The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-18 00:00:00

MANCHESTER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.

(From the Times. )
There has scarcely been an age of the world when
it was not a prevailing opinion that man
had pretty
well got to the end of his tether. Against this, in-
deed, may be urged the theories of revolutionists,
socialists, religious fanatics, Utopians, and schemers
of all sorts ; but besides that these agitators have
generally made more noise than actual impression,
the very existence of schemes promising a short cut
to some millenium of prosperity, freedom, and hap-
piness, attests a general want of confidence in ordi-
nary means and existing resources. Many wits are
at work to discover what is absolutely the best ;.not
so many to do the best out of the given materials.
So in all things, we repeat, in legislation, in trades
and professions, in agriculture, manufacture and
commerce, in social progress, in art and science, in
the health and comfort of our houses and towns,
in our institutions for learning and religion, the
majority are apt to settle into the dreary convic-
tion that nothing remains to be done. Desirable
as it may seem, short as our coming hitherto may
seem, and wide as the interval between the fact
and the ideal, fas et fata obstant—thus far and no
further ; the flaming walls of the universe surround
us ' • and we have reached that downward stage when
retrospection vainly strives to supply the place of
hope. Even now, in these stirring times, with all
the world changing about us and nations springing
into existence year by year, nothing is more usual
than to hear people complain that the professions are
overstocked, the trades monopolised, the sciences
worked out, and that there is nothing for a young
man to do unless he has ample means or extraordi-
nary opportunities. Some do not, indeed, sit still
at home and do nothing, but they do much worse, for
they rush into wild speculation from having a worse
opinion of what can be done in an honest and re-
gular way. Now, we are not anxious to kindle
the ambition of our more youthful readers with any
of the brighter visions and grander achievements
open to genius. We are about to tell a very
humble and pedestrian tale, but enough, in our
opinion, to show the rising generation that much
yet remains to be done, and that it is still open for
a tradesman's sons, and men in the pursuit of a
competence, to enter upon something like enter-
prise, and to take a place among the benefactors of
mankind. The world is not so " used up" and
fortune so threadbare but that the country lad
who takes his place behind a counter in the Strand
or in Tottenham-court-road may still make a high
and honourable position of his own—not, grublike
fashion, on the fruits of other's industry, but, MO
Marte, by his own endeavours, and go on to be
associated, and possibly remembered, in the desti-
nies and progress of the world.
And what is this humble and commonplace in-
centive to youthful ambition which we promise to
supply ? It is to be found in a document in yes-
terday's paper, which few of our younger readers
probably took the trouble to look into, repelled, as
they would probably. be, not only by its length
but still more by its mercantile subject. The
Report of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce
might seem to promise little pleasure or even profit
to most readers. Commercial codification, Bank-
ruptcy laws, the Indian Charter, new cotton fields,
the remaining rags of Protection, Quarantine, a
Decimal Coinage, Weights and Measures, Early
Day Mails, the Zollverein, the Mexican dishonesty,
are no light entertainment for the jaded spirits and
fading aspirations of youth. But read a little and
think a little, and, then reflect whether, with what
that document tells us, we really have got quite to
the end of our commercial resources, not to speak
of other and loftier vocations. Many have been
before us, but have they not left us a gleaning ?
Here is a plant, the seed pod of which a few gene-
rations ago was a curiosity because it contained a
sort of vegetable wool. It came to be used for
wool, old women spun it with their fingers as they
did flax or wool. There are people not more than
ninety years old who can remember the surprise,
and possibly disgust, with which it was reported
that a machine had been invented to do the work
of old women, and, as some thought, to take their
bread from them. Out of that little machine have
grown up the largest manufacture, the largest
trade, some of the largest cities, the largest re-
venue, and the largest national prosperity in the
world. We might almost add, the largest National
Debt ; for without it our debt never could have
been paid, and perhaps never could have been con-
tracted. Next to corn, cotton is the greatest
article of growth, manufacture, and commerce,
and it has sprung from nothing, it may be said,
within living memory. But we depend for its
supply chiefly on the labour of " Uncle Toms," and
on the enterprise of Haleys and Legrees. Brother
Jonathan girds us with this fact when we profess
philanthropy, and even talks of excluding us from
the manufacture. Mrs. Julia G. Tyler writes a
letter a mile long about it. But if the cultivation
of cotton has grown up so quickly in the United
States that the first experimental pod is still re-
membered, may not the experiment be as success-
ful elsewhere f So asks the Manchester Chamber
of Commerce, and forthwith sends agents and com-
municates with the Board of Trade and Colonial
authorities, and gets the cotton plant tried where-
ever the soil and climate seem to favour; first in
private gardens, then in broad acres, till the forest
itself begins to recede before the approach of this
vegetable wool. From the Gold Coast of Africa
we hear that 30,000 plants are thriving, that hun-
dreds of acres are being cleared by the native chiefs.
The informant is an African, educated in this coun-
try, and he expects that the cotton plant which
bears so much opprobrium by its connection with
slavery will vindicate its innocence by stopping
slavery at its very source. At Monte Video and
New South Wales there is at least proof positive
that the cotton tree may be naturalised, and that
labour only is wanted for any amount of produc-
tion. But India is the native land of the cotton
plant and the cotton manufacture. Why has
it been distanced by the United States ? and why
does it occupy only one desponding paragraph in
this report ? There wants neither the soil, the cli-
mate, nor the population for cotton to clothe the
whole world. There should not want the Govern-
ment. But the Government is want'ng. The
vast resources of that famous peninsula are lavished
in fruitless wars and barren conquests, while roads,
bridges, quays, piers, and works of irrigation are
either not done, or done to be neglected, and the
cotton trade ruined by the enormous expense of
the clumsy and tedious carriage, and the cotton
itself injured as well by that as by bad preparation.
Yet such are the social relations of the country that
nothing can be done, and there would be more
hope if India, was still in the hands of its native
princes than it is, under the govern • ent of a com-
pany of British merchants and a Board of Control.
Meanwhile, Egypt, cultivated by fellahs and' go-
verned by the son of an Albanian adventurer, the
tributary of a Sultan, is increasing its contingent
of a commodity so essential to the prosperity of
this empire. But in these promising experiments,
and these great discouragemeuts, what do we see
but the opportunities of great enterprise still left
for the sons of our merchants and manufacturers,
and all whom they may concern ? There is room
enough in the world for more Indias, more United
States, more Egypts, more Manchesters and Liver-
pools. . There is room for more Arkwrights and
Strutts ; and possibly for the new fields of cultiva-
tion and the new cities of manufacture may be
reserved the. additional glory that their labour is
not slavery or any other excessive and demoralis-
ing toil.
We have left little space for the other
topics of
the report, but they generally illustrate what we
started with—the much that remains to be done
and that promises to be done in all departments of
industry and all the arrangements of life. Who
shall say there' is not work for a young lawyer of
genius when our laws are a confessed chaos, and
the merchants, with
harmonisedoth erclasses, are demanding
that they shall beinto a code ? Again,
the tariff is deformed by differential duties, answer-
ing little other purpose thanto put a word in the
mouth of foreign rivals and Protectionists.
too, is an example how trade Here,
still growing, and
a proof how much more it may grow, even when
we are fighting with hostile tariffs. Notwith-
standing increased restrictions on the parlcofF ranee,
British trade with that country, which in 1830
amounted, for the whole of our exports, to only
475,8841., gives an average of the ten lB4l to 1850 of 2,472,6431. per years from
year. ~
not look as if we are coming near an end of our
This does
trade. Pass to the next paragraph. It relates to
quarantine, which the Chamber would have us do
away with. Here is a field for a young Esculapius
to exercise his wits upon
the nineteenth century- it. In. the middle of
is still left to dis-
cover whether quarantine, an institution of
ages, has not all along an unmitigated
nuisance and a meremblun.d. blunder--at least in our
ports. But pass on.
calculation,ere is our coinage still to
be made convenient ofso that the ac-
countant shall not be continuallypassing from de-
cimals to vigintesimals, and from
Again,vigintesimals to
duodecimals, and back again.agofor our post-
office. A very few years the
letter which. left
London at eight in the evening by a miracle of
dispatch reached Manchester at four o'clock the
next afternoon. It is now carried in seven hours,
and there are even two mails in the twenty-four
hours, besides the electric telegraph, for the con-
venience of stockjobbers and other speculators
But more may be done. Cannot a mail be sent by.
every ordinary. train ? The Chamber of Commerce,
however, always edging on, confines itself for the
nonce to " an earlier dispatch of the London morn-
ing mail," and next March 1 that mail will arrive
two hours earlier. Depend upon it, more will then
be asked, and more ought to be asked for, Unix.

edly more can be done. So it is in everything.
There is room for improvement everywhere,
enough to satisfy the most ardent enterprise and
the most boundless ambition. Nothing, of course,
will be done by those who sit at home and say that
nothing is to be done. But they that go abroad
will
.learn another story, even if they have not the
ability to followit up. We, however, are no be-
lievers in ability. Our creed is determination and
perseverance. These are open to all, and, with
God's help, they can work miracles.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

DERBY SMITHFIELD-FEB. 15.

There was an increased number of fat beasts to-day
some of which was of excellent quality, while many were
only of the middling sort. The demand for beef was
good, and yet there was some left on hand, owing to the
high price asked. The number of sheep was about the
average, and in good demand. Fat calves wero more
plentiful, and a shade lower in price. The supply of fat
pigs was much larger, and were readily disposed of.--
-Beef, sid to 6cl ; mutton, 7d to lid ; veal, 6d to 6id per
lb. ; pigs, 9s Od to 10s Od per score ; rough fat, 4s 6d per
14 lbs. ; hides, 2d to lid per lb. ; calf-skins, 2d to Od
per lb.

DENBIGH—FEB. 17.
There was -very little alteration in the prices. Wheat,
16s 6d to 00s ; barley, lOs to lOs 6d ; oats, 5s 6d
6s Od per hobbet ' • tub butte; 10d to 103 d ; fresh ditto,
is ld to is 2d per lb.

RHYL—FEB. 15.
Our market to-day wag well supplied with samples a
grain, but little or no variation in prices of this daY
week.

EDINBURGH GRAIN—FEB. 16.
We had a moderate supply of grain in to-day's market
the demand was good, at advanced prices.
Top of Wheat • .......... •• • • ... 654 lb 56s Od
Barley
- Oats

Beans

• Total Supply and Sales.
Wheat 9lO qrs •
Barley 703 qrs
Oats 787 qrs
Beans 242 qrs