6 MAY 1837, Page 9

At a numerous meeting of the inhabitants of Liverpool, on

Tues. day, resolutions in favour of the Government plan for abolishing Church-rates were adopted. At the commencement of the meeting, a good deal of interruption was caused by the Reverend Hugh M'Neill ; who, with a squad of some forty or fifty members of the Conservative Association, endeavoured to defeat the object of the majority. Find- ing himself, however, unable to do any thing more than create a row, the reverend gentleman and his party retired ; declaring, because the chairman bad said that the meeting was summoned for the purpose of petitioning Parliament in favour of Church-rates, that it was a private meeting ; whereas there was no objection to Mr. M'Neill or anybody else speaking against or for the resolution. This defeat of the Tories —for such it was—is called "the discomfiture of the Liverpool Whig. Radicals," in the Times and other London Tory journals. We only wish that at the next general election the Whig-Radicals of Liverpool may meet with just such another discomfiture, and then, we apprehend, " Sandon must go."

A severe contest for the election of Churchwardens for the exten- sive parish of St. Margaret, in Leicester, (containing between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants,) has resulted in the defeat of the Tories; the numbers being for the Liberal list 857, for the Tory list 802. The real question was Church-rates or No Church-rates. In this parish no person has a vote whose rent is under 12/. per annum ; and many of the larger rate-payers, most of them Tories, have six votes : so that the public opinion in Leicester is decidedly adverse to the Church. rates system.