The meeting held on Satur...
The Times, 1824-06-08T00:00:00

The meeting held on Saturday by the inhabitants of Li- verpool, for pressing upon Government an immediate re- cognition of the new States of North and South America, was an event of much importance. Liverpool contains a commercial body hardly less numerous than that of Lon- don, but in no degree less enterprising, less enlightened, or respectable. The merchants of Liverpool have also a more direct and peculiar intercourse with the New World, in au its various and immense divisions, than those of any other portion of the British empire; their fortunes are more in- volyed with its interests; their information as to all that concerns it is likely to be more exact and positive; and their right to speak decidedly upon the reltations which connect or separate the British people and the Americans, is proportionably clear and unquestioned. The senti- ments, however, now expressed by Liverpool, althongh that great town would have just pretensions to lead on such a subjeat the rest of the empire, derive a considerable increase of authority from the c7rcum- stance that they do not, in the present case, point out the true path of policy and justice to the nation at large, but have, in fact, been long anticipated by every honest and manly mind in Great britain. From the me- tropolis dovw nto themeanest English borough, there is not a place where the name of commerce or of liberty has yet been heard of, that has not for many months expected and desired this measure, now tardilv recommended by the merchants of Liverpool. Wc augur, therefore, even more from the manner in which the national mind is prepared upon the subject, than from the influence (great undoubtedly) of the commercial capital of the North, that Ministers, whatever their private feelings may be, must ere long embrace the course which has now been marked out for them. There is another ground of hope in the fact that such a meeting for such a purpose would not have been held at Liverpool, and attended as it was by men of all parties, while resolutions and a memorial of so very im- portunate a eharaoter were unankirously passed, had Mr. HusKIssoN given a hint to his more immediate friends that the proceedingwould in any manner displease or embarrass theKING'sGovernment. As for the principle of therecogni- tion-commercial or political-all argument against it has been long ago given up by Ministers themselves. How, in- deed, can it be otherwise ? Can those fineandpowerfulcoun- tries ever again become Spanish? What England, in ber power, could not effect against 2i millions of Americans, can Spain,in her weakness and distraction,perpetrate against 1 7 millions? The inhabitants, moreover, of 'Mexico and of South Arnerica come nearer to those of the United States at the era of 1779 in activity, courage, and alienation from the mother country, than the Spaniards of 1824 resemble in energy, unanimity, and warlike resources, the British of the former period. The permanency, then, of the independence achieved by the Spanish colonists, we hold to be as undoubted as its reality at the moment at which we -write. What motive for a delay of this great act of justice, can influence the temper of the King's Go- verHment, it is not indeed easy to conjecture. They can- not be averse, one would think, to extend a commerce, for which there is a field so vast and fertile; or to secure one wlhich is already open to a competition from other free States, already standing on vantage-ground, as compared with the position of this country, The United States are actually freed, in the harbours of Colombia, from imposts to which the subjects of Great Britain, from the delay of a recognition by her Government, are to th;s hour exposed! And, politically, does England meditate no ad- vantage from putting herself on the footing of a friend and ally of these new commonwealths? Has she nothin to hepe from the additional and undoubted rights she would thence acquire to fbrrm treaties with them, and to conteud against all European influence, of whatever kind, by which her own interests might be affected? Would there be no- thing glorious in creating, moulding, and moving, to the ends of justice and of moral amelioration every where, a confederacy of all the free nations of the civilized world?- nothing solid in the defensive power thus accruing to her own laws, her liberties, and dominions, against the deep hatred of despotism nearer home, which regards Great Britain as an outcast from the pale of Europe, and a living rebuke to that false principle on which the league of right divine and of arbitrary monarchy is supported.