The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-12-17 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, DEC. 17, 1844.

The young gentlemen and elderly ladies, who style
themselves the Anti-Monopoly Association of Liver-
pool, held a meeting yesterday week in the Assem-
bly Rooms, Great George-street, for the purpose of
having laid before them the mode in which the
county register is to be swamped by the League.
As the meeting in question was a hole-and-corner
one, to which members of the committee only were
admitted, we were deprived of the opportunity of
noticing the proceedings in our last publication ;
and in doing so now, we must premise that we base
our remarks upon the report of our contemporary,
the Liverpool Times. How much less of the various
speeches may have been set down than was deli-
vered, or how they may have been pruned by the
speakers before being given to the public, of course
we know not, the reporters only of the League press
having been permitted to record them. Sufficient,
however, is left for the serious consideration of the
Conservative public.
The nature of the League's present movem nts
will be best understood by the following extract from
the speech of their chairman, Mr. George Wilson,
explaining them :
" But he (the Chairman) might state to the meeting
that the League had not come to Liverpool without hav-
ing tried the thing to a certain extent in Manchester and
other places. They opened a room for the purpose of in-
ducing persons to become qualified as voters for South
Lancashire in the first instance, although they were quite
certain that South Lancashire could return Mr. Brown
to-morrow, and have a majority to spare, but still they-
thought it safer to continue their exertions so as to re-
turn him without a contest at the next election. They
had had meetings at Manchester, some four or five, and
they had already upwards of 300 names on the books for
qualification in South Lancashire, which 300 would be
speedily increased to 700 or 800. Rochdale would give
150 to 200 more ; Bolton 150 more; and thus they would
o on through the whole of the polling districts of South
Lancashire, provided Liverpool would do as well as its
neighbours, which he was quite sure it would. But the
League were anxious to lend a helping hand to their
friends in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He knew not
that the West Riding required their aid so much as it did
a while ago, but still they were determined to make a
stand against the monopoly landlords of that part of the
country. The League proposed to give the West Riding
somewhere about 500 votes, and they should do so easily.
They had nearly 200 at Manchester for the West Riding ;
Rochdale would give 100; and other districts would give
in proportion. The League next turned attention to
North Cheshire—that nice little snug county—and they
were determined to have it, and to have it before the 21st
of January too."
We can understand this. It is a business-like
and open attempt to obtain the objects of the League
by an outrage upon the constitution of the empire.
The waggon-loads of seditious and mendacious
trash, which a year ago their press spread over the
land, have produced nothing. Their hired lecturers
have ranted and gesticulated in vain. Their parlia-
mentary spouters have become acknowledged bores;
and in the midst of the increasing prosperity of the
country and the increased employment and comfort
of the labouring masses, their claptraps are listened
to with indifference and contempt. But here is a
machinery, by which the legislature itself may be
tampered with, and its composition, as the reflection
of public opinion, may be entirely changed. Here
is an association, numbering amongst its members
the possessors of vast wealth and greater activity
and organisation—professing, too, ultra-liberal no-
tions of popular rights—assuming a power of control
over the legitimate voice of the constituencies, and
seeking to become boroughmongers upon a scale
unknown in the previous history of the British Con-
stitution. Here is, not indeed that corruption of
individual members of the legislature, of which com-
plaint has been made, in past days and under every
form of government, but a corruption of the very
fountain from which the power of legislation
springs. By the success of such an effort the sub-
stantial power of returning members to Parliament
would be centred in the hands of a few violent men ;
and the representative principle of the British Con-
stitution become a farce and a mockery.
It may be said we are attaching too much import-
ance to such a project ; that it is too quixotic and
vast for accomplishment. But it must be remem-
bered that the same has been said of other projects
of the same body, which, although happily unpro-
ductive of the results anticipated from them, were
yet conducted with an energy and disregard of con-
sequences or sacrifices, which sufficiently shews,
that no ordinary barriers would be permitted to
stand between the League and the accomplishment
of its projects. Money, if it cannot work miracles
can yet effect great and dangerous ends when di-
rected by persevering and energetic minds. We know
already what the League has effected in this work
of registration in our own county ; and we must re-
member that the very elements which constitute a
manufacturing community afford precisely the ma-
terials by which the proposed action upon the con-
stituencies may be most conveniently effected.
The details of the proposed scheme, as detailed to
the meeting by the master spirit of the conspiracy,
Mr. Richard Cobden, abundantly prove, not only
the feasible nature of the project, but the " method"
observed by its projectors. Mr. Cobden reminded
his hearers that " a freehold of forty shillings a-year
might easily be obtained in any large town for from
£5O to £7O ; and that such an investment would be
a profitable one, even as a pecuniary speculation, as
it would most probably return at least seven per
cent., whilst only three was given at the savings'
bank." A dozen modes suggest themselves by
which a constituency might be brought under the
entire control of such a body as the League, or of
individual employers. We give, as an example, one
suggested by Mr. Cobden himself :

"Then the employers in the manufacturing districts
ought to join in the carrying out of this plan. Thoie em
ployers who have men who wish to obtain the franchise
ought to give them every facility to possess themselves of
a piece of property. For instance, if a man employing a
number of people about a factory were to build a number
of cottages, to divide them into shares, and see what each
costs, he might say to his friend, Here is a cottage for
any one that will buy it at its cost price,' and there is no
doubt that they would all be taken up immediately. This
proceeding would elevate both the man and the master.
(Cheers.) Every labouring man who thus obtained a
freehold property would become a missionary in the work-
shop for the purpose of teaching others bow they might
become men of property and obtain a vote."
Trace for an instant this piece of League subtlety.
An employer, say Mr. Cobden himself, builds such
a row of cottages as those suggested, and by pur-
chase, or by some juggle such as we need not parti-
cularly describe, such cottages, say fifty in number,
become the property of sundry Johns, Jacks, or
Williams, overlookers, colourmen, or blockprinters,
in Mr. Cobden's printworks. Mr. Wm. Brown, or
some other eminent Leaguer, presents himself to
solicit the suffrages of the fifty men in question.
Are they anything better than so many cards, the
playing of which Mr. Cobden has in his own hands ?
They are nothing else, for they dare not pursue an
independent course without incurring pecuniary sa-
crifices involving their ruin.
But how is this ? we hear some innocent person
say. The refractory individual has still his freehold
cottage. Yes, if the patriotic builder of that cottage
has not some inconvenient claim upon it, in the
shape of a mortgage, or in some shape which any
lawyer, of the " Quirk and Gammon" species, could
readily devise. But setting aside this possibility, and
presuming that the fee-simple has been. paid for, out
of the savings of a life of industry and economy, what
is the value of his property when Mr. Cobden says
to him, " I have no further employment for you."
He cannot carry his cottage on his back to the next
printworks at which he may procure employment.
" But can't he let it go to the person who takes his