The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-11-23 00:00:00

the absence of excitem

ace of that

highly flattering eircurnst

anco that her new

The adoption of a system c

ment—w

to feed the bloated and unwieldy thing in whose
growth are embarked the peace and security of Great
Britain, and whose course is to desolate and to trample
down the industry of other nations. On the contrary,
we are satisfied that it would be a source of grief and
bitterness to our manufacturing free-traders to see any
considerable number of the distressed population of
Great Britain deported from the scene of their wretch-
edness, by a humane effort of legislation, and allowed
to establish themselves in a land of plenty, and in a
condition of well-rewarded industry; and that they
would infinitely prefer seeing them pine on, under the
wasting hand of poverty, as sores upon the face of the
land, to subserve the ends of agitation, until they can
be subjected to the torture of that state of " transition"

'hich they must pass through before the tillers of the

soil—the hardy yeomanry and agricultural labourers
of Great Britain—can be converted into the living
mechanism required to attend a spinning-jenny or a

wer-loom

We nothing fear, however, that the government of
Sir Robert Peel will be driven from its wise and
humane purposes by the sneers or the threats of an
unprincipled and disaffected faction. A noble field of
exertion is before them. They have within their reach
the means of extending- British influence—of extending
British commerce to a degree almost incalculable.
They have within their reach the means of adding,
almost without limit, to the sum of human happiness
and to the spread of civilization. They have the power
of establishing the supremacy of the British name
throughout the world and for ever ; and they will not,

we are satisfied, neglect the opportunity.
In connexion with the subject of emigration from
Great Britain and Ireland to our colonial possessions,
there is one subject—scarcely second to it in im-
portance—to which the government of Sir Robert Peel
and Lord Stanley may at this moment consistently
devote a portion of its attention. Need we
.say that
we allude to the subject of immigration of the free
labourers of other countries into our West Indian
colonies ? In the securing of an adequate supply of
labour in those inexhaustible and fertile mines of
wealth, what vast benefits to the interests of British
commerce—what invaluable results to the interests of
humanity itself—are involved ! With proper culture,
the colonies of Great Britain are sufficient to supply,
with their products, the markets of the whole world.
They demand only to be furnished with hands to till
their rich soils and to gather the fruits of their teeming
luxuriance; and in return, they offer to the British
merchant the benefit of their increased production of
British produce and manufactures.
Already, by the encouragement which Ims of late
years been given to the trade with our Eastern Em-
pire, the importance of that portion of our possessions,
as a consumer of British manufactures, is rapidly de-
veloping itself. In Bengal the imports of cotton goods
from Great Britain nearly tripled themselves within the
last three years, as will be seen from an authentic
statement which we quote :
In 1837-38 the value of cotton piece goods

59,00,000 Rs.
1838-39 72,00,000
1839-10
1840.41 138,00,000
and in woollen goods the increase is extraordinary—
;he value of the imports of this staple manufacture
ming—

imported was,

In 1837-38
1838-39
1839-40
1840-41
In haberdashery, iron, malt liquor, hardware, and
other articles, the increase is in a similar ratio.

9,00,000 Rs
7,00,000
9,00,000
17,00,000

That a similar result would attend the development
of the mighty capabilities of our West Indian posses-

sions we cannot doubt ; and at a time when we are
threatened with exclusion from the markets of the
Brazils, unless we consent to measures hostile to Bri-
tish interests in those islands; it cannot surely be out
of season to call the attention of the government and
of the colonial office to the important and pressing na-
ture of the question. With a supply of labour, at all
adequate to their wants, our West Indian colonies
would speedily he in a position to fear no hostile efforts
of the anti-colonial faction here, and as little to dread
any foreign competition; and we are satisfied that an
enquiry instituted by government would at once elicit
the fact, that the means of transport to those colonies
are alone wanting to secure the object which the colo-
nists have in view, and at the same time to provide for
the languishing commerce and manufactures of the
mother country a market far more than able to supply
any deficiency which can arise from the threatened de-
fection of the Brazils.

We have the more confident hope that the import-
ance of this subject will impress itself upon the govern-
ment, from the character and identity of the distin-
guished statesman who now holds the seals of the
colonial office, and under whose notice it must come.
To Lord Stanley we owe the carrying out, without the
commission of injustice, of the noble measure of negro
emancipation; and we cannot believe that his lordship,
watching as he must have done the working of that
measure, can be unconscious of the fact that, by its
consequences, as evinced in the prosperity or decline of
the West Indies, must stand or f4ll the question whe-
ther slavery is to cease throughout the world, or to be
perpetuated in a harsher form, and with added cruel•
ties in every land save that of England and her colo-
nies. A large and liberal measure of immigration will
ensure to those colonies a permanent and solid prospe-
rity, which will proclaiiii to the world that free labour
can compete upon equal terms with slavery—that the
cause of humanity is not a losing cause ;--,an d without
such a measure we are confident that the progress of

litable means to promote that

gration, upon a

large and comprehensive scale—a measure which is at
length taken up in earnest by her Majesty's govern'
regard, as indeed, we expressed in our last

publication, as one of infinite importance to a commer-
cial and manufacturing community. At the present

moment too, with the stagnation and distress which we
see around us, its consideration is peculiarly well-

timed ; for we are quite satisfied that it cannot have
escaped the notice of the government, and must be
impressed by them upon the community, that the true

source of the commercial greatness of this country,
the mainstay, at all times, of her manufacturing in-
dustry, are to be found in her vast and increasing co-
lonial possessions.
" Our Colonies " writes a London contemporary, the
Morning lierald, "are certainly our most profitable ex-
ternal customers ; our population at home is rapidly descend-
ing into pauperism ; thousands are desirous, in the agony 0f
their present wretchedness, to transfer their labour to those
dependencies where their services are in demand ; and by
such transfer, numbers who are now a burden on the rest of

the community, might undoubtedly be converted into valu-
able consumers of our products. New sources of revenue to

the state, new channels of employment for the people, new
fields for advantageous investment of the capital of the
we t:;:ty, would, it cannot be denied, be created by the en'

eouragement of emigration to the territorial colonies of the
United Kingdom."

And yet we venture to predict, that the proposition
of any measure by which the admitted disposition of
numbers of our impoverished fellow-countrymen to

make that transfer of their industry to our colonies i 3

to be encouraged, will be met, by the unprincipled
spouters of the free trade agitation, with a sneer of
contempt, if not even with a shout of execration and
disappointment. " The philosophers" can see nothing
which lies beyond the day or the hour. The perma-
nent strength of the empire—the permanent comfort
add happiness of its people—are not the objects of
their care, or towards which their truculent agitation
is directed. They never descend to weigh the benefit
to be derived from a commerce with free and indepen-
dent British people, established in happy affluence in
our distant colonies—consuming the best fabrics of our
looms .and favouring exclusively the products of the
mother country—and those to be reaped from a
scramble in the markets of the world for a temporary
supremacy,—at the sacrifice of the comforts and the
moral welfare of the labouring population at home,
whose very heart's blood is systematically wrung from
them drop by drop to purchase and to sustain

Om - that cause will have been retarded rather than advanced
throughout the globe, by the passing of that bill, of
iced which his lordship is justly proud, and for which he
:nen has received the nraise of every friend of suffering
d so humanity.

it Is
that

The " Committee of Arrangements" of the Franklin Lec-
ture—a body which we presume consists of one individual—
have furnished us with what they term a statement of their
accounts, by which it is made to appear that the nett proceeds
of the lecture given on Wednesday night is just X 134 lls•
In this sum, however, is included a sum of £6 received as
donations subsequently; and the nett proceeds therefore
of the lecture itself are, £l2B lls—which is about the
amount we expected would be produced to the charity.

A contemporary, in giving this statement, observes, in al-
lusion to the remarks in our last upon the management of
this affair, that the committee must have

economical