The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-01-30 00:00:00

Qbr ilnruonl

TUESDAY MO lilt ING

'AA. 30, 1844

The Anti-Corn-law League is, a portion of the
world imagines, a body of men associated for the
purpose of carrying the repeal of the Corn-laws by
the effect of facts and reasoning upon the judgment
of the British people. The fifty thousand pounds
raised by it last year it is" suppnied was spent in
printed rubbish, to be circulated amongst the agri-
cultural population—in salaries to perambulating
spouters—in getting up forged petitions to Parlia-
ment—in bribing and bludgeoning constituencies;
and the innocent of mankind conclude that the hun-
dred thousand pounds to be raised this year are to
be expended in the same harmless and inoffensive
manner.

But the innocent world mistakes the Anti-Corn-
law League. That pure and immaculate body is,

after all, not so very pure as it ought to be, The

League has discovered a " great fact"—a fact
greater than that of its own existence. It has dis-
covered that it cannot gull the British people—that
it cannot bludgeon the British people. And why?
The British CONSERVATIVE PRESS stands in its
way. Yes—our own William Rathbone has turned
up the whites of his eyes, and, with the lungs of
a Kentucky screamer, given to the world the as-
tounding piece of information (?), that there are
people who read ourselves, and our Conservative
contemporaries, in preference to League oracles,
which they believe to he lying oracles. The League
canrot make headway. They cannot impel amongst
the breakers the noble bark, which bears within its
oaken timbers the liberties of Englishmen—because
there is a pilot on board, whose voice is heard above
the storm of faction and the brawl of agitation; and
because the crew who navigate her pay attention to
that voice more than they do to the false lights and
the treacherous advice of the wreckers on shore,

who are gloating on the prospect of her plunder.
The Conservative press stands in the way of the
League. It exposes the silliness of the small nobo-
dies who hark and yelp at anti-monopoly tea par-
ties, and the wickedness of the more potent and in-
fluential quacks who pull the wires and prompt the
pigmy performers. The Conservative press, there-
fore, must be put down. Delenda est Carthago !
was never thundered forth, in the Roman Senate,
more impressively and significantly than the de-
struction of the Conservative press has been called
for in the council of the League. We are to be
harassed with writs, ex officio informations, actions
for libel, and indictments. We are to be smothered
with as much legal slime as a hundred thousand
pounds will pay for! Do not start most "liberal"
reader, whose toast, drunk in toast and water, at
all whig-radical gatherings, has been " Liberty of
the press—'tis like the air we breathe—if we have
it not, we diet" We tell you a " great fact ;" and
we are going to spew you that the very prosecutions,
to which we have referred you, have already been
commenced.

The public no doubt remember something of a
League meeting, which took place in Manchester
in November last, at which the project of raising a
fund of a hundred thousand pounds was originated,
and a large sum subscribed by the members present.
Amongst others, a gentleman, who does the buf-
foonery at the gatherings of the body,—Mr. John
Baooks—narrated a ridiculous story about the effect
produced upon him by gruel regimen, and concluded
by putting down his name for £5OO. Upon these
proceedings our contemporary, the Manchester
Courier, commented, in a tone of banter; and call-
ing to Mr. Brooks' remembrance the fact that he
had, once before, promised a similar sum of five
hundred pounds, as his contribution towards ano-
ther object, which promise he somehow or other
contrived to back out of, suggested the possibility
that the munificent amounts promised at this meet-
ing might be only baits for the unwary—paper
pledges never intended to be redeemed. For this
suggestion, our contemporary has been visited with
legal proceedings, and will shortly be brought into
a court of justice, to await the verdict of a jury of
his countrymen.

At this, if John Brooks himself and our contem-
porary were the only parties concerned, we should
not complain. But the prosecution is not Mr.
Brooks' at all. He is only the "John Doe" in the
affair, THE LEAGUE itself being the real prosecu-
tors. Yes, this " liberal" and enlightened body it
is who are directing the powers of the law, not to
protect the character of John Brooks from injury
inflicted upon it, which a jury will, perhaps, estimate
at a farthing, but to crush, in the person of the
Manchester Courier, an organ which beards it in the
chief seat of its seditious agitation, and exposes to
to the world, with the authority of an eye witness,
the hollowness of its composition. It is THE
LEAGUE which is devoting a portion of its hun-
dred thousand pounds to the infamous purpose of
annihilating the liberty of the British press.
This is no mere supposition of ours. It is the just
and only deduction to be drawn from the declara-
tion in the case. That document states, as the
ground of the action against our contemporary,
that he

" Falsely, wickedly, and maliciously, did compose and
publish, and caused and procured to be published, of and
concerning the plaintiff, and of and concerning the said
National Anti-corn-law League, and of and concerning
the plaintiff so being a member of the said National
Anti-corn-law League as aforesaid, and of and concern-
ing the plaintiff and the said other persons so associated
and united together as aforesaid, for the purposes in that
behalf aforesaid, and of and concerning the said National
Anti-corn-law League so proposing and endeavouring to
raise and collect the said stock or fund of £lOO,OOO, in
manner and for the purposes in that behalf aforesaid, and
of and concerning the said public meeting so held as
aforesaid, and of and concerning the plaintiff so attending
and being present at the said public meeting as aforesaid,
and of an concerning the plaintiff so addressing the said
meeting, and in the course of so doing making the said
statement and promise in that behalf aforesaid, and of
and concerning the said other proceedings at the said
meeting, and of and concerning the said newspaper
called the Manchester Guardian being so printed and
published as aforesaid, and of and concerning the said
contents of the said Manchester Guardian herein-before
set forth, a certain false, scandalous, malicious, and
defamatory libel."
The League, therefore, is clearly the plaintiff.
The League it is whose feelings are so sensitive th t
it cannot endure the rough side of the tongue of
journalism. The League it is, of which, and to which,
we must speak henceforth in taffeta phrase—use
honeyed words—wrap our sentences in scented
paper—seal our communications with perfumed
wax—and be thankful if, with all our humility and
cautious abstinence from anything which a hungry
lawyer can twist into offensiveness, we do not find
our names in the next cause-list, as defendants in
an action brought by some gruel-inspired idiot, at
the prompting and the cost of this combination of
sedition-mongers.
- - - -

But will the British press submit to this insolent
dictation from a body of men so unprincipled and
shameless ? Is the voice of public opinion to be
stifled by these grinders of the faces of the poor ?
Is the light of truth and justice to be extinguished
by a broad-rimmed beaver, or blown out by a half-
crazy drinker of slops, and no counter effort to be
made by Conservatism ? We hope not. On the
contrary, we are firmly assured that the manifesta-
tion of this disposition to dragoon us into submis-
sion to its dictates, was all that was wanting, on the
part of the League, to rouse the spirit of the Con-