The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-03-05 00:00:00

our less formidable contemporary, " Young Mercury,"
must not suppose we want the inclination to break a
lance with him, on any fit occasion; and when we lack•
the power, and get into a slough, we must e'en follow
the example of the waggoner of old—call upon Jupiter
to help us ;—but that. he may, rest assured we shall not
do, without first putting. our awn. shoulders well to the
wheel.
It has not escaped our recollection that, when we
were at school, and any mischief was done, nobody had
ever done it. And well we remember, if we happened
to be in the secret of who was the guilty urchin, that he
was almost invariably the strongest and most persevering
in his asseverations of innocence, and his inuendos
against some less bold and impudent of his school-fel-
lows ;—exactly as the man who picks the pocket is loud-
est in the cry of "stop thief."
Just so with our friend the " Times." He proses and
prose*, and like some of that class who "see strange
things," repeats his story about the corruption of the
Burgesses of Liverpool so often, that, if he does not
convince any body else, the probability is that he will, ere
long, begin to think it true himself; little supposing that
these amoiig his fellow•-townsmen who take the liberty
of forming an opinion of their own, well know, that if
corruption really exist, it is to be sought for in a quarter
somewhat different from that to which he points.

Doubtless this feeling is, with our young friend, a
Lind of "amabalis insania—mentis gratissimus error ;"
and it would have been cruel in us to dissipate the
agreeable delusion too early or too 'Suddenly. We
have, therefore, allowed him, -thus far, to have it
pretty much his own way. But' in pity. to the pa-
tient himself—we must restrain. him a little, or it will
become a species of fixed insanity, which might de-
prive us hereafter of that variety of agreeable matter
with which his columns have been wont to be enlivened
—a little nutmeg to the rice. Upon any other subject
all these good people, our opponents, are rational
enough ;—but, touch the question of the election, and
they seem just like a class of men in a public institu-
tion which we will not name ; or like Napoleon and his
officers about Waterloo,—who say that Wellington ought
to have retreated at two o'clock in the day ; and that he
did not. know when he was beaten. We could name
numerous brave and excellent officers of the French
army, who will contend the same thing to this day,—and;
moreover, journals that will print it too.
So it is with Mr. Thornely and his supporters, liberal
and illiberal, literary and illiterate :—they are well and
deservedly beaten, just as the French were at Waterloo
—but, fur the life of them, they cannot make out how it
is. For themselves, poor innocent dears, to imagine.
that such sleek, lamb-like creatures as they are should
be beaten by fair means ! impossible ! Their own
standard of value is of too immaculate a character to be
deceptive,—it is their own judgment. We, however,
happen to measure them by a very different rule.
We will, nevertheless, try to convince our worthy con-
temporary that we are possessed of, at least, one requi-
,
' site quality for the investigation of the question—pa-
tience; for we actually yielded to the necessity for read-
ing his two columns of Tuesday last no less than three
times over,—and if that is not sufficient evidence of pa-
tience, we have no better proof to offer. And what does
it all amount to ? Ju4t to this ;—that, among the po-
pulation of a large town, in all the excitement incident
to a contested election, with the " striking" novelty of
the " Jerrys" and " three and tenpennies," on their first
appearance upon the stage, a certain proportion, of all
parties chose to regale themselves, as they would at a
fair, with a tankard of Harvey's best XXX ale, or a
noggin of King Roberts' or Mulleneux's fine "Old Tom,"
(neither of them bad things in their way,)—and what is
the consequence ? Their hearts are warmed—the right
English feeling roused7--up to' the hustings they go ; and
like honest men, vote for an honest member—" Sandon
for ever," is their cry. Why, if some of our opponents
whom we could name were at all guilty of reflection,
they must know that the very vinegar of their own faces
is enough to turn the stomach of any plain, honest Eng-
lishman. .
But to be brief and somewhat serious :—to wade
through the paragraphs of which the . article of Tuesday
last in the " Times" is composed, with a view to comment
upon them separately, would be too much even for our
patience, supposing it were possible to deal with such
loose generalities, which are throughout destitute of one
single point of a tangible nature. Our friends of the
" Times," in their love for the classics, have no objec-
tion to bandy a little 'Latin now and then; and, there-
fore, we will take the liberty of reminding them of that
wholesome truth, that " dolus versatur in generalibus."
Let 'them bring forward, if they can, a distant charge
that can be grappled with, and we will meet them. We
challenge them to the combat on thoSe terms. The
gauntlet is at their feet—let them take it up if they dare.
But let not a deliberate dorieoction of baseless and jesuit-
ical assertions and falsehoods take the place of fair argu
mint or plain truth. It is, we tell them, in no respect
creditable either to the fallen party or their writers.
There is only one way of meeting such a dishonest course
—plain and flat' denial. Come openly, we bid you, to
-the charge; and when you find yourselves beaten, as you
soon will be, on fair ground, have a little regard for your
own characters, and for the rights of others, who, if o
humbler station, have no less sterling honesty or right
.British feeling than many of their superiors ;—and we
caution you to avoid too free a recourse to the agency of
means so much the reverse of respectable, as to sanction
the supposition, that the words which' an ancient poet
puts into the mouth of one of his heroes was something
mere: than fancy, when he makes him say,

Fletere si nequeo superos,
Acherouta-movebo."

which being freely translated, for the benefit of the un-
initiated, means" When all upright and honourable
means fail me, I will call the Devil to my aid." ••This,
the Tinos and their friends ought to know—or passing
events are strangely lost upon them-r-is but a ticklish
sort of game to play now-a-days.