The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-10-02 00:00:00

ability the town would not willingly lose. At the
same time, we may offer tothe confederation a little
hint. The opponents of the Rivington scheme in
the Council haVe lost a little ground lately. They
mustered only 20 in the recent division on the
question. The feeling upon the subject out of
doors is also on the decline. If any thing has,
more than another, led to this change, it is the
violent proceedings of the confederation itself.
We have also a question to ask from the com-
mittee of this association. Is it true that on
Friday last, the name of a highly-respectable gentle-
man was brought forward at a committee meeting,
as a representative for St. Peter's Ward, and a re-
solution come to that he should receive the support
of the association ? Is it likewise true, that on the
following day, another meeting was held, drummed
up by the Radical section, at which a counter reso-
lution was passed, rejecting the gentleman pre-
viously announced, because he was a Conservative,
and recommending a candidate of opposite political
principles ? We have the names of the parties
alluded to, but withhold them for the present.

WE hear, daily, complaints amongst the trades-
men and shopkeepers of our own, and other large
towns, of depressed trade, of customers falling off,
and businesses which are scarcely paying for rent,
taxes, gas, and servants' wages. We see establish-
ments, lately thriving, abandoned ; and, where
once was the glare of lamps, streaming through
plate glass, and reflected in gorgeous mirrors with
busy assistants displaying to eager purchasers the
rich products of the loom and the workshop, dull
solitudes, or closed shutters, plastered over with the
ominous announcement " to let"—or the more start-
ling record of disaster—the sale announcement of
the auctioneer. Statists, indeed, tell us continually
of the revival of commercial activity; of better
markets and increased consumption. Board of
Trade reports and commercial circulars shew us
that we ought to be in a condition of reviving
prosperity. But every man asks himself—where is
the prosperity ? And every man declares that, as
yet, nothing of the kind has fallen to his own
experience. _ _

We believe that a very little reflection will enable
the trading community, and especially retailers and
artizans, to solve this apparent problem for them-
selves. Within the past few years we have seen a
new system of business spring up amongst us.
The doctrine of "small profits and quick returns"
has been proclaimed the secret of commercial suc-
cess. Cheap-shopkeepers, cheap traders, and cheap
artizans have established themselves in every town,
and in every street, and pushed from their stools
the old-fashioned race of regular men of business,
who were content to thrive upon moderate remune-
rating profits upon the sale of honest goods.
" Bargains" now solicit our attention on every side ;
and unfortunately there exists a thoughtless portion
of the world who are enamoured of bargains, who
are ever ready to grasp at "alarming sacrifices."
Half the commodities vended by our modern dealers
are either pretended "bankrupts' stocks," "stocks
selling off previous to improvements," goods " pur-
chased under extraordinary circumstances,for cash,"
or goods really purchased with very little chance of
their being paid for at all. A ruinous competition
is everywhere going on. Every man is seeking to
undersell and to supplant his neighbour; and our
very largest purchasers, our public boards and cor-
porations, even the legislature itself, encourage the
practice, and invite tradesmen to ruin themselves,
or each other, by the system of contracting for every
article supplied to them, and every species of work
done. We see every day men taking such con-
tracts at prices which leave, if any, the bare shadow
of profits, to be wrung, too often, from decrease of
the wages of their miserable working people, and,
sometimes, from the substitution of inferior for first
class goods; and how aften do we see such con-
tracts result in ruin to those engaged in them—to
the fortunate (?) competitors!
Now, it is clear that this desperate scramble for
business cannot go on without serious injury to
the trading classes. To secure a living, the shop-
keeper, who contents himself with half the ordinary
rates of profit, must sell double, or more than
double, the ordinary quantity of goods. But you
cannot, however you may reduce profits, double
consumption, until you have doubled the means or
the number of consumers. A man cannot wear two
coats, two pairs of boots, or two hats at a time ;
and if the tailor, bootmaker, or hatter is also doing
business for half profits, the chances are that he
cannot so conveniently buy one of the-commodities
in question. If a tradesman of the old school, he
is, in all probability, driven out of business altoge-
ther. We find, also, men of large capital, or large
credit, absorbing in one giant concern, half a dozen
branches of trade ; manufacturers engrossing the
profits of the retailers, or otherwise depressing the
condition of men of less abundant means. The
tradesman who reduces the wages of his labourer,
diminishes his power to consume. The manufac-
turer, or the artizan, who employs apprentices to
do his work, throws the adult hand into the work-
house, or drives him to a condition in which he can
barely command the common necessaries of life. It
is this desperate competition—this mad struggle
for cheapness—which is at the root of much of the
suffering at present complained of amongst our
shopkeepers and small traders, hundreds of whom
are daily discovering that they are de trop in the
battle of life ; that they cannot exist in the shadow
of the leviathan concerns, and are rapidly falling
back into the ranks of the ill-paid working classes.

It is not at all customary for the conductors of a
journal, or any publication which assumes the cri-
tical office, to be called upon to defend its strictures
upon a work given to the public. The task would
be an interminable one if every disappointed au-
thor was permitted to have a hearing, or to claim a
second or third notice of his work. We cannot,
therefore, permit the authors of the prize essay on
Direct Taxation to figure in our columns, to the
extent of the letter which they have addressed to
us ; but must content ourselves with noticing a
few points only, which they bring forward.
In the commencement of their letter they say :

" We have made no attempt," you complain, " to
show it to have been just, that when the middle, or trad-
ing classes, began to progress in wealth and importance,
the land one should remain subject to the whole expense
of internal government and national defence." True, we
have not endeavoured to show what you have indicated ;
nor do we think the indication just. We cannot see the
equity of the landholders throwing their peculiar bur-
thens upon the trading and manufacturing classes, even
if the latter have improved in their circumstances. We
personally might as well apply to our neighbour over the
way, who has got greatly enriched by American com-
merce, to discharge for us our income-tax or tailor's bill.
If it had been a matter of state necessity to till the
ground ; if the landholders had been obliged to retain and
cultivate the land to their disadvantage, there might have
been room to charge the non-agricultural community
with a just recompense. But as the possession of the
unbought soil has always been advantageous to the pos-
sessors, and as the advantages have been continually aug-
mented by the increase of commercial and industrial
wealth, we should have been making the worse appear
the better reason, bad we declared it to have been just
that the trading classes should not only have sustained
their own, but their landlords' burthens too."
In the first place, there is here a little Jesuitism
displayed. We complained of the assumption of
the writers that " the land alone," after a valuable
commerce and a wealthy trading class had sprung
up, should have remained " subject to the whole
expense of external government and national de-
fence." The essayists reply by complaining of the
landowners throwing "their peculiar burthens upon
the trading classes.' We are ourselves not aware
that the internal government and defence of the
country should be the peculiar charge of the land;
but of the owners of property of every description,
whether consisting in mills, in houses, in goods, or
in labour. In the quotation marked in italics it
strikes us that the writers contravene their own
principles, which are, if we understand them at all,
that taxation should he borne by the people ac-
cording to their means. Surely the manufacturing
classes, as they "improved in their circumstances,"
would, according to this principle, be entitled to
bear an increased share of the national burthens.
The Essayists differ from us with respect to the
opinion which we expressed, that their proposed
system would be painfully inquisitorial, and lead to
concealment, and even perjury. They have more
faith, they say, than we have in the patience and
truthful habits of their fellow-countrymen, who
will readily allow their affairs to he yearly scruti-
nized by the tax gatherer, or save him the trouble,
by always giving in the real amount of their earn-
ings. Unfortunately, all experience is against these
assumptions—or wherefore all our present customs'
searchers, and other costly endeavours to keep the
world honest ?
But our Essayists go beyond maintaining that
the inquisitorial character of direct taxation is ob-
jected against by the public. It is even desirable