The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-11-30 00:00:00

Nov. 30, 1847.

TRADE IN LIVERPOOL, AND STATE OF

COMMERCE.

(From Lord George Bentinck's speech.)
Within my own knowledge, during the last six weeks,
some of the merchants and importers of Liverpool have
sold 22,000 bales of cotton at a loss of £BB,OOO ; and in
the year before last, their loss upon the same commodity
amounted to £lOO,OOO, thus affording a premium, a bonus,
and a bounty to the foreign manufacturer to come here
and beat Englishmen in their own market. (Hear, hear.)
For eight years past the stocks of cotton at Liverpool were
never so low as they are at the present time. These
gentlemen tell us that a short cotton crop is the great
cause of all the distress. But what is the spectacle which
England presents ? Why, that she is at present the
greatest exporting country of raw cotton, the material of
our staple manufacture. Then it is a want of cotton that
has produced this distress ? No ' • is it a want of credit ?
It is your restrictive monetary laws, your cruel Bank
Charter Act ; your system, the true object of which we
were let know by the Elbing letter, of endeavouringbv anti-
cipation to correct any toogreat commercialspeculation ;it
iv your act of parliament, passed with the view of making
things in England artificially cheap, so that when, by your
fren imports, you have allowed all the gold ta pass from the
country, because foreign countries would not take your
manufactures in return, you might then bring hack the gold
again—this it is that has produced the distress. (Hear,
hear.) You have cotton selling at £4 the bag below the
cost price • sugar at 6s. and Bs. the cwt. below the price it
was purchased at in Cuba or Brazil ; tea sold by the pound
retail at a price less than what it cost the merchant by the
chest in Canton. These are the works ofyour free-traders,
who must bolster up their new-fangled schemes by means
of this Bank Charter Act. lam assured—l speak in the
presence of mill-owners and cotton-spinners, who may
contradict me if they can—that for the first time in the'
history of cotton manufactures, calicoes and yarns have'
been sold at the price the cotton cost. (Hear, hear.) Do'
you think that it is a-profitable trade for England? (Hear,
hear.) It will bring back the gold perhaps—it will bring
back the golden image fortherighthon. baronetthamember
for Tamworth to worship—but will it benefit the country ?
(From Lord Alin Russell's Speech.)
I find, on looking to the returns, that, in the 'nine
months ending October 10; 1845, the amount of articles
of British and Irish manufactures exported from the king-
dom was £41,732,000; that for- the same period in 1846
it was £40,800,000, and for the same period in 1847 to.
£39,975,000. This does, to be sure, exhibit a difference,
as compared with the two preceding years, but it is no'
such falling off as should inspire any one with despond-
ency, or that, coming after -those prosperous years, it is
such a falling off as should dispirit any one looking to the
future for the permanent prosperity of the country.
(Hear.) I find that the exports from Liverpool of British
manufactured goods to the United- States for the three
quarters ending October, 1846, were to the amount of
£4,629,586, and that for the three quarters ending Octo-
ber, 1846, they amounted to £6,791,000, making a differ-
ence in favour of exports this year from Liverpool to the
United States of £2,261,414. (Hear, hear.) This fact
shows us, that according to the wholesome process of
trade and exchanges the food vip imported into this coun-
try in greater quantity than usual had been'the cause of
greater export of our manufactures."