POSTMASTER OF CARLISLE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
2nd December 1831.
SIR—You have unwittingly lent your columns to the dissemination of a most vituperative and scurrilous attack against the Whigs, and parti- cularly against Sir JAMES GRAHAM, touching the appointment of a new Postmaster for Carlisle, in the room of Mr. PORTER, lately become a bankrupt in the business of an iron-founder. Had I not seen this attack repeated, in a paper which I so highly esteem as yours, and so far re- moved from the scene of action, it never would have been noticed by me. The people of Cumberland, every man, woman, and child of them, know how to appreciate the sentiments expressed in that paltry effusion of meanness and malice. Know, then, that the Carlisle. Patriot is a grossmisnomer and cheat, and, in this case, means directly the reverse of its literal import,—being the prime tool and support of the Boroughmon- gering faction in the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, headed by the house of LOWTHER ; and the proprietors of which are a junta of toad-eaters, whose object it is, and ever has been, to secure to them- selves as large a share as possible of the public plunder. The Whigs have, generally, and I think most justly, been charged with a marked in- difference to the interests of their old and tried friends ; but here is a complaint that the First Lord of the Admiralty has wantonly displaced, one would suppose, a meritorious public servant, to make room for a relation of his own : and this is.clone in the caseof the respectable and confidential situation of . Postmaster of such -a town as Carlisle. with a salary, perhaps, of from sixty -to seventy pounds per annuls. ..This,cer• tainly, is a most appalling instance of cupidityand selfishness, and might, no doubt, to be made the most of by the Carlisle Patriot and his friends, as it would seem they have great difficulty in hunting up similar subjects for their animadversions against the Whigs. How far Mr. PORTER may have been properly displaced, in consequence of his becoming a hank. rupt, I really do not know ; but I well remember the unjustifiable out- rage committed upon the feelings of a great number of the respectable inhabitants of Carlisle, of all parties, by his appointment to the office ; and that a petition of theirs, to the Earl of LONSDALE, in behalf of Mr. CONNEL, the principal clerk or manager of the office, was despised and set at nought by such appointment.
The truth is, that some few originally obscure families, the deter- mined slaves of corruption, and the prime tools of Isis Lordship, have for a long time past engrossed the entire of his favours worth having. I need not add, that the whole race are !mown, detested, and despised in the North, and their conduct and principles there need no exposition.
DETECTOR.
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