The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-04-01 00:00:00

Trade must exhibit signs of increased

all may share to a reasonable

extent ; but there was never a moment in our history,
probably, when thoughtless speculation should be
more studiously avoided. The burdens of taxation
for the cunent fiscal year must bear heavily on every
section of the community, and whatever the

legitimate augmentation of trade may be within
the next twelve months the calls of the exchequer
will be equal to its profits. In seasons when we
bad less than 60,000,000/ of revenue to raise there
was a much wider margin left for mercantile
profits than there can be in the year before us.
If increased demand should sustain the

present average of prices and the pro-

fits of trade enable us to balance the
State ledger, we cannot reasonably look for a
great deal more. Peace will scarcely

remove

the necessity of raising further loans. The Govern-
ment, if it has resolved to keep a large army in
Turkey, will assuredly require the entire amount
of the estimates already laid before Parliament ;
and money must be borrowed, or else the elasticity
of trade must prove much greater than we are
justified in anticipating. And after the experience
the country has had brought home to it within the
last ten years, it is not likely that the dangers of
what is termed " speculation " in the face of an
ever-fluctuating money market and inordinate
fiscal burdens, will be all at once forgotten.
We have no grounds whatever to lead us to
look for any serious revulsions in our produce
markets ; but we are not, ou the other hand, in a
condition to warrant any hope of seeing an extra-
ordinary expansion of trade. The war was one
only of our crying grievances. We have other
afflictions deeply rooted in our social system, which
remains to be besieged, mined, stormed, and
carried, before the country can taste the blessings
of peace and commercial prosperity. Reason has
to overcome fallacy, ere England is to be as
triumphant at the loom as she is with the
sword. There are the mercantile Russianisms of
the Overstone school, and the concordat of the
dark ages of Peelism, to be combatted before
British industry, can wear its laurels, or com-
mercial England venture to calculate the gains
of trade ? The war leaves us where we were, with
the exception of 100,000,0001. additional debt ; and
we have been credibly informed, that if the war
had not taken place, we should have been as badly
off as we were when its pressure had reached the
culminating point. We consequently return to
peace with the cheering assurance, that no matter
how great the tranquillity all the rest of the world
may be enjoying, Great Britain must consider
herself at war, and be constantly prepared for
all its worst contingencies. " Over-trading,"
" over-speculation," "reckless buoyancy," and a
thousand other undefined and incomprehensible
aphorisms are to bring upon us all the most
lamentable conditions of a state of war, not
even excepting its " mortaiity as witnessed in the
year of famine. More than 1,500,000 perished in
1847. Our two years and two days of blood shed
does not equal, by 50 per cent., the number of
deaths caused by this domestic conflict, in which
false principles of internal economy alone rebelled
against the laws of (+on and humanity.
To avert these appalling visitations, and to give
us that full measure of prosperity the nation hope
to derive from the re-establishment of the world's
peace, we must get rid of all those hidden miseries
which lurk in our economic system. The mere
belief that heavy calamities must inevitably befall
a country periodically, is sufficient of itself to destroy
that confidence which is so essential to the success of
trade, and to bring on those convulsive throes which
prostrate the industry of our population. To be
spared from further bloodshed is, however, no less
a blessing. When all is passive, reason exercises
its irresistible sway over the hearts and mind ofmen
Fallacy, stupidity, selfishness, and all the baser
instincts of a nation, reign supreme in a moment's
tumult, and universal distraction, and now that
these have had a two years' revel, we do not

iespair of hearing matters of far deeper import
~00lly and dispassionately discussed. There
is much to do in peace to render life what
he millions have long been accustomed to, and
still expect to find it. To the philanthropist it
brings a moment for rejoicing, which in Liverpool
will scarcely be suffered to pass away in apathy—
to the man of business it brings hope, which,
rhou,gh natural and full of promise, must be
foverned by caution and experience—to the
statesman it opens a new volume of history, in
which the past will bear no relation to the
future, since the progress or recoil of
civilisation, which is impending over our
heads, is without precedent in the annals
of this or any other empire, England
cannot remain as she is. Providence has taken
the motive-power—gold—out of our hands. We
cannot calculate its political effects, or venture to
contemplate the material changes it is destined to
work. It must suffice for us to know that peace
will lead to its rapid development, and hasten
forward the transitions it is to bring about.
And it matters little what conventional
terms are employed on the Paris treaty,
so long as the next two or three years of our
existence is enveloped in profound mystery, which
the long experience of the trader, or the
unfailing foresight of our rulers, cannot penetrate.

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