The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-02-14 00:00:00

nion, with respect to the truth or the falsehood Of those
charges, or the propriety of the course taken by the,
stipendiary magistrate to procure the adoption of a
better system. Our hands are now no longer bound.
The select vestry, after a full and searching investiga-
tion into factsr-which are alone valuable in such a
case—have made their report ; that report is before the
world—not, we are afraid, so prominently as the &-
pante assertions to which it is a reply, but still suffi-
ciently so for those who wish to arrive at truth—and

we may therefore now venture upon a few comments

upon the whole case.

But first, before proceeding to deal with facts, may
we be permitted to glance at the animus which appears
to have instigated two of the parties who have figured
most prominently throughout this affair? The parties
to whom we allude are, of course, Mr. Rushton and
his twin in sagacity—" long° intervallo," however—
tile Liverpool Journal. In our limited course of
human action, we have often been struck with the
conviction that, if it be true that—to use the language
of the immortal dramatist—

" There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,"
the corollary is equally true, that there is a period in
the career of men—whether they be barristers or jour-
nalists—at which they are occasionally content to buoy
themselves up in the ey© of the world by discovering
mare's nests. Now we much suspect, from their ap-
parent haste to catch at an opportunity for this un-
seemly quarrel with the authorities of the township,
that our worthy stipendiary and his associate have ap-
proached, or are approaching, the " shallows" which
lie before those who " let slip opportunity." And this
is our reason for such suspicion. The sense of de-
corum which ought to surround the bench—a sus-
tained dignity of personal character even—would in
our opinion have prevented a man, assured of his posi-
tion in the estimation of those around him, from rush-
ing to the utterance, in his public capacity, of charges,
imputing, to those against whom they were made, utter
unfitness for the performance of their highly-responsi-
ble duties, and, by implication at least, gross insensi-
bility to the claims of morality, and even decency. If
perfectly convinced that every imputation which he
made could he sustained ; that the workhouse was ill-
administered; that there was an indiscriminate inter-
mixture of the , sexes within its walls ; that it was, in
fact, worthy of the term which he applied to it in the
presence of Mr. Birkett; that the means of religious
instruction were withheld ;—what should have been
the course of the paid magistrate of a town in which
such abominations existed ? To denounce them, from
the bench ? To invite popular clamour and direct par-
tisan animosity against those authorities ? Surely this
was not the course of a wise and prudent magistrate--
anxious only for the peace and honour of the town
over whose well-being it was his duty to watch, or
anxious even for the welfare and morality of the poor,
in whose name he made his public protest ! It was a
course only worthy of a mortified spirit, which had
discovered a weapon of retaliation upon a world guilty
of the heinous offence of overlooking its own fancied
perfections, or of a blatant journalist, anxious to make
a noise, even if he beat his drum or gong with his ink-
stand or his head.
We rather imagine that a very different course was
open to Mr. Rushton ; nay, he admits it himself.
" He had made a formal communication to the Guar-
dians," with respect to the evils of which he com-
plained,--when ? " Twelve months ago I" Nothing,
he urges, was done to correct those evils. He admits
the difficulties which pressed upon all parties. And
yet how did he act ? Where is the evidence of any
appeal to the magistrates to co-operate with him,—when
those admitted difficulties had increased,—in endea-
vouring to surmount them—the course which he is
now adopting, and which might, as far as we can see,
have been pursued without the popular outcry which
now exists on the subject. He might have brought to
the aid of the guardians the weight of his experience ; i
or n the event of a disinclination to amend, to the
utmost of their power, the system complained of, he
might have addressed the Central Board. But was
any part of this course pursued ? We have no ground of
knowledge that it was. But the daily or weekly obser-
vations of Mr. Rushton, and which have now found
eofthea et i‘ •
Boroughvent in his recent magisterial explosion, have made
thousands of people throughout England, who had
never previously dreamt of his existence, for the first
time acquainted a
Stipendiaryi nt ed with
mt.
Magistrate
amazingst
rat
ityand
of
wisd°lll
of the
a
Li-
verpool !

It is with sorrow that we make these remarks upon
the conduct of such a man as Mr: Rushton, of whose
public conduct, and general efficiency in the perfor-
mance of his public duties, we entertain the highest
opinion. But we like not that morbid ambition to
shine out of his sphere which he occasionally displays
—those fits of spasmodic energy which occasionally
come over him. Upon the bench of justice we must
prefer a fixed luminary, though his beains may not be
of the brightest, to your erratic planet.
And now let us come to the sum and substance of
the question involved in this, we repeat, unseemly con-
troversy. The report of the Select Vestry is before
our readers and our fellow-townsmen. The charges
to be met have been for some time before them. The
only fact established—which has indeed never, of late'
been attempted to be denied—is, that the accommoda-
tion afforded by the Workhouse to the numbers re'
quiring relief and shelter within its walls, is insult
cient, and incompatible with proper classification 0'
the inmates. A few deficiencies in the order and sys-
tem of the establishment have indeed existed; but the
principal point determined is the insufficiency of the
building itself. And what man of any discernment
would not have predicted that such insufficiency would
result from the application of the Somerset-house sYs.
tern—however modified, however mitigated in its res,
sure, whether by a Board of Guardians or by the Se;
lect Vestry—to the poor of this town ? Surely 11011e_.
And if the Select Vestry have erred at all, it has beePi
in not foreseeing those events—the embarrassment eh
the commerce of the country, and other causes—whic,e
have precipitated that insufficiency, whose ultimate
approach was certain.
But even if this be charged against them as a crime,
—which we by no means admit to be reasonable,-411,
extenuating circumstances are many, to which indeed
the report refers. The probability of being relieved f
a portion of the inmates of the building, who will Deir
transferred to Kirkdale ; the hope of returning Pren
perity to the commerce of the country; and the
.11 ,
willingness—surely praiseworthy !—to press, at a time
of difficulty like the present, upon the resources of the
inhabitants, for the forty or fifty thousand pounds
,
re-
quired for the erections necessary to furnish the r
quired accommodation : these are strongly
induce
reasons for past delay; and there are few, lneleeo;
amongst our fellow-townsmen by whom they will 1:,,g
be admitted as valid. If, however, there be, arnolll%,
the community, a few such unreasonably Captions epee
rits as our contemporary of the Journal; if the spite
of this neglected scribe exist in a few breasts ;
would suggest to them that, after all the zeal wblep
they and their fellow-Radicals have displaYed
":
precipitating the evil, it is a little too bad to ee3
plain that the exertions of others to keep pace with I
have not been successful. For the attainment of
they
political ends they fastened an enemy of paupea, " v
pote.'"
ot
upon the vitals of the rate-payers; and if we have
or
yet had time to prepare for the accommodation of
guests, they must remember that they came Inlinvi
oto
The •` PRECURSOR" SOClETY—fitting name I
fellow-townsmen, when they are called upon to /0
Workhouse rate, will not forget the " PnEcinCO g tor
SOCIETY, which furnished so many Radical er,
sellors with constituencies, and the parish 0f Ltv ll'
pool with an overflow of paupers, and a FIFTY rr
SAND POUNDS WORKHOUSE RATE. „the
pay
The London Times of Saturday says, that are
parish authorities complain, that when PattPedoet,
brought before the police court for disorderly con._s been
Mr. Rushton, instead of simply correcting them, has
in the habit of publicly denouncing the want 01 ;joie°
classification in the house, whereas they are „oeir
his
that other modes and times of uttering tions might more properly have been selected' belie
This is precisely our own opinion, and we _lO.
that of the great bulk of the inhabitants of the te,

ev-
-4 —abt er'
" DUNOLOE, COAST OF DONEOAL, FEB. '4.•roni
Scotland, of Quebec, James Buckanan master, fro nibie
pool to Charleston, with salt, was driven on shore.— d•
near the entrance of the Guaydore River; crew Isles Ili- 116
vessel will become a wreck ;part of the mat
,
saved."