The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-01-06 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

it command, in con-

s of J. H. we must respectfully decline,

Ebt tiberpoot &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, JA:;. 6, 1846

We have a pleasant duty to perform to our
readers and the public, before issuing to them the
first publication of the LIVERPOOL STANDARD
for the year 1846. It is to return to them our
thanks for their favours in the year which has gone,
and for the proud position in which they have
placed us amongst the contemporary press of our
town. We entered upon our labours, at the com-
mencement of the past year, with a determination
to do our duty. We were bound to no party, but
to our country, and to her hest interests.

We had noJ personal object to serve, strong enough
to sway us from the path of rectitude and of truth.
Convictions we had, which we were unwilling to
barter for temporary popularity, or for the pecuniary
reward which it brings. We have boldly expressed
these ' - we may, in so doing, have offended some
friends; but the increased support which we have
received throughout the year satisfies us that to be
honest and candid is to earn the approbation of the
friends, of whom we are proud, because they are,
emphatically the friends of honesty.
Upon one particular feature of the year's expe-
rience,—and successful experience it has been—we
must remark. We have sustained a pressure—a
rich pressure—of advertising favours, for which We
are most grateful, and which, we fear, has often
caused us to disappoint our readers of that ample
mass of information on generally interesting sub-
hich is looked for in a newspaper. Such
-disappointments,

however, we have taken means
which, unless inordinate prosperity sets in upon us
will not recur again. Our publication of this day,
appears printed from a new fount of type, provided
at a considerable expense, and which will give us
more than an additional page to be devoted to news.
Our paper is now, by this aid, inferior to none in
_
size and contents

and the mode in which we have
all along conducted it, we trust, will allow us to be
believed, when we say that it shall be our study, in
the present year, and in years to come, to render it
one of the best, if not the best, papers in the loca-
lity for the commercial man, the a.ivertizer, the
poor man, and, above all, essentially a family paper,
which we pledge ourselves shall not contain a line,
at which modesty itself can blush, or of which reli-

gion can be ashamed

The conclusion of the business here, and the
publication, by our leading brokers, of their annual
circulars, enable us to bring before our readers a
digest of the leading features, which have charac-
terized the operations of 1845, and the opinions of
well-informed men, as to the prospecs of the year
In which we have just entered. As the chief in
bye turn first to the year's history of the
t staple trade of tile port—the cotton trade.
and Son, in their circular, thus

importa

Wrigley

speak of it

"In the annals of the cotton trade we believe no single
year can be pointed out in which the market has exhibited
such an uniform teadiness of prices as the one now nearly
closing. The fluctuations in American and Surat cotton,
from the lowest to the highest point, have not exceeded a
id. per lb., and in Brazil and Egyptian Id. per lb, The
year opened under very favourable auspices ; cotton was
low in price, all descriptions of food moderate, and as a
consequence of these two important elements, trade was
in a healthy and improving condition. As spinners found
opportunities of making contracts for yarn, they supplied

. -
themselvesfreely with Cotton, so that the progressive im-
provement in trade during the first three quarters of the
year, induced them to hold far larger stocks of cotton
than they were ever known to possess at any former
period ; indeed, they may be said to have bought during
the first nine months more than sufficient for their annual

consumption

That the general prosperity of trade should not have
enhanced the value of the raw material in a greater degree,
may be accounted for by the heavy crop of 1844, and the
consequent accumulation of stock in this country; more-
over, the desire to secure the handsome profit on importa-
.
t to bring the cotton freely on the
iods of extensive speculation, of
luring the year, passed away
iinpu!se to prices."

tions, was an indue:.nae
market, so that the p:

h there WE

The same influential firm account, in part, for
this feature in the trade in the same way as we have
done several times, when remarking in the columns
of the Liverpool Standard upon the inordinate spe-
culations in railway shares, which we viewed as
a timely safety valve, provided to check, and,
at the worst, more harmless in its results than
would have been the application :of the surplus ca-
pital of the manufacturing community to an enor-
mous extension of their means of producing manu-
factured fabrics.

" It is fortunate," they say, " for those engaged in the
cotton trade that the abundance of unemployed capital
obtained vent in the multitude of new schemes to which
the difficulty of finding profitable investment gave rise;
had this new channel not been opened, there is little
doubt that all sorts of produce would have become the
objects of speculation. and more disastrous results have
ensued, by causing distress amongst the labouring com-
munity, than is likely to follow the unprecedented extra-
vagance of the recent railway bubb!es, the failure of
which is more immediately felt by the middle classes."
Another circumstance which checked an advance
in the raw material was the fact of the crop ex-
ceeding in amount the general anticipations. The
American crop, variously estimated at the com-
mencement of the year 2,100,000 and 2,200,000
bales, is now found to be (we take the figures
from the circular of Messrs. Heywood and Mac-
Viccar) 2,394,500 bales, exclusive of 25,900 bales
from Texas. The same firm, from whose cir-
cular we first quoted, thus wind up their account of
the year, and state their opinions of the prospects

of the present

" The partial failure of the harvest and the injurious
effects of the railway mania in deranging the operations of
the money market, having given a severe check during
the last two or three months to the prosperity of the
cotton trade, consumers, during that period, have been
working up their stocks of cotton, and it is now calculated
that the quantity on hand in the country does not exceed
that held at the same period last year. Almost all the
old mills, which had been for some time standing, being
at work again, several new ones erected, and the con-
suming power still extending, there is a considerable in-
crease in the consumption for the year ; it is estimated at
157,781 bales, or 3,034 per week. The weekly consump-
tion of 1844, was 27,326 bales ; during the present year it
has reached 30,36 U bales.
Although the new year may be ushered in with pros-
pects somewhat less encouraging perhaps than the last,
still we see no cause for despondency. Our unusually
heavy stock of cotton, and the certainty of a good crop
having been again secured in AS erica, are sufficient
guarantee for moderate prices daring the next twelve
months ; the clouds too, in the political horizon seem to
be gradually dispersing, and although we may have to
contend against the effect of a scarcity of agricultural pro-
duce, it is to be hoped that this will in some degree be
neutralized by liberal and enlightened measures about to
be introduced during the ensuing parliamentary session." ,
The profits reaped by the spinners during the
year may be estimated by the fact mentioned in
Messrs. Heywood and MacViccar's circular, that
at one time of the year they were realizing from 2d.
to 3d. per lb !
Another rapidly rising trade in Liverpool, whose
prosperity may fairly be stated to form a fair index
of that of important masses of the community is
the wool trade. We give the state of this trade
from Messrs. Gartside and Co.'s annual circular :
" From the commencement of the year until the month
of October we experienced a good demand for all de-
scriptions of wool ; since that period very little has been
done. The extent of railway speculation during the
earlier part of the year and its subsequent effects, the
supposed failure in the potato crop, the changes in the
ministry, and the probabilities of an American war, have
all tended to destroy confidence, and have caused the
woollen manufacturers to reduce their consumption of
the raw material, and they are in many cases working
short time.
Our imports this year into Liverpool exceed by 24,318
bales the quantity received in 1844 ; the present stock also
shows a considerable increase upon that on hand. at the
end of last year, though not in so great a proportion, and
thatincrease is principally in Alpaca and Peruvian.
The quantity of wool imported into England from the
Australian and South African colonies reaches about
fd,ooo bales, of which only 6060 bales have come to this
market; this is to be the more regretted, when we con-
sider that a larger quantity was received here eight years
ago, and the growth in the meanwhile has more than
doubled.
We are now receiving considerable supplies of fine
wool from the United States. As we stated in our cir-
cular of the 28th ultimo, the quality and working pro-
perties of these descriptions are not yet known, and buyers
only take them to a limited extent, consequently what has
hitherto been done in them cannot be taken as a fair
criterion of value when they become properly known.
Should the Government of the United States reduce their
import duties on woollen manufactures, we may look for
an improved business with that country next year.
On comparing the list of prices with that of this period
as year, we find on the whole very little alteration.
although the rates obtained in the highest point of the
market during the spring and summer have not in general