The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-01-26 00:00:00

original avocations? is the important question which
suggests itself for our serious consideration.
There are many reasons why we conclude this to
be a highly improbable event. In the first place it
would be sheer madness, with the present calami-
tous state of Ireland as a warning, to tolerate any.
longer the growth of the class, to which these men
belong. A. cottier tenantry, depending for subsis-
tence solely upon the potato root, cannot consis-
tently with the permanent amelioration of the social
condition of that country, or even with safety to
the institutions of the empire, be allowed tu continue
in the occupation of the soil. A new and better
mode of cultivzition must be adopted, and a dif-
ferent description of crops substituted for those at

present raised. Capital and science must be
brought in aid of the natural resources of the land,
if Ireland is ever to become a self-sustaining coun-
try, and to be able to bear the burthen of its own
poor. To effect this, an extensive depopulation
must take placp; and when we withdraw from the
country the employment which we are at present
providing for its peasantry, upon public or repro-.
ductive works, we shall do so, with almost the cer-
tainty before our eyes, that a great portion of the
labourers, who have at length been taught to live
will never be either able, or inclined,
to return to their former precarious dependence
upon the produce of a patch of land, and the habits
of indolence which that dependence creates. .We
shall then dtubtless see the present tide of immi-
uppetinn • A -

wages,

witness any reflux of the peasantry to their native
soil.

The effect which must thus be produced upon
the condition of the labouring masses in the coun-
try it is not difficult to foresee. For years past, in
all our seats of industry and commerce, the im-
ported labour of Ireland has been pressing upon
the comforts and reducing the wages of the British
artisan and operative. Already Irishmen fill all
the subordinate situations in our industrial fabric.
They work for less, because they can live for less,
than Englishmen. They rush with avidity into the
worse paid employments, are content with the
worst description of habitations, and infect with
their filthy and squalid habits every locality in
which they settle themselves. The new importa-
tions, however, which are now arriving amonast us

daily, and spreading themselves over the manufac-
turing districts, are
.even of a worse class than any
which have preceded them. Many are confirmed
and habitual mendicants, and all are in a state of
pauperism. We cannot support them either as
beggars or as paupers. Gradually they must be
compelled to take up the same practices of industry
which they witness amongst our own population ;
and it is creditable to the national character
that, as a class, the Irish labourer or operative has
always shown himself in this country second to
none in the readiness with which he takes up new
pursuits, and the persevering industry with which
he is ready to toil. A further and a greater dete—
rioration of the condition of the English labourer
and operative must inevitably follow the increased
pressure which must thus be created upon the
laboUr market.

Are we now, or have we the prospect of be' g, in
a position to absorb this increased supply of hands
in any branch of our domestic industry ? We are
not. The cotton manufacture, it is clear, cannot
employ those already dependent upon it. Had we
even a large addition to our customers for manu-
factures, we have not, and cannot procure, the raw
material to supply them. Indeed, as we shewed
last week, we are in danger of not having a
sufficient stock to meet even a diminished con-
sumption. Most other branches of industry are
depressed by various causes ; and even railway en-
terprise is insufficient to provide work for all the
labour which is pressing upon us for employment
A plentiful harvest or two, an increased culth

of cotton, and a revival of the demand from foreign
markets, may, howe

country to a state of

greater activity

but, in the

meantime, the con

.ng of the newappli-

cants for employment will have succeeueu
ing down the price of labour to the minimum upon
which existence can be supported ; and the contact
with the masses of wretchedness introduced into
our manufacturing towns and villages will too
probably have produced a sad deterioration in the
character and habits of our labouring classes.
The remark, that Ireland is the chief difficulty of
the statesman, was never more strikingly correct
than at the present moment. The povertyand de-
gradation of that unhappy land is the millstone
which England seems for ever destined to have
hung round her neck.

We are informed, on authority upon which we
can place implicit reliance, that the very obnoxious
Bill, with which the ports of Great Britain were
threatened,—the Tidal Harbours' Bill,—has been

withdrawn by its promoters. Thanks, in a great
measure, to the press for this triumph of truth and
justice over attempted tyranny. But for the warn-
ing note sounded, and the spirited protests for-
warded to the Government by the various local
bodies throughout the kingdorit, Whig-Radicalism
would ere long have had the most sumptuous feast
of jobbery and patronage upon which it has ever
yet fattened and fed its hungry dependants.

OUR readers are; no doubt, aware of the spirited
efforts made last. year by the Guardian Gas Com-
pany to procure an Act of Incorporation, for the
purpose of supplying to the public of this town a
cheaper supply of gas. The application in question
was, it will also be remembered, rejected, on the
condition exacted by the Parliamentary Committee
from the existing companies, that the price of gas
should be reduced from its then present price of
6s. per 1000 cubic feet to 4s. 6d. Thus far. the
company succeeded in realizing a saving to the
consumers, equal to one-fourth of their consump-
rion, for which we ought to be most grateful.
From an advertisement in another column it
will be seen that the same parties are again about

to apply to Parliament for an Act ; and we trust
that such application will not, on this occasion, be
permitted to be staved off in the same way as last

year. The promoters of this company are in a
positioh to prove that an excellent gas can be pro-
duced and supplied to c insumers at 3s. Bd. per
lop° feet ; and it is a well-ascertained fact, that
the facilities for its manufacture are about to sus-
tain an immense increase. Science, applicable to
the manufacture of gas, is progressing day by day ;
and, we feel assured that there will be ample room
and encouragement for this, or any other company
which is disposed to give to the public a fair share
of the advantage' which those increased facilities
and advanced science afford them. In urging the
claims of this company upon the su

t of the
public, we may correct a notion which we suspect
prevails, that the object sought by them is cheap
gas, and not a return for capital invested. Such is
not the case. Their object is a supply of this in-
dispensible article at the lowest
consumer, with at the same tim