The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-01-23 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS,

There are two objections to the suggestion S B.—the extra
esnense and the fact of the building to which he alludes not
being at present obtainable..
Will t wait until next week.
We will bear in mind the hint of "A Fr'end to the Charities."
We believe the specific mentioned by C.M.D. is not in as good
repute as it was, as we have heard little about it lately.
We are compelled, in consequence of the State Trials, to post-
pone several Communications.

rr)t i'lJerpoot k/ntanarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, JAN. 23, 1344

We are of more importance in the world than we
imagined, until enlightened upon the subject by
Mr. William Rathbone. That profound philosopher
assures the world that the Courier and ourselves
stand in the way of the conversion of the entire
population of Liverpool to the cause of free trade;
that, in short, the corn laws would be repealed
forthwith were it not that the people of Liverpool,
"instead of listening to the Anti-monopoly Associa-
tion, listen to such farthing rushlights as the Liver-
pool Standard and the Liverpool Courier !"
Very shocking that the people of Liverpool should
manifest such miserable discretion ; that they should
prefer our advice to the ravings of William Rath-
bone and the motley assortment of elderly ladies
and schoolboys who compose the Anti-monopoly
Association ! Still, the fact cannot be got over that
they do so award us their preference and confidence.
We are drags upon the wheels of revolution. We
are manacles upon the hands which seek to over-
. throw the constitution, and to commence the work
of national robbery. We keep the drab men .of
Philadelphia and elsewhere from poking their fingers
into the pockets of the British people ; and the
question, we presume—from William Rathbone's
kind mention of us—is to be forthwith mooted:
by what means is a press thus effectually inimical to
the League faction to be muzzled or put down ?
Are we to be favoured with an application to us
of the same weapon with which "honest" John
Brooks and his fellow-Leaguers are at this moment
endeavouring to gag our contemporary, the Man-
chester Courier ? Is the six thousand pounds sub-
scribed in Liverpool a few weeks ago, for the alleged
purposes of agitation, to be employed in League
prosecutions against the local Conservative press ?
Or are we only to be pushed out of the way by com-
peting Radical journals, propped up by the funds
thus raised ? We know not,—we care not to know.
We shall continue fearlessly to do our duty, whe-
ther attacked by any of these weapons, or only
visited occasionally with an emission against us of
the spiteful silliness of William Rath bone. Poor
old man ! Disappointed ambition and wounded
vanity have well nigh overthrown his small modi-
cum of reason and common sense; but we should
imagine that he has still a sufficient glimmering left
to tell him that he cannot but have the worst, in
anylattempt he may make to bully journals, whose
influence has already reduced him from the promi-
nent position, which he once occupied in public life,
to one of comparative obscurity and neglect.
By his lips, however, the Anti-monopoly Associa-
tion have pointed to the course to be taken ; and it
is for the Conservative public to support us against
their machinations for our injury, in whatever shape
they may be made.

Whilst upon this subject, may we ask so very
great a luminary as Mr. William Rathbone to come
down from the stilts, upon which he has erected
himself, and give us, if the remnant of Quakerism
is not too strong within him, a plain answer to a
very plain question. At the same meeting, at which
the absurdities above alluded to were uttered, we
find Mr. Rathbone telling his hearers the following
story :--

" The other day, he had to go to Toxteth-park, in
his capacity of a magistrate, to hear appeals against
taxes ; and a more painful duty be had never had to
perform in his life. About 130 cases came before him.
He could not, as a magistrate, refer to politics on the
occasion ; there were ship-carpenters, rope-makers, sail-
makers, lath-cleavers, brick-lay c,rs, and a whole host of
other workmen, who said, " You know, Mr. Rathbone,
we are very much distressed." He replied—" I know
it, and sorry I am to be obliged to wring the taxes out
of you ;" but he could not, as a magistrate, tell them—
" and, my friends, it is your own fault that you are so."
(Hear and cheers.)

He could not " the other day in his capacity as a
Magistrate," inform the distressed ship-carpenters
of Toxteth-park that "it was their own fault that
they are so distressed ;" but how is it, may we ask,
that Mr. Rathbone's Magisterial prudence carries
him so short a distance from the Magisterial Bench ?
How is it that he can utter to the same men—to
the world—the same inflammatory language, as a
man, which he shrunk, the day before, from uttering
as a Magistrate? If the utterance of such lan-
guage in one place was improper, it must be of
very questionable propriety in another.

The Mercury has not of late so grossly offended
the Protestant portion of our readers with papistical
and anti-Saxon advocacy, as has been his wont in
past times. We have not had repeal of the Union,
spoliation of the Protestant landlords, and other
popish remedies for the disturbed social condition of
Ireland, so insolently obtruded upon our notice.
The proceedings of the past week, however, in the
matter of the prosecutions against O'Connell and
his confederates, and the issue to which those pro-
ceedings are evidently tending, have upset all the
prudence of our contemporary; and in his last pub-
lication we have him accordingly throwing dirt about
him in all directions—bespattering judges, lawyers,
ministers, and juries, alike, with infamous aspersions
and raving abuse—in short, throwing off the cloak
of affected moderation, and shining out in his true
colours, as a thick and thin papist advocate, and an
enemy of the integrity of the British empire.
We shall not attempt to enter into any serious
argument, with a writer who is evidently in too
great a passion to know very well what he is talking
about—who tells us, for instance, of the government
" drawing the sword against civil and religious
liberty, and throwing a% ay the scabbard ;" but there
are a few points upon which it is possible that we
may enlighten our contemporary, and, hopeless
though we are of any good result, we will make the
attempt.

The Mercury asserts—or rather, he echoes the
assertion of Dan. O'Connell—that " the jury list
was fraudulently made out, with a view to exclude
all persons of liberal politics, and of the Catholic re-
ligion"—that it was, in fact, a "packed" list, and
should be set aside. And then he breaks out into
the following passage of sublime absurdity:—

" The whole spirit of the thing is too glaring. Who
has weeded the list ? Why was it sent to England ?
Why were such pains taken to exclude from it all Catho-
lics and Liberals ? The Irish nation will answer-4 To
-make sure of a conviction.' There may have been no
such purpose; but whether there was or not, this was
not the fair mode of trying a man by his country. Far
better would it have been if the government had tried
O'Connell in Lanca.hire or Middlesex : then, indeed,
he would have found jurors unfriendly, perhaps, but still
devoid of rei,onal motives, and not subject to the insolent
and gro;:mfle,s charge of being regardless of the sanctity
of an oath. Now it is proved that, in the ocuntr,n of the
government at least, a jury cannot he taken from the
miscellaneous body of his countrymen who will convict
him, and the inference is, that they believe his cause to
be that of the nation."

As the only reply which we can give to this bab-
bling, we shall detail as briefly as we can the provi-
sions of the Whig act of 1833, in strict accordance