20 MAY 1837, Page 12

SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF GLASGOW REFORMERS.

"I speak to freemen, and a freeman speaks."

THE Conservative press, in its anxiety to provide a proper candi- date for Glasgow, reminds us of the liberal Dame Quickly in her good-will to further the wooing of the suitors of "sweet Anne Page." "In troth, I wish he had her; or I wish Master Doctor had her ; or I wish they all had her." So the brokers for the Tory party have sworn that Mr. CAMPBELL, and Mr. COLQUHOUN, sad Mr. MosrreerH, are all and every one of them the man for She good city of Nicol Jarvie—" the boy for bewitching them." The readiness with which these kind go-betweens vouch at a moment's warning for the exceeding fitness of a man whose name • they never heard before, is another thing that provokes our ad- miration. In their promptitude for this service, they have no parallel but "honest Joe" of the Foul Anchor, in the good town of Newport, Rhode Island, of whom we read in the veritable okro- slides of COOPER'S Red Rover. "The new candidate for the city of Glasgow," says the Morning Post, speaking of a Mr. MONTEITH, whom it describes as son of the gentleman who played the part of boat to Sir ROBERT PEEL at the Tory festival, "is an avowed, a conscientious, au intrepid, and, as he will prove, we have no doubt, a formidable antagonist to that unprincipled," Ste. At this moment we cannot positively charge our memory with the know- ledge whether Mr. MONTEITH has a son. If lie has, the young gentleman has never taken a part in public life : and we make bold to say that his flaming character will astonish no man more than himself. He will feel, on readirg it, like the nthiecin "Hech, quo' the wee wielcie,

This is no me! "

Seriously, we, albeit neither indifferent to the political strugete, of Scotland, nor altogether uninformed, have no knowledge of --wh - the good Liberals of Glasgow intend to do ; and we lack that at happy assurance which.enables our Conservative brethren') t place the disproved bold assertion of yesterday by another i■rel: vanced to-day with equal confidence and upon as slender erouna

d

But we know what the country has a right to expect from the Re. formers of Glasgow, and we will venture to tell them what it is

The constituency of Glasgow may not be more enlightened Hi; '' that of other cities, but it is more independent. Every ma: almost is the maker of his own fortunes, and feels the impor- tance which attaches to him. This renders it a difficult constitu- cy for politicians to manage ; but it keeps it altiieloalutglihy they There is, however, this danger in such a body—that, al

are honest and well-intentioned, humours and personal prejudices have great and dangerous sway, and make them at times apt to be unreasonable. It is upon a common principle alone that their way- ward humours can be reconciled—it is only round a man in whom they place confidence that they can be brought to rally. If the electors of Glasgow will look back upon former elections and probe their own bosoms, they will admit that the friend who reminds them of their infirmity has not mistaken them, and will be on. their guard " against the sin that most easily besets them."

There are three classes of opinions which are eagerly advocated in

Glasgow by their respective adherents. It is honest conviction in the main that makes men partisans ; for in Glasgow there is no field for placehunters, and the few who seek to make a question- able livelihood as mere venal political agents, are pretty well appreciated even by the parties who employ them. They are tools, not leaders. The three parties may be designated Tory, High Church, Reformers. The real Tories may muster about a thousand voters. They consist of the colonial merchants, who have all an interest in bolstering up the colonial monopoly, and many of whom are the descendants of families which have sup- plied the city with wealthy merchants for nearly a century back. In PITT'S time, this party was lax enough in its religious sentiments—it patronized the party called Moderate in the Church of Scotland. But the bigotry of its political servility was "above E la." It has of late caught the religious twang of the Orange- men, and has not been at all improved by the admixture. The High Church party are the abettors of Dr. CHALMERS. Like him, they affected Whig politics while the Moderate party had the ascendancy in the Church courts. Since the scale has turned in their own favour, and the Dissenters have grown stronger, they have become zealous opponents of the popular will. They have become keen politicians, and they have brought the provethial odium theologieum into political controversy. They would test a man's fitness for secular office, not merely by his devotion to the Church, but by the soundness of his Calvinism. In their estima- tion, zeal is more valuable than charity. This party receives its organization from the General Session of the city clergy and their elders—a body which has on several recent occasions proved itself a most efficient canvassing committee. malgre lui on being assured that he is a great physician: he –is; hum to himself the national melody, The Reformers of Glasgow are by far the most numerous : they are of all colours and complexions. The wealthier and more educated class form one great division ; the operatives another. The Voluntary Dissenters are a contingent force with a peculiar character of their own. There are also many minor bodies which go to make up the sum total. These classes do not stand divided from each other as castes; they fade insensibly into each other. The wealthy and educated Reformers of Glasgow have taken the "form and pressure" of their opinions from the academical prelec- tions of SMITH and MILLAR, in the same manner as those of Edinburgh took theirs from DUGALD STEWART. The bolder character of the Glasgow teachers has given a bolder tone to their Liberalism than that which prevails in Edinburgh. The free at- mosphere of a mercantile city was also more favourable to original and independent habits of thought, than that of a city in which professional men seeking to rise with a party took the lead. The operatives of Glasgow have, like those of the whole empire, been made Reformers by the continual recurrence of distress. They have, however, been less led astray from sound principle by Cob- bettisiu and other specious errors, than the operatives of any part of the United Kingdom. The difference between them and the wealthy educated Reformers is in degree, not in kind. The ope- ratives go at once to the extreme point of Reform, seeing the prin- ciple in its simplicity, and making little allowance for the obstacles in the way. The capitalists see these obstacles; and, as a mole- hill close to the eye seems greater than a mountain iii the distance, they sometimes allow special difficulties to cloud ultimate principles than an they ought. Again, economical questions, n which the capitalist and operative range on different sides, tend to perplex beyond the pale of the franchise that keeps the working classes forgetting that am the sense of living

theta further. The capitalists,

united as one man, dread their admission within it, as the detting- in of a torrent that would disperse and swallow up their °en divided body. The working classes, on the other b and, are jealous of those who are vested with a privilege denied to them. Hence, strong mutual jealousies work frequent disunion between those whose wishes and interests are indeed the same. A similar souice of disunion prevails between the Voluntaries and the Liberal Churchmen. The Dissenters, feeling their strength, are neces- sarily anxious to assert their right to stand on a footing of equality witlithat sect upon which the state has conferred exclusive privi- leges. The Reforming Churchmen are, some of them from habit, unable to conceive how religion can subsist independent of an establishment ; others, chiefly latitudinarians, care little for these technical differences of opinion, and are favourably disposed to a thumb establishment, which they think way be made a good moral engine. 00 the one hand, then, we have the old Tories and the High Churchmen, united not by esteem or sympetby, but by the convic- tion that asunder they are each too weak for time Reformers. Th grim zealots are offended by the frivolity of the " fashion- worship- v. ets " — their horse-racing, balls, hunting, cock-fighting, and other indulgences against which the Kirk is still more severe. En revanehe, the jolly Tories are disgusted with the assumption, moroseness, and intolerance of their new allies. The more nearly they approach—the longer they are kept together—the greater will be their mutual aversion. But now is the hour of their adversity, and that keeps them from squabbling. " Necessity makes a man acquainted with strange bedfellows."

On the other side, the Reformers, though united in purpose—if all saw clearly what they would be at—are apt to sunder into small sections even in face of the enemy. The ten-pounders are jealous of an extension of the suffrage. The non-electors arojealouti of any hesitation to recognize the propriety of extending ft. The Dissen- ters are impatient of the prolonged usurpation of the Establish- ment. The Churchmen are angry at their pertinacious moving of a question which, in regard to the slenderly-endowed Kirk of Scotland, they regard as in a great measure a speculative question, and which has called down upon them virulent reproaches, to which their reluctance to think deeply on the matter, and their habitual unreasoning respect for what is established, render them keenly sensitive. These general causes of disunion are further embroiled and perplexed by the liability above adverted to, of the individuals comprising a Glasgow constituency to be biassed by personal feelings. " These be facts," whether our fellow Reformers in Glasgow relish our plain speaking or not : and these facts point with the certainty of the mariner's compass to the course they ought to steer.

All these subdivisions of the Reform party can only unite honestly and comfortably, and therefore permanently, upon the common ground of principles recognized by all. Personal consi- derations must be left out of view. Vain fears must be grappled with, and their emptiness recognized. Pet opinions, however just, must be postponed until fair argument and mature deliberation lead the majority to adopt them.

Following out these rules of prudence, we find one point upon which all may be agreed—that Reform was originally demanded from a conviction, impressed by long and sad experience upon all, that without a greater degree of responsibility to public opinion on the part of the legislating and taxing body, the administrative part of government must still be mismanaged. The mismanage- ment complained of was—the exorbitant expense of government ; refusal to amend laws which, instead of securing persons and pr petty, only entailed expense upon litigants ; appointments, through favouritism, of unqualified persons to public offices; repression of free discussion and the formation and expression of political opinion; the depression and uncertainty of commerce, arising from monopolies and restrictions ; violent stretches of the law in csurts of justice, and employment of the soldiery to stifle the com- plaints of the people. It was the conviction that without organic improvement in our political constitution it were vain to hope for a redress of these practical grievances, which was the motive to demand Reform. The only measure of the Reform necessary, acknowledged, or that can be acknowledged, was that the remo- delled institutions should enable us to obtain redress of grievances. It is the duty of the Reformers of Glasgow to unite upon a man whose intelligence, knowledge, and firmness of character, are a warrant that he knows this truth, and will act in conformity to its dictates. It is their duty at this moment to du so, that they may show to the world that the misfortune of Westminster is no index of a revulsion of national feeling. It is emphatically their duty ; fie it was the DURHAM demonstration in Glasgow that gave the first check to the headlong, precipitate, downward career of the PREY and STANLEY policy. The Refinmers of Glasgow—if they indeed deserve the name—have time double stimulus of having it Ill &it power to perform ut this moment a more than ordinary service to the cause of real Reform, and of having a character of no ordinary kind to lose. We congratulate them on the vacillation observable iI the enemy's ranks. The number of candidates, successively sug- gested and withdrawn by the Tories, is a good omen. And if the Conservatives will but take the grave advice of the Standard, the confusion will be doubly confounded. They are edvised to select " the best Protestant in their ueighbourhood :" marry ! this is a epomt may take some time to settle. But the greater the advan- tage to be derived from this uncertainty among the Tories, the deeper and more indelible will be the disgrace of Reformers if They allow themselves to be defeated.