The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-06-11 00:00:00

than taught

This small but noisy party being duly impressed
by the powerful eloquence of the Manchester lecturers,
and excited to action by a trifling modicum of the
great propeller (of which the league is reputed to pos-
sess so ample a supply) do, it seems, contemplate pro-
curing candidates to start for Liverpool on anti-corn-
law principles ; but we expect that our esteemed re-
presentatives need not make themselves very uneasy
on this score.

Mr. Cresswell, in his address, alluding to the im-
possibility of any adjustment being produced by the
" violent and unreasoning hostility which it is sought
to raise in one class against another," makes the fol-
lowing just observation :

" Some persons," he says, " may suppose that theprotec-
tion given to agriculture is for the benefit of landowners
alone ; but nothing can he more erroneous. How many in-
terests are bound up and inseparably united with those of the
landowner, the farmer, and the agricultural labourer? How
many heavy burdens are at present borne by the landowners,
which are essential to the welfare of our complicated state of
society, and which cannot be removed from him and imposed
upon the owners of any other description of property ? I can
hardly imagine any thing more important to the well-being of
the nation, than that it should be independent of all fo-
..

reigners for the necessaries of life; and if that be so, is not
the encouragement of agriculture by an adequate protection,
equally a benefit to all classes of the community ? '
This is the proper language of an Englishman and
a true patriot, and a complete answer to those who
raise the stupid cry of " monopoly" against the sup-
porters of the existing laws. 'We doubt sometimes if
these cheap-bread brawlers be Englishmen at all, or
anything better, at all events, than bribed agents of
some foreign power. We will, however, he so far
charitable as to suppose that they have no correct no-
tion of the consequences that would result from that
free trade which they are most strenuous for. They
may be aware that free trade in Brazilian sugar would
be a direct bounty upon negro slavery, hut do they
know that a similar operation in Russian corn would
be productive of a sirnilar'effect on white slavery ? We
extract the following from a pamphlet addressed to
the " Farmers of England, by a Merchant," which
may be useful to some of this party :
" Throughout that immense empire (Russia)," says the
author, " land has no value of itself; it is the cattle which are
upon it that constitute and regulate its value, and that cattle
are our fellow-creatures .1 When an estate is to be sold, the
first question is, how many souls does it hold ? and the an-
swer includes every male, whatever his age ; the value, fer- '
tility, and situation of the land regulating the price per head,
the land itself being a necessary appendage of the bargain,
without any stipulated value, or indeed even a formal con-
veyance by the deed of sale.
" When an estate is let to a farmer, the number of days
that each peasant is obliged to work is duly entered in a book
signed by the landlord and tenant, who then pays the rent,
or, in other words, the value of the slaves' labour to their
owner ; the slaves being obliged to work two, sometimes
three days of the week for nothing, and maintain themselves
by using the remainder of the week in cultivating the scanty
plot of ground allotted to their use.
"The oppression and-infamy of such a system of agricul-
ture, the cruelty of the master, and the sufferings of the slave,
is a subject foreign to our present purpose, and would require,
to do it justice, the pen of Gibbon or of Raynal ; suffice you
should know that predial slavery eAists throughout the vast
extent of the Russian empire, that there is no other mode of
cultivation, and that every bushel qf corn imported into this
country, in times of scarcity, from any part of the Russian
dominions, is fully as much the labour of slaves as oppressed,
though worthy of a better fate, as the blacks who raise the
sugar with which Lord John wished to sweeten yourlea by
importing the same from Brazil.
" The i►unmediate and inevitable consequence of a fixed duty
of Ss. per quarter upon wheat would be, if possible to aggra-
vate the lot of twenty millions of white slaves, who will be
made to work double tides by dint of the cat-o-nine-tails,
now liberally used. Think also that Russia contains tracts
of uncultivated land vast enough to cover the surface of the
rest .f Europe.; -and that within-a radius of four or five.hun-
dred miles round the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of
Asoph,- not a twentieth part of the land—fertile as it is he-
yond any land that you have ever seen—is in 'cultivation,
from want of hands. Lord John's law would, therefore, be-
come the strongest stimulus to the population of Russia
which she ever had ; and let it not be said that increase of
predial slavery will enlarge the market for our manufactures.
Not one of one thousand Russian peasants ever wore a patch
of British goods: their dress in winter consists of sheep's-
skins; in the summer of coarse sail cloth, manufactured by
themselves. You may lose India by encouraging the pros-
perity of-Russia ; but as long as predial slavery shall exist in
that country, you cannot increase the demand for your

It is apparent, from the eloquent addresses of both
our esteemed members, that they feel a deep convic-
tion of the importance of the great struggle now about
to be brought to an issue throughout the kingdom,
and pleasing to find them gratuitously renewing those
pledges of unalterable attachment to our constitution
in Church and State, which first recommended them
to the Electors of Liverpool. On this head the lan-
guage of both is " express and admirable," and we feel
particular pleasure in referring our readers thereto.
Liverpool will do itself much honour by again adding
to the Conservative majority in Parliament two such
able, honourable, and talented men. Whether, when
the time comes, there will really he any opposition or
not, it is of couse impossible for us to say; but it can
be no harm for the Conservative Electors to be on
their guard. We have had enough of the pretended
" Reformers"; the next must be a Conservative—a
Peel flour,e of Commons. Remember, then, that it
will not be enough for the Conservative Electors of the
kingdom merely to do what they have done before;
that won't do now. We must now give Sir R. Peel
and Lord Stanley and their friends a " good working
majority." Should there be a ministerialist opposition
then in Liverpool, let the Electors hear in mind that it
must be served out in very prime style and nothing
less. The Whig-O'Connell Ministers must learn what
confidence the people of Liverpool place in them.

The notorious Dr. Webster, of St. Alban's, is to be
prosecuted' after all. Mr. Wynn moved to this effect
in the House of Commons on Tuesday, and the minis-
terialists, although they chewed their teeth, were yet
afraid to divide the house ; consequently their friend
the doctor is sacrificed. The bribery used at that
election, by which Lord Listowel obtained the vacant
seat of St. Alban's, was a matter of perfect notoriety ;
and it may be recollected that the only reason assigned
by the committee who investigated the case, for not
setting the election aside, was a pretended failure of
proof as to " agency." Thus the seat was secured to
the bed-chamber lord, and a " vote preserved to minis-
ters; but now that the tide has turned against them,
misfortunes pour in, and overtake even the meanest of
their followers, The prosecution against Webster will
be carried on by the Attorney-General, at the instance
of the house; and let it operate as a caveat to all whig
agents at the forthcoming general election.

Disaster after disaster pours in upon the ministers—
once more they have been signally defeated. On
Wednesday evening, during the progress of the " ad-
ministration of justice bill" through the House of
Commons, a question arose whether "a ministry in
abeyance," (as designated by Lord Stanley,) should ap-
point the officers under the bill, as it does not come
into operation until November neat. Sir Edward
Sugden moved "that the appointment of the judges
under this bill should he postponed until October,
when the ministry,' (then in office,) should be em-
powered to appoint them." This motion was carried
on a division by a majority of 18 against ministers,
when Lord John Russell postponed the further pro-
ceeding of the bill till that day three weeks, which, of
course, amounts to an abandonment of it. Poor crea-
tures ! they seem to have no comfort in the agonies of
dissolution, but to be liable to the kicks and bites of
every cur that passes by.

THIS JEWS.—A statistical account of the Jews in Russia
has lately been published at St. Pctersburgh by the Acade-
mician Kopper. It appears from it, that the number resi-
ding by permission in the 17 governments is 1,054,319,
including both sexes. In Volhplia they are most numerous,
constituting a 15th part of the whole population. In Poland
the greater number is in Warsaw, of which the Jews form
one-fourth of the inhabitants ; and, indeed, in both Russia
and Poland, they are greatly more numerous in the towns
than in the country places. In 1837 the total number of
Israelites in Poland was 411,307, of whom 338,667 lived in,
the towns, aid 72,630 in the country.