The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-09-10 00:00:00

' STOPPING THE SUPFLIES

"A
.rumour has ~;;a;ciusof of holding a
preliminary meeting in this town, to deliberate on the grave
question of refusing to pay any direct taxes to the govern-
ment, until the corn laws be abolished, in imitation of the
course adopted by Earl Fitzwilliam and others, during the
agitation for the Reform Bill. We think any such course
would be illegal if carried out by a public meeting, or recom-
mended by any association.' Individuals may refuse to pay
the assessed taxes in money without violating the law, which
provides for such cases by a distraint and sale of the property
of defaulters. To stop the supplies, so far as the assessed
taxes go, it would be only necessary for the corn law aboli-
tionists to obey the law by quietly and peaceably letting its
officers take their course. We question if any auctioneer in
Manchester, or other towns of Lancashire, would' be found
willing to sell goods so distrained, and we are sure there
would be no purchasers.
" A respectable correspondent has furnished us with the
following note on this important subject :—" We have heard
from several quarters repeated intimations that in this town
parties of the highest respectability have resolved they will
not voluntarily pay any more taxes to the revenue till the
trade in corn is fre. We believe the resolution is not con-
fined to secular persons. How will it appear if ministers of
religion, whose hearts bleed for the oppression of their
brethren, and who have resolved to mingle their sympathies
with the poor and suffering, shall be dragged to prison, or
their property confiscated, for the maintenance of an un-
righteous system 1' "
Some people may perhaps be inclined to say with Polonius,
"if this be madness there's method in it." Be this as it
may, the article we have quoted is not destitute of the merit
(the only one it has) of shewing us to what extremes the in-
terested excitement on the corn-laws in the manufacturing
districts may lead the people, and their blind guides also. An
end is here proposed to the legislature and to the government,
which end, if not quietly surrendered, is to be taken by com-
pulsion. A rebellious and insolent tone, it will be observed,
pervades the whole composition, bit to give it something
like a semblance of honest political comment, reference is
made to the proceedings of a peer of the realm on a former
period of excitement, advice is gravely offered, and the whole
terminates by a sentence in which cant, hypocrisy, and hum-
bug are combined.
A correspondent of this accredited organ of the league
says, there have been repeated intimations that parties
in Manchester, "of the highest respectability," have re-
solved not to pay any. more taxes to the revenue, volun-
tarily, till the trade in corn is free. All we have to say
on this resolution of these men of the highest respectability
is, that it is really amusing to see how the love of notoriety
will manifest itself. The modes of its manifestation, too, are
not the least curious part of the phenomenon. Some men
become murderers, some suicides, and there have been many
incendiaries ; some, in the very spirit of maytyidom, as it is
explained in these days, invite notoriety within the walls of
a prison, whilst others, from the self same principle, court
ruin out of it ; some are pleased to lavish thousands in the
pursuit of the same object, whilst there are others who won't
pay the fiftieth part of a farthing, because otherwise they
might be in danger of ranking with the common herd, who,
by paying all legal demands upon them, cannot possibly
emerge from obscurity : and so on in a hundred other ways.
In the case before us, the " parties of the highest respecta-
bility" aim at the same end, but on a grander scale than any
yet enumerate(;, and by instruments the very names of which
are formidable enough to sink a kingdom. Discontent and
rebellion are the agents by which their operations are to be
guided ; the dissolution of government, the annihilation of
security, and the confusion of all rights, social, moral, and
political, are to be the fiery elements by which their fame is
to be made, unless their longing for notoriety is not appeased
by the credit of having caused the destruction of the corn-
laws.

Verily, if the proceedings of the Anti-Corn-Law League
have hitherto failed in exciting scorn, (though to assume that
would argue a belief that this is the age of miracles,) it is
impossible that this last grand thought of " stopping the
supplies" should not produce a general feeling of that de-
scription.