The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-12-22 00:00:00

Ebe Eibtrpool &tanbatt.

TUESDAY MORNING, DEC. 22, 1846.

The productions of South Australia are exciting
considerable attention at the present moment. A
wide field for geological enterprise has opened upon
the colonist, somewhat earlier it is true, but not
more sure than was anticipated by those who laid
the foundation of its present prosperity. A letter
on this subject in our columns of to-day from Col.
Gawler, formerly governor of that colony, will be
read with much interest. He triumphantly shows
that the calumnies which were unsparingly heaped
upon him at the period of his recall, were but the
offspring of ignorance, and that the outlay which
was there condemned as lavish expenditure, was
but the seed which is now generating such luxuri-
ous fruit.

We believe the day is not distant when both the
people and government of his country will do jus-
tice to the discernment and foresight which dic-
tated the wise policy of Col. Gawler, when governor
of South Australia.

In the present quiescent state of parties, whilst
rival factions appear to have ceased their strife for
supremacy, affrighted at the complication of evils
into which rash legislation, combined with the de-
crees of Providence, has precipitated the country—
the Journalist, if he be honest, has no small amount
of responsibility and of difficulty thrown upon his
shoulders. It is his task to direct the mind of the
community into the best course, by which the en-
tanglements of our social position may be unravel-
led—to mould the temper of our population to a
proper submission to the pressure of suffering to be
surmounted and of sacrifices to be borne—to teach
and to warn against those errors, into which we
have unhappily been led, by our bli .d adherence to
the dictates of temporary expediency, and our ob-
stinate wandering in the mazes of a false and selfish
philosophy. The press has ceased to he the mere
exponent of the views of opposing leaders of public
opinion. It is no longer a record of the mere chit
chat of coteries. A higher mission is seen, felt and
acknowledged; and to the performance of the duties
of that mission its members must devote themselves
in truthful earnestness, unless they are contented to
sink in the struggle of intellect into which they are
rapidly being impelled.
The last few years—we may almost say the last
few months—have witnessed this signal change in
our positionl have seen• the newspaper press of this
and some other countries assume the power, and
ably maintain it, which has hitherto been wielded
exclusively by the statesman and the senator. We
have seen it shake the power Of the demagogue and
the disturber, and arrest the hands of tyranny,
whether stretched out from the Throne or from the
mob. Better than all, this mighty influence has
advanced as much in character as in power. The
furious bluster which, a few years ago, would have
won the encomiums and support of thousands of
readers, is rapidly falling into contempt, and those,
by whom it is still employed, into impotence. Bitter
personalities, malicious slanders, mis-statements or
exaggerations of facts to injure opponents, are be-
coming disreputable and comparatively innocuous.
With these views of our changed position, and of
our duty, strongly impressed upon us, we feel bound,
in entering upon what we humbly hope will prove
to be a wider career of usefulness, to refuse to
bandy personalities with those few of our contem-
poraries who appear to take a more limited view of
the responsibility of their mission. We have taken
an important step, with our eyes fully open to its
possible personal risks ; and we shall not turn aside
from the course of duty, to which we have devoted
ourselves, either to puff ourselves or to revile our
rivals. Any increased influence, which we may gain
with the public, we are content to leave to the issue
of our exertions to benefit our fellow beings ; and of
the correctness or incorrectness of our views of
human affairs, and of national policy, time and ex-
perience must be the exponents.
There is surely enough for the Journalist to do,
in the honest endeavour to remove the evils, with
which he feels that the nation and mankind are sur-
rounded, without admitting into the quietude of the
closet the bitter contentions which too often deface
the proceedings of the public assembly. The temper

of the present age is, happily, favourable to calm
discussion, and the exercise of the reasoning powers,
rather than of the vituperative. The questions
which now press most earnestly upon us for con-
sideration are social questions—the improvement of
the health and the morality of the masses—the pro-
tection of the weak and the poor—the universal
spread of civilization and Christianity amongst
mankind. Such questions may be discussed with-
out ill temper or worse manners. The mere trading
consideration attached to Journalism need not be
for ever intruded upon the world. By ourselves it
shall not be thus unnecessarily intruded ; and we
are not at all afraid that we shall surfer from our
forbearance.

We remarked briefly a week ago upon the vast
increase of Irish pauperism crowding into Liver-
pool ; and the fact appears at length to have made
itself telt by the drain upon our parish-office for
relief for these destitute beings. They cannot be
permitted to starve in our streets ; and if we pass
them back to their own country, as we are com-
pelled in self defence to do, fresh importations keep
arriving to claim the same bounty at our hands.
"If we remain at home," they say, "we shall be
starved." Food sufficient for the people it is now
evident that there is not available. The pressure
of the times, too, has locked up the springs of
charity, e. en where the means to give exist. Ire-
land is being taught as a nation to exist upon the
industry of the British people; and she is not slow
in learning the lesson. In past years her peasantry
have been in the habit of snatching the harvest
wages from the poor Saxon tiller of the soil. They
worked then, whilst the English labourer stood
idle. Now they come in a different guise, and with
a different demand. It was enough that British
industry should be displaced whilst the Irish cotter
earned the rent of his hovel and his potato ground,
and fed the rapacity of the middleman, the priest,
and the agitator : it is more than enough that the
pauper, the widow, and the orphaned of our own
country should be reduced to coarser food to sup-
port the beggared outcasts, whom Irish landlords
are unable or unwilling to provide with the ne-
cessaries of life.
There must be an end, however, of this kind of
infliction. But who is the party to whom the
country must look to bring it about One of our
vestrymen, we observe, suggested on Tuesday, that
captains of packets ought not to bring over to Eng-
land persons so obviously unprepared to support
themselves. We know, however, quite sufficient of
human nature, to be aware that precisely that num-
ber of people who can procure the money for their
passage, and who have the inclination to come, will
do so. Sending them back again, without permit-
ting them to land, is another suggested plan ; but
it is quite inefficacious, as indeed is every other
which does not grapple with the root of the evil. This
is one of a general, not of a local nature, although
we unfortunate people of Liverpool are experiencing
its local burthen. It is the duty of the government
to look at our position, and to devise some compre-
hensive measure for our relief. They are totally
mistaken who imagine that the present is a mere
temporary emergency ; that it arises from the po-
tato disease, or any other disease. We have vir-
tually kept the poor of Ireland for a generation
past. Their necessities have depressed the condition
of the industrious labourer of Great Britain for a
generation past. Irish laboar, deprived of its re-
ward at home, has invaded our farming districts
and our manufacturing towns, lowering wages, by
the competition created, and offering no very satis-
factory example of good conduct for imitation.
The present difficulty is only exaggerated in degree;
and it ought to bring about a cure for the difficulty,
which we have all along been experiencing.
We are far from wishing to join in the outcry
against Irish landlordism. But really our present
Government must take some steps to enforce upon
some of them a recognition of their duties. They
must be urged to do what in them lies to keep their
own poor removed from even the possibility of want
and wretchedness, such as they are now suffering ;
and, to ensure this object, some of the anomalies
which characterise our past legistation for Ireland,
must be swept away. We must have no more at-
tempts to cure actual and tangible evils by remedies
addressed to fictitious diseases; no more prescrip-
tions of Godless colleges and municipal franchises
for a starving people. A poor-law upon the broad
principle of the law of Elizabeth must be submitted
I to. Ireland's good landlords—and they are many—
would welcome it readily. Only the short-sighted
or the selfish would wince under its infliction.

Throughout the discussion of the Free Trade
question we predicted that one of the first results
would be to place the consumer of food at the mercy
of the capitalist and the speculator; and it is not
difficult to perceive that we are in something very
like that situation at the present moment. In every
corn market throughout the kingdom the rage for
investments in grain and flour is rife, and the most
trifling incident—the stoppage of a canal or the
snowing up of a railway—is seized upon as the
ground of advanced rates. Cargo after cargo pours
into the country from foreign markets. Immense
supplies are known to be preparing for our shores,
and only detained by the temporary want of ship-
ping. Yet the capitalist is found ready and eager
to buy and to store up every fresh supply as it
arrives, in the hope, no doubt, to exact famine
prices, although the effect of the measure, which is
thus placing the food of the country in his hands,
was to protect us from even the fear of famine.

There must be, however, in this movement, as in
every past mania, a day of reckoning; and we would
earnestly press upon the farmers of Great Britain
not to permit themselves to be involved in its con-
sequences, by madly holding for increased prices.
Already the consumption of the country is seriously
reduced. Whilst the speculator in corn is raising
the poor man's loaf, the speculator in cotton is
closing t!-.e factory, which enables the poor man to
eat. Half wages for the manufacturer is the sure
forerunner of half rations. High prices thrown into
the hands of the foregn grower inevitably attracts
his produce to our markets, and must ultimately
bring on a period of glut and ruin. The steady
operations of the British farmer are all to which we
have now to look for safety.
We do not anticipate that a crisis has already
arrived, or is immediately at hand. The gip created
in our supply of food, by the partial failure of the
potato crop, will perhaps, for a time, absorb our
rapidly increasing supplies. But that time cannot
be a long one, when we take into consideration the
fact that high prices of the leading staples of manu-
facture are limiting the demand for labour, and
reducing the estimated quantity of food required to
feed our population. We may also feel the effect of
a pressure upon the money market as the result of
our increased imports, and the existing want of
orders for the manufactured exports. All these cir-
cumstances combine to produce a state of things
against which the farmer will do well to guard, and
which may probably affect, very seriously, those
unwary persons who are at present dabbling in spe-
culations foreign to their legitimate business, and
which they cannot be supposed to understand very
distinctly. Some of the latter may have to thank
us for our warning.

The limitation of the salary to be paid to the pre-
sent medical officer, appointed under the provisions of
the sanatory act, to £3OO a year, ie certainly not very
complimentary to the gentlemen of that profession,
or consistent with the very onerous duties which
the act of Parliament imposes upon such officer.
He is required to be a man of "ability and expe-
rience;" and is

" To inspect and report periodically on the sanatory
condition of the said borough, to ascertain the existence
of diseases, more especially epidemics increasing the rates
of mortality, and to point out the existence of any nui-
sances or other local causes which are likely to originate
and maintain such diseases and injuriously affect the
health of the inhabitants of the said borough, and to take
cognizance of the fact of the existence of any contagious
disease, and to point out the most efficacious modes for
checking or preventing the spread of such diseases, and
also to point out the most efficient means for the ventila-
tion of churches, chapels, schools, registered lodging_
houses and other public ediffices within the said borough,
and to perform any other duties of a like nature which
may be required of him."

In addition to all this, he has, whenever required
by the coroner, to make "a post mortem examina-
tion, with or without analysis of the contents of the
stomach or intestines, without fee or reward," in all
cases where an inquest is held. To do this mass of
work well is obviously quite incompatible with the
enjoyment of much leisure or opportunities of pri-
vate practice ; and if a first-rate man is to be
secured, it is rather beneath the character of a
wealthy corporation to press that talent into their
service without a fair and adequate reward.
We know, however, sufficient of the public
spirit and liberality of the heads of the profession

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.