The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-09-15 00:00:00

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TUESDAY MORNING, SEPT. 15,

Two years ago the people of this empire absolutely
revelled in visions of extending greatness, which no
hand could arrest, and of individual and national
prosperit7, beyond the reach of check or reverse.

our arms were put forth to chastise or to
..story followed them. Into whatever re-
gion we sought to extend our commerce, wealth
Rowed in upon us as the natural result of our efforts.
''fence was doing mighty things for us within our
alm : opening out its mineral wealth—almost
annihilating time and space—and bringing together,
hours' journey, the congregated masses
of our busy hives of industry—enabling the east to
know the west, the north to know and converse
with the south. The hallucinations of our pride
whispered to us that the rules and the wisdom of
the rest of mankind were not for us; that our high
destinies were to be wrought out by unaided philo-
sophy ; that we had found out a new path to in-

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within a few

creased wealth and territorial importance, to pursue
which successfully it needed not that we should
retain what were presumptuously styled the " swad-
dling clothes" of past experience—that salutary
protection, by which we had been enabled to attain
our then high position amongst the nations of the
world.

We forgot, in our vanity, that there is a Being
above us, who holds the destinies of every people
in his hands ; in whose sole power it is to set up
and to pull down on earth. We forgot the teach-
ings of all past history, human and divine. We
overlooked the thousand lessons breathed forth
throughout the material as well as the natural
world—what small and insignificant means are
sufficient, when guided or permitted by him, to
overthrow the projects and the power of the power-
ful. A needle, a pulley, or a crank out of its place,
is sufficient to destroy the mighty engine, whose
labours give bread to thousands. An unseen rock,
no bigger than a man's hand, will sink the mighti-
est fabric of human pride and power which sails the
ocean. An insect strips the noblest ornament of
our forests of its foliage, whilst a worm at its root
levels with the ground the stately trunk, which the
storms of a thousand years have not sufficed to
bend.

We are about to be reminded, by bitter experi-

ence- and calamity, of the error and blindness of
which, in our presumption, we have been guilty.
We are about to be shewn how little it is in the
power of the mere statesman or the philosopher to
advance permanently the prosperity of an individual
or a peop!e. Man proposes, but God disposes.
We were this year to witness the pouring of abun-
dance into this land. The depreciation and the
partial loss of one humble root, which we have
wrongfully permitted to become the almost sole
source of subsistence for millions of our poorer
classes, has shattered our expectations to the winds,
and brought impending famine and death over the
land. A blight has fallen upon our potato fields,
which are blackening and rotting before the eyes of
the husbandman, and spreading despair amid the
hearts of our unfortunate poor, to whom that crop
is the only resource from starvation. Can our

avans, our philosophers, our political economists,
race the cause or retard the approach of this dire

calamity ? No : science and Philosophy are alike
at fault. They look on helpless. They see in its
desolating effects the work of a hand mightier than
their own, to destroy or to save—of a Being whose
attributes and power, in their presumptuous self-
reliance, they have practically denied ; and they
wouH treat the lesson as canting, and unworthy of
their consummate enlightenment, if they were to be
reminded that that Being never chastises without
provocation—never visits his mysterious dispensa-
tions upon his people without an object in view.
We have a right, however, to call upon them now
to tell us, in their exceeding wisdom, how our mil-
lions are to be fed. Their measures, which were to
have wrought such miracles—which were to have
placed us beyond the reach of calamity and dearth
—which were to have rendered us independent of
the contingencies of seasons at home or abroad—
have been baffled from above. We have no present
prospect of busy looms, or of active industry in any
branch or in any quarter. The manufacturer, the
merchant, and the trader look forward with utr'is-
guised dread to the coming winter, and ask, " Will
the poor endure patiently their sufferings, their
"—for they were taught to expect disappointments ?
a very different state of things to that which they
have now to prepare for. " Will those sufferings
be promptly met, or can they be met, by the charity
of the rich ?" We have hundreds of thousands in
England, from whom both employment and their
main and cheapest article of food being withdrawn,
must be relieved; in Ireland we have millions in
even a worse plight, or soon to be so. Whence is
the relief to come ? By grants from Government,
by Voluntary contributions of the wealthy, or from
what other source ?

One thing
.:11

at least is clear. Great masses of
people will not voluntarily starve. We cannot shut
them up in our workhouses, which would not hold
a tithe of those who, we fear, will be dependent
upon our bounty. No new tinkering of the corn-
laws will materially aid us, for the foreigner is in
much the same condition with ourselves, and will
want all the food he can procure. The demolition
of the whole of the existing protection would only
put the amount of duty repealed into the pockets
of the capitalist and the foreign agriculturists and
merchants. In Ireland such a measure, as one of
is wholly out of the question. That country,
will seek relief for itself, in the
s of agrarian disturbance. Already the anti-
-,ent has spread amongst the population

it is too apparent,

nost wretched counties; and, ill some, the
population, even if disposed to do so, cannot pay.
No collectable amount of poor-rates would meet the
emergency there. That country will have to be
subsidised, and heavily too, by the British Govern-
ment, who must originate and carry on themselves
those great public works which the landlords of
Ireland, mulcted of a large portion of their rentals,
will find themselves unable to execute.

The difficulties are stupendous, however we re-
gard them. They compose a knot which we shall
cut, for untying it is beyond our hope. No
conomical legislation is applicable

Merely DS

emoval of an evil of teriiporary emergency—
which, as it spurns all established rule, and
;raced to no cause humanly remediable, may

.NTe must, therefore, resort to an irregular

le of action

In our own country, it is clear
that we can no longer be guided, as to the relief of

the stringent rules of the New Poor I
NVe shall be compelled to resort to the old
stem of outdoor relief in cases of temporary pau-
perism. The pressure, in. rates, no doubt will fall
heavily upon the middle and wealthier classes in
our large towns ; but it must be borne. It will fall
heavily, too, in agricultural parishes. The only
means for both classes to enable themselves to bear
the infliction, is providing employment upon useful
7:orks for the population thus thrown upon
their hands for support. Railways might be pressed
forward, Government lightening the draughts upon
- Dockets of the shareholders by temporary loans.
of the soil might in the same way be pro-
extensive scale. Above all, we might
ortunity of our superfluity of labour to
...,ensive and thorough reform of the sa-
condition of our large towns, the repayment
~arns in aid granted by Government being
cad over such a period of years as would obviate
the necessity of oppressive rates, at a period when
the population of those towns have such heavy
demands upon their benevolence and their money.
Anything less direct than these or similar measures,
we feel convinced, will not meet the emergency of
the times which are approaching.

public

seize t

t seems to be established by general consent,
especially amongst Conservatives, that the
g-Radical and ultra free-trade parties are to be
m►tted to manage the affairs of this great king-
om, and to remodel its institutions, at their own
pleasure and after their own pet patterns, until
something very startling—some gross outr, ge upon
the feelings and principles of the Conservative party
—awakens them and the country to a sense of their
common danger. Lord John Russell, we are told,
is a srifer minister than Sir Robert Peel : ergo, it is

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