The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-08-07 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The Mercury is ever prone to impute motives to those who
differ from it, and insinuates that we had "reasons" for sup-
pressing in our report of the inquest in the late cases of cho-
lera " pll !illusion to points which are usually considered very
'.. essential in such twitters." The fact is, that our reporter
was taken seriously ill, soon after the inquest, and was unable
on Monday to attend at the office to complete his report.
which was certainly sent to press in a form in which it would
not have appeared but for that circumstance. Whilst upon
the subject, we may observe, that owing to the unavoidable
absence of one of the editors, and the misplacement of several
corrected proofs, a number of typographical errors were ph-
served in our last publication which would not otherwise
have been allowed.
THE FANCY Far t is suggested by a correspondent that the
children of the Blue Coat Hospital, and of all the public
and charity schools in the town, should be treated to a ram-
ble in the Prince's park during some one or other of the
three days. We have not had an opportunity of making any
enquiries on the subject ; but we take it for granted that the
suggestion has been anticipated by all the heads of our edu-
cational establishments. ; and certain we are that the com-
mittee of the grand festival will afford every facility for the
admission of the children, at such times, and in such man-
ner, as may not interrupt the progress of the proceedings for
the benevolent object in view. We may add that, in our
opinion, a procession, from time to time, of school children,
led by their teachers; showing their little flags and banners;
offering up an occasional hymn or song; gamboling on the
green sward. cr enjoying the sights—to them novel and de-
lightful—would form, to well-reculated minds, an appro-
priate and affecting attraction. That they would be treated
with buns and other slight refres:hment by their respective
generous patrons and others, we can entertain no doubt.

tßib.r:rpoot &tanbarti.

TUESDAY MORNING, AUG. 7, 1849.

The Niagara mail steamer, which arrived yester-
day from New York, brings very little news of a
5 ;nmercial nature. Business was almost entirely
nded, the heat of the weather, and the preva-
A:,! of the cholera, having driven most of the
merchants to their summer resorts. Money was in
abundance, and the rate of interest very low. The
Niagara brings, the season considered, an unusually
fair amount of orders for British manufactures.

THE history of our dealings towards the wretched
negro race presents the most lamentable instance
of national backsliding and selfishness ever exhi-
bited to the world. We were acting righteously
and nobly when we first interfered to put down the
slave trade, as carried on by our own countrymen,
and to discourage it, as carried on by the foreigner.
We were munificent when we liberated, at a heavy
cost, the negroes in our own colonies. But every
subsequent legislative act of ours towards the
African has been marked by gross inconsistency
and even hypocrisy. We have been negotiating
with foreign powers to put down the slave trade by
force, whilst we have given it a tenfold increase by
our encouragement of slave cultivation. We have
sent fleet after fleet to cruise along the swampy and
pestilential shores of Africa to put down the traffic
in men ; but whilst our gallant sailors have been
swept away by disease, and decimated yearly in the
effort, the mock philanthropists of Great Britain
have been neutralising the work by clamouring for
cheap slave-grown sugar. We have offered, in
short, by out legislation, a premium upon the felon
trade, at which we affected to hold up our bands in
pious horror.
It would seem at length, however, that we are to
be driven into a consistent course of action, with
respect to this trade. It is now acknowledged that,
with our markets opened to the produce of slave
cultivation, the exertions of our African squadron
have been almost abortive, and all the valuable
lives lost upon that station literally thrown away.
The following statement, taken from the Foreign-
office Reports, affords convincing proof of this
fact :

Number of Slaves Number captured
exported. by cruisers.
1840 64,114 .. .. 3,616
1841 • • • . 45,097 .. .. 5,966
1842 28,400 .. .. 3,950
1843 • . • • 55,062 .. 2,797
1844 54.102 4,577
1845 36,758 3;519
1846
76,116 2,783
1847 84,356 .. .. 3,967
The exportation of 1848 is expected to amount to
100,000, of which not more than 6000 or 7000 have
been captured. Let the reader remark particularly
the large increase in the exportations since 1845.
Up to that year. under a system of moderate pro-
tection to our own free-labour colonies, the trade
declined. The profits of the slave trader and culti-
vator were not worth the risk to be encnuntpred.
The passing of the sugar bill, admitting slave-
grown produce, more than doubled the exportation
of •slaves in a single year, whilst the number of
captures was absolutely decreased !

But we have further evidence from these reports,
which prove incontestibly the fact that it is to the
increased price which we are giving to the slave
cultivator, that we are to attribute the increased
energy with which the slave trade is carried on.
We beg to refer our readers to the following table,
showing the effect upon the trade of a rise and fall
of the price of ordinary Havana sugar at different
periods :

Averate price
of sugar per Rise or fall.
cwt.
s. d.
1820 to 1825 31 0

Increase or decrease,
in slave trade.

1825 to 1830 34 6 9 per cent. rise 21 per cent. increase
1830 to 1835 24 8 29 per cent.fall 37 per cent. decrease
1835 to 1840 29 3 19 per cent. rise 73 per cent. increase
1840 25 4 13 per cent.fall 53 per cent. decrease
1841 to 1845 21 1 17 per cent.fall 29 per cent. decrease
1845 to 1847 25 7 18 per cent. rise 44 per cent. increase

There are obviously only two courses open to us
as a consistent people. The utter impossibility of
our putting down the slave trade by our present
policy is admitted by the report of the recent corn-
niittee upon this subject. We must, therefore,
either withdraw the squadron at once, and allow
the trade to be carried on openly, or what would
far better become the character of a Christian nation,
decrease the profitable nature of slave cultivation
by extending a moderate protection to our own
colonists. We cannot go on sacrificing the national
revenue, and destroying the lives and health of
our gallant seamen in the abortive endeavours
which we have been making. Both policy and
humanity demand its abandonment.
Very little more effectual have been our efforts
of a more peaceable description, by treaties and
free settlements, to put down this trade. Nothing
can do it, save the adoption of a protective policy,
or a complete change in the social condition of the
African people themselves. Upon this part of the
subject we beg attention to the following extract
from a letter addressed by a gentleman who has
resided for a long period in an official station at
Sierra Leone :

" I am not," remarks the writer, " one of those who
place any importance on the third argument put forward
for maintaining a squadron upon the coast of Africa, and
upon which Lord Denman writes a good deal of vigorous
eloquence. Domestic slavery under no system can be
more general, or under a worse form, than it exists at
present in Africa, with the single exception of the English
settlements. In every Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch
settlement upon the coast, it exists in as revolting a form
as in the slave ship. They who hold nominal treaties
with us for the suppression of a barbarous traffic, encour-
age and foster domestic slavery from Cape Mount to Cape
Palrnos ; from the Shebar and Gallinas rivers to the con-
fines of free Liberia; from the shoals of Bisago to the
northern extremity of the peninsula of Sierra Leone. At
Calabar, in 1847, for the purpose of marking some
remarkable occurrence (I think it was the poisoning of a
king) the chieftains cut the throats of 100 slaves. Of
what advantage in arresting this awful wrong was our
squadron riding at anchor, or running before the winds
upon some idle chase ? In the very treaties which we
sign, upon the part of our sovereign with the native chiefs
of Africa, we have to acknowledge their right to establish
domestic slavery; and it is highly improbable that any
treaties with native chiefs for suppressing the export of
slaves can be binding upon men who recognize the justice
of domestic slavery. From what I have seen of domestic
slavery in Africa I think its horrors are more lingering and
infinitely more severe than the middle passage. I have
seen the infant children and wives of chieftains working in
slave gangs to satisfy debts due to another chieftain. I
should be glad to learn, sir, if our squadron was 3,000
miles away from the west coast of Africa, what worse
state of things than that I have depicted could exist, or
how can its withdrawal from the coast let loose any fresh
horrors in the slave trade which do not exist there while I
write ?"

The removal of such a state of things, by the
spread of civilisation, must evidently be a work re-
quiring such a length of time that it is Quixotic to
hope for any speedy and sensible diminution of the
slave trade from this source. A far more effectual
course would be such a protective policy as would
attract negro labour to our own colonies, and so
increase the supply of sugar as to render slave
cultivation by imported slaves unprofitable. This
voluntary immigration, however, the same writer
considers, is checked by the presence of our squa-
dron, and the means resorted to for its promotion.
The withdrawal of the squadron, he says,—

" Will be found to exercise a most salutary effect in the
encouragement of free emigration from the coast of Africa.
I have witnessed the abuses of the liberated African de-
partment in Sierra Leone. The native African sees the
slaves whom we have professed to set free, confined in a
yard, surrounded by a wall 20 feet high, and at length
drau2hted into a vessel for another land. He deems this
country converted into a nursery to supply the West I ndie

with slaves in another form, and in many instrnces ob-
jact to go to a land which requires compulsion to induce
men to visit it. See, sir, the unhappy anomalies which
attend the support of a system whose very successes are
t'ius converted into evils."

THE tide of commerce has at length begun to
flow once more in favour of our manufacturing
population. The exports of the leading staple,
cotton goods. have increased largely during the
past six months, notwithstanding the still dis-
turbed condition of a large portion of Europe;
and if our home consumption were upon its ordi-
nary scale, we ought at this moment to be in a
condition of great prosperity. We shall endeavour
to lay before our readers a few of the leading
features of this increase, as shown in Mr. Burn's
Commercial Glance, just published.
In the article of Cotton Yarn we exported during
the first six months of this year 58,606,9041b5.,
against 46,774,8131b5. in the first six months of
last year. This quantity, however, does not exceed
the average ,of the five years from 1842 to 1846.
The export of this particular article will, however,
have been materially affected by continental dis-
organization. The most important increase is in
the two leading fabrics of plain calicoes and printed
and dyed calicoes. Of the former we exported in
the past six months 345,769,822 yards, against
252.855,726 yards last year, being an increase of
92.914,096 yards. This is the largest export of
the article which we have as yet reached. The in-
crease has been principally to the following ports,
as per statement annexed :
Plain Calicoes exported during the first six months of

1848 and 1-839.

1848. 1849.
Yards. Yards.
21,093,350.. 27,811,052

Brazils