The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-11-23 00:00:00

n the hoase of the charlatan ; and it is a happy omen

as a

We may safely pronounce th

tin• the country of which he

)reeminently the curse

repose

that pernicious habit altoge

ighly flatter

here is one subject—scarcely second to it in itn-

portance—to which the government of Si: Robert Peel
and Lord Stanley may at this moment consistently

ievote a portion of its attention. Need we say that
we allude to the subject of immigration of the free
abourers of other countries into our West Indian
!olonies ? In the securing of an adequate supply of
abour in those inexhaustible and fertile mines of

wealth, what vast benefits to the interests of British
commerce—what invaluable results to the interests of
humanity itself—are involved ! With proper culture,

is colonies of Great Britain are sufficient to supply,
ith their products, the markets of the whole world.
hey demand only to be furnished with hands to till

their rich soils and to gather the fruits of their teeming
Luxuriance; and in return, they offer to the British
merchant the benefit of their increased production of
British produce and manufactures.

Already, by the encouragement which has of late
years been given to the trade with our Eastern Em-

pire, the importance of that portion of our possessions,
as a consumer of British manufactures, is rapidly de-
veloping itself. In Bengal the imports of cotton goods
from Great Britain nearly tripled themselves within the
last three years, as will lie seen from an authentic
statement which we quote :
a 1837-38 the value of cotton piece goods
imported was

59,60,000 Rs
72,00,000
96,00,000
138,00,000

'lB3B-39
1839-40
1840.41
Ind in Nvoolleu goods the increase is extraordinary—
he value of the imports of this staple manufacture

,eing—

In 1837-38
1838-39
1839-40
1810-41
In haberdashery, iron, malt liquor, hardware, and
other articles, the increase is in a similar ratio.
That a similar result would attend the development
of the mighty capabilities of our West Indian posses-
sions we cannot doubt ; and at a time when we are
threatened with exclusion from the markets of the
Brazils, unless we consent to meastires• hostile to Bri-
tish interests in those islands, it cannot surely be out
of season to call the attention of the government and
of the colonial office to the important and pressing na-
ture of the question. With a supply of labour, at all
adequate to their wants, our West Indian colonies
would speedily be in a position to fear no hostile efforts
of the anti-colonial faction here, and as little to dread
any foreign competition ; and we are satisfied that an
enquiry instituted by government would at once elicit
the fact, that the means of transport to those colonies
are alone wanting to secure the object which the colo-
nists have in view, and at the same time to provide for
the languishing commerce and manufactures of the
mother country a market far more than able to supply
any deficiency which can arise from the threatened de-

9,00,000 Rs
7,00,000
9,00,000
17,00,000

-ection of the Brazils.
We have the more confident hope that the import-
nee of this subject will impress itself upon the govern-
nent, from the character and identity of the distill-
.uished statesman who now holds the of the
olonial office, and under whose notice it must come.
'o Lord Stanley we owe the carrying out, without the
commission of injustice, of the noble measure of negro
emancipation; and we cannot believe that his lordship,
watching as he must have done the working of that
measure, can he unconscious of the fact that, by its
consequences, as evinced in the prosperity or decline of
the West Indies, must stand or fall the question whe-
ther slavery is to cease throughout the world, or to be
perpetuated in a harsher form, and with added cruel-
ties in every land save that of England and her colo-
Marge and liberal measure of immigration will
ensure to those colonies a permanent and solid prospe-
rity, which will proclaim to the world that free labour
can compete upon equal terms with slavery—that the
cause of humanity is not a losing' .cause ;—and without
such a measure we are confident that the progress of

s been so long and so

One of Ireland's chief wants

—tile absenco of excitement, and a discon-
Ind it is

g circumstance that her new Chief

;oVernor takes every suitable means to promote that

The adoption of a system of emigration, upon a

;arge and comprehensive scale—a measure which is at
length taken up in earnest by her Majesty's govern-
ment—we regard, as indeed, we expressed in our last
publication, as one of infinite importance to a commer-
cial and manufacturing community. At the present
moment too, with the stagnation and distress which we
see around us, its consideration is peculiarly well-
timed ; for we are quite satisfied that it cannot have
escaped the notice of the government, and must be
impressed by them upon the community, that the true
source of the commercial greatness of this country,
the mainstay, at all times, of her manufacturing in-
dustry, are to be found in her vast and increasing co-

'onial possessions.
" Our Colonies " writes a London contemporary, the
:y (Jerald, " are certainly our most profitable ex-
ernal customers ; our population at home is rapidly descend-

ing into pauperism ; thousands are desirous, in the agony of
their present wretchedness, to transfer their labour to those
dependencies where their services are in demand ; and by
such transfer, numbers who are now a burden on the rest of
the community, might undoubtedly be converted into 'valu-

able consumers of our products. New sources of revenue to
the state, new channels of employment for the people, new
fields for advantageous investment of the capital of the
, would, it cannot be denied, be created by the en-
coul,g,nent of emigration to the territorial colonies of the
United Kingdom."

And yet we venture to predict, that the proposition
of any measure by which the admitted disposition of
numbers of our impoverished fellow-countrymen to

make that transfer of their industry to our colonies is
to be encouraged, will be met, by the unprincipled
spouters of the free trade agitation, with a sneer of
contempt, if not even with a shout of execration and
disappointment. " The philosophers " can see nothing
which lies beyond the day or the hour. The perma-
nent strength of the empire—the permanent comfort
add happiness of its people—are not the objects of
their care, or towards which their truculent agitation
is directed. They never descend to weigh the benefit
to be derived from a commerce with free and indepen-
dent British people, established in happy affluence in
our distant colonies—consuming the best fabrics of our
looms and favouring exclusively the products of the
mother country—and those to be reaped from a
scramble in the markets of the world for a temporary
supremacy,—at the sacrifice of the comforts and the
moral welfare of the labouring population at home,
whose very heart's blood is systematically wrung from
them drop by drop to purchase and to sustain it,—
to feed the bloated and unwieldy thing in whose
growth are embarked the peace and security of Great
Britain, and whose course is to desolate and to trample
down the industry of other nations. On the contrary,
we are satisfied that it would be a source of grief and
bitterness to our manufacturing free-traders to see any
considerable number of the distressed population of
Great Britain deported from the scene of their wretch-
edness, by a humane effort of legislation, and allowed
to establish themselves in a land of plenty, and iu a
condition of well-rewarded industry ; and that they
would infinitely prefer seeing them pine on, under the
wasting hand of poverty, as sores upon the face of the
land, to subserve the ends of agitation, until they can
he subjected to the torture of that state of " transition"
which they must pass through before the tillers of the
soil—the hardy yeomanry and agricultural labourers
of Great Britain—can be converted into the living
mechanism required to attend a spinning-jenny or a

power-loom.
We nothing fear, however, that the government of
Sir Robert Peel will be driven from its wise and
aumane purposes by the sneers or the threats of an
unprincipled and disaffected faction. A noble field of

xertion is before them. They have within their reach

the means of extending British influence—of extending
British commerce to a degree almost incalculable.
They have within their reach the means of adding,
almost without limit, to the sum of human happiness
and to the spread of civilization. They have the power
of establishing the supremacy- of the British name
throughout the world and for ever; and they will not,
we are satisfied, neglect the opportunity.

In connexion with the subject of emigration from
Great Britain and Ireland to our colonial possessions,