The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-09-17 00:00:00

is in view

Let us see, then, the conclusion to which we have arrived.
By the reduction of the corn and timber duties, we secure
only the consumption of the least valuab'e of our foreign
markets, viz., those which take from us almost exclusively
cotton yarn. By the proposed equalization of the sugar du-
ties, we exchange the consnmption of our own free colonies
for that of the slave colonies of foreign states—a market for
valuable fabrics for one requiring only those of the lowest
and least valuable quality. We stimulate only the moat un-
profitable portion of our export trade ; and where we do sen-
sibly increase the demand for our finished productions, we
_only-arrive at that result through a large reduction of the
wages of the manufacturing community ! We have omitted
altogether, in this " analysis," any consideration of the ef-
fect of the proposed measures—of this much vaunted free
trade policy—upon the condition of our large agricultural
community, upon the home consumption of our manufac-
tured goods, upon our colonies, our shipping, or upon the
revenue. We have not inquired whether a people, dependent
entirely upon the bare remuneration derived by the export
trade, can afford to consume imported commodities as here-
tofore—to endure taxation as heretofore ; but, confining our-
selves to their effect upon the export trade alone, we have
shewn that even that trade will not be largely benefitted by
the measures in question.

Are we then, it behoves us seriously to ask, about to em-
bark upon an experiment of so vast a nature as the transfer
of our agricultural prosperity to foreign shores—an experi-
ment involving the stability of our entire social fabric, and
threatening certain and heavy injury to our internal trade,
in order merely to enable the large manufacturer and cotton-
spinner to deluge the markets of Europe with the produce of
his machinery—with his power-loom cloths and his cotton
yarn? Is it to increase the profits of a comparatively small
class, and to stimulate the most worthless portion of our ex-
ports, that Great Britain is to cease to be a home fed nation?
—that a valuable home demand for her manufactures is to
be destroyed, and that the labourer is to be deluded by the
prospect before his eyes of a cheap loaf, which he is cut off
from the opportunity of purchasing ? We trust not. We
trust that the parliament of Great Britain will listen to no
such proposition, and that the people of Great Britain will
pause before they permit their judgments to be led astray by
the seducing terms in which it is offered-. The cry for
" cheap bread" is not a cry fin- the poor man, for the shop-
keeper, or for the middle classes even. It is the cry exclu-
sively of the millowner, of the capitalist, of the trading ad-
venturer ; and its true meaning is " cheap labour," a scram-
ble for the trade of the world, periodical bankruptcy and
ruin, in the midst of which the manufacturing democrat,
directing the passions of a hunger-maddened multitude
against the institutions of their country, hopes to climb,
with his ill-got paid, into the seals of England's aristo-