The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-10-13 00:00:00

t' TOnER 13. I 836,

the men we Inive mentioned, but among the numberibt
undegenerate descendants chapel trustees upon the re-
gister of voters, and dissenting ministers in blissful ig-
norance of the tenure of their`offices, will not assuredly
be reckoned.
•

Previously to the registration considerable intert
was excited on the subject of the claims made by trustees
of dissenting chapels to vote in respect of the value of
the property over whioit-Atey profess to have eon"
trol. The decisions have been very conflicting en
the subject, but in many instances these gentry have
been allowed to register by means neither creditable to
them or their judges. Mr. GREENWOOD, who throughout
the revising circuit has treated them with becoming spirits
has uniformly refused to allow their claims, unless they
produced the deeds under which they acted. That gen-
tleman publicly declared in, open court, at .I‘lanchesteri
that there was no single case of chapel trustees which
came before him in which an attempt was not made td
practise on his credulity by fraudulent and false repre-
sentations; and that in one instance, at Ashton-unddr-
Lyne, an individual who had protested that he knew mit
any specific trust in the deed which he had signed, and
that he had never seen it, actually pulled it out of his
pocket upon being informed that he would not be. allowed
to vote unless he produced it ! Now, when one revising
barrister declares that his experience of the conduct of,
dissenting trustees has rendered the utmcst caution and
suspicion necessary, our readers will be surprised to hear
that in every other case his colleagues have taken the
statements of trustees before them without further in'
quiry —declining to see their deeds—and refusing to bear
testimony calculated to throw doubt on their assertions.
Yet this is the fact. Mr. ABRAII:ILL, Mr. BLANSHARVI
and Mr. IfErwoon allowed-the claims of some calvinistie
methodist trustees without looking to deed: or
.document
—although when the case of a chapel trustee came before
Mr. GREENWOOD, it appeared that over the funds the
claimants had not direct or indirect control—that they
were mere naked passive trustees ! The refusal of tiles!,
gentlemen to alter .their decision when these facts ap-
peared was grounded on the idea that it would be unfair
to strike out persons who were absent from the court, and
who had understood their cases had been decided. S°
that the man who was honest and produced his deed IYSS
struck off the register, while his colleagues triumphed in
the success of their deception! A premium, in fact, has,
throughout the circuit, been given by all the barristers
but Mr. GREENWOOD to these political dissenters, WIIP
have lately discovered that the fact of signing a trust deed
confers a privilege supposed to be enjoyed only by those
who possess a certain specific stake in the country !

It is true that even in the courts of these favourt.rs of
dissenting trustee voters, many such claimants have been
disappointed in their attempt to obtain the franchise,
this result has ensued from the facts which cross-examina-
tions by the conservative agents have elicited with regard
to the extent of the mortgages and charges affecting the
property for which these ridiculous claims, are made'
Nevertheless too many of these newly..inverited faggot
votes have been crowded upon tile tegiket; and it will be
necessary for the conservatives, in self-defence, to meet
these pestilent busy ki9dies'on their own ground. Maul
chapels of. the esltiffilshed church exist in South Law
cashire which might be conveyed to a large number of
pri;ate trustees, in order to enable individuals otherwiSe
unpossessed of a freehold to vote for the county, and we
doubt not that by proper arrangements and good manage-
ment sufficient votes would be created to cause the dis-
senters to regret they ever set so bad an example..
The legislature undoubtedly ought to interfere on the
subject ; but constituted as the House of Commons at pre-
sent is, it is not to be expected that any energetic effort
will be made to restrain the practice while its operatic'
is, to confer on the supporters of destructive principles an
increased number of active voters. In self. defence, there-
fore, we call upon the conservatives to meet the radical 9
on their own ground, but at the same time not to lessen
their opposition to the claims of dissenting trustees, as the
next year's revising barristers may see fit to alter the
decisions on this subject; and though the alteration of
the present determination would then operate to disfran-
chise alike trustees of dissenting and episeopalian cha-
pels, yet such a consummation is much to be wished as
•systein is radically bad—should it, hoWever, continue
and increase from the multiplication of such voters by the
re-conveyance of chapels to more trustees, and by under-
hand arrangements of transferring mortgages into per
onal engagements, the origin of the evil will be kpowa'
and to the dissenters will be attributed a state of things
so inconsistent with their doctrines and professions. of
christian humility and contempt of worldly privilege.

One chance alone remains for the whig party, and we
think they are beginning to be conscious of the fact'
They have gone so far with the present imbecile admi-
nistration, and the administration ha-ve gone so far wit°
O'CONNELL, that both have an exceedingly difficult game
to play; and yet the whigs have no alternative but either to
desert the government or allow themselves to be dragged
into ruin and infamy by the Irish demagogue. We have
seen this for some time. The aristocratic whigs, long
before the end of the session, evinced many symptoms of
uneasiness at the dominancy which DANIEL had obtained
over the ministry. Some of theth. were silly enough t°
believe the declarations put forth by Lord MELBOURNE,
but the great majority, nursing their sorrow and alas"
in silence, waited the termination of the session in Pill'
'furl suspense. It was this, the best portion of the whigs'
wlio compelled Lord MELuourterE to eat his words and
retract all his threats upon the amended municipal bill--
who obliged the commons to vote the supplies—and
made Lord JOHN RUSSELL submit to those alterations ill
the measure which he and others had repeatedly declared
were destructive of its fundamental principles.
The session being closed, the whigs imagined that the
calm of the recess would dissipate the fears which tbe
fraternization of once opposing sections had excitedi
They could not have conceived that any government °f
which the leaders were would .form any real cod'
i
lition with such u man as O'CONNELL. They treat
the charge as the political clap-trap of the passing hour--;
as a bugbear set up to startle the timid—and they believed
that the agitator having helped to carry them through
the session, would, like all the base tools of the whigs/
he spurned, cut, rejected, and kicked into prison or
oblivion. What was their surprise then when they sal'
DANIEL careering in the middle and northern districts °`e
our island as a missionary of agitation—hired or per-
witted by the whig administration to rouse, not the peo-
ple of England against the tories, but the very dregs
the people against the House of Lords—calling upon
congenial ruffians to tear the coronets from tile brows °f,
tile Duke of NORFOLK and the Duke of WELLINGTON'
the Duke of BEDFORD and the Duke of NEWCASTLE, the
Earl FITZWILLIAM and the Earl of LONSDALE ? Not S
single peer would O'CONNELL vouchsafe to spare. `rile
" Death's-head" was to be placed over the King's art°
in front of the throne, and " cross-bones" were to be
hung upon the shield of every noble family in Great Bri"
tain. No favour was to be, shown to any of the heredi:
tary allies of his Majesty's ministers. Lord Grin' and
Lord SPENCER, Lord LANSDOWNE and Lord MELeoulolE4
were equally denounced. Tile whig aristocracy .were
filled with horror at this ferocious attack upon their order
by a man who was'said to be the principal supporter of
the present administration. If DANIEL had been unsuP"
ported in this attack by any but an out-door Irish rabble
they might not have treated the matter so seriously. a°d 3
they probably could have been induced to believe that l
was in reality nothing more than a culpable attempt en
the part of an insolent beggar to extort money from the
Irish Roman Catholic population of England. But theY
could not press even this consolation into their service;
They saw that the whole revolutionary phalanx of til
metropolis—the HUMES, GROTES, WAKLEYS, WHALLEYSi
and at least twenty or thirty members of the House
Commons, exclusive of the tail, joined O'CONNELL. ti
the assault. Even in this large community we have 00e
representative who professes himself. to be favourable t.,0.
what the small blockhead calls an " elective peerage'
flattering himself that he in course of time might be anls
.
elective peer, well knowing that, us far as Liverpool
concerned, lie will never again be'ari elective commoner,
and for which piece of silly I.4pity arid arrant stupidity