The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-03-14 00:00:00

gait Ethsrpsol &tanbaril.

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 14, 1843.

In a recent article upon the debate on Mr. Roebuck's
motion, we intimated to Sir Robert Peel that hie
generous protection of his' discomfited opponents,
and particularly of Lord Palmerston, was not a kind
of proceeding which would find imitators. The mo-
tion of Thursday night,—in condemnation of Lord
Ellenborough's Somnauth proclamation, ostensibly,
but against his lordship's entire policy, in reality,—
and the debate by which it was followed, afford ample
proof that our estimation of the length and breadth
and depth of Whig-radical meanness and dishonesty
was not greatly at fault. The reader has perhaps
seen, at some period of his life, a cur, or some other
mongrel specimen of the canine race, relieved by the
humanity of a passer-by from the unenviable pressure
of a cart-wheel upon his loins, or dragged, at the risk
of ' smeared hands and garments, from a pit in which
he was being stifled by inches. Did the gasping ani-
mal lick the hand which preserved him, or even whine
forth his thanks at his feet ? No. Ten to one it
snapped at his legs and, with a portion of his torn
trousers hanging from its jaw, ran yelping off, to
plunge next moment into some fresh dishonesty, and
reap the reward of a sousing in a horsepond, or a
kick in the ribs from some victim of its propensity for
meddling and peculation. Such is precisely the con-
duct of the faction, over whose head Sir Robert Peel
interposed the shield of his good nature. His hand
lifted the baffled incapables out of the mire in which
they were plunged ; and their first moment of reco-
vered breath and spirits is devoted to an attack upon
their preserver.

We are sincerely pleased, however, to observe that
the conduct in question has not been without its effect
upon the mind of the Premier. Sir Robert distinctly
announced on Thursday night his sense of the ingrati-
tude displayed, and, his resolution that, in future, he
should not be the man to interpose between the ex-
ministers and those who bring down punishment upon
their heads. Most deeply do we deplore that, in the
case of Mr. Roebuck's motion, he was led thus to in-
terpose. We shall be satisfied, however, if the error is
not repeated.

The proceedings taken by government against the
Chartists implicated in the recent disturbances in the
manufacturing districts have terminated much as we
anticipated. The supremacy of the law has been vin-
dicated. The Chartist agitators, and their dupes, have
been taught that they will not be permitted to goad to
frenzy a suffering people, in the hope of achieving by
violence their insane projects ;, and at the same time
justice has been tempered with mercy, the convicted
prisoners having, instead of receiving a summary sen-
tence, been required to present themselves at the next
sitting of the Court of Queen's Bench in London,
where most probably they will be bound over to keep
the peace and discharged.

It was due, we maintain, to the character of her
Majesty's advisers to take this course. The working
classes were to be taught a lesson; they were to be
taught that they could not, in a civilised country, and
under constitutional government, be permitted to cor-
rect their injuries, real or assumed, with their own
hand. The selfish or misguided men, by whom those
classes are usually led, were also to be taught that the
law of England was not a weapon which mere cobweb
sophistries could suffice to blunt. On the other hand,
these lessons were to be taught in a kindly, not a re-
vengeful, spirit. Could it be doubted that the offen-
ders, or at least the majority of them, and the masses
whom they led, had acted under cruel provocation ?
The progressive deterioration of their condition during
the past twenty years, and the evidence before their
eyes of a disposition on the part of their employers to
make further and further reductions in wages—the
threats known to have been in circulation with respect
to these reductions, and the impression, so sedulously
spread amongst them, by Chartist and League agita-
tors alike, that the remedy was solely in a demonstra-
tion of their strength, for the carrying of a legislative
change—the charter or free trade in corn—were toge-
ther sufficient to impel ignorant men to a course of
violence and folly ; and no government could have
visited, with consistency, a heavy meed of punishment
upon the overt actors, whilst those equally, if not more
guilty persons, who precipitated their course of error,
were screened in immunity, by the greater secrecy or
cunning with which they worked out their object.
That such persons there were, few men who have
perused the evidence brought forward upon this trial—
fewer still, acquainted with the state of the manufac-
turing districts during the past year—will venture to
deny. What, we ask, is the impression which we find
existing in the mind of the arraigned Chartists ? Why
that the League manufacturers were straining every
sffort to break up the Chartist party, and to drive the
working classes, from sheer desperation, into the
movement in favour of cheap bread. The two parties
have long been notoriously at feud with each other.
The master Leaguer had been endeavouring to seduce
his Chartist workmen to give up Feargus and his six
points, and embrace the cause of free trade. 11l blood
had been between them long; and when, at the close
of the last session, the League conventions and depu-
tations returned, half frantic, to their various homes;
when they had declared, in a document bearing
the names of men of station, wealth, and respectability
—we were going to add sense—that the country was
upon the verge of a bloody revolution ; when they pro-
ceeded at once, with an improving market and the
prospect of the advantages to be afforded to commerce
by the new tariff before them, to a reduction
of
the
miserable wages of the working classes;--what so
reasonable a conclusion, on the part of those working
classes, as that which they arrived at, viz.: that in the
proceedings which they adopted—the forcible stoppage
of factories and other outrages—they were so precisely
carrying out the predictions of some members of the
League that they need fear little interruption on the
part of the authorities ? What so reasonable a conclu-
sion as that the attempted reduction of wages was in-
tended to produce the strike which followed ? The

Lum puty Are, Irztally reaporalle to. :Very °I
outbreak of August lot,d,
We now proceed to comment briefly upon the a
mission made on Wednesday by one of the WI;
Sir Thos. Potter—with respect to the doings of t
Manchester authorities during that outbreak.
Sir Thomas was asked, in cross-examination by the
Attorney-General, several questions with respect to thief
course taken by the authorities of whom he hill°
was one ; and in reply the worthy knight told of sun:
dry meetings held and placards issued, and of his
attendance for two days and nights at the Toul'ha
But he was pressed to say what protection was give
to parties applying for it, whilst the mob was engaged.
in forcibly stopping the factories ; and the naive a
mission was given, that the authorities " advised the
parties applying that it was the best plan to subinitl
Employers anxiously seeking protection, for themselves
and their workpeople, from the dictation of an excited
mob, were told, that they were to yield Without rail`,.
ance to the violence offered to them! And why wag
such a course pursued by these sage magistrate-,
Sir Thomas was again and again pressed upon this
point. " Were they afraid of bloodshed being the re,i
Sir Thomas Potter indignantly rePelle
the idea that he could be afraid. What was the reesatb
then ? What could be the reason of this submission to
which peaceable individuals were urged ? Why' a,
that could be alleged by the worthy knight was lity
assertion, as a fact, that the workpeople
obeyed the dictation of the insurgents, end turned O.
—an assertion which, in the case of several e,
fienri
ind other works, is contradicted by the efforts made
iy the workpeople themselves to prevent their stop'

suit i" No

gttendcd tt

page, by meeting force with force.•
We question that willingness of the men ; but wilie;
ther it existed or not is no valid plea on behalf d th'! I,
supineness displayed by the authorities. And t:T
opinion appears to have been that of the .Att°ll3,7.
General himself, who commented upon it in the 'fitl;
lowing emphatic language, which we recomtnentdo,
the consideration of the gentlemen to whom it re,lb-ig
"No doubt," remarked the learned gentleman, "l
was only a part of the tampering policy which indti,c
the magistrates to withdraw the troops and to
the mob to march into a town like Manchester, te,hi,
was handed over to them for a space of 48 hours
of
We dare say we shall be greeted with a flourish op
triumph and gratulation 'from the Leaguers, oP
their assumed escape from the exposures with
they feared this trial was rife. Let them pause' h°
ever, before they invite too much public attentl°: of
the details, bearing upon the wretched concliti%iri,
their boasted population, afforded throughout tbs.nted
dence. Bearing in mind, even, the somewhat tal'ate,
source from which some of these details email
the
there is still much to excite serious misgivings jflte
minds of reflecting men, whether it is a sound state be
things in which the tenth part of such evils can p,
permitted to exist. And lest such oracles as ntir.coref
temporary the Manchester Guardian should ride 10
with the impression that his clients of the League the
effectually purged themselves of all implication to
disturbances of August, we beg to call his attentiO4,
the pithy description of them given by the Ait°,.rl tbe
General. " Their character"—the character n' to
disturbances in question—" might be described il,llO
/,
words. It. was tumult or intimidation OUT 01 ore
CHESTER ; it was ENCOURAGEMENT, IN'
CHESTER !"