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

TO CORRESPONDENTS,

There are two of jections to the suggestion J B.—the extra
expense and the tact of the building to which he alludes not
being at present obtainable.,
Will l wait until next week.
We will bear in mind the hint of "A Ffend to the Charities."
We believe the specific mentioned by C.M.D. is not in as good
repute as it was, as we have heart! little about it lately.
We are compelled, in consequence of the State Trials, to post-
pone several communications.

Ebt W.lberpoot &tanarTi.

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that, in short, the corn laws would be repealed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 Rathbone. 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 he 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 Tosteth-park, in
Ili% capacity of a magistrate, to hear appeals against
taxes ; and a more painful duty he 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-layers, and a whole host of
other workmen, who said, " You know, Mr. Ratlibone,
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 as ay the scabbard ;?' but there
are n 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 ilfereury 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—' 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, peihaps, but still
devoi,3 of personal motives, and not subject to the insolent
and groundleQs charge of being regardless of
.the sanctity
of an oath. Now it is proved that, in the opinion of the
government at least, a jury cannot be 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

with which this very "packed" list has been made
out. In the first place, the parish officers in each
year frame lists of persons qualified to serve, those
lists being revised, in counties by the sessions, and
in the city of Dublin by the recorder. After re-
jecting unqualed persons (which we presume is
what our contemporary terms " weeding the list"),
and inserting the names of persons improperly
omitted, it is his duty to classify that list, so
amended, according to the rank and property of the
parties, those of the degree of esquire, or possessed
of £5OOO in property, constituting the special panel.
The list thus arranged and classified is, by the re-
corder, given to the clerk of the peace; by the lat-
ter copied into the juror's book, and such jurors'
book handed to the sheriff. When a special jury is
required, the list called the special panel is taken by
the sheriff from the jurors' book, and handed to the
clerk of the crown, by whom each name is written
on a separate card; these cards are placed in a box,
and forty-eight drawn out. Of these each party
rejects twelve; and the twenty-four names left are
the panel to be summoned on the trial.
Now this was precisely the course adopted on this,
as on previous and ordinary occasions. The "weed-
ing of the list," which the Mercury would fain have
the world to view as some back parlour affair, was
the ordinary revision by the ordinary and only legal
authority. The alleged " pains taken to exclude
from it all Catholics and Liberals" is an unauthorised
invention of the Mercury himself. The list was sent
to England, for the signature of the Recorder, who
happened to be in that country.
So much then for this piece of flippant ignorance.
But we are further reminded, as a " matter of deep
suspicion," of the omission of some names, which
ought to have been upon the full panel from which
the 48 names constituting the jury were drawn; and
it is more than insinuated that the omission in ques-
tion was made designedly, although the fact is on
record that, of these names, only fifteen were those of
Roman Catholics. But how did thia omission take
place ? We give the reply in the words of the Lon-
don Times, to whose columns we have already been
indebted for some of the facts above.
"The Recorder prepared' the classified I.llt with his
own hand. With his own hand he delivered it to Mr.
111‘Grath, the deputy clerk of. the peace. Mr. M'Grath
is a Roman Catholic. He is anofficial of more than ten
years' standing, and his politics are therefore unknown.
The names of persons worth ,C 5,000 were given on slips,
a separate slip for each parish. Mr. M'Grath says he
dropped the slip that contained the names in St. Andrew's
parish-16 in number. He has found it since he made
out the jurors' book. The cause of omission of the 59
names cannot be traced. In the name of common sense,
should the administration of justice be obstructed for
twelve months because a clerk lets a slip of paper fall
out of his hand P At all events, neither Mr. O'Connell
nor any other traverser ventures to swear that he was
not cognizant of the mistake or fraud by which the names
were omitted,"

So then, after all the furious outcry-against the
" person unknown," by whom these names were
suppressed, and which person unknomt was of
course to be a Tory, and a Protestant, it'is quite
possible that the real delinquent may have bin this
Mr. Magrath, a Roman Catholic, and a legacy left
us by a preceding: Whig administration. The loss
of the slip containing St. Andrew's parish, with six-
teen names, is acknowledged by the gentleman- in
question, and why may not the ',illy-nine names ban
been lost by the carelessness of the same individual
—of course without any wrongful. molives ?
But, according to the Mercury, we must view tilt':
whole of the proceedings against O'Connell and hia.
confederates as an attack upon civil and religious
liberty ; and our contemporary asks, " Wherefore
let the vision of an elderly gentleman living at Rome,
and a- few poor divines studying at a:?; Irish college, I
frighten the landfrom itYpropriety ?" Indeed
l The
repeal agitation is, indeed, a Romish movement—is
it? We are glad of_a_ cofeettiotr-of -Vhc-farct
such we-have ever viewed this very agitation !

Excessive modesty is not ordinarily the attribute
of a whig-radical journalist. Our contemporary,
the Albion; has this week, however, gone clear ahead
of all our previous notions of such a character; and
exhibited an amount of sheer impudenca, beauti-
fully combined with ignorance, such as we must
confess we never yet mat with. Our readers, -of
course, remember the circumstances, under which,
as the result of a scrutiny', before the assessors, Mr.
Glazebrook, the present conservative member for
South Toxteth Ward, was-declared, after the opinion
in his favour of the Town-clerk upon the law of the
case, to have been elected by a majority of the bona
fide constituency. With this decision Mr. Platt, the
unseated radical, does-not.appear to have been par.-
ticularly well satisfied. A case was, therefore, drawn
up, "as fairly as possible,'.' we are informed, and
stating the politics of the respective candidates;:f!) for

the opinion of the Attorney-General--(who ought,
by the bye, to be highly flattered by the notion of
his Whig-radical clients; that he had one opinion for
his friends, and another for his opponents in poli-
tics); and the result- " shews that the Town-clerk,
able lawyer as he is, . was, in this instance, .wrong
for Sir Frederick Pollock has delivered an, opinion
in every respect favourable totbe claim of Mr. Platt."

There is certainly nothing very singular in this.
The Attorney-General, consulted by Mr. Platt, and
supplied with Mr. Platt's version of the facts of the
case, has given an opinion that Mr. Platt should
have been elected to the representation of South
Toxteth Ward. Of course the Attorney-General,
an eminent lawyer, is perfectly correct in his judg-
ment upon the case as thus placed before him. But
the Albion goes much too far N,vhen he states that,
" under these circumstances, the straightforward
course for the tories to pursue would be, at once,.to
resign the usurped seat, and declare in Mr. Platt's

favour " t The opinion of the Attorney-General,
upon an exparte case (and such, we must consider

it to be until it is given to the world along with the
opinion) is not to outsveigh the opinion of the Town-
clerk, an acknowledged good lawyer, who had both
sides of the case before him ! Why, upon thispria-
ciple we might ourselves claim the prolviatarsl4-4,4-

the Albion get the opinior;TitleAttorney-Gene-
ral upon a one sided case, and tell our contemporary
that " thestraightforward course for him. to pursue"
would be to remove his inkstand, scissors, and dic-
tionary of Latin quotations, and evaporate forthwith !
We should assuredly be laughed at nevertheless for
our modest assurance !

The Albion, however, gives "the tories" credit for

a little less of "magnanimity"—he had better have
said " common sense"—than would be shewn by their
pursuing such a course. He is of opinion, how-
ver—clever being !—that
" it will be proper for the
Town-council to not only pay the expense of the (ex-
parte) application to the Attorney-General, but to
pursue the matter immediately to a legal issue"—at
their own expense of course. !) Strange notions
of the law and the fitness of things a man must have
who can broach such an absurdity as that any public
body should pay
as to his election or non-election, (!)
who contravenes the decision of its own legal officer
the expenses of a rejected candidate,
merely because
that rejected candidate, upon a case which he has
not chosen to submit to the light of day, has received
an opinion in his favour.
The Albion proceeds
It will he recollected that, when a dispute arose
respecting the legality of Mr. Harvey's election as al-
derman, the decision was obtained under the direction
of the Council, and the expenses were defrayed out of

,

the Corporate funds. As Mr. Platt has been deprived
of his seat by a decision of the Town-clerk, which .de-
cision the highest legal authority in the land has de-
clared erroneous, it is plainly the duty of the Council
to un 'ertake the satisfactory arrangement of the case.
The Town-clerk should, when he has ascertained that
the facts have been fairly laid before the Attorney-Ge-
neral, make it his business to see that this is done, and
also, to prevent those who have merely sought justice
from being pecuniary sufferers."

Now, Mr. Harvey's case, we submit, is scarcely
analogous to the case of Mr. Glazebrook. The
case of Mr. Quayle, in Everton Ward, is nearer to
it; and that gentleman, it will be remembered, pur-
sued a very different course to that which the Albion
would have Mr. Glazebrook pursue—i. e., he kept
his seat and voted for a year and a half, after quite
as good authority having declared his election to be
void as any which has been given in the present case.
We do not remember any extraordinary fuss being
made about the claimant of that seat, Mr. Shand,
having the proceedings to oust the " usurping
member" being taken up or paid for by the Council,
or any great lamentation being made by the former
as to the possibility of his being a "pecuniary
sufferer."

The idea, by the' bye, of the Council paying for
the opinion itself, is rich !—and the idea of the At-
torney-General being "the highest legal functionary
in the land," is equally so.

We have been appealed to, by several corres-
pondents, upon the subject of the probable course
which will be pursued by the Watch Committee in
their election of a person to succeed to the situation
of the late high-constable, Mr. Whitty. We have
no positive information as to what will be that

course. We can have,. and ought to have, none,
Our own impression, and the general impression,
that the best man will be selected, whoever he may
he, and that, however highly recommended, to no
man will undue favour be- shown.

We do hear it whispered, indeed, that, in some
' quarters, a disposition has been evinced togive prefer-
ence to a military man over one who has been accus-
to other pursuits, and that such a man, influentially
recommended,, is in the field. We doubt, however,
that such a preference is generally entertained, and
greatly doubt the advantage to be derived by such a
nomination. A military, or quasi-military govern-
ment, of a purely local force is not one- most adapted
to win favour in the eyes of the English people, if it
is not even adapted to provoke hostility to such
a force rather than a kindly feeling towards it
on the part of the public. The military government
of the Manchester force' is an instance of this-; and
the remembrance of the events of Auguet,• 1842,
does not convince us that such a force is the most
effective. And with respect to the rank, education,
&cc., of a Head-constable,. we are not assured that it
is necessary that these should be of the very highest
order. A firm resolution to do his duty, and to do
no more, may be found wire these assumed requi--
sitec- are not ; and it is, we should imagine—and
we say it without- any wish to appear dictatorial—
not necessary to go beyond the' boundaries of our
own borough to find these qualities.

The Watch Commtttee, however, we repeat our
conviction, will do :88 duty fairly and impartially
upon this as upon other occasions

We have forborne ;fitberto, from motives which
naaii readily be divined, referring to a topic suggested
to us, as eminently worthy of consideration, by the
fate of the five unhappy men recently under sentence
of death at Kirkdale, and one of whom on Satur-
day last expiated his offence upon the scaffold. We
allude, of course, to the crime of poaching and the
means to be taken for its suppression. Even now,
we do not purpose entering at any length into the
subject. , A time at which, the mind of the public
. -.

curb weighty considerationa,-can be best-approached
and satisfactorily discussed.

There is one point, however, which we'have seen
mooted, in relation to the present state of the law,
as effects this crime, against which we enter our
protest. It is said—and there is some truth in the
auument—that poaching, under the present law,
which permits :he open sale of game, will 'continue
to be resorted to-by our agricultural population, so
long as that population is sunk in its present ex-
tremely depressed condition,- Our firm impression
is that, practically, such depressed condition of the
labourer has not nearly so much to do wiih the
matter as is supposed. It is, seldom that mere ne-
cessity is the
_incentive to this crime. In nine cases
out: of ten, poaching is a propensity, indulged, in
the first instance, for the gratification. which it
affords, and afterwards pursued for its lucrativeness,
and because its indulgence has rendered the party
almost an outcast from society. They are not agri-
cultural labourers, who chiefly stock our markets
with game, but men sprung_from a grade of society
much higher—degraded men perhaps, for poaching
leads to degradation as its sure results, yet men
whom poverty most assuredly has not led to its com-
mission.

We must go deeper, therefore, for the causes of
the increase of this crime than to >the depressed
condition of the labourer, But, as,we have already
remarked,,we must leave the subject for future dis..
cussion.

W. B.FZEtRAN D, ESQ.,—This gentleman, passed through
Liverpool on Saturday, on his way, to Dublin, where he
attended a meeting last night (Monday) for the purpose
of assisting the fund now raising for the liberation of the
honest but injured Rishard Oastler.. God speed hint on
his mission.

CHANGE OF THE. MARKET-DA.Y.--We hear from a
source on which we can rely, that measures are being
taken to procure the Saturday's market to be held on
Friday, in lieu of that day, whereby the late Saturday
night's labour and, the partial desecration of the Lord's
Day will be altogether obviated.

MR. 0 ASTLEi. AND TWZ. MEECURY.—Our veracious
contemporary reminds us marvellously this week of a
beaten cur. In his first attacks against the character of
Mr. Oastler, how magnificent was his swagger! He
could prove tiis; he insinuated that; and, with a know-
ing shake of his long ears, he intimated that if we would
write to somebody or other, we should learn something
else very astonishing and shocking. And now—most
lame and impotent conclusion !—the Mercury is all
aground—all abroad t _IL. same
tine...watts-for a reply, until receipt of which he can
say no more. Meanwhile, all he can do is to indulge in
a flourish, addressed to the chairman of Mr. Oastler's
Central Committee! We can tell the Mercury a fact,
however, in relation to the subject of his slanders, which
Ole prudently suppresses. Both the Mercury and our.
selves were waited upon last week, by another member
of Mr. Oastler's committee—Mr. Auty; and that gen-
tleman communicated to both the fact, that, after the ap-
pearance of the first of the Mercury's slanders, and after
our having written to them in accordance with his own
suggestion, a deputation from the Central Committee had
waited upon Messrs. Rawson and Co., and bad been as-
sured by these gentlemen that they had no complaint
against Mr. Oastler ; that they believed him to be a
strictly honest man ; and that nothing but the fact of no
direct charge against him having, at that time, been even
suggested, together with their aversion to being drawn
into a newspaper controversy, had prevented their giving
their strongest denial to the existence of any complaint,
emanating from or connected with them, against Mr.
Oastler. Mr. Auty's call at the Mercury-office—his
strong remonstrance with the editors—his challenge to
them to give up the name of their informant—his offer,
on the part of the Central Committee, to take upon
themselves the duty of sifting the truth of any state-
ment he might have made—the suppression of all
these facts we leave our readers to form their own
judgment upon. Another fact, too,
we may mention, as
having been communicated to us by Mr. Auty, and:which
we dare say is known to the Mercury. Not eighteen
months Pgi,—at last Doncaster races but one—Mr. Auty
saw Mr. Thornhill himself, who expressed his perfect
satisfaction with Mr. Oastler's books, which had been
audited by competent accountants on both sides, who,
although these hooks extended over a period of thirty
years, had expressed themselves to the effect that they
were highly creditable to Mr. Oastler. Mr. Thornhill
added that he slioeld be rejoiced to see that gentleman at
liberty, but that he warted his money. At this period, it
can scarcely be supposed icut that, if there had been any-
thing discreditable in Mr. Oastler's conduct, Mr. Thorn-
hill must have been acquainted with it,