let him
do this and we will be prepared to meet him. Rabid de-
clamation and wholesale invective go for nothing.
But the Corporation are accused of " partiality to
kindred," and friends, and party, in the distribution of
their patronage. This comes with an ill grace from a
thick and thin supporter of the Grey administration.—
The noble earl, in his place in Parliament, contended that
if he found among his relations persons fully competent
to discharge the duties of such offices as were in his gift,
he had'a clear right to appoint them. Questionless he
has the right, but it is doubtful whether the competence
of the persons appointed is equally well sustained. The
Corporation of Liverpool are not such gourmands in pa-
tronage as Lord GREY, but they have as good a right to
bestow their patronage upon their relatives and friends as
he has. That they have bestowed their patronage, in this
way, inmost instances, can be disproved by the facts. It
would be strange indeed if the Corporation of Liverpool
should nominate to one of their church livings an eternal
babbler against the institutions of the Church of England.
It would be liberal overmuch, and, in our opinion, a vio-
lation of their trust, if they were to expend their funds in
building chapels for Unitarians, schools for Socinians, or
colleges for Infidels. It would be singularly liberal if they
were to choose a Town-clerk from some obscure coterie
of attorneys who court popular opinion, and gain clients
by railing against Corporations. It would be astonish-
ingly liberal if the freemen should elect for Mayor some
Roman Catholic who would carry the parapharnalia of the
Corporation to the mass-house. Roman Catholics,-at least
the unthinking portion of them, might rejoice at all this—
the Socinian might be vastly pleased—the Infidel would be
delighted; but we take it that if such extravagancies were
indulged in merely to please certain ambitious persons,
the Corporation would not exist six months, for the very
purpose of its creation would be defeated and destroyed.
Wherever men possess power, that power can only be
sustained by a judicious selection of members, equally
alive to the common interests of the institution. That
the Corporation of Liverpool have made this judicious
selection is proved by the flourishing condition of their
property and the long period during which the affairs of
the town have been administered with unspotted honour
and integrity. The Times complains of the exclusion
from the council of persons " best fitted" to be magis-
trates. Who are these persons ? If it be not too great a
demand upon its modesty, would it be pleased to favour
us with the names of these "best fitted" gentlemen ?
In the churches of Liverpool there are, unquestionably,
clergymen who ~are related to members of the Corpo-
ration. It would be strange if they were nearly related
to the enemies of the Corporation, and it would be more
singular still if they ;were. related to,neither the one nor
the other. If the Roundheads,. or the Owenites, or the
St. Simonians, or the disciples of the Rev. Robert Taylor,
or any other of the mad or disgusting sects which have
sprung up in these fungus times,if any of these formed
the majority of the Members of the Liverpool Corpora-
tion, we should like to know what. kind of toleration they
would prescribe, or how many of their relations they
would refuse to provide for ? To cavil at this patronage
only evinces a narrow and despicable disposition. If
improper appointments have taken place, let our oppo-
nents fix upon the men, and show their incompetency.
If .they cannot do this, their carping is only an idle ex-
penditure of breath.
One word more, and we have done. The members of
the Common Council, we are told in a thousand news-
papers, in large letters, indicating horror and astonish-
ment, ate self-elected! What a discovery ! Oh, long
endured wrong I Hapless land, where the members of a
town council are self-elected !
Hold down your hands, patriots, and open your ears
for a brief space. The common council of boroughs are
elected according to the terms of their several charters.
It was expressly provided by these charters that they
should have the power of nominating their successors.
The intention was, that the executive governments of
corporations should not be entirely at the mercy of the
democratical body. It was a balance regulating the
power within with the power without, or, in other words,
a regulating check in favour of the objects of the charter,
and against temporary clathour and factious innova-
tions. For the same reasons, the test acts and the law s
against Roman Catholics were- framed. These corpora-
tions were adapted by William 111. for the maintenance
and preservation of the reformed religion as established
by law, and under the influence and blessings of which
this country has flourished as no nation ever did on the
face of the earth. The Infidel and the Socinian, aided and
abetted by the Roman Catholics, are now desirous to pull
that barrier down, in order to gain a fulcrum on which to
rest their tremendous levers against the Church. Lord
GREY and Lord BROUGHAM are secretly assisting these
parties in their work of destruction. The corporations
and the Church must now stand or fall with each other ;
but enough of this for the present. If misrepresentation
and falsehood are allowed to prevail, and if_the tenets of
the writer whose unblushing mendacity we have exposed
are permitted to havp, sway, the hour of doom for both
is near at- hand.