The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-10-25 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The letter of " Amicus" is too long for our present number
and, besides, we cannot see the object or the utility of such
sweeping accusations against the whole body of salt manu-
facturers. " Aniicus" confesses he has no remedy to propose,
in which case silence is the best course to pursue, for he may
depend upon it, that although some of the parties may be
ruined, the evil will cure itself.

In answer to a question we beg to state that Junius, like other
quacks, was a reformer to the fullest extent that reform was
mooted at the period he lived.

Elie Eiberpool 'tanbarb.

FRIDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 25, 1833.

The speech of the King of HOLLAND, at the opening
of the States-General, will be found elsewhere. It con-
tains nothing to induce a belief that the settlement of
the negociations is practicable in the present state of
Europe. His MAJESTY assures his people in the strongest
terms, that "new difficulties" have been raised to every
fresh offer of concession on his part. And by whom
have these difficulties been started ? Certainly not by
LEOPOLD of Belgium, who has no more to say in the
dispute than the Emperor of MOROCCO. The parties
accused, then, must be the liberal governments of France
and England. Louis PHILIPPE keeps Belgium as a
sort of suburban cabbage garden, and poor LEOPOLD is
merely the "man in possession." He has no power,
no fees, no wages, but is compelled to vegetate upon his
English pension. A King, indeed! he is not the shadow
of a King, and the people who surround him, and by
whom he is despised, know it well. We have said it
from the beginning, and every passing event fortifies
the opinion, that the separation of Belgium from Hol-
land, and the erection of that worthless people into a
nation, was one of the most unfortunate occurrences in
European policy. It was unfortunate as concerns the
people themselves. Their once flourishing trade is
nearly destroyed, and the merchants of Antwerp are
fast emigrating to Rotterdam, and the other mercantile
towns of Holland. The separation is not yet complete,
and never will be while Lord PALMERSTON holds the
seals of the foreign office.' At the very first commotion
on the continent, Belgium will be the field of conflict.
Holland is ready, Prussia is prepared, Austria expects,
Russia desires it. If Louts PHILIPPE, as he threatens
to do, should march an army across the Pyrenees, the
w::ole of Europe will he up in arms. Holland, of course,
is an anxious and interested spectator of the Peninsular
contest, and she waits the decision of the French govern-
ment as to the line of policy they will pursue.
The news from Portugal is to the 13th instant, on
which and the two preceding days, if the PEDRO accounts
can be relied upon, some severe fighting took place in
the vicinity of Lisbon. The MIGUELITES are represented
to have been repulsed from all their strong positions
near the capital, and driven some twenty or thirty miles
into the country. We give the news as we find it,
leaving the reader to form his own estimate of its au-
thenticity in the ratio of the credit due to the agents of
DON PEDRO. The fighting men on his side were chiefly
foreign mercenaries, and it is believed that at least a
hundred of our countrymen are among the killed, and
as many more, at least, among the wounded. Death in
such a cause is a trifle more honourable than being
hanged at Newgate, but it is only a trifle.
We have no intelligence of much novelty or impor-
tance from Spaila. Nothing has yet transpired as to the
progress of Don Catt Los ; nor is it known where he is.
Marshal BourtstoNT is equally under a cloud; and till
these personages appear in the field, and we know some-
thing of the reception they experience in Spain, it
would be rash to speculate upon the result. The mail
has again been stopped between Madrid and Bayonne,
which is a proof that the northern provinces are favour-
able to CARLOS.

Under a separate head, aided by our private corres-
pondent, we give the fullest particulars that have yet
transpired relative to the extraordinary enterprise of
Captain Ross. It is singular enough that that brave
officer was of opinion that no passage existed between
the western and eastern seas, and this opinion he has
had the honour to prove. The narrow isthmus which
runs from the continent of America to the 74th degree of
north latitude; great part of which was traversed by the
younger Ross, sets the question at rest as to a passage
in a lower latitude than 74. At the extremity of the
isthmus, tremendous mountains of never-melting ice
Were piled one upon the other, and this fact demonstrates
that there can be no passage northward of 74. This is
an important point now ascertained for the first time, and
far exceeds all the discoveries of Captain PARRY. In ad-
dition to this, Captain Ross has now ascertained, by ac-
tual experiments, the true position of the magnetic pole.

Lord DURHAM, we perceive, the Whig Lord DURHAM,
who has been toasting the " Liberty of the Press" dur-
ing the whole f his peevish life, has commenced a legal
crusade against the Durham Advertiser in particular,
and has issued an ukase against the conservative press
generally. Ever since this petulant lord was turned out
of the Cabinet by Lord BROUGHAM and Mr. STANLEY,
he has been at his small wits' end. He was sent to Russia
to be kept out of the way, and the charge upon the
nation was upwards of £30,000; but when the money
was spent, and Lord AvruoaP began to grumble, he
returned, half inclined, as some say, to join the
opposition against his too-kind and good-natured
father-in-law. Since then he has been roaming and
sailing in summer weather, and wrangling and snarl-
ing at every man, dog, tree, gate, and wheelbarrow
that have come in his way. The newspapers, it
would appear, have noticed these curvettings of Lord
DURHAM, and his lordship is tremendously wroth
thereat. We knou not the nature of the particular
offence charged upon the Durham 4dvertzser, but the
stories which have gone the round of the press must be
'familia; to moat of our readers. It is Laid, we kaow

r t•.~

not how truly, that when his lordship was in his yacht at
Cherbourg, on a visit to Louis PHILIPPE, he hoisted
the Durham arms over the British slag--the flag
of his Sover!ign. It is also said, that when
the same yacht returned to England it carried
at its mast head the blood-stained tri-coloured flag
of France. In addition to this, there was an affair
between his lordship and a Mr. WARD, at a watering

place on the coast about a right of way, the obstruction to
which the servants of Lord DURHAM pulled down. These
are the anecdotes Which have appeared in the newspapers,
and, as far as we have been able to ascertain, they have
never been contradicted, either by Lord DURHAM or any
body else. If they be untrue, surely their immediate and
unqualified contradiction is all that is required to satisfy
the wounded honour of an amiable gentleman. To run
to an attorney at the first philippic in the newspapers, is
conduct that might become the keeper of a turnpike,
but is very unseemly in a peer. It is particularly
unseemly in so high-born a personage, who has
dined with one Emperor and two Kings, who is son-in-law
of the prime minister of England, one of the learned
authors of the rObrm bill. an•? whose foreign tours for the
benefit of his health and his education have already cost
the people of England so much money. If Lord Du a lIAM
be lampooned, or quizzed, or laughed at, or even libelled
in the newspapers, let him say so—let him deny the libel
—and there will be an end to the matter, and the greatest
possible share of truth and gravity will be bestowed upon
him hereafter.
We have said that we know not the nature of the offence
given by the Advertiser but we know that Lord Mtn-
HAM has written a letter to his attorney, and an admirable
correspondent an attorney is, in which he states that the
conservative press has for some time been circulating un-
founded imputations upon his, (Lord Duriam's,) charac-
ter. With all respect, we beg to observe that this sweeping
charge is a falsehood. In the conservative papers, which
we read professionally, and generally with great delight,
we have seen no unfounded imputations against Lord
DURHAM. We have seen nothing which he has denied,
nothing but what his advocate in the Morning Chronicle,
now also a conservative paper, admits to be true. But'
we are ashamed of having bestowed so much pains upon
him. He is like all the rest of his hollow, shabby, and
deceitful party, the worst enemy of that press, the " liberty"
of which he has so long toasted at public meetings.

Passive resistance, as it is modestly termed, is tra-
velling over the country at railroad speed, and tht Lon-
don disciples of Lord MILTON have already their imita-
tors in Manchester. We find the following in the Man-
chester Herald of Wednesday:—

" Last week a table was seized for house and window duty,
amounting to £1 2s. 6d., on the premises of John Doherty, the
radical bookseller and news-room keeper, in Wythy-grove, and
deposited for sale in the New Boar's Head, an inn adjoining
his premises. On Saturday Doherty issued a placard, stating
the circumstance, and requesting his friends to attend the sale,
for the purpose of seeing that justice' was done between the tax-
collector and himself. Accordingly, ou Monday morning a
strong body of political unionists, nine-tenths of whom never
paid a direct tux in their lives, took up their station in and around
Doherty's shop and news-room, and a number of police-officers
were also on the spot, for the purpose of preventing a breach
of the peace. About eleven o'clock, there being no appear-
ance of either tax-collector or auctioneer to proceed with the
sale, Doherty addressed the people through the window, thank-
ing them for their attendance, and regretting that they should
be exposed to the rain, but he hoped they would not depart
until their work was completed, as he feared that advantage
would immediately be taken of their absence to proceed with the
sale. At sunset it was triumphantly announced, that the five
days allowed by law had expired, and that the table had once
more become the property of its rightful owner, a victory
having been obtained over the government and their minions,
the tax-gatherers. This was received with loud cheers, and so
elated were the heroes of the day with the beer they had drunk
and the victory they had gained, that they insisted upon bear'
ing the table in triumph through the town, as an evidence o-
their success. It was accordingly hoisted through the window/
and chalked with the inscriptions, " Seized for Assessed
Taxes, bid who will, we will not," and " No votes, no taxes;',
it was carried on the shoulders of four men, followed by
a rabble of some four or five hundred radicals, through the
principal streets of the town. After this farce had been per-
formed, the proccsss;on returned to Dotiort7,. house, and the
table was presented with all due ceremony to Mrs. Doherty, as
the gift of the people.' "

This is pleasant work certainly, although it looks very
like rebellion. Has the Lord MILTON that was, the Lord
FiT2wiLLIA.3I that is, any land or houses in the neigh-
bourhood of Manchester ? If he have, let him look to it
—his turn comes next. It must be vastly agreeable to
all debtors to have so ready a way of discharging their•
obligations: What creditors think of it we know not
and what Lord ALTIIDIIP thinks of it is of no earthly con-
sequence ; but we ask Lord GREY, as the reputed and
responsible head of the government, bow long these
open violations of the law are to be endured ? The mob,
in these scandalous exhibitions, act as boldly as if they
were authorised to do so by his MAJESTY'S ministers
They could not do their work with greater coolness i
they had the Premier's letter, addressed to Mr Secretary
PARKES of the Birmingham Union, instructing them
how to proceed, and indemnifying them against the
consequences.

It is said that two unknown gentlemen, supposed to
be barristers, who have the honour of bearing the KING'S
commission, and who also act upon a resolution of the
House of Commons, are to make their appearance here
next week in order to hold what they are pleased to call
a court, for the purpose of inquiring into the abuses of
corporations.

Not being in possession of any of their secrets, we are
unable to tell, or even conjecture, what course the
MAYOR and the other members of the Corporation intend
to pursue with regard to this inquiry. What follows,
therefore, is merely the suggestions of our own minds
upon a question of mightier import than the stability or
disfranchisement of the borough of Liverpool. We look
at the institution of this commission as an invasion of
the rights of property. If the Commons of England
can call upon their Sovereign to invade the law which
has raised a fence round corporations, and which has
given to the supreme court of judicature the exclusive
right of investigation, and the power of punishing real-
versation and delinquency—if the Commons do take this
liberty, and the KING is so ill advised as to accede to
their call, then is a second Star Chamber erected in Eng-
land, and no property in house or land, in mine or fac-
tory, in bank or chest, ort.earth or water, is :safe for a
single moment. •
It has for some time been charged against corpora-.
tions, that they have been profuse in their expenditure,
partial in the distribution of their favours, corrupt in
their dealings, and that they have abused their trusts.
What is meant by trust? Corporations hold nothing
in trust but for the use and benefit of their own mem-
bers. They are responsible to no person who is beyond
their own pale. They obtained certain rights and pri-
vileges, in most instances of an exclusive nature, and
wisely intended to be of an exclusive nature, by royal
charters. Their several modes of election, the qualifica-
,tions for members, the extent of servitude requisite to
constitute a free burgess, were all severally and distinct-
y defined. So long as these corporations fulfilled the
provisions of their charters they were not amenable to
the law; but they have ever been amenable on any
charge involving a dereliction of duty, a corrupt use of
power, or a violation in an oppressive form of their mu-
nicipal privileges, and contrary to the letter and spirit of
their chartered rights. Whenever any charge of this
kind has been brought in due form of law, and according
to the prescribed form of law, the Court of King's Bench
has been open to do strict and impartial justice between
the accuser and the accused. Further than this the law
could not go—and we maintain that it would have been
oppression and injustice to have gone further.
But the charges to which we have alluded above have
been brought in general terms, without any regard to
particular grievances. They have been brought by per-
sons who have no interest whatever in corporations—by
persons who never were, and whom the law never in-
tended should be, members of corporations, except by
courtesy. What right has a London, Dublin, or Glas-
gow trader to be admitted a member of the Liverpool
Corporation ? It never was intended that such persons,
or any other peraoos, shouhl be admissible, except by

OccoRER :25, 1.83 Y.

servitude ; and where there was .no servitude there Was
no right. The alien was excluded for the best of all pos-
sible reasons, ❑amely, that his privileges might be con-
fined either to the ',lase of his birth, where be had
learned his handicraft, where he had acquired hereditary
rights, and where his character was best known.

The complaints against corporations have, therefore,
no foundation in fact, because they proceed from persons
who have no legal ground of grievance. These persons
do not contend that they are illegally excluded, for that
would be a grievance which the supreme courts would
rectify ; but they complain that they are legally excluded,
and they contend that charters should be burnt, and the
law altered for their personal advantage !
The clamour thus raised by self-interested persons has
been listened to by the reformed Parliament, and an at•
tempt is now making to invade, violate, and destroy all
chartered rights for their sole advantage. We care not
what protestations to the contrary are made. The expa7
rience of the last three years has taught us that when a
Whig talks of protecting an institution, he secretly means
to annihilate it. When he talks cf protecting property,
he intends confiscation. When he professes his sincere
attachment to the Church of England, he has made up
his mind to spoliate and degrade it. When he assures us
that he is anxious to extend the political franchise, he is
busy in circumscribing it. In the sacred cause of reform.
he only converts decayed or nominal boroughs to Whig
purposes. He has not an idea beyond self, family, and
faction—beyond power, place, and pay.
This being the case, which the acts of the present ad-
ministration have proved beyond all cavil, we require no
ghost to tell us what are the secret and levelling objects
of the "base Whigs." The corporations are doomed.
The commissions are a mere pretext. They are sent
forth to gloss the prepared measures with something like
inquiry. It is of no consequence what they report.
Foul or fair—favourable or otherwise—it is no matter.
The knife is whetted, the brand is lit, SWING is in Down-
ing•street, and before two years elapse, provided the
present men are in power, every charter in England will
be considered as waste paper, and the ten-pound house-
holders will be the electors, enjoying the privileges of
the present freemen in all corporate towns.
There may be some worthy people who dissent from
this opinion, and if so, we are sorry for it, inasmuch as
the present are times when nothing but•the most resolute
courage, the most unflinching adherence to principle.
the most vigilant suspicion of the ministerial authorities,
and the most uncompromising opposition to all their
measures, can secure the country against anarchy, rob-
bery, and bankruptcy.
It is because we see in the intention what is likely to
be, what Dr. CHALMERS calls, the upshot of the conspi-
racy against existing charters, that we, after mature de-
liberation, call upon those who are the guardians of local
but long-established privileges to take their stand on the
.outer rampart. They can gain nothing by. concession.
To sanction the assumed right of inquiry is to meet the
enemy half way, and facilitate his contemplated victory.
That position which ensures the longest defence is the
most desirable. What right have these commissioners to
inquire ? None whatever. They are empowered, we
are told, to call for persons, papers, and records ; but
they cannot " call spirits from the vasty deep"—they
cannot compel any man to answer any one of the nu-
merous questions dictated to them by the government.
They have permission to listen to every idle tale—to
hear the allegations of meddlers and busy-bodies-4o
surfeit upon mendacity—to revel in dreams and pot-
house fictions—in all the falsehood that public credulity
feeds upon—in hearsay slanders, stale and fallacious ;
but they have no right to administer an oath, no power
to compel an answer, no authority to extort facts, or en-
force the production of books or deeds. Such a commie.-
sion is therefore of no practical utility. Before it truth
has no chance. It is incapable of adjudicating upon
right or wrong—upon what is admissible and what is ob-
jectionable. It cannot determine what is worthy of cre-
dence, and what is pure assertion without proof. It can-
not determine what is and what is not true !

But apart from its incompetency, we object to the inves-
tigation, by such counnibssonei 3, on higher grounds. We
deny that the KING or the Commons have the power to
institute any such inquiry. That they have not the
power is proved by the admitted inadequacy of their
right to enforce evidence. The KING, the Lords, and
the Commons may do what they please. We are net
here contesting their united and , legislative authority
but we do contest the right of the CROWN, backed though
it be by the Commons, to legislate by commission, or ad-
judicate by Star Chamber practice, upon those rights and
immunities which were originally derived from the foun-
tain-head of feudal authority. The KING cannot recal
the honours or rewards conferred by his ancestors. He
cannot rcOahn the patent rights or dignities which he or
his royal predecessors have bestowed. If we were to ad-
mit the cOntrary, we should be bound to concede to the
CROWN the right to inquire how the Marquis of WEST-
MINSTER came by his estates—how the Duke of BEDFORD
came by Woburn Abbey—what right Earl FiTzwamssi
has to his coronet and his fair lands—who made Lord Dun-
HAM a peer, Mr. GREY a bishop, and Sir JOHN KEY a_
baronet. To admit the right of inquiry into corpora-
tions, by commissioners appointed by the CROWN, or by
the House of Commons, is to admit the right of inquiry
into the title of every man's property. Such a power is
utterly incompatible with the liberty of the subject, and
if assumed or usurped would lead to monstrous abuses,
frightful tyranny, and endless confiscations. The Com-
mons have no more right to inquire how corporations.
expand their revenues, or whence they derive them, than
the chairman of a political union has to inquire where we
buy our endive in winter and our parsnips in the spring-
If the right be usurped by a revolutionary faction, or by
a ministry equally devoid of principle and shame, that is
another question. We are not combating force, or deny-
ing
the power of extortion, or.the desires of avarice; We•
are only contending for those well-defined rights which
have, during many ages, and by the wisest of our states-
men, been considered the bulwarks of British liberty.
It is true that corporate bodies, sensitively olive to the
unfounded misrepresentations which have been system-
atically circulated by their enemies, may very naturally
be anxious to avail themselves of any opportunity to
show to the world that these mischievous imputations are
unmerited. But this, in our opinion, can hardly be
taken as a sufficient reason for surrendering a constitu-
tional right. When a man is accused in general terms
of parsimony or extravagance, does he invite the public,
or a travelling commission to inspect his books, examiner
his servants, and question his tradesmen ? If this were
the only way to meet detraction there would be no lei-
sure for anything else. Our lives would be spent in
eternal- inquiries concerning ourselves or our neigh-.
bours. If any distinct charge be brought against an in-
dividual or corporation, then is the time to go into court
To rush in heedlessly and unnecessarily is madness.
But enough of this for the present—in our next vve
shall, perhaps, be enabled to speak more definitely on the
subject.

THE LATE LADY FARNHANI.—We have to announce tha
death of the above lady. who died on the 10th inst., at Valence,
in France. Her ladyship (formerly Lady Juliana Lucy An-
nesley,) was the eldest daughter of the late Earl Mountnorris,
and sister-in-law to tic present nobleman of that title. Her
ladyship was united in 1,89 to the present Lord Farnham, ut.
Farnham, in the county of Cavan, ono of the representative
peers of Ireland, and his left no issue. Her ladyship was aloe
related by marriage to the families of Lord John Somerset,
Lord Le Despeuser, Viscount Bangor, &c.
A TIGER HUNT.—As soon as we reached the spot, the
boldly leaped into the hoilow, at the same time uttering a shrill
cry in order to arouse his enemy from its slumbers. Upon
seeing its resolute aggressor slowly advance, the animal raised
itself upon its forelegs with a terrific howl. As the little Hitidoe
continued to approach, which lie did slowly and with his dark eyes
keenly fixed upon the face of his formidable foe the tiger rose W
its full height, and began to lash its ides furinusiy with its tail, yet
it evidently appeared to be in a state of embarrassment. Still the
man advanced deliberarely but undauntedly; the uneasinesS
and rage of the excited beast increased with every step; ,e 1
length it crouched, evidently with a determination to make
terrific spring. The man suddenly stopped, when the tiger
paused, turned up its head, and, uttering a horrible noise be'
tweeu a snarl and a howl, made one stop forward, and sprang
towards its victim, who instantly bent his body, ieceivea
the animal's paws upon his shield, dashed the knife into his btglfo
and fell under, but almost entirely beyond the extremities of MS
wounded enemy. The creature turned upon its back; the little •
llindoo regained his feet in an instant, striking the prostrate
tiger with astonishing quickness and precision a desperate blow
upon the throat, which completely severed the windpipe, at the,
same moment springing witil.the etuickness of thought, beyeti4
the roach o; the moiastees elawt fheligfr diod 'auk* irons*'
diate4.—Orievita: Armitel.

OtToaEtt 25, 1833.