The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-06-21 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

The furious fire which the battery of the Ministerial
Pregs has kept up, during some days past, upon the
House of Lords, has nut vet annihilated, or even si-
lenced that branch of the Legislature, for we observe
that it still continues to assemble and exercise the func-
tions of a deliberative body. The bombardment of
Oporto by Don Miguel has not been at any time more
vehement, and certainly has not been accompanied by
more noise or smoke: still their Lordships continue to
exercise the privileges of British Peers, heedless of the
" thunders" of the Whig portion of the "fourth estate,"
and wear their coronets with as much equanimity as if
the storm which threatened political extinction was not
sweeping round the battlements of their ancient House.
The Ministerial battery may play on. In a just cause,
and with the country at its back, it would no doubt be
a powerful engine; but under the present circumstances,
when so much noise is made merely to serve a political
manoeuvre, and to establish the ascendancy of one am-
bitious party at the expense of another, and without
any regard to the public interests, the agony of exer-
tion to rouse and excite the country is thrown away, or
only serves to express the alarm of those who make it.
The people, instructed by bitter experience as to the
folly of winning battles for those who, in their eager-
ness to monopolise the spoils, forget them in the hour
of victory, remain passive. They answer not the vio-
lent appeals of politicians who condescend to remember
them only when danger presses, and their assistance is
wanted to extricate them from the consequences of
their own calamitous blunders. The Whigs have a suf-
ficiently subservient House of Commons—that House
has gone great lengths in enabling them to preserve
many abuses, and all the public burdens, in opposition
to public opinion. Let them rely on their obsequious
majorities. Why endeavour to reproduce popular ex-
citement, and " fright the isle from its propriety," when,
after the long and painful struggle about reform, the
people have a right to expect its substantial fruits in
good government, diminished burdens, returning pros-
perity, public confidence, and repose ?
It is Lord Bacon who quaintly, but forcibly, observes,
that there are " some persons who would burn down
their neighbour's house to roast their own eggs." It
may well be suspected that the niotive for the present ex-
citing appeals to the people is just as patriotic, and that
the fire which threatens to consume the House of Lords
has been kindled for the purpose of "roasting the eggs"
of those who apply the political combustibles, and who,
to carry a selfish object, do not hesitate to endanger the
whole fabric of our mixed constitution.—Morn. Herald.

A list of what the Times pleases to call Tory sinecures
is published in that paper of this morning, and com-
mented on with characteristic falsehood and vulgarity in
a leading article. So ignorant of the persons whom he
abuses is the writer, as to set down the Irish family of
Knox-as Tories, they having always been Whigs and to
call Henry Dundas, the "ancestor" of Lord Melville,
and the Right Honourable William Dundas, a man
much older than his lordship, his son. He states also that
Lord Hardwicke in 1825 obtained the sinecure of Clerk of
the Irish Court of Exchequer on the death or surrender
of the Earl of Buckinghamshire, during the lives of
Lord Viscount Royston and C. J. Yorke, Esq., Lord
Hardwicke's sons ; these gentlemen having been-
drowned in the Gulf of Bothnia, some fifteen years before
1825,. long before the death of Lord Buckinghamshire.
Two Lord Conways and two Beresfords are put down to
.well the list, though it is admitted that all four are dead.
But there would be no end of exposing the gross false-
hoods or stupid blunders of the text and its commentary;
both are quite worthy of the author of the great Barnes

lie.
Admitting, however, the list to be perfectly correct,
nothing can be more absurd or unjust than the charge of
rapacity or corruption here made against the Tories.
The sinecures given to Lord Ellenborough, Lord Ken-
yon, Lord Hardwicke. Mr. Best (a splendid affair this
last, it amounted last year to £lB9 15s. 6d.), were all
as much part of the official remuneration of the founders
of their families as their regular salaries. Would Lord
Ellenborough, for instance, have accepted the burthen
of the peerage, unless he knew that prescription had
attached to the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench
the power of conferring the lucrative office of Chief Clerk
of that court on his son ? Certainly not ;he considered
that patronage as part of his salary. An alteration of the
practice is thought advisable ; but those who impute any
character of corruption or dishonour to such transactions,
are as ignorant as they are malignant. In making a great
soldier a peer, it is always considered just to attach a
pension for two or three lives to. his peerage,. in order
that his advancement may not pauperise his family, and
degrade the order. When a great lawyer is raised to a
similar honour, it was always understood that the same
result should be obtained by giving him the disposal of
such legal offices for his sons. Where is the difference
between the cases ?
But are there no Whig sinecurists ? Just as many,
'considering the different duration of Whig and Tory mi-
nistries during the last seventy years, as there are of the
other side. But let us only talk of the present ministers,
who are in office two years and a half, and we shall con-
sider the audacity of any organ of theirs in holding up
the nepotism of the Tories to public indignation as some-
thing truly brazen. Never was nepotisin carried to such
a height as by Lord Grey. He has quartered seventeen
relatives on the public purse, with salaries amounting to
more than £lOO,OOO a-year. His son-in law was Privy
Seal, and was discharged, after taking a salary which he
pretended to retuse, for incompetency. His son was
Under-Secretary for the Cdlonies, and was discharged
for the same reason as his brother-in-law. His brother
was made by him Bishop of Hereford, an appointment
which we own late events do not make us regret. A bro-
ther-In-law was appointed by him to the richest see in
Ireland. A son-in-law is Secretary to the Treasury
—a brother-in-law Secretary at War, with his own son
for his secretary. There never was any thing like'this.
Then where are the Broughams? His lordship's brother
is Master in Chancery ; another Receiver-General of the
court—an office which was promised to be abolished, but
which Mr. James Brougham is receiving thousands upon
thousands for holding, in spite of every. pledge. His
lordship's near connexion, Lord Auckland, is President
of the Board of Trade, the business of which is done,
how splendidly we need not say, by Mr. Poulett Thom-
son. The.Dundases.and Bathursts are nothing to the
Broughams and Greys.
And after all, if the whole of the pensions and sine-
cures were abolished, what would be the saving to the
nation? Nothing. We own, however, that the out-
rageous nepotism of the present ministry is worthy of at
least the punishment of the utmost contempt.—Standard.

The accursed reign of the Incapables is drawing to a
close. The poor Miserables are in their dotage; and,
however reluctant they are to abandon office, they see
that they are on the eve of dissolution. They are deter-
mined, however, to die hard, and not to yield before they
have wrought us much mischief to the country as disap-
pointed ambition and impotent malignity can inflict.—
Welll aware that the Irish Church Bill will be rejected by
the Lords, and that the King will make no more puppet
Peers, they have instructed their revolutionary organs of
the press to raise up a howl against the only independent
branch of the Legislature, and to call upon the slavish
Commons to dispense with the Upper House altogether.
Accordingly, we find the brutish Times brays with more
than ordinary loudness in its seditious and unprincipled
calling ; and the Morning Chronicle growls most trea-
sonable stuff on behalf of Dictator Grey and Company.
Their lucubrations, however, bear so close an affinity to
the ravings of Bedlamites broken loose from confinement
that we are certain they will defeat the hellish aim with
which they were published. God be thanked, the coun-

Jt`NE 21, 1833.

try has seen through the hollowness of Whig pretension
and the treachery of Whig profession. But more than
this, to its sad cost, it has suffered in all its vital interests,
and in its national honour, through Whig incapacity,pro-
fligacy, and corruption. It is rather too late in the day
for either the Times or the Chronicle to raise a deluded
and insulted people in arms for a batch of the veriest dis•
semblers and the most supreme dunces that ever trifled
with the destinies of this vast empire. The Whigs are
seen through, their political derelictions have been accu-
rately scanned, and sentence has gone forth against them.
They enjoy the confidence of no party, and they carry
with then) the contempt and the hatred of all.
Yet it is in defence of these wretched Ineapables that
the Times and the Chronicle crack their throats and
threaten the country with revolution and. bloodshed,
should the House of Lords venture to reject their uncon •
stitutional measure relative to the Church of Ireland.—
Because one of the estates of Parliament asserts its le-
gislative independence, and interposes its veto to the dic-
tatorial Mandate of Earl Grey, we are threatened with a
republic and with civil war. Surely the ministerial prints
which rave in this extravagant fashion, suppose that all
constitutional and loyal sentiment is' extinct in the bo-
som of the people of Great Britain, and that, since the
reform bill, they have neither sense, reason, nor under',
standing left to them. In this, however, they will fin"
themselves wofully deceived. The treason of the Tittles
will be met, should the worst of .its vaticinations even
come to pass,

"By hearts resolved and hands prepared,
The blessings they enjoy to guard."
The revolutionists will find the throne,, the altar, and,
every venerated institution of the country, surrounded
by a loyal and patriotic people, determined to stand or
fall by them, and ready to shed the last drop of their blood
in their defence, when assailed by democratic violence,
infidelity, and republicanism.—Glasgow Courier.