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

that, in the weft-thy dhapidated condition of the semi-

defunct 11,idical faction i❑ our

it is next to a

certainty that they will not 1.

,e able to rbkoAr a cal di-

date to receive a thrashing at our hands.l-44e very name
of the Conservative champion whose adalrcss will pro-
bah), appear in our columns on Friday wilfriVe strongly

suspect, check at once the thought of any pugnacious

. „
attempt which Whiggery might be inclined to make
upon the occasion; and his well-known constitutional
opinions and distinguished ability would render such

an attem

perfect absurdity

We have no occasion, therefore, to do more than to
call upon our Conservative bretlucn 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, BE READY

The fortuitous emancipation of an hundred and odd
negrces, 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-
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
w,, shall change our own municipal laws in order to
accommodate his piratical propensities, and render him

owners

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 he 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.

An 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
" property ;" 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 by the
master or its agents; and 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 wo
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 nc,t 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 an
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 thernselOs
from an unqualified, life-enduring, and intolerable bon-
dage.

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 boQders; 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; and
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 them.
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, if
it would faithfully discharge the great and responsible
public duty committed to it, will do well to pay little
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' Institu-
tion, said the authors of this grand stroke of policy, was
an egregious failure, and a complete deception upon all