The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-11-14 00:00:00

Mr. Webster says to the Dock Chairman—

" Your concluding observation, on Tuesday last, that
the fact of the expenditure during the last twenty-four
years, namely, from 1824 to 1848, of an amount of wages
on the dock estate exceeding the whole of the bond debt,
is sufficient proof that the estate is one of the best in the
United Kingdom in financial solidity,' involves a fallacy
similar to those already adverted to, the question being
as to profitable or unprofitable increase of capital. The
expenditure of £3,882,000 in the town of Liverpool may
have been highly beneficial to that place, but it may have
been injurious to the bondholders, and may have entailed
a perpetual tax on the commerce of the Mersey."

A fallacy to say, that when an estate, containing
an immense Dock space, with magnificent walls,
quays, warehouses, &c., has had expended in the
construction of it, £3,882,000 in labour alone—
exclusive of materials, the price of land, and other
property—that fact is not a proof that it affords a
good security for a bonded debt, less than that
amount of labour ! Why, Mr. Webster must be
dreaming. At all events, we can assure him that
the bondholders are not of his opinion.

AT length the question is attracting the earnest
attention of thinking men—how long can the
country endure the burthen of the present incapa-
ble and dishonest ministry ? And, what is more
satisfactory still, we observe very distinct evidence
that an effort will shortly be made to release us
from their domination, by getting rid of the state
of things, which alone contributed to impose it
upon us. We need scarcely say that we refer to
the division of the great Conservative party, caused
by the adoption, by the Peel section of that party,
of the policy advocated by,Mr. Cobden and the
Manchester school, and the almost personal enmi-
ties, which it engendered between statesmen, agreed
upon most of the vital questions which agitate the
community. It is felt that in the present posture
of affairs, with a commerce prostrated, and bank-
ruptcy and ruin attacking successively every mer-
cantile and trading interest,—with the revenue of
the country sinking month after month below its
expenditure—with an insecure state of our foreign
relations, and a distressed and murmuring popula-
tion at home—with our colonies sinking into de-
cay and the national credit itself placed in peril—
we cannot afford to cherish those enmities any
longer, without being impelled into a crisis of dis-
aster, terrible to contemplate, and which it may
prove to be beyond the wisdom of the wisest to
repair.
Twelve months ago it seemed possible that, by
the gradual action of public opinion, a party and a
government might be formed, according in opinion
and policy with the feelings of the great mass of
the loyal and reflecting portion of the people; har-
monious amongst themselves with respect to the
general principles of a paternal and constitutional
rule and at issue amongst themselves, if at all,
only upon minor and inconsiderable details. The
lamented decease of the leader of that party in the
House of Commons—Lord George Bentinck—in-
flicted the first blow against the growing tree,
under whose shadow in its maturity we had hoped
that Englishmen might have sate, a happy, a pros-
perous and a powerful people. But it needed not
that blow to assure us of the impossibility of the
constitutional party in the country remaining in an
isolated position from those, with whose general
principles they agree, and maintaining an attitude
of protest only. We are startled to find that the
good ship has been drifted too nearly upon the
rocks to allow of the officers maintaining a sullen
aloof from each other. The time of action has
come; and it must be "a pull altogether" which
alone can save us. This is the rapidly grow-
ing opinion of both sections of the once-united
and powerful Conservative party throughout the
kingdom ; and it is strengthened by the good wishes
of nine-tenths of the Liberal party themselves,
disgusted with the imbecility and the venality, the
mingled rashness and insolence, of the men whom
they have selected as their heads. We may still
hope, in good time, for the kind of party being
formed, which we have contemplated as the type of
pure constitutional principle. But at present we
most urgently want administrative ability, to rescue
the country from its position of ruinous reverse
and difficulty.
A. significant evidence of this growing determi-
nation of the Conservative mind is to be found in
a passage of a letter of Lord Stanley, a nobleman
of admittedly high constitutional principle and of
unimpeachable honor, addressed to the electors of
Lynn, in reply to a requisition, signed by 187 of
their body, calling upon his son to become a can-
didate for the seat vacated by the lamented death
of Lord George Bentinck. His lordship expresses
his gratitude for the mark of respect thus shown
to his family, which he says :

" Is greatly increased by perceiving that the requisition
is signed indiscriminately by electors of all shades of opi-
nion in that great Conservative party which recent events
have unfortunately divided, but whose harmony and com-
bined action, as far as may be found practicable, appears
to be all-important to the best interests of the country."

It may be worth while to remind our readers, in
explanation of his lordship's increased source of
gratification, that the Borough of Lynn contains
within itself a divided Conservative party, between
the members of which the remains of former violent
ill feeling still exist, the colleague of their late
member being Viscount Jocelyn, a member of that
Peel party, of whose recent policy both Lord Stan-
ley himself and Lord George Bentinck were the
consistent and determined opponents. The result
of any other course on the part of the electors of
Lynn than their present waiver of past political
enmities, and cordial union in behalf of the heir
of the house of Stanley would obviously have been
the return, as on a recent occasion, in our own
borough, of a follower of the Whig party.
A similar instance of the feeling which we have
adverted upon is to be found in the changed tone
of some of the leading organs of the Conservative
party. Every reader will remember the indignant
attitude in which the London Morning Herald and