The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-06-27 00:00:00

POLITICAL MISCELLANY.

The Earl of Rosse has published an admirable letter—
temperate, rational, and full of the truest principles of
political wisdom—against the repeal agitation.
A decision of the Dublin Election Committee, last
week, has upset 198 of Mr. Reynolds, the Repealer's
votes.
Mr. Hume's proposed reform is called the " Four-point
Charter." viz., retrenchment, household suffrage, triennial
parliaments, and vote by ballot.
In the present session of Parliament more members have
been unseated on charges of bribery than in any preceding
one.

--X
bookcase and library, valued together at £1750, have
been presented to Mr. John Bright by his free-trade
friends.

The Times says of John O'Connell: " He reels to and
fro, he staggers like a drunken man, and is at his wit's
end." The purpose of to-day is the no-purpose of to-
morrow. He shuffles, he twists, he wriggles, but there is
no escape. Resolution is fatal, and irresolution perdition.
Meetings continue to be held in all parts of the coun-
try in favour of Mr. Hume's proposed measure of reform.
They, however, excite little attention, the Daily News
being the only journal that thinks them worthy of mere
record. At Liverpool, Leeds, and one or two other large
towns the Chartists have succeeded in carrying their six
points as an amendment.
June is passing away ; in July, people will be counting
the remaining days of the session. Yet even the Budget
is still to be produced ; while Church reform, sanitary
reform, and many other important subjects are rapidly
falling into the danger of being " postponed from want of
time," before anything effectual is done. The House of
Lords has now been in attendance for several months,
with scarcely any important business placed before it.
Very few statesmen of moderntimes have produced
such strange feelings in the minds of both friends and
foes as Lord John Russell is constantly producing. The
leader of " the Reform movement" one year ; the next,
" the chief obstacle" in the way of Reform. At one time,
regarded by Churchmen as their most dreaded enemy ;
anon, looked up to as the Church's firmest friend ! The
Dissenting leader at one period ; in a few years after, the
object of the greatest disgust to all Dissenters ! Scarcely
ever, certainly, did such opposites meet in the public life
of vile not cl;glionest nor very inconsistent man.

June 27, 1848.

THE NEW REFORM MOVEMENT.—At the meeting held
at the Portico, in this town, on Monday evening, to sup-
port Mr. Hume's motion for Household Suffrage, Equal
Electoral Districts, Vote by Ballot, and Triennial Parlia-
ments, the supporters of those measures were defeated by
the Universal Suffragists, who succeeded in carrying reso-
lutions in favour of the six points of the Charter. As the
Chartists are miserably weak in Liverpool, this fact proves
that the Humeists must be still weaker. The fact is that
there is no party in Liverpool, except a little knot of
Chartists, that desires organic changes of any kind. Even
those who are most disposed to them on general grounds,
consider the present period of political confusion abroad
and commercial depression, (caused by that confusion) et
home, extremely ill chosen for reconstructing the Consti-
tution of the country.—Liverpool Times.—( Whig Paper.
CHEESE-PARING PATRIOTS.—It is not by sinecures
and unmerited pensions that the resources of a country
are drained. Curtail all the expenses of the Court—put
Her Majesty's attendants on board wages—cut down the
Chamberlain's and Lord Steward's departments—be 0
penurious as you may be, you would not save 3d. a-Year
to every tax-gatherer throughout the empire. It is not
the establishment of the Palace that is consuming the
subsistence of the householder at Stockport and Birming-
ham : and, while in many departments we would gladly
see reduction, it is not by saving a few thousands a year
that the merchant can be rendered prosperous or the
artizan kept in full work. We are as willing to reduce
the army and navy expenses as they can be ; but we can'
not break up the apparatus and appendages of a great
empire as we would the stock of a bankrupt tradesmen.
We cannot forget the duties and the responsibilities of
rule just at a moment of accidental pressure. We cannot
fling Canada, Australia, India to the winds ; neither can
we keep them and all that they give us without soldiers
and sailors. We cannot afford to surrender our own
position and pre eminence in the eyes of the world. It.
is part of our stock in trade. It is our capital. If it
goes we go too. But we cannot keep it without keeping
that by which it was obtained—an adequate fleet and an
adequate supply of brave and well-trained troops. Gentle-
men leaguers, be careful what you are doing. Petition,
agitate, and declaim, against superfluous and extravagant
expense. Petition against and denounce every unneces-
sary outlay in the army, the navy, the state ; but beware
of going too far. You may do much mischief without
meaning it. Your country is engaging the attention of
the world. Secure, and hardly shaken, she is affording
an asylum to the exiles of less happy lands, and the
victims of less healthy institutions. Slowly and steadily
she will reap the reward of. great actions and great suffer-
ings. Mar not the completion of a glorious history, nor
under the pressure of a temporary distress try to inflict a
wound which no time can cure, but which all would have
reason to deplore.—Times.

DECLINE OF MR. COBDEN'S POPULARlTY.—Foreigners
are naturally imposed upon by superficial information, and
it has been truly remarked that even the speeches of Mr.
Duncombe and Mr. Wakley are read by continental
statesmen as if they carried with them all the weight
which belongs to some of our great party leaders. The
flattery heaped upon Mr. Cobden was therefore quite na-
tural, and he enjoyed it. He came back to England with
his ears still ringing with the cheers with which he bad
been greeted at public dinners and public meetings. If
he had any misgivings as to the stability of his popularity
at home, these must have been removed when the first
news that greeted his arrival in England was his election
for the West Riding of Yorkshire. It was his election
for Yorkshire that placed Lord Brougham on the wool-
sack, and had he declined that honour, might, with toler-
able management, have made him ultimately prime
nister. It was an honour that turned Lord Brougham's
head, and has been the forerunner of his downward course.
The glory of Lord Brougham culminated when he Was
returned for Yorkshire, and we think Richard Cobden'
star has not been in the ascendant since the day he Was
elected to sit for the West Riding. He has found, most
unexpectedly, that the burst of enthusiasm which greeted
his success as an agitator, has died away into expressive
silence : he no longer finds himself, as formerly, the lion
of the day, feted by the aristocracy, courted by the people,
and listened to with mute attention by the House of Coln-,
coons. His passage through the gay circles of Grosvenor-
square and Belgravia, has been scarcely more brilliant or
more evanescent than those of George Hudson and Mr.
Ferrand. Out of doors the agriculturists can hardly claim
him as a friend, whilst the manufacturing operatives, v!11°
,clubbed their shillings and half-crowns to raise
.£loo,Ueu
for the idol of their masters, now find, to their cost, that
they had a far truer and much more economical friend in
Lord Ashley, who never sought for such splendid testi-
monials to his more effective and more consistent philan-
thropy. It is obvious that Mr. Cobden has been stunl
and mortified by the decline of his popularity, and still
more by the manner in which the House of Commons
received the killing exposure made by Admiral Dundas of
his attack on the British navy at Malta. Something wags
done. A new league was to be got up. A new standard
of agitation was to be raised, and reform in parliamen.„
seemed to be the most promising. It has signally faile_coir
and the people have but too recently raised X 70,000 for
Mr. Cobden himself, and several hundred thousand pounds
more for a whole army of hungry agitators, to impend""
any unusual exuberance of enthusiasm in favour
new league, having such costly appendages.—Record.