REPRESENTATION OF LIVERPOOL.
Tfisns are three parties for the representation of this great town, each of which has its favourite nominee. The first is the Ministerial, properly so called—that is, the men who look to the Cabinet, it matters not by whom led or of whom composed, for advantages correspondent to the support they proffer; whose maxim is, long live the victor, whether the victor be Mr. CAN.NIIVG or the Duke of WELLINGTON. This party are anxious to have Sir ROBERT PEEL for their member. They are in all boroughs a numerous body, and in all an influential one. In Liverpool they have great power ; and nothing but the overwhelming weight of Mr. Husxisso:s's public and private character prevented their exhibiting it at the last election. Nor are we sure that all the weight of his character would have quietly returned him, had not the cupidity of the Ministerial party been lulled by the very confident rumours of his return to office. The second party is composed of the free-trade advocates—those who supported Mr. ilusx.issox for his principles rather than his place. The third is the politically libeial—the Reformers of Liverpool, who are of opinion that the laws of representation require revision as much AS the laws of commerce. The second party support Mr. CHARLES GRANT, in consideration of his principles. Mr. EWART is the object of the third party, and failing Mr. GRANT, of the second also. We do not of course mean that strictly and positively there may not be some liberal men among the advocates of Sir ROBERT PEEL, and some illiberal men among those of Mr. GRANT and Mr. EWART. In point of fact, the Home Secretary never ventured to differ from Mr. Husirissox on the principles of trade (although to one educated in a school whose maxim is" whatever 2ea8. is right," it must have been with many a groan that Sir ROBERT accompanied Mr. HUSKISSON in his attempts to reduce them to practice); it was on the question of Parliamentary Reform—the attempt to employ the principles which had been so successful against the mischiefs of monopoly in one department, in destroying the mischiefs of monopoly in another --that Sir ROBERT and the late excellent member for Liverpool quarrelled and separated. It is possible that an advocate of free trade, whose notions of freedom extend to nothing else (if there be such a man), may honestly advocate the cause of Sir ROBERT PEEL; it is impossible that an advocate of reform in the representative system can. There is a fourth party in Liver, Pool—the old Tories—these are hostile to Sir ROBERT, on grounds WhiCh ipe.loOk on as„altogether untenable. They would oppose kith because 'Of the most enlightened act of his political :life—his' support of the Catholic 'claims. We suspect this party is every. where, and now even in Ireland, both few and feeble. They will hardly influence th0 election of Liverpool, although, were the others nearly balanc,..A, they might turn the scale against Sir ROBERT.
Such are the parties and the proposed candidates. Of the latter we shall say a few words. Two of them are well known. Mr. GRANT has, Ave have said, a political advantage over Sir ROBERT— he has been and he is consistent. But as a respectable and accomplished gentleman, an intelligent legislator, a hard-working and steady man of busines..ySir ROBERT PEEL has few equals, and, we believe, no superior in the House of Commons. Still we cannot see how either Mr. GRANT or Sir ROBERT PEEL can be member for Liverpool. Mr. GRANT 15 at present member for his native county ; he has been honourably elected for a succession of Parliaments ; his last election was conducted on the most independent principles ; he derives from his present station, looking to the means by which he attained it, as much weight and dignity as he would from being the representative of the first county in England. We are accustomed to look on Scotch county members with little respect. Nine-tenths of them are nominees, in as strict a sense as the members for Old Sarum or Westbury. But Mr. CHARLES GRANT, especially as respects his last election, is a proud and marked exception. Now, is it to be supposed that Mr. GRANT, as a gentleman, as a Scotchman, would put sogreat an aftiont on his countrymen, on his neighbours, on his friends, on himself, as to abandon the representation of Inverness, which has been so honourably earned and so honourably conferred, for the chance of success at Liverpool? Those who think so, show but small knowledge of men and things. Sir ROBERT PEEL is not bound to Tamworth by precisely the same. kind of ties that bind Mr. GRANT to Inverness ; but neither could he disconnect himself from it without violence to all his declarations when he came forward as a candidate for its representation. He then stated, that it was his earnest wish to keep up the connexion that had so long and so pleasantly for all parties subsisted between the borough and his family : with what show of honour could he rudely break through that connexion at the very .first opportunity that chance threw in his way ? But this is not all. When Mr. CANNING relinquished the representation of Liverpool, why did he so ? The number and importance of the duties it imposed might be one cause, but the paramount cause was the imcompatibility of the political duties of a member for a great trading town and a member of his Majesty's Cabinet. He saw, and every one saw as well as he, that in numerous instances his duty to his representatives and his duty to the King would come in rude collision ; and he withdrew, in consequence, to a borough where no such jarring between the office of senator and of minister were likely to occur. Sir ROBERT PEEL holds a place in the Cabinet, which is in every respect as incompatible with the representation of Liverpool as that held by Mr. CANNING was. There is, besides, something derogatory. both to the character and station of such a man as Sir ROBERT PEEL in descending into an arena of political squabble, where success could confer no honour, and where failure, which is by no means impossible, must be disgraceful, since it must have been unnecessarily courted. We might urge the interruption to public business which is the inevitable consequence of the absence of the Home Secretary from the 'House ; but it is needless. We cannot think that Sir ROBERT PEEL Will hazard it, by resigning the representation of Tamworth for any other,—u'dess it were that of Oxford, whence he ought never to have been removed. Assuredly of all the freaks of Learning, she never assumed so strange a disguise as when she appeared in the person of Sir ROBERT HARRY INGLIS.
There remains, therefore, but one person to whom the representation of Liverpool seems naturally and necessarily to fall—we mean Mr. EWART. Of, that gentleman we know nothing. That he is a person of great respectability, we believe ; and that he is so esteemed by his townsmen, is apparent from the high character he possesses amongst them. He is intimately acquainted with the wants and the wishes of those who are to be his constituents, 'and prepared to make them the earnest and undivided object of his study. Are the people of Liverpool so absurd as to expect they can be better served by a Scotch country gentleman, or by a professional politician, than by one of themselves, who is bound to their service by the highest ties that can influence a man, namely, that their interests and his own are the same?
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