The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-04-26 00:00:00

01, STAN DA D.

having beautiful ruffles and frills, wantea.nothing to ren
der it a perfect shirt but a body. Mr. Baring likes the
frills well enough, but is anxious to attach a body to them
in the most delicate manner possible, and without any
further enquiry.
Sir Robert Peel, however, is far from being thankful
for the overtures of Mr. Baring, and regrets his amend-
ments as if they were remedies worse than the disease.
Speaking of the proposal to make silver as well as gold a
legal standard, he says,—" 1 t would be ruin to the debtor.
Where a debt was contracted in gold it would be positively
dishonest to pay it in silver. Persons who had made de-
posits at the bank would try to recover the gold they had
deposited. Would any man advance 20s. upon mortgage
when there was a certainty of his being paid off in a less
value ?"

This sort of reasoning is, we regret to say, unworthy
of Sir Robert Peel. The lender and the borrower would
be on an equality in this respect, for the advance might
be in silver as well as the repayment. But why all this
'new-born sympathy for the lender ? There was none of
this evinced when the debtor was robbed in 1819. When
the amount of every man's obligations was actually dou-
bled by: Peel's bill, we heard then of no bursts of indig-
nant and censorious morality about the dishonesty of de-
frauding the obligants. There was then no crime in
converting a depreciated paper into gold at the expense
of the nation—thereby doubling the wealth of the great
capitalists—doubling the public debt—doubling the pres-
sure of taxes—limiting the credit of the country—de-
stroying the available resources of the middle and indus-
trious classes—increasing the poor-rates—and multiply-
ing the number of paupers. No reparation, it would
seem, is to be made for past errors, or past crimes; the
present policy is to be persisted in for no reason that we
can divine, but that John Smith or Peter Jones, who
made 50 per cent. upon their capital in 1819, should not
lose 5 or 15 per cent. upon it in the righteous adjustment
of 1833. Such, we are sorry to say, appear to be the
'sentiments of Sir Robert Peel.

At our latest advices the debate had not ended, and it
is still questionable how it will end. Ministers, it will
be observed, have not moved a positive negative upon the
enquiry. They could hardly venture to do so, when it is
'well known that Lord Grey, the Duk,a of Richmond, Sir
James Graham, Mr. Stanley, and Mr. Edward Ellice all
entertain sentiments on the currency question very nearly
allied to those of Mr. Matthias Attwood. Lord Grey has
repeatedly avowed these sentiments in his place in Par-.
liament, and Sir James Graham has not only brought for.
ward (during the last administration) a motion almost
word for word the same as that now under discussion, but
he has moreover defended Mr. Attwood'S opinions in one
of the ablest and most convincing pamphlets we ever
read. In the teeth of these well authenticated facts Lord
Althorp could not, with any decency, negative the mo-
tion. On the contrary, with his usual candour and art-
lessness, he only endeavoured to strangle it by means of
an ingenious amendment which had little or no connec-
tion with the subject in dispute, and in moving it he con-
fessed, that he only required a pledge from the house not
to depreciate the currency, so that in case the committee
should be granted, it might be restricted in its proceed-
ings, and thus rendered as inefficient as possible. It was
a most contemptible manoeuvre and could only have
originated with Mr. Poulett Thomson.

SOME of the respectable members of the Society Of
Friends, have taken exception to an article in a previous
STANDARD, in which an allusion was made to Mr. Joseph
Pease, the member for South Durham, and a Mr. Faith-
ful, the member for Brighton. The ground of excep •
tion is, that we accused the Quakers and some other lay-
sectarians of aspiring to and possessing more extensive
privileges in the House of Commons, than are enjoyed
by the members of the Church of England.

What we stated was neither more nor less than the
truth. Mr. Pease may not be a teacher in his commu-
nion ; but Uwe is nothing to prevent his being so, or
having been so, nothing to prevent his being a member
of Parliament. A teacher, or an expounder among the
Quakers is, to all intents and purposes, as much a priest
in their sect, as is a deacon or priest in the Church of
England. But mark the distinctive privileges of the
two parties. A Quaker teacher or priest may enter
Parliament, and as a legislator may become the assail-
ant of the Church; but no ordained priest of the estab-
lishment is allowed to enter within its walls. This was
all we meant, and we meant nothing invidiously.
The case of Mr. Faithful is still stronger. He has
been called to the ministry by some obscure sect in the
town of Brighton, and he has been called to_Parliament
by the political unions of that very loyal town. He is a
preacher in his conventicle, and he is a talker and as-
pires to be a teacher in the chapel of .St. Stephen. In
the latter place he rails most loudly, coarsely, vulgarly,
bitterly, and of course, most ignorantly, -against the
church of England; but—and here is the hardship—no
priest nor minister of the Church of England is per-
mitted to enter the arena with him, to. defend that es-
tablishment which he loves, and which the law has re-
cognised as being the parent and protectress of all true
religion.
But. while we are on this subject let us, in pure kind-
ness, exchange another word with some of our respected
friends among the Quakers. We dO not complain of the
superior privileges which the law has conferred upon
them, above the members of every other sect; but we
have a just right to complain of the inferior and almost
degrading position in which it places us of the Church
of England. A Quaker is allowed to state that upon
his affirmation, or his simple. word, which we are com-
pelled to state under the. solemn sanction of an oath.
The natural induction from this is, that the word of a
Quaker is in law, considered to be equal to the oath- of
any other professing Christian. This we say, and we
lament to say it, throws a slur upon us. If oaths are
dispensed with in one instance, they should be dis-
pensed with generally. We cannot recognise the .prin-
ciple of invidious purity=. We cannot sanction the supe-
riority that any given tenets confer upon any one or
mute classes of professing Christians. The scriptural