The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-08-28 00:00:00

CONTE Ai PURA'? I" PRESS.

If at this moment Lord Melbourne be prime minister
of England, or is not on the eve of resigning the trust
whieh.he has abused, then he has virtually announced
that the government of this country is in future to be
carried on by the House of Commons alone. We yield
our adhesion of course.to the new constitution without a
murmur, knowing full well that if this be the case the ca-
reer of independent journalists is over, and that the year.
will not elapse without, some severe ukase being promul-
gated, which will efficiently .prevent any criticism of the,
press upon the conduct and " pleasure" of oar new lords
and masters. Yet, while there is time, even if it be the
last exercise of our right, and the last fruitless fiilfilmelat
of our duty, in the discharged the noble function of up-.
holding the truth arid ditrusing knowledge; we will at-
tempt to assist our countrymen in clearly understanding
what this hitherto-third estate cif the realm styled the
House of Commons, really is; and what has formerly
been the government of this comitry when carried on by
the House of Commons alone. The House of Commons
affects to be.the representative of rni PEOPLE. 'Tis no
such thing. It never was, it never will, it never can be.
his the representative of a section, and a limited and
va, ied section, of the people, called TUE CONSTITUENCY j
a body, certainly more numerous, but as conventional, as
privileged, and as irresponsible as the House of Lords
itself. r The vast majority of the pepple is unrepresented,
arid Must '4ver be unrePresenled. No government of any
form or frame can act without the existence of some ir-
responsible power in its structure, and if the I-louse of
Lords were rendered elective to-morrow, what is to
check, what is to guard, the people of England against
the irresponsibility of the canstituency, and the repre-
sentatives of that constituency, styled the House of Com-
mons? The constituency of to-day is different, very dif-
"Terent, frorri the constituency of five years back, and five
years hence it may be found to vary still more widely
from its present character. Only a few days since the
King's ,ministers proposal a measure to parliament which
would at one.blow have cut off and disfranchised eighty
thousand members of that constituency.. Had the pro-
position been successful, would these men, therefore,
have ceased to be of the pecple? The freemen ofEng-
land, that is, a portion of the constituency of England,
whose rights were menaced by a more powerful portion
of the same body, acting through their representatives,
fled to the peers of England for succour, and the peers
saved them; and' herein was seen, and in this just and
courageous conduct might have been detected, the strong
claim which those " pillars of the state" have upon the
trust and affection of the nation ; herein might have been
discovered the reason why, when the constituency of
England in the seventeenth century had succeeded in
abolishing the upper house of parliament, and in esta-
blishing a tyranny of the constituency over the people,
why the same people, harrassed. and plundered, rose at
length against this despotic and cruel constituency, called
back their bani Shed sovereign and natural leadri, and re-
establi"shed the abolished House of Peers, in whoni they
recognised their legal and constitutional champions
against the inroads and assaults of a favoured and privi-
leged section of their number, namely, that portion of
them whoare entrusted with the right of electing repre-
sentatives in the House of Commons, and thus have a
chamber set apart for the advocacy of their rights and
interests, and are established into a third estate of the
realm—an institution, we repeat, as purely conventional
as the institution of the limited monarchy and the here-.
ditary peerage.
Now, the constituency of England, as distinguished
from the people of England, are, as appears by the-divi-
sions in their peculiar chamber, equally divided in opi-
nion. It is probable that the majority of the constituency
are indeed conservative, for the conservative repre-
sentatives of the constituency have in general been
elected by large majorities, and the destructive represen-
tatives of the constituency by very small ones; but this
matters little. We have to-day pointed out, for the con-
sideration of our countryinen, an important distinction,
over which they will do well to ponder—that there is a
vast difference between ibe people of England and its
constituency ' • that this same constituency is a purely
conventional body ; that the House of Commons is their
peculiar chamber, and not the chamber of the people in
general ; that if the Howse of Commons alone rules the
nation, the uation will not be ruled by itself or its repre-
sentatives, but by the representatives of a limited section
of itself; and that the natural consequences of this ar-
rangement will be, as it has been before—arid which we.
shall take an early opportunity of demonstrating—that
the favoured minority who will thus obtain the whole
power of the state will establish a tyrannical and vexa-
tious oligarchy, and soon obtain also the whole property
of t'he state.—Morning Post.

We havetion a former day ventured to comment on the
doctrine laid down in a certain assembly, that" the first
duty of a witness, and one which supersedes all private
and pemtaxot oorio.e..leratinno,;. to yield prompt obedience
to the pleasure of the House of Commons." Our re-
marks, it appears, have had some influence, for we re-
ceived by yesterday's post the sum of, £lO from a noble-
minded corresponderit, whose letter will bpst speak for
itself, with a view to raise a fund to try the legality of
the late commitments. W know that the courts have
hitherto been prevented from interfering with the acts of
the House of Commons. 0% er its own members we be-
lieve it to have generally exercised a degree of absolute
despotism ; that it has an equal power over free -born sub-
jects out of the house may admit of doubt; or in any
case where one institution of the c try is obvioully
acting in an unjustifiable manner, liiiTlishmen can only
have recourse to the purer and more unimpared institu-
tions of the country for redress. Thank GOD, the Oat
by jury has not been yet reformed to the taste of rite
Scotch and Irish agitators.

The sufferers from IpswiTh and Yarmouth are now out
of prison, and we know not whether they will attempt
to seek legal redress; but What are we to say to the last
case ? The doctrine laid down in it, that an English-
man's whole house may be searched for a particular pa-
per, and that without any oath being previously made
as tothe probability or belief that the paper in question
is in the house, and without its having been in any man-
ner traced thither, is terrible. But what shall we say of
the proceeding with respect to the man, the possessor of
the paper ? We can, we dare, say little, more than offer
a bare statement of the facts. He receives from the
mouth of the Speaker the alarming warning quoted at
the beginning of these remarks, and in our correspond-
ent's letter. He retires from the bar, after being or-
dered to produce his book of memoranda to a committee
of the house. The house is merely told by one of the
committee that he has refused to obey the order; and
on that information, the informatiOn of an enemy, the
Speaker orders a British subject, not to be brought to the
bar, to acknowledge the feet, and state his reasons for
his disobedience—no, but to be taken wherever he may
be found, and conveyed silently to prison.
We take this opportunity of saying a few words on
theparochial meetings which are got up, and to which
it is intended to give importance here in London. The
congregators at those meetings intentionally forget, or
wilfully overlook, that the majority of the English mem-
bers in the House of Commons are in favour of the Mu-
nicipal Alteration bill and the Irish Church bill, precisely
as they are passed by the House of Peers. That upper
house agrees entirely with the majority of the English
members in the House of Commons, that the Irish
Church bill should be divided into two, and that there
shoUld be some qualification for those who are to be raised
by popular-election •to the highest offices in municipal
corporations. -The call, therefore, upon the House of.
Lords by certain cliques in this English metropolis has
been to force their lordships by threats to alter those
bills sons to srrit-rhe taste of Messris.rflume and'O'Con-
nen. Mr. Hume and Mr. O'Connell are the authors of
those anti-protestant and anti-Euglish meetings. And
how forcibly do such assemblages, and the speeches of
the members who, attend them, remind us of similar' nes
at the beginning of the French revolution, when the sec-
tions of Paris were called together to overawe the Na-
tional Convention!

The division of the Irish Church bill into two was, as
we have said above, carried in the House of Commons
by a majority of the English members, in the same form
as it has been now modelled and is to be sent down
from the upper house: but that arrangement, though it
only has relation to an English concern, does not please
our Dantons, Marats, and Couthons; they are; there-
fore, attempting to call together the " sections" to me•
nace the Peers and the English members in the lower
house, if the bill be not framed totheir mind. But they
have failed, and will fail, in even this attempt, for their
meetings, though furious, are but shabby ones. Let
them call together now, if they dare, their sections d
la mode de Paris, to approve of these frequent acts of
imprisonment by a single branch of the legislature, and
particularly of this last—the attempt to imprison an Eng-
lish subject, accused in his absence, and withrult being
heard; or let Joseph call his " sections" together to ap-
prove of his attempt to convey to the House of Commons
some other terrific power (he names it not) beyond that
of imprisonment in Newgate. He !tares not ! In these
sections are, or rather have been, many misled English-
men, who are now beginning to see the golf which is
opening for them. One British subject was to have been
pushed into it ! He has escaped by flight, though his
home has been seized. Whose turn may be next we
know not.— Times.

THE NEW REGISTRATION BILL.—The bill for revision.
of the Irish registries is likely to be a useful measure,
notwithstanding the unwholesome shape in which it was.
introduced tOihe House of Commons his majesty's
Solicitor General for Ireland, lAr:"llli4ey O'Loghlen.
Like every other whig measure, it is intended to aug-
ment the patronage of the crown by depriving some per-
sons of their juSt rights. It is intended by the popish
crown lawyer to transfer the business of the registries
from the chairmen of -counties to barristers of not less

than six years' standingovho are-to be appointr!d by the
lordAientenant. It is not pretended that the chairmen
were unqualified, tn. that they bad rnisconaucled. them-
selves in any manner; and yet it has been resolved that
they shall each be deprived of £lOO a-year of their in-
come, to enable the whigs,to effect a job with a seeming
respect for economy, or rather with a seeming. desire to
avoid an increase of expense. Is this just? -Is it .fair
that the chairmen of the counties, ,being able, willing,
and qualified, to discharge their duties, should be de-
prived of so serious a portion of their incomes for the
purpose of contributing to the remuneration of a set of
whigling ban isters of the 0' Loghlen, O'Connell, and
Perrin school ? If the assistant barristers have miscon-
ducted themselves, specific charges should be brought
against them, and they should be afforded an opportunity
of entering upon a defence. They should not be con-.
demped unheard, or robbed of. £lOO a year, or any other
sum. They should not silently submit to the spoliation
.and degradation—fordegiadation it is to have it said in-
directly that they are unfit:to discharge the duties assigned
them at the registries. • •
If they sit quiet under the injury, and,pocket the of-
fence, they may fairly calculate on being calumniated at
no distant day in the House of Commons, as the Irish
judges have been, by the party which now seeks to in-
jure them in their repotatiori and in their incomes: The
question
.affecting them is simple. It is this—are they
competent in every respect tp the discharge of the busi-
ness of the registries ? If yea, they should not be de-
graded and robbed. If nay, let them be openly arraigned,.
not cowardly and invidiously thrown overboard in silent
contempt. One of the practices of the party at whose
instance the bill has been brought before parliament is to
asperse the administration of 4justice in Ireland. That
practice was indulged in white the bill was before the
House of Commons on. Wednesday night, and his 'Ma-
jesty's Solicitor General for Ireland heard in silence the
Irish bench calumniated. The whole bench, every judge
in this country, was denounced as a politician ; and two
of the ablest men of that illustrious body, Barons Smith
and Pennefather, were denounced by name, yet was Mr.
O'Loghlen silent.'" Mr. Shaw and Mr. Sergeant Jackson
repelled the venomous attack upon the judicial bench, and
the latter called on his Majesty's Solicitor-General, Mr.
O'Loghlen, the sponsor of the bill under consideration,
to bear testimony in favour of the assailed judges, yet
was Mr. O'Loglilen silent and consenting to-the calum
nies. The calumniator •aill next attack the chairmen of
the counties, and, perhaps,bring the circumstance of their
having been deprived of their trust to bear in proof of
his attack. Who in that case will defend them ? Will
their spOliator, Mr. O'Loghlen, raise his voice in favour
of the characters of those who he does not deem trust-
worthy ? The bill so far as it is intended to affect the
chairman of the Irish counties is most unjust. They
should not silently brook the injury and the insult.—
Dublin Evening Packet.