The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-08-03 00:00:00

d Mr. Cardwell',

dress ; and, on the (14' of such publicat
gentleman appeared on 'Change, and addre

d the
There was still

assembled Merchants and eleC

time for the Conservative part
elusion, by which the defeat ju
have 1

to arriv

at a con-

experienced might

It was

however, thrown away

On the N

a meeting of the Association

vas called bN

ircular, such circular

returned to ti

tion, inviting him to allO;

himself to be put in nomination. At that meeting
the friends of Lord John Manners, evidently pre-
pared for the course to be taken, mustered strong

.n numbers, and, notwithstanding the protest of an
influential majority present, many of whom left the
ling without voting, his lordship was adopted
ion as the candidate to be brought
fOrward by them, in conjunction with Sir Digby
Mackworth ; and a meeting of electors was called
at which both were

by thelssociat

to be held in t
to address the elector

kmphithea

Another hitch, however, took place in the pro-
ceedings, which might have informed the friends
of Lord John how hopeless his case was. Sir Digby
Mackworth refused, on principle, to be leagued
with a candidate, to so many of whose principles,
upon questions which he considered vital, he was
widely opposed ; and intimated that he could only
consent to attend the meeting, or to appear as a
candidate, on the distinct understanding that he
and Lord John should not be in the most remote
degree committed to each other; that no joint can-
vas should be made by them, and that each should
have separate committees and separate canvassers.
Was this stipulation carried out by the officers of
the association and Lord John's friends ? certainly
not. The placard calling the meeting at the Am-
phitheatre, reasonably implied that such meeting
was to promote their joint election. There was no
distinct explanation given at the meeting itself that
they appealed independently to the electors. True,
that a quasi division of their central committees
took place, Sir. Digby's friends and his Lordship's
occupying different rooms, in the same building.

But sill Mani of the wards both committees sat
together at the same place, and canvassed for the
parties jointly. Their ward and other meetings
held in the same rooms, on the same evenings.
.'he voting papers were directed by the same hand
and delivered by the same person ; in fact, from
first to last, Lord John Manners' friends stuck to
skirts, traded upon his
'lit, to be returned by

Mackworth's

,nd hoped, no dou

the split vo
of the fact

on.from electors, who were 'thaw

tion had been _ repudiated

a barone

d fair play

we been assured, m(
;ardwell,
nstances every body knew that the ret
iorally certain.
Card

elector

s under the

the latter

itleman was

and his

into the lit

amp : and thus accomplished the
ihornas Birch, to the exclusion of

return of
Sir Di1.7,b3

It to discover upon what grounds this
of Lord John Manners, and against

Sir Howard

•ould certainly I

(.J -
and been returned with Sir Digby Mackworth, ha
been fought by the majority of his supporters. T

a large portion of the

iercantile body-

to the
1 body

to all who deprecate undue interfere

nce with th

try, the claims (

Sir Howard Dougia

alone, putting out of view his lot

tried services, justified a -preferen
True, his Lordship has the charact

in his b
of a '

ld even a poet

m advocate of rural sports—
tion to a commercial constitu-

)ted fc

1d alleviat

)r sanatory improvements
1 of the people

-in which
s is not behind

pczent
'd Alisc

—rema

a period in whi
nore felt by the

le that

population of twenty-seven millions. Wages in the
former period were high, employment abundant, the
working classes prosperous, with an export of British and
colonial produce of from £45,000,000 to £50,000,000
annually : in the latter, wages were in many trades low,
employment difficult, suffering general, - with an annual
exportation of £120,000,000 to £130,000,000.
' But-extraordinary and apparently inexplicable as these
facts are, they are yet exceeded in marvel by the details of

_
our social and economical state, during this period of un-
paralleled increase in our material resources. It may
safely be affirmed that the anxiety and distress which
were felt during that brilliant period of national growth
have never been surpassed, at least in a state possessing
the external mark of prosperity. It is well known to
what straits the Bank of England has been reduced on
two different occasions in that period. In December,
1825, it was, as all the world knows, in very great diffi-
culties. We were, as Mr. Huskisson said, ' within
twenty-four hours of barter.' In November, 1839, the
stock of specie was reduced to £2,800,000, and the bank
was under the necessity of negotiating a loan of
£10,000,000 sterling from the Bank of France. There
can be no impropriety in mentioning these facts, which

are universally knovin, regarding- that magnificent
establishment, which now has above £15,000,000 of
bullion and specie accumulated in its coffers: The dis-
tress among the mercantile classes for years after the
dreadful crisis of December, 1825—0 f the agricultural
interest during the low prices from 1832 to 1835, and of
the whole commercial community from 1837 to 1842, was
extreme. Wages sank during these disastrous periods, in
the manufacturing districts, so low, that they barely suf-
ficed with the great bulk of workers, especially females,
for the support of existence. Serious insurrections broke
out in 1820 and 1842, both in England and Scotland,
ostensibly for political purposes, but mainly occasioned
by the general distress among the manufacturing opera-
tives, as was decisively proved by their entire extinction
when labour again received a remunerating turn.

Farming capital in the agricultural districts was, during
their distress, everywhere grievously abridged—in many
places totally annihilated. Ireland during the whole
period has been in a state of smothered insurrection ; and
for the last four years has convulsed the country by the
fierce demand for the repeal of the Union, which was only
prevented from breaking out into open rebellion by the
continued presence in that island of thirty thousand armed
men, between the regular forces and armed police. The
manufacturing districts of Scotland were involved, during
the same period, in such distress, that in 1837 the
mortality in Glasgow was 1 in 22; in 1842, 1 in 30; and
in the latter year 32,000 persons took typhus fever in that
city, and the deaths were upwards of 10,000, out of a popu-
lation not exceeding, at that period, 280,000 souls. Thelate
Poor-law Commission has accumulated evidence proving
to demonstration the existence of severe and unheard-of
distress among the poor of all parts of Scotland, gene-
rally esteemed, and in some respects with reason, the
best-conditioned part of the empire. The Poor-law Com-
mission for Ireland has shown that there are in that fertile
land no less than 2,300,000 persons in a state of almost
permanent destitution. The heart sickens at the proofs,
numerous and incontrovertible, which the parliamentary
reports for the last ten years have accumulated, of wide-
spread and often long-enduring suffering among the
labouring poor in England.
" While wealth was in_
_creaging to an unparalleled extent
among the c

ommercial classes, suffering-and distress as
generally ensued among the rural inhabitants; and the
multitude of ruined fortunes among them rendered it
certain that at no distant period the old race of landed
proprietors would, with the exception of a few magnates, be
all rooted out, and their place supplied by a new set of pur-
chasers from the commercial towns. While population was
advancing with unparallelled strides in the manufacturing
districts, pauperism even more than kept pace with it
in all; and the extraordinary fact has now been revealed
by statistical researches that, in an age of unbounded
wealth, and general and long-continued peace, a seventh
part of the whole inhabitants of the British islands are in
a state of destitution, or painfully supported by legal
relief. While all attempts even to pay off the National
Debt have been abandoned by government, and the prin-
a I ciple openly pr

_ aimed by the Prime Minister, that any
surplus of revenue above expenditure must, to relieve the
necessities of the country, be applied to the reduction of
taxation, without a thought to the reduction of the debt,
the Home Secretary has announced the not less alarming
fact, that since the peace above two hundred millions
sterling, or a fourth of the National Debt, has been raised

for the relief of the poor in England alone. Wh
returns of the Income-tax have demonstrated that seventy
thousand persons in Great Britain possess among them
an annual revenue of two hundred millions a-y
about £2,300 each on an average, the mel
has been revealed, by the result of attem!

le the

ry or
mcholv fact

to increase

that source of income can no longer be relied on ; and in
a time of profound, and at the close of a period of long-
continued peace, it has become indispensable to recur to

an assessment on property and direct taxation, as it was
in Rome in the decaying days of the empire."

The progress of crime increased, pari passu, with
this inflated prosperity of the capitalist, interspersed

commercial classes, on the one hand, and steady
deterioration of the condition of the landowner, the