The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-03-03 00:00:00

The destruction of our protective system, of which
the Canadian farmer—onr own countryman—has
thus far enjoyed a portion of .the advantage, goes
far to render useless and unprofitable all this ex-
penditure. He is henceforth placed no nearer to us
in commercial allegiance than the farmers of the
United States. Nay, he is in a worse position ; for
the industry of th.! latter is protected by a duty on
the importation of foreign corn, whilst we have sti-
pulated for the withdrawal of all protection from the
industry of the former. May it not therefore be an-
ticipated, that in the Atural course of human
events, the Canadian population will ultimately be
driven to direct their attention either to the achieve-
ment of independence as a nation, or to a union with
the great confederacy of the United States, by which
they will, at least, acquire the right of trading with
that important republic on better terms than they
would possess if still maintaining their present con-
nexion with Great Britain.

We cannot perceive upon what plea we can resist
such a movement on the part of Canada, if it be re-
solved upon; or even defend much longer the
granting of supplies to meet the cost of our establish-
ments in that country. The tie of our common
blood apart, Canada, under a system of free trade,
will be nothing to us. She will cease to be the child
of England and merge into one of the great family of
nations. Like an unnatural mother, we have thrown
her, in her infancy, upon her own resources; and,
when she asks, as she reasonably may ask, to be re-
leased from a dependence upon us, which our own
act has rendered profitless, and demands permission
to make her own arrangements for revenue pur-
poses, with what perfect reasonableness may some
Hume or Cobden suggest the enquiry, "on what
ground is England called upon to tax herself any
longer for the maintenance of what has ceased to be
a colony, and is now allied to her only by accocia-
tions of the past ?"
That the course which we have pointed out is the
one which Canada is likely to pursue will be ap-
parent from the following letter, addressed. under
date of Feb. 6th, by an eminent member of the Can-
adian legislature—Mr. Isaac Buchanan—to the con-
servative members of the British Parliament We
quote this, as confirmatory of the views which we
have above expressed, and shall refrain from offering
a word of comment. Mr. Buchanan says :

" It is clear that the coloni-s of British America and
the West Indies will be the first we shall lose, the inte-
rests of both now leading them to become members of the
American union.
" Take for instance the case of Canada.

" Can any one for a moment doubt that, as soon as it
is known on the other side of the Atlantic that Canadian
wheat has no longer any protection in England, the Ca-
nadians will at once insist on the repeal f Mr. Glad-
sorter's Act, which gives protection:in the colonies to Bri-
tish manufactures?
" Nine tenths of the Canada trade will thereupon go to
the markets of New York and Boston. The overbur-
thened people of England will in their turn begin to feel
that they are going to the expense of defending a colony
which has ceased to be of any use to the empire, as con-
suming its manufactures, or employing its sailors and
sh,pping.
" And any hint from England of a desire for separation
will be cheerfully responded to by the people of Canada,
who wilt be writhing under the feeling that England has
dishonourably broken promises of protection to Canadian
wheat and timber, made by every ministry from the tim-
ber panic of 1808 downwards, and will have got their eyes
open to the fact that (as there remains no longer any, the
slightest bond of interest between Canada and the mother
coentry) no reason can be given why the Canadians should
risk their lives and properties in defending nothing! or
should allow Canada to be any longer used as the battle-
field of European and American squabbles.
" The Canadians will, moreover, see, that as their wheat
is practically excluded from the English markets, their
only chance is to get itintroduced into the markets of the
United States. The republic, however, will not free trade
with Canada, and a political connection will have to he
consummated between them, to give Canada the American
protection of Ss. sterling per quarter against British or
other European corn.
" Whether, therefore, England wishes it or not, Canada
will certainly cut her connection immediately.
" The Canadians, by joining the United States, will
continue all the privileges which England's colonies enjoy
under a free trade •ystem, and, into the bargain, secure
a better market for their wheat than.that of England ; for,
instead of removing their protection of Ss. sterling per
quarter, the Americans will be prepared to increase the
duty if found insufficient for their great western interests.
" America will he the more ready to do this, when the
result is shown that English free trade will reduce the
Liverpool below the New York grain market ; our wheat
being drawn from countries where their is no credit or
banking system to inflate the price above the specie stan-
dard, for" England will get little or no grain in return for
her manufactures, although the free traders delude the
public with asserting that she will.
" In losing the British American colonies, England will
lose employment for 30,000 sailors, and the finest naval
nursery in the world, the amount of tonnage in that trade
being greater than that of the trade to all ledia and China.
" But it is not a simple logs to England ; the cora:nand
of the St. Lawrence will give a gain to America equal in
extent to our loss, thereby trebling her naval power; while
it leaves leer with no rival or enemy in the north."

It is nearly twelve months ago since we assured
our readers that the repeal of the corn-laws was a
consummation which they might expect from the
government of Sir Robert Peel. It is*true, we gave
that ministry two years in which to make, gracefully,
the required pirouette from the doctrine of protec-
tion to ultra free-trade. The political Jim Crow is
not jumped quite so expeditiously as the stage Jim
Crow, or the genuine nigger movement. We did
not, however; anticipate the potato panic. We were
not aware of the important influence which that root
appears to exercise in determining the national
policy. We had been in the habit of regarding po-
tatoes as in the same category with cabbages, tur-
nips, and other esculents of the same class; and we
certainly never expected that a murrain in one or
other of them could have produced such startling
conversions as have been witnessed amongst states-
men during the past few weeks.
This portion of our prophecy has, therefore, been
verified a year before we expected and predicted.—
But, it may be remembered by our readers that, we
went a little further in our anticipations of incon-
sistency and change. We imagined that we saw
symptoms of betrayal of principles higher and holier
far than those affecting merely commercial policy.
We thought that we discerned the connexion of con-
cession upon one point, with the power of main-
taining their previously recorded opinions with re-
spect to another. Consistency once abandoned, it
seemed to us impossible to conceive where such
abandonment was to stop. We went, therefore, the
length of predicting that, along with the abolition of
the protective system, we should be compelled to
witness an inroad upon the church establishment of
Ireland : more sops thrown to popery in that
country and in this, and ultimately, the granting of
the full measure of the demands of the agitation for
a repeal of the legislative union between the two
countries. In short, we looked, at the hands of Sir
Robert Peel, for measures of a republican tendency,
destructive of the best interests of the country, and
opposed to all the recorded opinions of his past life.
Well, it will be accorded to us that, thus far, we
have been correct in our anticipations; and it now
only remains for us to shew that we are not likely to
err materially with respect to the future. Ikon the
subject of the probable policy of government towards
the Irish church establishment, and other Irish
affairs, we have the following evidence of the perfect
accordance of the views of Sir Robert Peel's ministry
with those of the "liberal" party—the free-thin king
party—in the following quotation from the speech
of Mr. Evelyn Denison, a gentleman with whose
politics the people of Liverpool are tolerably well
acquainted. Mr. Denison, at the South Notting-
hamshire nomination, thus expressed himself :
" As Lord Lincoln came in the new and responsible
office of secretary for Ireland, entertaininz the strong
opinions which he (Mr. Denison) entertained on certain
points o/ policy both as regarded church and state
affairs in Ireland, he could not offer the noble lord, at all
events, an entire and cordial support without some explan-
ation, in the first instance, as to the views with which
Lord Lincoln entered on that office. lie (Mr. Denison)
asked for no promise and no pledge ; it would have been
unworthy of him to have asked, or of the noble lord to
have granted. lie had had a conversation with the noble
lord on Irish affairs, with which he was entirely satisfied,
and if convinced the noble lord would enter on those high
duties in a spirit of firm and liberal policy, he at once as-
sured him of his cordial good wishes and earnest support.
Nor was this reluctantly extorted. The noble lord had
known how to conciliate the good-will of his opponents."
Now, what does this mean ? Mr. Evelyn l )enison
is one of the appropriation-clause school of politi-
cians. Lord Lincoln has just been appointed to the
responsible office of secretary for Ireland. Air.
Denison"entertains strong opinions on certain points
of policy both as regards church and state affairs in
Ireland," and Lord Lincoln has satisfied him that
her Majesty's government is about to deal with
Irish affairs to his " entire satisfaction !"
Another intimation of forthcoming measures of
conciliation towards Ireland, was afforded on Mon-
day night, in the House of Commons, in a convers-
ation between the agitator, O'Connell, and the pre-
mier. Mr. O'Connell required to know, whether
government were prepared, Ist-- to extend the
elective franchise in Ireland ; 2nd—to increase the
number ofirish. representatives; 3rd—to lower the