The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-05-12 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
- A correspondent su3-s, that for the first week in April last, the
traffic upt n 1800 miles of railway was at the rate of G millions
per Aril= ; and supposine the cost of construction to be on
- art average £25,,,0 uer mile, it would give 45 milli:tns as the
coat •of that length of railway. Ile deducts 4 1 per cent. for
the cost of working, and it leaves £3 9,0,1:00, which will pay
- a dividend of 81 per cent. The first week in April, he consi-
ders. w:11 be under the average rate pea annum ; and of the
21.300 miles, the traffic of the greater part is not yet developed.
'On the whoe, the result is such as to lead him to believe
there is not mucli cause (whet the really bad schemes are
.-swept away) to fear any ill effects from railway extensi. n.

Ebt Eitnrpoof

TUESDAY MO RNIN G, MAY 12, 1846.

The statesmen who compose her Majesty's pre-
-sent Administration are, no doubt, individually and
personally, men of the highest honour and truthful-
aess; yet it is strange to observe what a large
an of the very opposite qualities they are occa-
sionally tempted to display. In their private capa-
city they would revolt at the slightest approach to a
rnis-statement of a fact, or a disingenuous colouring
of an argument ; but when breathing the atmosphere
. Downing-street, or engaged in party conflict
-within the walls of St. Stephen's, their whole men-
tal and moral economy seems to have undergone a
transformation. The man isstink in the Minister ;
=• rand weapons from which he would have shrunk with
loathing, if used 'o advance his private views of
interest or emolument, are seized hold of and used
without compunction, when the object is to advance
'the interests of a party or to secure a parliamentary
-.triumph. Does an opponent make a slip in debate,
bow readily it is taken advantage of, and tortured
frona..the sense which it was intended to convey !
. Has a Minister inadvertently allowed his personal ,
convictions to ooze out to the detriment of his con-
sistency as a public man, how promptly his col-
- leagues fly to the rescue, to repair the injurious con- '
sequences which may accrue to the measure which
he is bound by his official capacity to support in
~defiance of such convictions! Disingenuousness
has taken the place of straightforward, dealing ; and
the search after truth, as the basis of legislation; is
postponed to the longing to shine as a successful
parliamentary tactician.
The episode of the error in a recent return of the
/Souse of Commons is not yet forgotten. The pub-
kc heir in mind that invariably such errors are in
the right direction, They serve their temporary
purpose of bolstering up a ministerial argument and
swaying a majority; and any subsequent correction
comes too late. Tire case in question was a bad
one. It looked suspicious at all events ; but there
was a subordinate official to hear the blame, and
ministerial honour was left untarnished. An in-

stance, however, of similar perverSion of fact by a
cabinet minister has just occurred, where there is no
such rea'y escape by the ordinary mode of trans-
ferring the onus to another. In the debate on Wed-
nesday week upon the Factory Bill, Mr. Fielden
-quoted the father of the Premier as having demanded
a great limitation in the hours of labour—as having,
in fact, contemplated a term nearly approaching to
that proposed by the advocates of the ten-hours
hill. t-7,ir James Graham, in his reply, gave utterance
to the follotvi g asse,tion
"All that Sir Robert Peel ever proposed was, not that
len hours should be the limitation, but twelve, which is
now the law. The limitation proposed by Sir R. Peel only
applied to children of eight or nine years of age till the
ape of sixteen."
Xow here is a statement, deliberately made, with all
the supercilious self complacency of the right hon.
socretary's manner, uncontratlicted at the time, and I
which, therefore, answered its purpose. Sir Robert
Peel sate by and heard his father's views of the sub-
ject thus propounded. There were, moreover, mill
owners in the house old enough to remember what
those views were. Yet, what is the fact ? We give
it in the words of a Jotter which has just been ad-
dressed by Lord Ashley to the Short Time Com-
.aarttee
1 'Lace now lying before me a copy of the bill intro-
draced by Sir Robert Peel in 1815, when the labour, as you
know, was much less severe than at the present day. That
bill passed the first and second readings, and was amended
by the committee. Here is the clause :—`And be it
tweeted, that no person, being under the age of eighteen
-years, shall be emp oyerl in any such mill, manufactory,
or building, for more than ten hours and a Win any
arse day.' "
The misstatement here is glaring enough, and Sir
James Graham would do well to purge his reputa-
tion by explaining how it arose, or at least by con-
fessing that it was one of the too-frequently recur-
ring ministerial ruses. Another assertion, how-
ever, of the same speaker, on the same occasion, is
so atardingly opposed to the truth, that we can only
wonder bow the requisite amount of assurance was
summoned up to enable him to venture upon its
utterance. Sir James said :
"An hon. gentleman observed that the working classes
were greatly disappointed by the course which had been
pereued by the house in reference to the proposition for
the reduction of the hours of labour to 10 hours. I abso-
izw.tely deny that this house ever pronounced for a ten-
hours measure.
- We give here Lord Ashley's confutation of the
impudent statement :
" On Wednesday afternoon last, we heard this positive
language from the Secretary of State r—' I absolutely
dewy that this house ever pronounced for a ten-hours
Stems:Ere ' Let me put before you ihe amendment that I
sawed in March, 1841. Hansard,' page 1.073, vol. 73.
3,1 series, ' Lord Ashley rose to propose the amendment
of which he had given notice :
" ' That the word night' shall be taken to mean from
six o'clock in the evening to six o'clock in the following
morning, and the word mealtime' shall be taken to mean
an interval of cessation ot work, for the purpose of rest
surd refreshment, at the rate of two [toms a day. with a
:Stew to effect a lirnilaLion of the hours of labour to ten
us the day.'
This amendment I moved at the personal request of
Sir James Graham. He stated to me in private previ-
(it Ay to the debate that I should much oblige the govern-
ascot by raising the question of my proposition at the
wary earliest possible period in the bill, and suggested an
atuendment on the word night' in the first or interpreta-
tion clause. I saw the difficulties of such a course, but
to oblige the Government I complied with their request.
awl drew up that form ot amendment which Sir James
Graham approved (so far as it would raise the whole
Aneation) before the opening of the discus-ion.
" Hansard's pages will confirm my statement The
form of my amendment,' said the noble lord, 'requires
no preliminary explanation. I move it in its present
shape a the request of my hon. friend and the Govern-
nowt, though I fear that in adopting that course I subject
atreelf to some disadvantage.'
Two divisions were then taken, and both were in.fa-
sour of my amendment, after which (I again quote from
Hansard,' p. 1,260), Sir James Graham said that the
decision which the committee had come to upon the noble
Lord's amendment was a virtual adoption of a ten-hours
bin without mod;.fication.' "
la it not melancholy t 3 find the Minister of a
great nation—the Minister, too, who is especially
entrusted with the improvement of the morals of
the people and the supervision of the adtnistration
of justice—thus placed in a position so humiliating ?
All the world remembers how the Commons of
England, at the dictation of a minister, stultified
themselves by negativing a principle which they
'bad twice affirmed. The printed votes of the House
prove the fact. The pages of Elansard record it,
and the acknowledgment from the lips of Sir James
(graham himself, that " Mc decision which the House
Awl just come to was a virtual adoption of the Ten
Hours Billwithout modification." By what miserable
shuffling can he reconcile with such evidence his pre,
sent" absolute denial that the House ever pronounced
for a ten hours measure ?"
We are sorry to perceive the constant recurrence
of such outrages upon the truth in high places.
They degrade the character of statesmen in the eyes
of that public, before whom it ought to be presented
unspotted and above even the suspicion of blemish.
Iffe may forgive apostacy and tergiversation—even
great as have been those of the Right Hon. Baronet
—we mayforbear in ouroppo_iti in to measures which
Ave deem dangerous to the public and subversive of
the true interests of the people. But when we see
such means resorted to for promoting their passage
through the legislature; when we see men thus
crawling beneath the feet of a faction—throwing
from them the feelings of high honour which ought
to animate Englishmen—condescending to misre-
present facts, and even to eat their own recorded
words—such forbearance and forgiveness itself be-
come almost a crime.

We live in strange times ; amidst events which
would be startling to the most lethargic, if we had
not been partially prepared for them by "shadows
cast before." We are, as a nation, day by day
progressing, and each day faster than in the one
which preceded it, towards one of two extremes—
die establishment of Popery as the ruling influence
in the state, on the one hand; or the repudiation of
religion altogether, as having any Et tiled ground in
aur institutions, on the other. The middle and safe
way of tolerant Protestantism we have long ago
deserted ; and we are drifting 110 W between the
'Charybdis of Romanism and the Scylla of Infidelity.
We have enfranchised our Roman Catholic fellow-
countrymen, and admitted them to a share in the
councils of the nation. We were making up our
finds to see carried by an apostate Ministry and a
too subservient Legislature, the endowment of their