The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-08-25 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

WITS JUDIIP. We are blest at one and the same mo-
ment with the whig cabinet in England, and, the Doc-
trinaire cabinet of France; and it:is, as the Cockneys
used to say, quite refreshing to find both these liberal
and respectable bodies of men engaged in the saute occu-
pation. The liberal government of Louis Philippe is
busily cramming into jail some hundreds of the persons
who do not approve of his mode of governing by the
bayonet; and the liberal and reformed House of Com-
mons of England, by a majority of some twenty orAlliity,
embodying (as they would say themselves) in the thirty,
some forty of the tail—imitates that best of all possible
republics on a small scale, by sending its dozens to ten-
ant Newgate, for the especial benefit of Mr. Cope.
At the time of the popish plot, when there was a plot,
(what we have of Mr. Dens' doctrines enables us to duly
appreciate the value of the evidence adduced to contra-
dict it), the House of Commons, justly•alarrned, ordered
many persons to be arrested. The offizer of the day, im-
mortalized by Sir Walter Scott in "Peveril of the Peak,"
was named Topham; and "Take hith, Topham," was so
often repeated by the Abercromby of that time, that it\
became a common expression. Sir William Gossett,
kicked out most shamefully and ignominiously by Pan-
taloon Mulgrave, now, fills the office which in the days of
Charles was filled by Tophatu; and we are sure that if
the house goes on as it is now proceeding, that "Grab-
him, Gossett,"‘ will be as trite as the address directed to
the Speaker's officer or Sheriff's officer in the times to
which we refer. Gossett, the Newgate purveyor, will
be as famous as any other burn in the kingdom. It is a
sweet employment for a knight "girt with sword" to be
a competitor with Selby, or Glowman, or Davis, or
Levy, to say nothing of'Daniel Forrester, or Ruthven,
or the other " active and efficient officers" attached to.
Bow•street, who are so disinterestedly lauded by the
penny-a-line men.
But putting Bum Gossett aside, may we yet ask whe-
ther general warrants for searching for evidence against
an unaecnsed person are'net gone by There has not
been a writer in what is basely, brutally, falsely called
the liberal side Col- the last seventy years, who has 'not
bawled and brawled about the iniquity of the proceed-
ings against Wilks. Now nobody is so barefaced as to
deny that Wilks (we do not mean the Tabernacle Vtrilks,
but the Right Honourable John Wilks, as the Bridge-
street obelisk calls him) was indeed an irrecoverable
scoundrel, and well deserved whipping at a cart's tail,
or any punishment that could be legally awarded him ;
but still there was no reason that he, or any body else,
should be illegally punished; and accordingly great was
the uproar, and vast the tumult, when Halifax (we be-
lieve, we are not quite sure, and do not think it worth
while to turn over our school-boy books to ascertain whe-
ther we are right or not) ordered a general warrant
against the squint-eyed patriot, the chosen of Middlesex.
The times have come round ; %and he who now, by the
strength of interest of the same kind that sent in Wilks,
misrepresents Middlesex, is the most active, venomous,
and vindictive, in demanding that all the inquisitorial
power of the House of Commons should'be directed to
perform an act ten-told more oppressive and more treach-
erous tharsany thing that was ever meditated by the Se-
cretaries of State in the early days of George the Third.
Any man who will not grovel before Mr. Hume or Mr.
O'Connell is booked.. " Grab him, Bum Gossett."

Charming liberty this! Let it go on in .God's name,
and Newgate will be the chapel of ease to St. Stephen's.
The most diverting affair in the midst of these dirty pro-
ceedings is the claim set up by the profligate press, in
the pay of the ministers of France and England, for the
immense affection for liberty entertained b 3 the whigs
and doctrinaires. " Cram them into St. I'elagie—itn7
prison them twenty years—keep them untried year after
year—ruin them, destroy them, mangle them." So runs
the song of Tillers and the people with whom he associ-
ated. Why ?—Becanse newspaper men have dared to
say a word against Louis Philippe.
"Newgate—Newgate—Newgate! Serjeant- at-Arms
—Serjeant-at-Arms—Burn Gossett!"—Howl forth Hume
and O'Connell, Warburton, Broken-nosed Buller, and
the rest of that wretched crew. Why ? Because the pa-
pist priests are not allowed, in addition to their now un-
disputed and unopposed domination in Ireland, to enter
the houses of people living in England, to seize by vio-
lent force their property—by torture to compel them to
afford evidence against themselves.

Is this free England ? We ask every man, really de-
serving of the name of being free—we ask every man
who is not the servile liekspittle of the government w ith
which we are afflicted, who has not altogether forgotten
what are the first principles of liberty, whether the 'pro-
ceedings of the House of Commons in the case.of little
Fairman were not

No! we shall not write the word. The weather is too
hot to go to Newgate at the command of such things as
Broken-nosed Buller. But if there be a particle of the
old British vein—Persius tised a'different word;, but we
cannot follow always the plain spoken pupil of Cornutus
'—left in the country, the committing house will fall,•not
into contempt, but into something else. It is now in its
majority something almost as shabby as the Marylebone
or Pancras pauper vestries. Do the people who com-
pose that majority not know, that,such is the estimation
in which they are held ? They know it well; and the
question to be asked is, not what the Tomkinses and
Jenkinse,s.put into their ptiny and penny newspapers—
" What is to be done witl► the Loris?" but " What, in
God's name, shall be done with the people who call them-
selves the Commons-?" • .• • • • •
We shalj, however, wait until the session is over be-
fore _we go mucl► farther in our remarks on what old
Chaise-horse Burdett used to call the " bad house at St.
Stephen'S."—Age.

The baffled and craven Whigs, trembling
,at what is
about to happen, talk daily of "the lords opposing them-
selves to the wishes of TILE PEOPLE." We wish we could
induce these gentry to define what they mean by this fa-
vourite phrase of theirs—T[lF. PEOPLE. The King of
England is the avowed leader of the conservative party—
according to the whigs—who raise seditious cries in con-
sequence. We have upon our side also the peers of
England ; we have upon our side the gentlemen of Eng-
land; we have upon our side the yeomanry of England ;
we have upon our side their armed and gallant brethren ;
we have upon our Side the universal peasantry of Eng-
land; we have upon our side the army and navy, the
church, the learned professions to a Man, the universities,
the judges, the magistrates, the. merchants, the corporate
bodies of all descriptions, and a large party in every
town, agricultural, commercial, even manufacturing.—
What constitutes a people if these do not afford the ele-
ments of a great and glorious nation ? Why, to say no.
thing of rank, of property, honour, intelligence, experi-
ence—in numbers, in sheer and very numbers, we beat
these brawling braggarts. Yet the whig-radicals talk
not only of the indignation and resolution, but even of
the meetings, of THE PEOPLE in their favour. Where do
they meet ? " Yesterday Birmin!zham met—to-day
Westminster." To tell the truth, w hen Lord Ellenbo-
rough proposed and passed his clause for entrusting the
division of the boroughs into wards to the gentlemen of
England, and Pi.',-aller Parkeslost his job, we were-quite
prepared fora Birmingham meeting, and meet it cer.:
tainly did. A precious meeting Of THE PEoPIE! The
rump of the Political Union, the debris of that " aristo-
cracy of blackguards," listening. to the brainless bray-
ings of that melancholy ass,Attwoud, over Cossacks and
currency.. But for Westminster ! Why, we live in
Westminster; we Ourselves are' part anti Parcel of the
people of Westminster. Anit.Who doth the gentle public
suppose was the great lion at the Westminster meeting
of THE PEOPLE ? one Juggins, who deseribed him-
self as a member of ".the Annoyance Jury." Shade of
Dogberry ! Spirit of. Ver,ges! are at length out-
done. What are ye to .Master Jeggins, of the Annoy-
ance Jury ! Oh, William Shakspeare I and oh, Walter.
Scott !Aire most ideal creations of your choice humour
must vield.to this grotesque existence ! And Ju"gins
is a leader of TILE PEOPLE!. and .TUggins wishes to know
what is the use of the lords ?.
- -

If this. be •." the people" with whom the threatened
c-lhsion is to take place, we think the fray nay
it to
be
left to the new police-,--and with whom else is to take
pince? What do the whig•radicals mean by this word
" ?" Do they mean civil war? If so, we de-
precate, but we are prepared fair it. Fancy
.John Rus-
sell "civil war! Our English Don Carlos would
scarcely gain as many laurels ashis namesake in Na-
varre. Farley Spring Rice waving a shillelagh, or
Palmerston tilting with a lady's fan ! Civil war, indeed!
Why, when the last civil war took place it commenced
by Hampden's green horsemen riding-up from 'Bucking-
hamshire, and alone overawing the king and court. Let
William IV. now raise his standard in that very county,
ay, the birth-place of Hampden, and the whole male po-
pulation, to a man, would rally round his throne. The
counties within it day'sjourney of London would furnish
his majesty, within a week with fifty thousand cavalry, a
great portion of them already armed and trained, and
led by skilful and esperienced officers. But the whigs
and the whip-radicals do not mean a civil war by their
word collicion. Oh, no, they mean a row, a riot, aw short
'revolution, a metropolitan bang-up, raving stones.
White Conduit-house, broken windows, a fire or two,
Cheapskle and Regent-street plande red, and the prisons
thrown open. This is what the king's ministers want.
They want three days, three glorious days, three glori-
ous and beautiful •days, as their prescient flashman, Ma-
caulay, styled the bloody riot tha.t, wasthetitting precur-
sor of the ?ton 'despotism of Lon Philippe. The whig
ministers want a revolutionary riot to consolidate their
power—the power which tbey have now failed in estab-
lishing, although thay carried the reform act, and at-
tempted the corporation bill. But it wontdO. We tell
these Gallomaniac apes of every thing that-is detestalle
in the French character that these things will ever I),
"managed better in France than in England." Let the
collision be tried, and as soon as.the?; please. They shall
have row enough!—Morning Post.

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