The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-08-15 00:00:00

POLITICAL MISCELLANY.

Mr. Labouchere's Bill for the Repeal of the Navigation
Laws will be in circulation early next week. Time will
thus be afforded for its consideration during the recess.
PROROGATION OF PARLIAMENT.—Her Majesty's Min-
isters left London via the South-Western Railway, for
Gosport, on Friday. The Cabinet were conveyed to
Osborne in one of her Majesty's steam yachts.
In the House of Commons, on Tuesday, Mr. H.
Berkeley succeeded in carrying, by a majority of 86 to
81, a resolution affirming the necessity of the ballot in
taking votes for the election of members of parliament !
A fact not very generally known was stated by Mr.
Berkely, in moving his resolution on the ballot, namely,
that the House of Commons, in the year 1710, passed a
bill for establishing vote by ballot, which was thrown out
by the House of Lords. We find, on reference to an
authority, that the statement is perfectly correct. We
doubt, however, whether the radicals of 1849 will be as
successful as the jacobites of 1710.
The arrival of M. Gustave de Beaumont in this country
as the envoy or representative of the present government
of France is a circumstance favourable to the mainte-
nance of amicable relations between the two countries.
M. de Beaumont is a gentleman already well known to the
society of the metropolis, both in person and by his lite-
rary productions. He shared with M. de Tocqueville in
the mission sent out by the French government in 1831 to
examine the penitentiary system in the United States;
and some years later he became the author of a book on
Ireland, which is one of the best foreign works on that
inexhaustible subject, and does credit to his discrimination
and his researches. In politics M. de Beaumont has been,
since his entrance into the late Chamber of Deputies, an
active member of what was termed the dynastic opposi-
tion.

SLEEPY MEMBERS.—At 12 o'clock last night the con-
dition of numbers of the honourable members in the two
galleries of the House of Commons was most pitiable.
Legislation is evidently much more fatiguing than the
hardest agricultural labour. Who ever saw in the heat
of harvest a dozen labourers fast asleep in a field of a few
perches ? And yet last night, in the highest fervour of
legislation, within a smaller compass, I saw at least a
dozen of our legislatorial labourers recumbent at full
length on the downy cushions of the galleries, and buried
to all outward seeming in the most profound repose. It
would be invidious to mention the names of the dozen
sleepers; but a high legal functionary was among them,
who snored unblushingly through a long debate. A
metropolitan member, as if ashamed of his .slmnnlp.fr,
ala ms nest to sleep wiui ..terucy oy covering his face with
both his hands ; but another without the slightest regard
to the usual convenanees of society, turned his face to the
wall and exposed a most extensive surface to the admira-
tion of the House. At half-past 12 o'clock there was an
attempt to report progress, but all in vain. The only
result of the motion was that the cry for a division woke
the sleeping members, who shook themselves gloomily,
and then sheered off with tottering steps and slow, not
into the lobby, but up to Bellamy's to obtain some slight
refreshment to enable them to encounter the prolonged
labour which at that hour they had still to undergo.—
Times of Saturday.

MR. COBDEN'i FALL.—The Times has long been in
the habit of puffing off Mr. Cobden ; but in an article on
Friday, stating that they had formed high expectations
from Mr. Cobden's recent continental tour, asks, " How
have our anticipations been fulfilled ? Alas, how are the
mighty fallen ! Mr. Cobden set out with advantages
such as no other man in his position ever carried with
him from England. The applause of crowds, the pane-
gyric of Ministers, and the Royal assent—all ushered him
from the shores of a grateful country. He went as an
ambassador, with more than the usual credentials and
less than the usual burdens of diplomacy, to every court
of Europe. Every town from llamburgh to Trieste did
honour to the successful champion of free trade. He was
feted, belaudee, and toasted from Bourdeaux to Cadiz.
His continental glorification was crowned by domestic
honours. The West Riding of Yorkshire conferred on
him the unsolicited distinction of its representation before
his return, and expected that after he had returned he
would justify the choice. What has he done ? What
have been his tactics ? What is the sum and substance
of the statesmanship to which all the world looked for-
ward
so anxiously ? Simply this—a depreciation of our
military and naval establishments, and an emulation of
America. The first constitutes the whole gist and pith
of the honourable member's speeches ;. the latter, of his
policy. England is to disband her fleets and armies, to
give up her colonies, and to enter boldly on a course of
Yankee statesmanship."
A SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.—Rather a strange
scene occurred, on Tuesday week in the House of Lords.
A claim has been for some time pending before that tri-
bunal, at the instance of a Mr. Tracy, as the alleged legal
heir to the Tracy peerage in Ireland, at present in abey-
ance. Among the muniments of claim some time ago
produced, were the broken nieces of an apparently old
tombstone, taken from the burial ground of an ancient
church or chapel, and bearing an inscription, in antique
characters, setting forth the death, interment, age, and
title of a remote member of the Tracy family, and thus
supplying a necessary link in the chain of evidence for the
claimant. Nothing could be more satisfactory. There
was the hardness of granite added to the durability of
parchment ;—the title of the claimont was fixed in stone
and enshrined in ink. But it was fated to a sad change.
A stonemason and a quarryman were produced before the
lords, and their evidence, particularly that of the former,
was to the effect that the alleged old tombstone was of
very recent manufacture—had been secretly prepared in
the silence and seclusion of night—had been darkened
with the smoke of a turf fire to give it the appearance of
age—and was, finally, fractured by a hammer into' Such
convenient pieces,, as, on being put together, would make
out the required inscription. The stone mason deposed
that he had himself cut out part of the inscription—that
he had scientifically fractured the tombstone—and that he
now recognised in the fragments before him, lying on the
floor of the house, the specimens of his own handiwork.
Not old Edie Ochiltree, the bedesman, had a greater
triumph when he demonstrated, to the utter confusion of
Mr. Oldbuck, of Monkbarns, that the long-valued stone,
bearing the cabalistical letters of A. D. L. L., and very
clearly indicating not only Roman origin, but the senti-
ment Agricola Dicavit Libens Luber's," was of com-
paratively recent manufacture, and merely designated
"Aiken_ Drum's Lang Ladle," having been so fabricated
by himself, and "a wheen other wild hallenshakers."