The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-11-22 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD, AND GENERAL COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER.

ITHE undersigned RICHARD SHAW, of
Liverpool, Cotton broker do HEREBY GIVE NO-
TICE, that the PARTNERSHIP lately subsisting be-
tween myself and my son RICHARD SHAW. the younger, as
Cotton-brokers, at Liverpool aforesaid, under the firm of
" RICHARD SHAW and SON," IS DISSOLVED. Dated this
Nineteenth day of November, 1853

bidding for

meeting. He may, perhaps, be
employment in these stirring times, and therefore
takes the opportunity of bespattering his old
enemies the Whigs with his praise. Mr. ITRQu-
HART is notorious for his virulent attacks on
Lord PALMERSTON, in which he takes every oppor-
tunity of indulging. About thirteen years since,
on his dismissal from employment in the East,
he indulged in a series of pamphlets against
the then Foreign Secretary, whom he accused
of being the secret ally of Russia, and the
mania seems to have adhered to him ever since.
This will account for the tone of all his harangues,
and the great interest, which he appears to take in
the question. We are no apologists for the Govern-
ment, but they are not to be blamed because they
did not precipitate the quarrel by ordering the
entry of the British Fleet into the Black Sea at
the commencement of the dispute. They are rather
to be blamed for not assuming that decisive tone

' reference to its effects

instant, the weight of representation give

RICHARD SHAW
Witness, ROBERT Won't's, Jun., Solicitor, Liverpool.

OTAMES FOR ST. PETER'S CHURCH.-
The COMMITTEE appointed for the purpose of taking
steps to raise a FUND for the RESTORATION of the
CHIMES of ST. PETER'S PARISH CHURCH, beg to ac-
knowledge the following Contributions,. and to solicit further
aid in order to carry out the object in view.

SUBSCRIPTIONS PREVIOUSLY ADVERTISED.
X a. d. £ s. d.
T. B. Ilorsfall, M.P.. 2 2 01F. A. Tamplin
R. C. Gardner
Thomas Clarke ... . .. 1 1 0 W. Titterington 0 10 6
Harmood Banner,... 1 1 0 .1. It 0 10 6
Joseph liii:r2..er
J. C. Ferniliongh
Thorrag Branch .... 1 1 0 John Vickets 0 10 0
Edward Banner 1 1 0 Thomas Rawlinson .. 0 10 0
Thomas Harrison 1 1 0 J. R. .M`GutEe
Henry Steele
Thos. Cheshire
J. Moss
Thomas Kaye 1 0 0 H. E. Brown 0 10 0
J. N. Moore
I
Arthur Henderson .. 1 0 0111. Crosthwaite 0 10 0
Richard Thornton .. 1 0 ()Mrs.. Walton
William Bennet O'John Ellison
J. uck Lloyd
..
50n.... 0 10er 1 0 0 W. W. Lloyd o 5 0
James Mawdsley .... 0 10 6 Richard Bailey 0 5 0
R. Frodsham 0 10 6 W. Haywood 0 5 0
Robert Hughes 0 10 6 David Lloyd
R. R. Williamson.... 0 10 6 J. D. Here 0 5 0
E. P. M‘Knight 0 10 6 Miss Vickers 0 5 0
W. Edwardson
Thomas Williams.... 0 10 6 Charles Lomax 0 5 0
John Greatley
J. Musker
J. Edmondson
Gerard Hornhy 0 10 6 C.P.
George 51-Knight.... 0 10 6 R. Woodward 0 5 0
George %V. Hewitt .. 0 10 6 John Pemberton
George Hofken 0 10 6 S. Taylor 0 5 0
H. Gambell 0 10 6 F. Henry 0 5 0
Thomas Ball
F. Frodsham
Joseph Kitchen 0 10 6 George Sharp 0 5 0
G.
H. C. Beloe 0 10 6 Henry Parsons 0 5 0
S. T. Winstanley .... 0 10 6 Sundry small sums

which might have prevented any hostile demon-
strations. We cannot, however, leave out of view
the religious part of the question, however dis-
tasteful it may be to free-thinking Radicals ; and
we hold it to be worse than suicidal folly for
Christian England to embroil Europe in sangui-
nary strife, in order to save an infidel State from
that annihilation which we have a right to believe
is in the decrees of Providence. The whole argu-
ment in favour of Turkey is based upon considera-
tions of mere money-getting, and with this sordid
view we would retain twelve millions of Christians
in bondage to four millions of believers in MA-
HOMET, which are about the proportions of the
population of Turkey. The dispute with Russia
may be temporarily settled by the evacuation of
the Danubian provinces, but it will be far short of
the settlement of the real question at issue, which
can never be satisfactorily arranged until Turkey
is included among the Christian States of Europe.

DR. BOWBING has been lecturing in this town,
during the past week, on decimal coinage and its
plausibilies. One great point which appears to be
relied upon is, the unanimity of the witnesses
before the Committee of the House of Commons
which sat last session, in favour of some
scheme of the kind, but this should excite little
surprise when it is considered that those only
were examined who were favourable to the
change. It is, however, an instructive conse-
quence of the proposal,—indeed a difficulty which
besets it at the outset,—that great difference of
opinion exists as to the mode in which it ought to
be effected. The committee, in their report, re-
commended that the present pound sterling should
form the unit of the future system, but it was soon
discovered that this would create almost insuper-
able difficulties with the present penny, which
forms the standard of so many transactions. The
future penny, or by whatever other name it may
be called, must be something more or something
less ; and, in either case, it would seriously affect
many concerns of aggregate importance. There
are postage, receipt, and newspaper stamps, which
must either bring in something more or consider-
ably less to the revenue ; and there are numerous
charges, such as penny tolls, railway fares, and
many articles in common use, which would equally
be affected by an arbitrary alteration in the value
of the coin. The only solution proposed is to make
the penny the unit of the system, but this would
alter the value of the larger and more important
coins, and in all extensive transactions, particularly
the accounts of the public revenue, render neces-

nary multitudinous figures. We cannot spare the
pound, and it is equally difficult to alter the penny.
Both are indispensable, without a revolution such
as introduced the decimal system into France and

America. But, supposing these difficulties, which
meet us at the outset, could be surmounted, it would
still be beset with others of far more consequence
without one advantage to compensate for them. The
only possible good which could result from this over
estimated decimal system is a little facility in the
keeping of accounts, and for this trifling advantage
the everyday concerns ofa large and busy population
long accustomed to our present monetary system,
and the weights and measures with which it is inti-
mately connected, are to be subjected to countless
inconvenience. The first step which has been
taken in the issue of two-shilling pieces has been a
loss instead of a gain. By far the simplest calcu-
lation was that two half-crowns make five shillings,
and twice that half-a-sovereign, but it must be a
strong predilection in favour of decimals for any
one to believe that a division into five is a more
convenient process. Again, halves and quarters
may be exactly estimated by our present coinage,
every value down to a penny being divisible by
four:; but confusion will be worse confounded
when divisions must take place by fifths and
tenths, and the labourer's wife must ask at the
shop for the fifth of an ounce of tea or the fifth of
a hundred weight of coals. There must not only
be a total revolution of weights and measures, with
which the humblest purchaser is now familiar, but
also a total revolution in long-formed habits, a
change far more difficult to effect:; and, when all
has been done, there will be more inconveniences
suffered, and more frauds committed, than can be
the case under the present time-honoured system.
The case endeavoured to be made out by the agita-
tors for decimals is a gross delusion upon popular
credulity. It is an off-shoot of Liberalism, the chief
object of which is change, no matter whether for
better or worse, and the instances referred to as
proofs of its success are examples which England
should be the last to follow. All the gain would be,
to save some wealthy merchant from keeping an
extra clerk ; while the loss would be felt by
every man, woman, and child in the United
Kingdom.

THE near approach of the meeting of Parliament
—if even the perplexed state of affairs in the East
should not call for its assembly before Christmas,
as stated by our London correspondent—ought to
awaken public attention to the threatened inflic-
tion of a new Reform Bill, which, if there were
really any demand for it, would precipitate the
country into a useless and dangerous agitation,
fatal alike to commercial prosperity, and that kind
of domestic legislation which is most wanted. It
is not, perhaps, easy to define the particular direc-
tion which this new movement is intended to take,
if, indeed, there be any intention on the subject in
a Cabinet of which no two members are agreed on
any one principle ; but there are circumstances
which may afford some clue to the nature of the

attack upon our existing institutions. The inves-
tigations which were carried on so pertinaciously
last session in the Election proceedings in several
agricultural towns were, no doubt, intended to
prepare the public mind for a wholesale disfran-
chisement of many of the smaller boroughs, and
the Times has been taking up the question by
arguments in the same direction, all labouring to
show the inutility of improving the constituencies
by grouping other towns with them as proposed by
the bill of 1852. The real object is to swamp the
public opinion of rural districts, by giving a greater
preponderance to the denser populations of the
manufacturing towns, and this is advocated on the
plausible pretence of the weight which, it is said,
ought to belong to mere strength of numbers. Such
a position is difficult to assail upon mere abstract
reasoning, which would make every member of the
House of Commons the representative of an arbi-
trary number of voters, without reference to their
quality, standing, or stake in the country ; but
we may arrive at a more correct conclusion by

us imagine, for one

to the

solely because of their
then

If former