The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-01-08 00:00:00

.112

trbt Etberpool Otanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, JANUARY 8, 1833.

AT a moment when such intense interest is excited in
the public mind by the approaching Session of Parlia-
ment, when all are anxiously speculating as to the
measures to be proposed for its sanction, and on which
must hang the weal or woe of this great country—at
such a moment, we need hardly offer an apology for re-
curring to the speech of Mr. Stanley at Lancaster.—
Much as we admire the manliness of its tone, and
entirely as we concur in many of his views, and in the
arguments on which he grounds them, yet we cannot
pass unnoticed some-of-those fallacies which have struck
us most forcibly.—First in order, as it is in magnitude,
is that unbounded tone of self-gratulation in which Mr.
Stanley paints the satisfactory results of the Elections, at
the date of his speech, already far advanced towards
completion. When he refers us for the "removal of our
apprehensions" to the returns from the populous towns,
does he include in his triumphant list those of Messrs.
Fielden and Cobbett, Brotherton, Buckingham, the
gallant Col. Williams, and others too easily to be
enumerated ? Does he add to these the returns from
Ireland of full 50 Repealers, most of them destitute of
legal as well as political qualifications, but amply pi ovided
with all the requisites essential to agitators, and ready to
throw the weight of their united clamour and their votes
into that scale which, be it what it may, they deem most
likely to promote their own dangerous and selfish pro-
jects?—Grant that this body will prove to be a portion
only of the aggregate ;—still does Mr. Stanley not foresee
the injury that may be effected by a dogged, clamorous,
and compact phalanx, careless as to the fairness of the
weapons used, and fighting on 'vantage ground, because
opposed to a more scrupulous adversary ?—The reality of
the triumph assumed from the Metropolitan returns we
cannot admit. It was obvious that the Ministerial
Candidates who rushed into. the field, Reform Act in
hand, must prove too powerful for their opponents on
this first occasion, from the mere fact of their having
showered unexpected favors so liberally on the new
constituencies, and having a consequently strong claim
upon their gratitude,—gratitude as deep and lasting as
that of him who thanks you for the alms that enable him
to purchase the means of encompassing your life ! We
assert confidently that, let the elective franchise rest even
within its 'present limits, and the very, first stand that is
niade.by Alinistersagainst further inroads on the consti-
tution, will be the date of their downfall in the favor of
the metropolitan districts.

Mr. Stanley admits that the ministerial measure not
only fell short of the wishes of some, while it exceeded
those of others,—wishes mutually sacrificed on the Altar
of Reform ;—but that "it would have been much more
consonant to his wishes and feelings if the reform had
been commenced some twenty years ago—if carefully,
and step by step, it had come to its present position."—
Why then not have dated hii first " step" from the year
1831 ? Why not have adopted the bantling of the then
Henry Brougham, and which had a few short weeks before
been hugged in the arms of the Right Hon. Secretary
and the then members of Opposition ? Why not afford its
tender age the benefits of gradual and well matured
growth, rather than force it prematurely into a mis-shapen
monster? We require not that he should have adopted
the course of his predecessors in office; but that he
should have avoided bringing upon the.institutions of his
.country those injuries which he laments that they have
sustained by " a great and sudden change." We com-
plain not that he should have " made sail so as to start
over the shoals ere the ebbing tide left him stranded"—
but, to pursue his own beautiful metaphor—we do com-
plain that in avoiding Scylla he should have rushed into
Charybdis ; that in crowding all sail, he should have
strained the masts of the Constitutional Vessel, too soon,
we fear, to go by the board
It is, with. pleasure that we turn to the admirable
expose given by the Right Hon: Secretary of the
" falsely termed protection of the Ballot," and of the
fallacy that prevails with regard to the supposed blessings
of cheap corn :—would that we could extend our approba-
tion to the new ground he has assumed, in attempting to
justify the part we have acted against Holland ; for we
grieve to .see a British Statesman appealing to the
interests of the manufacturers of this country, in order to
palliate the enormity of wresting from another the right
to navigate her rivers, and thus secure for us free access
to the markets of Germany.

The sincerity of Mr. Stanley's declaration, that the
Government will offer its determined opposition to further
changes in the Constitution, we doubt not;—but we do
doubt its power to oppose them effectually.—Happy shall
we be to find that we have misread the signs of the times;
that Mr. Stanley's estimate of the new House of Com-
mons is not fonnded on his wishes rather than his judg-
meht ; and that his ship reaches her destination, heedless
of the tempest that he has aided in gathering around her!

LIVERPOOL DISFRANCHISEMENT BILL--That proved
corruption should be followed by deprivation of the fran-
chise, was the principle of the anti-reformers, with Mr.
Canning at their head, and was supposed to be held by
them in common with the reforthers: •

When, however, the scandalous election of 1830, was
dogged by the disinterested efforts of Mr. Rigby Wason,
and when the proposal to' inquire into the delinquencies
of the Liverpool voters, was strenuously supported in the
House of Commons, by the Marquis of Chandos and
other anti-reformers, strange to say, their efforts were
frustrated by the government, and subsequently by the
vigilance, tact, and management (we use Mr. Shepherd's
words) of Mr. Ewart, Proof was thus unhappily
afforded, that it was not this demoralising character of
elections—undoubtedly their grand' defect in the eyes of
right-minded men—which had incited the cry for reform,
but a desire for political change.
In the election of May, 1831, the ,radical press trun-
peted forth; in its loudest notes, the' praises of the free
men of Liverpool. They had atoned•for their fault—they