The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-12-03 00:00:00

This is the argument as between Mr. IRVING aml Mr.
BOLTON, and it applies to all the parties in the cottest.
One set of men wish to prey upon another : the weaker
party are, at present, at the mercy of the stronger; and
if injustice succeed, and free Men are robbed, we slould
like to know how long it will be before the same prnci-
pies of spoliation are applied to parks and streets—to
lands and houses—to mines, ships, and factories ?
But the Corporations are accused of malversatiot or
corruption, and an improvident expenditure of fieir
revenues. The charges brought against the Liverrel
Corporation are not many in number, or very enormous
in magnitude. Let us, however,. see what they are
" I have endeavoured," says Mr. FOSTER, " to recollect
all the notes of the items that have been objected to in
the expenditure of the funds ; the principal of which
appeared to be in building churches, subscribing to the
King's College, London, subscriptions towards Mr. Can-
ning' s and Mr. Huskisson's Monuments, the subscrip-
tion to the races, the picture of Mr. CASE, which was
hung in the rooms of the council, and the expense of :he
chairs in those rooms, objected to by Colonel Williams!"
• Mr. FOSTER explains these important" items in a very
satisfactory manner, and in fact meets manfully every
charge of a similar nature ; and .he moreover exposes the
shameful misrepresentations which have been propagated
with respect to them. But supposing that Mr. FOSTER
• had been unable to answer one word, and that all• the
alleged extravagance had been proved, what then ?
Would a beggar in a ragged doublet not be ashamed cf
the miserly economy, the narrow mind, and the. paltry
meanness which could higgle and chaffer, and wrangle
about an expenditure of a few hundred or a few thousand
pounds in encouraging the fine arts, and doing honour to
the integrity of a faithful servant, or a great statesman,
by a Corporation whose isicome is one hundred thousand
pounds per annum Y But we must turn from this sub-
ject—it is too contemptible 1
We must beg pardon for trespassing so much, as we
find we have already done,- on the patience of our readers.
But the subject is very far from being exhausted, and we
will return to it.

' We have of late watched with more than ordinary in-
terest the proceedigzs of London Juries. cot-kr:4o,l6mi that
their extraordinarl
.vagaries are admirably calculated to
bring the proudest boast of Englishmen, "Trial by Jury,"
into utter contempt. In another part of our columns,
under the head of "Old Bailey Sessions, London," will
be found scenes which can create no other feeling than
abhorrence and disgust. The first case is that of a juror
Who objected to serve, on the ground, "that it is not
lawful fur men to take away the life of a fellow creature,"
and when rebuked for his impertinence in persisting to
address the court, he further enlightened the bench by
stating that " the laws of God do not give man such
power as he assumes." From what sources this learned
theologian draws his conclusions we must confess our
ignorance ; assuredly not from the Scriptures, where the
punishment of death is frequently declared, and the
time, place, and manner of executing the sentence is in
many instances prescribed.
A short time after' this worthy had been disposed of,
another man objected to serve as a juror, because " he
was a member of the Society of Friends," who upon his
declining to take the oath was told by the Lord Mayor
that "he need not stay." The amendments of the law
are so numerous that we believe even lawyers are now
frequently at a loss to decide what is or is not the law,
therefore a Lord Mayor's ignorance of it is very excusable;
and we believe it is still a matter of doubt whether a
Quaker's verdict in a capital felony can be received. The
objection was raised at the Admiralty Sessions in January
last, in the case of a ship carpenter who was found guilty
of murdering his captain ; but before the question was
submitted to the consideration of the Judges the culprit
died a natural death. On this subject we have only to
observe further, that we cannot see the justice or equity
of extending to " the society of friends" privileges which
their other fellow subjects are not permitted to enjoy : we
cannot see why the affirmation of a Quaker should be
considered as of equal value with the oath of every other
person ; we cannot see why this sect who claim the right
of making laws, not by the indirect agency of tepre•
sentation, but in person, which impose oaths on others,
should themselves be especially exempted from this obli-
gation ; nor can we see why they should escape from the
performance of any other duty, whether civil or military;
which we are called upon to fulfil in obedience to those
laws which they take a direct part in framing.
As a newspaper is expected to take cognizance of all
that is new, we have to notice another novelty in Old
Bailey proceedings. Two witnesses had the audacity to
declare, after presenting themselves to be sworn on the
Gospels, that they were atheists, and that they did not
believe in the existence of a God! That this was said
with the view of bringing the administration of justice
into contempt there can be, we imagine, but little doubt.
Within the last two years, two men and a woman were
convicted at a quarter sessions; we believe in Kent, of a
conspiracy to biting the institution of marriage into con-
tempt. The offencg was the sale of a wife in a public
market—in that cast the husband, the wife, and her pur-
chaser were all sentenced to a severe imprisonment and
hard labour. In a civilised country, to bring the admi-
nistration of justice into contempt cannot be an offence
of less magnitude, and we should conceive that, if an in•
dictment can be sustained in the one case, it can be in
the other. We have heard a great deal of late of the
schoolmaster being abroad :—if what we have alluded to
be the result of his labours, perhaps it would have been
as well had he remained at home.

With reference to the case of Berthold, we make the
following extract from the John Bull:
" It may not be uninstructive to observe that this Mr. BEti-
rtiotn, the convicted felon, is the editor and concoctor of that
most nefarious compound of falsehood and scurrility, the 'Black
Book;' of which, no doubt, his most respectable witnesses are
most ardent admirers."