The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-01-25 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JANUARY 25, 1842

The elevation of our talented member, Mr. Cress-
well, to a seat upon the Judicial Bench creates a vacancy
in the representation of Liverpool ; and the Conserva-
tive electors of our " good old town" have thus pre-
sented to them an opportunity of proclaiming, once
more, their firm and devoted attachment to the princi-
ples of our glorious constitution. The eyes of all the
empire look now to this leading mart of commerce and
industry for the opinion—to which we are about to
give constitutional expression —with respect to the
policy by which this great country is to be governed ;
and we can say with confidence for our Conservative
fellow-townsmen, that they know their duty, and will
discharge it fearlessly and triumphantly. It was the
voice of the constituency of Liverpool, expressed in
the motion of her present representative, Lord Sandon,
which shook in their tenure of office the unprincipled
administration of Lord Melbourne ; and the voice of
the same constituency must now be raised to strengthen
in their seats the Conservative Government, who at
present happily
hold in their hands, to guard by their
wisdom, the destinies of England.
'We do not yet announce the name of the gen-
tletnan selected to succeed, in the confidence of the
constituency, our late representative. Our brother
Conservatives may be assured, however, that he is one
worthy of them ; and before our next publication he
will he amongst them in person to speak for himself.
We have no fear of the result ; and if one painful

hi enter Into the cheering; prospect which Ia

that, in the tvofully dilapidated condition of the semi-

certainty that they will not be able to muster a candi-
date to receive a thrashing at our hands. :The very name
of the Cot:crvative champion whose address will pro-

bably appear in our columns on Friday will, we stfon,

suspect, check at once the thought of any pugnacious
attempt which Whiggery might l►e inclined to make

upon the occasion ; and his well-known constitutional
opinions and distinguished ability would render such

an attempt a perfect absurdity

We have no occasion, therefore, to do more than to

call upon our Conservative brethren to BE READY.
Their candidate will be amongst them in a day or two—
a candidate which a right-minded and loyal constituency
may he proud of; and we trust that the first shout

which they raise, in honour of his name and fame, will
proclaim to broad England that the heart of Liverpool
beats true, and that its affections are wedded, through
good and ill, to the Monarchy, to the Church, and to

our glorious Constitution

BE READY, THEN!---

CONSERVATIVE ELECTORS, BC READY

The fortuitous emancipation of an hundred and odd
negroes, the " property " of American citizens, which
has taken place at New Providence, has caused a con-
siderable share of alarm among all the citizen slave-
owners. It shows them the vigorous being and acti-
vity of a new peril, and they contemplate fixing a
quarrel on Great Britain in order to remove it. Our
most captious and pugnacious brother, however, was
never more unexceptionably in the wrong in his life
than he is in this business, nor can one wonder at any
thing so much as the power of face.with which he puts
forth the most monstrous assertions concerning it.
What is his expectation =Why nothing less than that
x-t- shall change our own municipal laws in order to
accommodate his piratical propensities, and render him
more secure in a possession which we have renounced
for ourselves, and have proclaimed that no man, of
whatever country, has a right to. This is a beautiful
exhibition of national modesty ; but we will not yet
say national ; it is only the "slave-holding interest," and
the more truculent canaille of ultra-republicans that
deal in such presumption.
It is surely very ridiculous of our swaggering cousin
to suppose that we should sympathise with him on the
mutiny and desertion of his miserable bondsmen, and
the increasing precariousness of his tenure in them by
reason of the facility of deliverance afforded them by
the universal law of freedom established within the
dominions of Great Britain. The natural and logical
inference on his part should be, that we should rejoice
with the unfortunates who have gained their liberty,
and at the effectual door of escape which we have
opened to their unhappy race, rather than condole with
the unrelenting masters out of whose hands they have
been delivered.

One hundred and fourteen of the slaves brought into
Nassau were set at liberty ; there was no charge against
them ; the authorities of the island had no right to de-
tain them, nor to assist others in laying them under
restraint. Nineteen were put under arrest, of whom
one has since died of wounds received in the decisive
struggle for freedom. These were demanded by the
Americans to be taken by them as culprits and tried
by American laws, but refused ; they remain on the
island, to be disposed of by the authorities there ac-
cording to the directions they shall receive from the

government at home

Everything that is natural and essential between us
and the slave-holding citizens may be brought out and
discussed on the trial (of whatever nature it may be)
of these persons. If these captives be charged with
mutiny and murder upon the high seas, their guilt or
innocence will depend upon the view we take of natu-
ral rights.

At involuntary slave may, we
,will take it for grant-
ed, run away from his oppressors, if he may obtain his
liberty by flight. By this act, he may indeed deprive
his master of what an unjust ordinance may call his
" propel ty ;" but a property in the bones and sinews of
another is a species of acquisition which God and - na-

ture never gave him.
We advance to the case in which the flight or at-
tempt to escape of the slave may be opposed IJxths
master or its agents ; anil here if a mortal combat en-
sue, and one of the oppressors be slain by the bonds-
man fighting in defence of his natural rights, are we
to call this " murder," " justifiable homicide," or
what ? On the high seas the municipal law of Ame-.
rica was of no obligation, and the parties on board the
Creole were in respect to natural rights all perfectly
equal. The nineteen accused blacks did no more than
vindicate their original rights ; they were guilty of no
excesses, no unnecessary cruelty; they did nu attempt
to rescue themselves without a reasonable probability
of success; and without making an effort for freedom
at the time, and in the way they did, they might fairly
have considered their doom of slavery as fixed for
ever. They are now charged with " mutiny and mur-
der." Mutiny ! is it " mutinous " not to submit to
the brand and the lash—to cruelty and oppression at
the hand of remorseless tyrants—and that for life ?
And if the oppressor meets with death in his nefarious
attempt to keep his fellow-man in bonds, is such so
accident to be counted " murder" ? We. leave the
decision in the hands of others; it is perhaps a nice
case ; we do not feel warranted in speaking dogmati-
cally upon,it; but we confess that the inclination of
our opinion and feelings is in favour of human li-
berty, and of great leniency and tenderness towards
those who may be driven by a hard and cruel necessity
to use even the strongest means to redeem themselves
from an unqualified, life-enduring, and intolerable bon-

In short, it seems to us that the coloured men of the
Creole, if tried on a charge of " mutiny and murder,"
must be acquitted. We cannot—we ought not to re-
cede from the position we have elsewhere assumed;
since we have taken upon us to denounce slavery as an
injustice—an infringement of natural and inalienable
rights—we should go through with it ; there is no re-
treat left us. Brother Jonathan may rail, but he can-
not rail the seal off the bond which we have passed in
behalf of the oppressed, and particularly of the coloured
race, in whatever quarter of the world they may be
found. He may practise the iniquity of slave-dealing
and slave-keeping within his own borders; but out of
them he must find no favour to his practices at our
hands.

We feel convinced that public opinion will go along
with the Municipal Council in making the most liberal
grant towards the completion of the beautiful building
for the COLLEGIATE INSTITUTION, now so far ad-
vanced, that the state of their -funds will permit. So
tasteful and splendid a pile will constitute one of the
principal architectural adornments of the town; anti
had it sprung up solely upon the suggestion and ex-
clusively from the funds of the authorised trustees of
the public property, there is no enlightened inhabitant
of Liverpool who would, or at least who ought to say,
that the work was otherwise than creditable to thew•
The merit of the design, however, belongs to others:
and in that the Council cannot now share ; but as the
work is incomplete, and pecuniary aid is required to
carry it forward, they have the opportunity of doing a
public service, and gaining much honour for them-
selves, by contributing a handsome sum out of their

surplus income for this purpose.
That there is a baneful party spirit operating in the
mind of some men, which would feel more gratified in
arresting the progress of an important public under-
taking of this kind, than in forwarding it, we have too..
much melancholy proof to doubt ; but the Council, le
it would faithfully discharge the great and responsibre
public duty committed to it, will do well to pay lilac
regard to the petty carpings and frivolous cavils that
proceed from such a source, and which are issued with
no other view than to impede them in an high and
honourable course of action.
We alluded last week to the readiness of one of our
local organs of liberalism, to commit havoc upon a fa-
vourite institution of its own, rather than allow it to
stand with the dangerous precedent connected with it,
of a " grant " from the Town Council. The folly
perpetrated in this case is somewhat analogous to that
insinuated in the old saying of " cutting one's nose to
vex their face." The precedent was inconvenient
but how was it to he got rid of without making an
offering of the institution itself upon the altar of party ?
And this accordingly is done. The Mechanics' Institti-

said the authors of this grand stroke of policy, was
egregious failure, and a complete deception upon all

parties concerned in it, The working dame, for whom)
benefit (as the name imports) it was exclusively designed,
have derived little or no benefit from it. "There are
evening classes," says a journal of the party, "very spar-
ingly attended by the working men and their children.
There are lectures, attended numerously by pupils, by
those who pay for admission, and by subscribers to the
library. But the extent to which its benefits are shared
by the poor is very limited indeed. it is no fault of the
managers that this is the case. They have made every
effort to induce the working classes to attend. With the
aid of the proprietors of some large engineering estab-
lishments, who use their influence over their appren-
tices, they-have to a certain extent succeeded; but the
general result is failure." Thus through party jealousy
and by a purely party spirit the truth is forced out, and
sentence is given against the grant to the liberal Me-
chanics' Institution, with the hope of preventing one
from being passed in favour of a rival establishment,
founded on Conservative principles. But such an
argument can have no weight with a Conservative
Council; no weight, at least, for the purpose for which
it is adduced, whatever it may possess for an opposite.
It is, in fact, a good argument in favour of a fresh
benevolence in aid of a similar establishment projected

on a better plan, and with a fairer prospect of answer-
ing the end proposed by its founders, unless the Council
adopt the Vandal notion actually pleaded by a Liberal
journal, that any description of collegiate instil ution in
Liverpool is undeserving of their support ! "We
argued," says the Journal of Saturday, "that the
failure of the Mechanics' Institution was a sufficient
reason for not listening to any proposal to spend more
of the public money in the same way, for it was now
clear that the only classes who would benefit by such
institutions were thoSe who could afford to pay for them."
Here, then, is a protest from one of those luminaries
which assume to exercise a special guardianship. over
the " march of intellect " against any pecuniary aid
whatever being contributed by the conservators of our
public interests' to any institution which professes to
deal with the higher branches and more advanced
departments of a liberal education. Of such, he has
discovered by experience, the working classes have no
need for themselves, therefore it would be throwing
money away to erect them for their use; and as to the
superior classes and the rich, they, if they require
them, he contends, should be left to provide them at
their own cost.

Thus the opposition of the Liberal party resolves
itself into this, that the local government of Liverpool
is bound to take no interest in the mental progression
and intellectual developments of the wealthier orders
of the community, and to refuse all support to any
institution, however judiciously planned, which pro
fesses to afford instruction to any other but the "work-

ing " classes

On this subject we shall have something further to

say in our next

Triumph crowds upon triumph; and new sources of
strength and health hourly develope themselves in our
glorious constitution and in the Conservative adminis-
tration, which now happily watches over the nation's
welfare. On Friday we announced, in a second edition,
the victory achieved by the principle of Protestantism
over a noxious and dangerous heresy in the University
of Oxford ; and we have now the satisfaction of an-
nouncing another and, if possible, a more important
triumph, in the virtual declaration of the government
of Sir Robert Peel in favour of sound Protestant prin-
ciples in our Established Church itself. The appoint-
ment of the Rev. Dr. Gilbert—the principal of Bra-
zenose College, and the strenuous supporter, during the
late struggle, of the anti-Puseyite candidate—to the
vacant bishopric of Chichester, will be received with
acclamation by every true churchman throughout the
kingdom ; and the minister who has made so gratifying

an appointment, at a time, too, when its meaning can-
not be mistaken, has well deserved and will receive a
largely increased amoant of confidence from the Pro-

By the people of Liverpool we know that such an
appointment will be viewed with unmingled satisfaction;
and the proper inference to be drawn from it will not
be overlooked. To the advantages which we anticipate
from the administration of the affairs of government by
Conservar I now the .additional pro-

hands we have

raise, which this appointment guarantees, that its foster-
ing care
.will be exercised to preserve, uninjured and
unweakened, the Protestantism of our Church; and
for this well-timed and bold indication of the sound
principles of his government, in the name of our Con-
servative fellow-townsmen, earnestly and emphatically,
we thank Sir Robert Peel.