The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-05-12 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
ft Correspondent says, that ft,r the first week in April last, the
traffic uprn 1800 miles ;4 railway was at the rate of ti millions
tper annum; sod supp•-,s;ng the cost of construction to be on
an average per mile, it would give 45 millions as the
cost of that length of railway. tic deducts 4,1 per cent. for
the cost of working'. and it leaves £3 9.:0,1:00, which will pay
a diVidend of 6-t per cent. The first week in April, he consi-
ders, will be uncer the avevagr rate per annum; and of the
1600 miles, the traffic of the gre..ler part is not yet developed.
On the who:e. the result is such as to lead him to believe
there is not ITIUCiI cause (whe,l the really bad schemes are
w
swept a
ay) to tear any ill effect; from railway extensi -n.

gLlit Kib,npeol

TUESDAY MO RATIN G, MAY 12, 1846.

. The statesmen who compose her Majesty's pre-
aent Administration are, no doubt, individually and
personally, men of the highest honour and truthful-
ness; yet it is strange to observe what a large
amount of the very opposite qualities they are occa-
. signally tempted to display. In their private capa-
city they would revolt at the slightest approach to a
mis-statement of a fact, or a disingenuous colouring
of an argument ; but when breathing the atmosphere
of Downing-street, or engaged in party conflict
within the walls of St. Stephen's, their whole men-
tal and moral economy seems to have undergone a
transformation. The man is ,unk in the Minister;
and weapons from which he would have shrunk with
loathing, if used to advance his private views of
• interest or emolument, are seized hold of and used
without compunction, when the object is to advance
the interests of a party or to secure a parliamentary
• triumph. Does an opponent make a slip in debate,
how readily it is taken advantage of, and tortured
from the sense which it was intended to convey !
Has a Minister inadvertently allowed his personal
convictions to ooze out to the detriment of his con-
sistency as a public man, how promptly his col-
leagues fly to the rescue, to repair the injurious con-
sequences which may accrue to the measure which
. he is bound by his official capacity to support in
defiance of such coneic,ions t Disingenuousness
has taken the place of straightforward dealing ; and
the search after truth, as the basis of legislation, is
postponed to )a longing to shine as a successful
parliamentary e.':tician.
The episode of the error in a recent return of the
House of Commons is not yet forgotten. The pub-
lic hear in mind that invariably such errors are in
the right direction, They serve their temporary
purpose of bolstering up a ministerial argument and
swaying a majori,e; and any subsequent correction
comes too late. file case in question was a bad
one. It looked suspicious at all events; but there
was a subordinate official to hear the blame, and
ministerial honour was left untarnished. An in-
stance, however, of similar perversion of fact by a
oebinet minister has just occurred, where there is no
such rea-'y escape by the ordinary mode of trans-
ferring the onus to another. In the debate on Wed-
nesday week upon the Factory Bill, Mr. Fielden
quoted the father of the Premier as having demanded
a great limitation in the hours of labour—as having,
in fact, contemplated a term nearly approaching to
that proposed by the advocates of the ten-hours
bill. Sir James Graham, in his reply, gave utterance
to the followi g assertion:---
"All that Sir Robert Peel ever proposed was, not that
.ten hours should be the limitation, but twelve, which is
now the law. The limitation proposed by Sir R. Peel only
applied to children of eight or nine years of age till the
Ne of sixteen.''
ow here is a statement, deliberately made, with all
the supercilious self complacency of the right hon.
secretary's manner, ureontradicted at the time, and
which, therefor—, answered 'ts purpose. Sir Robert
Peel sate by and heard his father's views of the sub-
ject thus propounded. There were, moreover, mill
owners in the hoese old enough to remember what
those views were. Yet, what is the fact ? We give
it in the words of a letter which has just been ad-
dressed by Lord Ashley to the Short Time Corn-
..nrittee :
" I have now lying before we a copy of the bill intro-
•duced by Sir Ruhert Peel in 1813, when the labour, as you
know, was much lees severe than at the present day. That
1)111 passed the first and second readings, and was amended
by the committee. Here is the clause :—'And be it
enacted, that no person, being under the age of eighteen
years, shall he emp.oyed in any such mill, manufactory,
or building, for more than ten hours and a half in any
Int. day.' "
The misstatement here is glaring enough, and Sir
James Graham would do well to purge his reputa-
Sion by explaining how it arose, or at least by con-
fessing that it was one of the too-frequently recur-
ring ministerial ruses. Another assertion, how-
ever, of the same speaker, on the same occasion, is
so startlingly opposed to the troth, that we can only
wonder how the requisite amount of assurance was
munmoned up to enable him to venture upon its
utterance. Sir James said :
" An hon. gentleman observed that the working classes
were greatly disappc-nted by the course which had been
pursued by the house in reference to the proposition fer
the reduction of the hours of lahenr to 10 hours. I abso-
lutely deny that this house ever pronounced for a ten-
hours measure.
We give here Lord Ashley's confutation of the
impudent statement :
" On Wednesday afternoon last, we heard this positive
language from the Secretary of State :—' I absolutely
• drafty that this house ever pronounced for a ten-hours
treasure' Let me put before you the amendment that I
moved in March, 1844. Hansard,' page 1,073, vol. 73,
3d series, ' Lord Ashley rose to propose the amendment
of which he had given notice :
" ' That the word night' shall be taken to mean from
six o'clock in the evening to six o'clock in the fallowing
morning, and the word mealtime' shall be taken to mean
an interval of cessation of work, for the purpose of rest
and refreshment, at the rate of two hours a day, with a
nrego to effect a limitation of the hours of labour to ten
in the day.'
"This amendment I moved at the personal request of
Sir James Graham. He stated to me in private previ-
ously to the debate that I should much oblige the govern-
s:sent by raising the question of my proposition at the
very earliest possible period in the bill, and suggested an
amendment on the word night' in the first or interpreta-
tion clause. I saw the difficulties of such a course, but
to oblige the Government I complied with their reouest,
and drew up that form of amendment which Sir James
Graham approved (so far as it would raise the whole
question) before the opening of the discussion.
" Hansard's pages will confirm my statement The
form of my amendment,' said the noble lord, ' requires
no preliminary explanation. I move it in its present
shape ai the request of my hon. friend and the Govern-
ment, though I fear that in adopting that course I subject
myself to some disadvantage.'
" Two divisions were then taken, and both were in fa-
vour of my amendment, after with (1 again quote from
',Hansard, p. 1.260), Sir James Graham said that the
decision which the committee had come to upon the noble
Lord's amendment was a virtual adoption of a ten-hours
MI without modification.' "
Is it not melancholy to find the Minister of a
great nation—the Minister, too, who is especially
entrusted with the improvement of the morals of
the people and the supervision of the admistration
of justice—thus placed in a position so humiliating ?
All the world remembers how the Commons of
England, at the dictation of a minister, stultified
themselves by negativing a principle which they
had twice affirmed. The printed votes of the House
prove the fact. The pages of Hansard record it,
and the acknowledgment from the lips of Sir James
Graham himself, that " The dech4on which the House
had just come to was a rirtual adoption of the Ten
Hours Bill without modification." By what miserable
shuffling can he reconcile with such evidence his pre-
sent " absolute denial that the House ever pronounced
for a ten hours measure ?"
We are sorry to perceive the constant recurrence
of such outrages upon the truth in high places.
They degrade the character of statesmen in the eyes
of that public, before whom it ought to be presented
unspotted and above even the suspicion of blemish.
We may forgive apostasy and tergiversation—even
great as have been those of the Right Hon. Baronet
—we may forbear in our opposition to measures which
we deem dangerous to the public and subversive of
the true interests of the people. But when we see
such means resorted to for promoting their passage
through the legislature; when we see men thus
crawling beneath the feet of a faction—throwing
from them the feelings of high honour which ought
to animate Englishmen—condescending to misre-
present facts, and even to eat their own recorded
words—such forbearance and forgiveness itself be-
come almost a crime.

We live in strange times ; amidst events which
would he startling to the most lethargic, if we had
not been partially prepared for them by "shadows
east before." We are, as a nation, day by day
progressing, and each day faster than in the one
which preceded it, towards one of two extremes—
the establishment of Popery as the ruling influence
in the state, on the one hand, or the repudiation of
religion altogether, as having any settled ground in
our institutions, on the other. The middle and safe
way of tolerant Protestantism we have long ago
deserted and we are drifting now between the
Charybdis of Romanism and the Scylla of Infidelity.
We have enfranchised our Roman Catholic fellow-
countrymen, and admitted them to a share in the
councils of the nation. We were making up our
minds to see carried by an apostate Ministry and a
too subservient Legislature, the endowment of their