The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-05 00:00:00

THE WEATHER AND CROPS.

All persons connected with agriculture concur in stating
that a season of greater promise than the present has not
opened upon the Cumberland farmer for many years. With
the exception of two or three slight showers we have now
been favoured with continued dry weather for two months,
and during the latter half of the period it has been nearly
as mild as in the middle of summer. Notwithstanding the
long continued drought, everything, even grass, is growing
well. This is probably owing to the moist state of the ground
from the quantity of rain which fell in the course of last
year, and at the commencement of this. There is every rea-
son to expect that, by the blessing of Providence, crops of
every description, including fruit, will be most luxuriant.—
Carlisle Patriot.

Nothing can be more beautiful than the weather, but the
thirsty land begins to want rain. Such a spring we do not
remember. It is quite a season of the olden time, and if we
do not get nipped by one of our Lancashire May-winters, the
harvest will be uncommonly early. A friend who has been
in the southern parts of the county informs us that he has
heard the cuckoo, and seen sheep-shearing.—Lancaster
Gnzette.

The month of April, which has for years brought with it
its showers, sleet, and storms, and in some instances a re-
turn of winter, must be recorded as having commenced and
terminated with but one day's rain ; every other day pre-
sented all the lovely appearance of summer. The fruit trees
are all in full bloom or bud, and the vegetable world presents
the promise of abundant crops. There is still no great out-
cry for water, but to the numerous beautiful plants and
flowers it would be of great service. If the merry month of
May he as auspicious as its predecessor, the greatest abun-
dance may be fully anticipated.—Hull Times.
Mr. James Liley, of Bondgate Cottage, Ripon, has now
growing in his garden a fine crop of early peas and beans
which are in full blossom, and have been so above a week,
showing the mildness of the season. Some of them are in
pod.—Leeds Intelligeneer.
There is a splendid show of plum, cherry, and pear blos-
soms this year. The damson trees are quite loaded with
bloom. There is also a very good promise of apple blossom.

—lbid. _
The fine weather which has prevailed since the rain which
fell on the 11th and 12th instant has done wonders for agri-
culture, and for the last fourteen or fifteen days there never
perhaps was known such uninterrupted sunshine in the
month of April. An immense additional surface of bare soil
has been expoked to the sun's rays, owing to the late-sown
wheat not having yet covered the earth with its blade, and
the Lent grain being also later sown than is usually the case ;
and the atmosphere, not receiving its usual vegetable exha-
lation from these local causes, has been unusually dry and
free from clouds, and most favourable for the flowering of
fruit trees, and for every crop except upland grass on poor
soils,— Worcester Journal.

It is impossible to imagine more propitious weather than
we have enjoyed during the past fortnight. An uniformly-
high temperature, and frequent bursts of powerful sunshine
have urged vegetation forward with forcing-house rapidity.
Forest, field, and garden, alike attest the genial influence ;
and the grass lands exhibit a luxuriance of verdure quite un-
sual at so early a period of the season. April—the opening
month—has never verified her title more fully than in the
year 1840. The greatest degree of heat in the sun in 1839
was upon the 18th of June, when the mecrury reached 111
degrees off Fahrenheit; but on Saturday last 114, being 3
degrees higher than any one day last year.—Staffordshire
Gazette.

RAILROADS, POST-HORSES, AND COACHES.

(From the Sheffield Mercury.)

To those who are in the frequent habit of travelling, rail-
roads will prove of immense advantage. They vastly econo-
mise time and money, and reduce to almost nothing the risk
of labour attendant upon long journies. They also possess
the power to run down all competition, and have not failed
to annihilate the last vestiges of rivalry through lines of coun-
try where common road coaches might, after all, be consi-
dered a public accommodation. Great, however, as mtiy be
the superiority of railway travelling, it cannot be denied that
the new system acts most ruinously upon the old one, not
only as having in its favour all the advantages that practical
science could bring to its aid, but by a gross inequality in
taxation upon the two. We have more than once adverted
to the oppressive tendency of the post-horse duty, and the
assessed taxes upon innkeepers and others who let out to hire
carriages and horses. We have shown that in some cases
the taxes amount to more than the entire fare for the same
distance by railway. " Competition speediliiiisaPpears under
such disadvantages ; in fact, it is taxed out of existence, and
public convenience suffers in many cases by the destruction
brought upon the postmasters. To be subject to a tax of
threepence per mile in one case, and half a farthing in the
other, is disparity enough to create a monopily in favour of
railwtys ; and it requires but little experience in travelling
across the country, and of the means at present employed to
carry persons from one part to another, to see that the pre-
sent taxes and restrictions upon those, whose only resource
is to hire vehicles on the common road must, ere long, de-
stroy that means of reaching one's destination. It is too
bad that there should be such an unjust inequality. but it
will be worse when no means are left to convey people from
one town to the next.
Those who have heretofore kept post-horses and carriages
have depended mainly upon the more frequented roads for
support, and when that part of their trade is taken away they
have not as much employment left as will enable them to pay
rid
Warrington,
taxes. See how this system has already begun to work.
seeWe understand that on the old line of road from Liverpool
to Manchester,
aorfrbi nugsti on ne
s,
st
te there
Liverpoolis tiot a
have solitary coach
to be n. If
a vbusiness
at Prescot, he can get there by coach, and if he wishes to get
on to Warrington, he had a short time since, and is proba-
bly no better off at present, no choice but to walk, there
being neither horse nor vehicle in the town licensed to let out
to hire. The railways have destroyed the great traffic of the
town, and the unequal pressure and foolish restrictions upon
travelling on the turnpike roads render it profitless for any
one to have a post-horse or saddle-horse for public accom-
modation. It cannot be denied that this is a state of things
in a commercial country which should not exist, and which,
as they have the power, it is the duty of our legislators to re-
move. •
We perceive Mr. Godson presented petitions from Staines
and other places on Wednesday evening, praying for a re-
mission of the duty on post-horses and on carriages let out
to hire. This must be done generally if the evil is to be re-
moved, an evil which very materially interferes with the
movement of commercial men, as well as with the agricul-
tural interests. The trade to remain in existence must be
wholly unrestricted, so that any man in a small town may be
left at liberty to employ or let out his horse or carriage with-
out license, and without the risk of being informed against
and fined. No modification of the present system will be
sufficient to correct the evil—it must be done away with.