Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-03-30 00:00:00

years

The chief items of those products, which constitute
the details of the comparative augmentations, are
matters of interest in such a case, and are at the
same time, in this instance, most significant of its
actual character, as affording indications of national
progress and prosperity. As usual in such returns
for even many years past, Cotton fabrics stand
prominently and proudly at the top—far,
far outstripping in amount all the
exceeding, in fact, them all put together.
The amount of Cottons, Calicoes, Muslins, &c., for
the single and short month of February this year, is
£3,029,624 ; whereas, in the same month last year it
was £2,116,391,—and in the same month of 1857, it
only reached £2,372,187. Thus, in the month just
past, there has in cotton products alone been an
increase of nearly a million over the same period of
last year, and of nearly three quarters of a million
over that of .the previous year, which was a period
of prosperity. In Cotton Yarns, Lace, Thread, and
Stockings, there is also an increase over each year.
And among the other items of increase are Linen
Yarns ; Apparel ; Flannels, Mixed Stuffs, and
Carpets; Worsteds ; Woollen Cloths ; and Haber-.
dashery. In Iron, however, whether Railway, Bar,
Pig, or Wrought, there has been no increase upon
1858, and but little upon 1857, owing, it is only too
much to be feared, to the fact we have noticed before,
of such quantities of English iron of inferior quality
having been exported for a year "or two preceding
the first period, which has got it a bad name.

The indications these official returns afford of im-
provement in trade are the more cheering, when we
remember how great was the depression only this
time last year. In the seven months ended July
31, 1858, for instance, the declared value of British
and Irish manufactures was £64,461,801, against
£71,027,913 in the corresponding seven months of
1857 ; shewing a decrease of nearly nine millions in
that time from the same short period of the previous
year. And the imports for the like period shewed
even a greater falling off, being £58,068,399, in
1858, as against £69,350,383, in 1857.

Another gratifying symptom in the last issued
official trade returns, is the increase they shew in
the quantities of the chief articles of food taken for
home consumption last month. In Tea, Coffee, Rice,
Sugar, Eggs, Cheese, Cocoa, Currants, there has
been a considerable augmentation of quantities, even
over the same period of that prosperous month in the
year 1857.

One cause of this improvement, no doubt, has
been, that there was peace in Europe,—that we were
not engaged in war with any foreign power, and that
there was calm and confidence here at home. The
insurrection in India may perhaps have prevented,
in some measure, the still greater prosperity of the
country, in its manufacturing and commercial
interests. That, however, is now, let us hope, being
brought to an end ; and we shall once more be done
with warfare altogether. Long, long may it be, ere
we are plunged into it again ! The welfare of our

cammeree will now, more than ever, depend upon
our having a Government that can keep us out of the
evils of war, and thereby enable us to go on

advancing in the arts and industry of puce,

-.-.0-

THE " CENTAL " IN THE LIVERPOOL

MARKET.

THE centul is a new term; but it is one with
which the general public is likely to become very
familiar, and more especially that large portion of it
that is engaged in the various transactions of
It is a term that will carry with it its
own meaning, in a great measure ; for every body
knows that cent means a hundred ; though every
body, pert -Ns,

commerce

_ may not know that it is an abbrevia-
tion of the Latin word for hundred—centum. The
derivation of cental is a very natural, though it is
quite a novel one.

We had, before, the word
tentage in use, meaning rate by the hundred. But
cental, a weight of a hundred pounds, is a term the
necessity of which has sprung from the proposition
that has been so favourably received, of calculating
weights by the centuni, or hundred,—or, its portion,
the decimal, or tenth. Instead of stones, of 141bs.
weight; quarters, of two stones, or 281bs. ;
or hundred weights, of eight stones, or 1121bs. ;
a weight of a hundred pounds, it is ascertained, is the
more sensible and convenient thing, which is easily
dealt with upon the decimal calculation, and alto-
gether more suitable for the purposes of trade. A
change from the present system to that of the cental,
has, it seems, been twice proposed for the considera-
tion of the Legislature, and urged with much force
of argument, by men of the highest eminence in
practical science, deputed by the Government of the
day to make specific inquiries into the whole subject
of standards of measurement and weight. Nothing,
however, has been based upon their reports in favour

of change, and, virtually, of the adoption of the cental
system,—and, perhaps, for sufficient reasons. But
this system has been introduced in the markets of
Liverpool, for the sale of grain, meal, and flour ; and
it is the published Report of the Commercial Law
Committee of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce,
recently presented to the- Council and adopted, a
copy of which has come into our hands, that has
called our attention to the interesting question.

It appears, then, we say, from this Report, that
the intention announced at the general Meeting of
the Corn Trade, held in Liverpool, on the Ist of
December last, has been carried into effect, and that
the " Cental" is now almost universally adopted in
the corn market of Liverpool, and is also under trial
in the markets of Glasgow and Hull. And this
ready adoption of the new weight in the Liverpool
market, is mainly attributable, it is stated, to the
exertions of the Association of the Liverpool Corn
Trade, to facilitate the changes of practice that had
become necessary in advancing from the old to the
new system. " Your Committee are informed," says
the Report, " that, since the Ist of February last,
when the ' Cental' was introduced, more than nine-
tenths, in quantity and value, of the corn, grain, and
meal sold in this market has been sold by the new
weight ; and that the parties who have objected to
the change are almost exclusively local dealers,
whose transactions do not extend to other districts ;
millers, whose business is similarly limited ; and
farmers from the neighbourhood who, having no
business in other markets, have no experience of the
diversities now sought to be abolished. But the
objections thus urged are said to be daily diminish-
ing, in number and in strength ; and the new weight
may now be said to be definitively adopted in the
corn market of Liverpool."
But a change of the present systein appears to be
demanded on other grounds than those of the greater
convenience of calculation by means of the cental, for
general purposes. The requisition by the Govern-
ment of periodical returns, from all parts of the
kingdom, of the price of the bushel or quarter of
corn is in a great degree inoperative, from the cir-
cumstance of the price at markets being not by
measure but by weight. In Liverpool, in particular,
where all sales of Corn (as well home as foreign) are,
and have long been, made exclusively by weight,
and where, consequently, the returns-required by the
Government of the sales actually effected cannot be
made by reference to measure, it has long been, and
still is, the practice for the local inspector to meet
the requirements of the Board of Trade by converting
the returns of the weight of home-grown corn sold
into equivalent expressions of measure without
regard to the actual weight per bushel, (that being
unknown to the inspector,) calculating wheat, at
60 lbs. per imperial bushel ; barley, at 49 lbs. ; and
oats, at 38 lbs. And the Report we here refer to
states, " that a similar practice prevails in all the
inspected markets of the kingdom, in which it is the
ordinary practice to sell by weight. Whence it may
be inferred that as a very large proportion of the
home-grown corn, the sale of which is brought under
inspection, passes through these markets, the prac-
tice of selling corn by weight, much extended of late
years, has already rendered the present system un-
worthy of trust as a basis of computation for any
purpose requiring even approximate accuracy ; and
that the proposed change, (that of substituting
weight for measure throughout the kingdom, and
continuing the present returns of prices upon the
basis of a general and equitable adjustment of the
existing relation of measure to weight,) would, by
bringing into harmony, the actual sales of the corn'
markets, and the record of them preserved and pub-
lished by the Government, afford a far more truthful
and more trustworthy foundation for all transactions
having reference to such records."

There can be no doubt, we think, of the soundness
of these practical views. Yet it will be more difficult
than might at first be supposed, to give full legal
effect to the proposed change, by making its
adoption universally obligatory. The expense as
regards the weights would, in the first place, be very
great. It is estimated that the quantity of weights
of 141b5., and its multiplies, now in use, is not less
than 30,000 tons ; and that the expense of changing
these weights for weights in the decimal scale
would be between £lOO,OOO and £200,000.
Then there is the mode of levying all the Customs'
Duties would have to be altered,—there are the
statutory arrangements connected with Tithe-rents,
the statistical records of the Board of Trade,—and
the estimating of the Average Prices of grain : iri
all this there would need to be corresponding alte-
rations. " But for all these changes," says the Re-
port, " however undoubtedly desirable, the leading
members of the Liverpool Corn Trade appear
disposed to wait till the new method shall have been
long enough in use, here and elsewhere, to establish
beyond doubt the advantages derived from the
change." This is certainly a satisfactory mode of
procedure, and one which may not improbably have
the effect of working the system into legal adoption
sooner than any attempt to force it upon the country
would ever do.

Intimately connected with this question of a
cental system of weights, is that of a decimal system
of coinage. Once let this be adopted, as it is, in fact,
contemplated to be, and the convenience of the
other would become so striking, that the change, in
all probability, could not long be deferred. In the
meantime, however, it is doubtless working its way,
by the every day experience of its advantages in the
Liverpool market.

-.........-.......---

THE COURT

OSBORNE, March 28.—The Duchess of Kent, attended by
Lady Fanny Howard and Colonel J. Seymour, took leave of
her Majesty to-day, and left Osborne for Frogmore-house
The Duchess crossed over to Southampton in the royal
yacht Fairy.

ARRIVAL OF TIIE COURT FROM OSBORNE.—Yesterday
morning, her Majesty, the Prince Consort, the Royal family,
and the Court, embarked on board the royal steam-yacht
Fairy, and crossed over from Cowes to the Hasler Creek,
Gosport. The royal party were conducted under a covered
way to the railway, and proceeded by the South Western
line to the new station at Wandsworth, and thence in car-
riages to Buckingham Palace.
ler Rc yal Highness the Duchess of Kent returned to
Frogmore on Monday, from a visit to her Majesty and the
Prince Consort at Osborne.

The high stewardship of the University of Oxford, ren-
dered vacant by the death of the Earl of Devon, has been
conferred by the Chancellor (the Earl of Derby) upon the
Earl of Carnarvon, the Under Secretary of State for the
Colonies. His lordship was educated at Christ Church, and
graduated in 1852, when he took a first class in classics.
Earl Jermyn, the eldest son of the Marquis of Bristol,
has issued an address to the electors of West Suffolk, offer-
ing himself as a candidate, in anticipation of the retire-
ment of Mr. H. S. Waddington. Earl Jermyn's address is
of a conservative character, and on the whole favourable to
the ministerial Reform Bill. At a meeting of the conserva-
tives, at Bury St. Edmund's, on Wednesday, a requisition
was agreed to, calling on Major Parker, of Clopton-hall, to
stand for the western division.

Despatches have been received at the Colonial-office from
the Governors of Mauritius and Malta.
His Excellency gr. Reed, late Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary of th
to C

!hina, has arrived in Paris, and alighted at the Hotel

Meurice

We (Inquirer) regret to learn that Dr. W. B. Carpenter

has resigned the post he has so long filled as Principal of
University Hall, in order to devote his exclusive attention
to his important and onerous duties as Registrar of London
University. _ _

A meeting of hop planters is summoned for to-morrow
(Thursday), at Robertsbridge, to take into consideration the
question of postponement of the coming May instalment of
the duty of 1858. A nreliminary meeting has been held at
Rye, and the gathering at Robertsbridge will be for the
purpose of deciding upon the best means of proceeding in
order to obtain the desired object.
The report for 1858 by the Committee of Management of
the English Schools in Paris for the children of their poor
fellow-countrymen, has just been published. The condition
of the schools appears to be very good. Much of the money
for their support comes from English persons who are in
Paris only on short visits. A new master and mistress have
very recently been obtained from two of the best normal
colleges in London. The supporters of the schools have
spent a good deal of money in trying to put them on a
better basis.

The Brighton Railway traffic return shows this week an
increase of £842.
NEW AUSTRALIAN BISHOPRICS.—The Government have
assented to the creation of the Bishopric of Brisbane and the
Bishopric of Guelburn.
Mr. J. Norbury, eenr., of the firm of James Capel and
Co., has been elected Chairman of the Stock Exchange, and
Mr. F. L. Slous, deputy-chairman.

—'rhe Times says that France
at of the proposed Con-

THE PROPOSED CONGRESS
objected to Aix-la-Chapelle as the
gress, as being within the

Powers represented