The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-06-21 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN TIMES.

whole staff to that level. This was the origin of
the strike. The Porters, however, before turning
out, memoralised the Directors in very respectful
language, and the deputation who presented their
address, asked if the able-bodied men, on the line,
would be allowed to receive 4s. a day as usual, and,

at the same time, sought to obtain 275. a week for
the Sheeters, who now get 265. a week, with some
trifling advance for the junior staff, whose ages
range from sixteen to twenty years, and who only
received from 7s. to 12s. a week They also asked
to have Mr. SMALL, who had been reduced from
the rank of clerk to that of a working man, re-
instated, to all of which the Directors gave a
positive refusal. With this decision between
masters and men, we have nothing whatever to do.
The Directors are responsible to the public for a
vast amount of life and property, and from the
peculiar nature of the employment they give, their
regulations, decisions, and general management,

must necessarily appear more orless arbitrary to
those under them.

The slightest carelessness on the part of Clerks

Porters, or the youths employed about a railway,
might lead to a lamentable destruction of life and
property. A monetary neglect of duty, and drunk-
enness, are unpardonable offences in a railway
servant, as the Directors are answerable should
any accident occur to the employe, or the public.
Men enter their service knowing all this, and they
must therefore be prepared for the moat arbitrary
enforcement of regulations. The service is, and
must ever remain, subject to despotic rule. The
simplest order must be obeyed, without waiting to
ask the reason pro or con ; and hence we say, and
we feel certain the reader will agree with us, that
a Railway Company, who have a sober, intelligent,
trained, and thoroughly efficient staff of Clerks
and Porters, are remarkably fortunate, and ought
not, for a trifle, to expose the trading classes, and
the public generally, to the manifest inconvenience
and dangers of placing such onerous, and really
difficult duties, in the hands of strange and
untrained men. We would not have Railway
Directors relax one particle of the strin-
gency of their regulations, as far as the duties
of their servants are concerned. On the
contrary, where the lives and substance of the
community are involved to so vast an extent, we
would increase the responsibilities of all parties
connected with such occupations, and enforce
penalties for neglect of duty with additional rigour.
But we would have Directors, and the Managers
under them, to bear in mind the risk they involve
the public in when they stop the traffic of a line of
such magnitude as the London and North
Western, or give its books and porterage into the
hands of an unorganised and less experienced staff
than that they have hitherto employed.
The difference between the Company and their
servants in this case is, after all, but very trifling,
and it would be well if the matter could be amic-
ably adjusted by the timely intercession of some
third party. It is not always possible to find 900
good men, who are really fit for the duties which the
London and North Western Railway staff have so
long discharged with great credit to themselves and

satisfaction to the public. The Directors are

trying, we are aware, to get-fresh hands who will
accept the reduced wages; but cheapness in this

case may prove, as it does in most others, to be
but sound economy. We feel very little

anything

cern for the men who have struck, for their

labour will

on be absorbed by other railways

Good

dy, and tried men in their way, can
always get employment; but the mercantile classes
whose means of transit have been suddenly cut off,
and the safety of life, on a line of road on which

there is so large an amount of traffic, must be
considered. The difficulty and loss, in such

a state of things, does not fall on those

but on those who have to supply
their place, and the public who have to
bear so serious an interruption to trade. The
Company, it is said, lost an amount which
appears perfectly fabulous by a similar strike which

who strike

took place some time ago, although it only lasted
two days, and it is not improbable that by the time
they have paid for the detention and damage of
goods, and other injuries which delay will entail on
the public, in this instance, the loss will be much
greater. It is then sincerely to be hoped, that the
Directors will re-consider the resolution conveyed
to the deputation, and that they will meet the
complaints of their tried and trustworthy staff in
a commercial and friendly spirit.

SPAIN, that land of woe, which cannot find
money to pay her British creditors, is arming,
without pecuniary or other aid from abroad, to
attack another State equally indebted to England,
and without a word of remonstrance from our
Cabinet. Her Armada is to be a formidable
affair, and will probably reach the Gulf of Mexico
at the time it ought to be seeking sheltered quar-
ters. A winter, or, indeed, autumnal blockade
in those regions, is rather a hazardous under-
taking for dubious mariners and unitiated
adventurers. The Mexican coast is the last
place in the world that we should select either in
winter or summer, for a pleasure trip ; and we
would just as soon be excused attempting the
defences of Vera Cruz without a large available
stock of heavy metal, and a sufficient number of
British or American seamen to do the work which
is cut out for its hostile visitors. It is useless to
caution those who will swagger and have their own
way ; but we will tell the Spaniards that if they
are unwise enough to allow their fleet to enter
the Gulf, it will never return again, except
England and France undertake its rescue. The
Mexican will find half a million of sympathisers
in California, Central America, Texas, and along
the lower valley of the Mississippi, against whom
the American Government can no more enforce
the law of neutrality than the Cabinet of Madrid.

The first shot fired by Spain will be the signal
of a coming storm, of which it would be lir_
possible to predict the end, except as far .as the
pretensions and chastisement of the aggressor is
concerned. The treacherous part which SANTA
ANNA has played of late years, and the frightfuL
difficulties he has brought on his country, may
have led Spain to conjure up a variety of ab-
surdities in her head, about the strength, general
disposition, and resources of the _
Republic. The Old Church party may have
persuaded the Court of Spain that the time has
returned when it may again appear in the
Western hemisphere as en cometa. But the
come estrella days of European rule in the land of
the MONTEZUMA'S have passed away for ever. The
remaining miseries of Mexico are Spanish
in their origin and essence, and her people
know and feel that they can never rise to
the level of surrounding nations, until they have
eradicated the last traces of their early oppressor
from the soil. Spain need not, therefore, buc
herself up with the hope of being able t.'
her subjugation of the Mexicans.
tasted the sweets of freedom, and will not return to
the Inquisition and bondage. Mexico's best friends
are not at all apprehensive on this head; but it
does appear strange that the British Government

Atexican

J renew

They have

do not endeavour to induce crazy old Spain not to
embark in an expedition which must be most in•
jurious to the interests of this country, and which
may lead to a positive rupture between England

and the States
Alex

co is making very great and laudable efforts,

at this moment, to keep faith with her foreign
creditors, and there is every reason to believe that,
with internal peace, and moderately good govern-
ment, she will'rise within a very few years to the
position of a really respectable and prosperous
State. She has, at all events, made sacrifices to
keep faith with those to whom she is heavily
indebted, which Spain might imitate with consi-
derable advantage to her creditors. The national
party in Mexico have always been ready to submit
to any domestic embarrassments sooner than
appear lost to a proper sense of their obligations
to friendly Powers, whose money they borrowed
to preserve an independent existence. We wish
we could say as much for the patriotic sons of
old Spain. But, laying aside the large pecuniary
interest we have at stake, in the peace and pros-
perity of the Mexicans, it is high time that we
knew what course Great Britain intends to
pursue, if hostilities should take place between
the two Powers. The United States will, most
assuredly, give all the moral aid they can to
their neighbours, if they do not openly join
the Mexicans in arms. What, then, will the
PALMERSTON Cabinet do ? Will they follow
Spain in her folly, and bring us into a
quarrel through Mexico, as soon as, or
probably before, we are out of the Central Ameri-
can difficulty? The people of England will not
hear of war with America, and if their Parliament
and Government would save the Spanish feet from
speedy annihilation, they must look to what they
see going on without further procrastination.