The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-06-04 00:00:00

FRIDAY MORNING, JUNE 4, 1841

Mr. Cobden adduced the extreme distress existing
in Manchester as a reason for repealing the corn laws.
Extreme distress, all must admit to be a great evil—
an evil which imperiously rfiipiires to be remedied ; but
it is denied that his recipe would be a cure. There is
a very obvious connection between hunger and. food.
Give bread to the hungry, and you cannot do wrong ;
there is no possibility of error there ; but offer cheap
bread to the needy, and • the same certainty does not
attend your proposal. The story of the Irishman in
London illustrates this point. " What do you charge
here for half-a-dozen eggs )" said he. He was an-

" Sixpence." " Oh," said Paddy,
unconscionable. If I was in Mayo, I could get two
dozen for that money." "Then why did you not stay
in Mayo ?" "Ah, 't was no use—for I could not get

" that's

awered,

the sixpence there."
The corn-law doctors make merchandise of the peo
ple through this fallacy ; they flatter them with the
notion that they are offering them " bread ;" and the
unwary and ignorant are cheated into the notion that
by a repeal of the corn laws they would have "bread ;"
whereas they would only have what the corn-law quacks
and swindlers call " cheap " bread—bread which to
the poor might be just as unattainable as the Irish-
man's two dozen of eggs in Mayo, when he wanted the
sixpence to purchase them. They are practising a
preconcerted trick upon the credulous, and the
fraud is carried on by means of this one word " cheap."
The people falsely suppose that if bread were " low
priced," they would necessarily have it in greater
abundance ; but this is an error. The far greater pro-
bability is, that if bread were made low in price by the
means so furiously clamoured for by the big millown-
ers, it would, in a short time, be much harder to be
got by the poor, and the poor would be greatly in-
creased in number.
On this point the corn quacks labour incessantly to
abuse them, and we lament to say that they have suc-
ceeded to a most lamentable extent.
" High prices and plenty," says Adam Smith, " are
prosperity; low prices and want are misery." This is
a sound aphorism, and easily susceptible of proof. In
the time of the Norman conquest, says Mr. Alison,
the price of wheat was from three shillings and six-
pence to five shillings a quarter; but nevertheless the
labourers had not half the command of the necessaries
and conveniences of life they have now, for the money
wages of labour were a halfpenny a-day during the re-
mainder of the year, and a penny during harvest.
Provisions are incomparably cheaper in Poland and in
Russia than in this country ; but are the Polish or
Russian peasants half as comfortably fed, lodged, or
clothed, as the corresponding classes of this country ?
Every one knows that so far from this being so, or ob-
taining any benefit whatever from the cheap price of
provisions in their own country, they are, in truth, the
most miserable labourers in Europe, and feed upon
scanty meals of rye-bread, in the midst of the splendid
wheat crops which they raise for the more opulent con-
sumers in this country. Wheat and provisions of all
sorts are much cheaper in Ireland than in Great Bri-
tain ; but, nevertheless, the Irish labourers do not en-
joy one half of the comforts or necessaries of life which
fall to the lot of their brethren on this side of the
channel. The mere necessaries of life are sold almost
for nothing in Hindostan and China, but so far from
obtaining any benefit from that low rate of prices, the
labo ring classes are so poor as to taste hardly any-
thing but rice and water. A cheap loaf, therefore, is
not the essential point, but a due proportion between
the price and the means of procuring it.
But, say the corn quacks, the manufacturing opera-
tives will be better off, because, though the loaf falls
in price, their wages will continue unaltered. Now of
all their falsehoods this is the most gross and bars-
faced ; but it has been so often exposed, and it is in
truth so obvious that the manufacturers would have no
interest in the existing agitation without they calcu-
lated on reducing wages in proportion to the lowered
price of bread, that it is unnecessary to say more on
this head. But even if wages were to remain for some
short time (as they possibly might) untouched, the al-
tered or repealed duties would not fail to create fully
as much distress in other quarters as they would re-

medy in this.
We return then to our " Manchester dictator," and
we tell him that repealing the corn duties is not the
way to remedy the distress he speaks of; we tell him
more—we tell him that it would aggravate it tenfold.
With regard to the amount of the distress, we are
quite willing to take all his statements ; for, like every
other argument he adduces, they make against, and
not for him. His account of pauperism and destitu-
tion at Manchester then, although made out by a Po-
pish priest, we shall not question. He might have
added much more to the same effect from the Report
of the Commissioners relative to the Hand-Loom
Weavers. In that report we find that in the north of
England the lowest paid class of weavers seldom earn
more than ss. or 6s. a-week. A family of six persons,
two of them employed, average about 7s. 6d. weekly.
At Ashton-under-Lyne 483 families were visited, whose
average weekly earnings amounted to only 4s. 1 lid. !
The linen-weavers of Yorkshire earn about 7s. 6d. a-
week each. Long hours, small pay, and inconstant
employment, are the hardships with which, from year
to year, they have to contend. The labour-market is
overstocked, while the labourers have to compete with
improved processes of manufacture and the giant
powers of the steam-engine. They are thus engaged
in a hopeless contest, which certain causes may pro-
long, but which no ingenuity or exertion, nor any re-
duction of corn duties, can render ultimately success-
ful.

At Liverpool our lecturer, or " educationer," as they
call the hedge schoolmaster in Ireland, seemed rather
disappointed at not finding the people in so suitable a
state to receive his instructions. The orator was in-

deed almost " non-plushed" in the midst of his oral

owing to this circumstance, until somebody had the
kindness to slip a note into his hand, by which he was
informed that " there were 13,000 families claiming
parish relief in this town." This proved a grateful
and very refreshing piece of intelligence to his parched
soul ; so he thanked his informant, and took courage.
It was certainly a little provoking that the trade of Li-
verpool was not, on the whole, languishing in such a
way as he would have it.

" It was true," he said, " that England had continued to
export nearly as much as she exported before ; but would
any one tell him that our manufacturers and merchants had
been for the last two years exporting to a profit ? He would
ask the merchants of Liverpool to answer that. Perhaps
they did not like to expose their circumstances, and they
were therefore silent, and he might be permitted to take the
silence as an admission that they had not. (' They have
net.')
How long would the trade continue that was carried
on at a loss ? Just so long as the capitalists could stand
out; when their finances were exhausted, they must. fall, and
then where would the trade be? It must be annihilated;
and the process he had described was going on in Lanca-
shire to a fearful extent. Property in manufactures and
faille hai 111141 slepraetatei, within the last three years, 10