The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-08-03 00:00:00

8,284; total population, 15,800,000
20.600,000

28,885;

56,605;

27,300,000

As a remarkable feature of the above state of
things, it is to be observed that capital has been
daily acquiring greater power over industry; and
that large capital is crushing small capital, however
industry combined with the latter may endeavour
to sustain the pressure. As a mode of protecting
the small struggling masses of capital against the
large masses, the co-operative or joint stock system
has sprung up, as exemplified in our railway com-
panies, banking companies, &c. The growth of
this system and its success, Mr. Alison thinks,
may in time produce an evil of no small magnitude.
Already the sway of our railway and other com-
panies have become a very formidable interest in
the state, superior to the East and West Indian and
shipping interests put together, and exercising out
of doors powers, to which those of the feudal
system were very inferior, Besides, the resource,
adopted originally to protect small capital has de-
feated its own purpose, such companies now,
directed as they are by a few energetic individuals
operate in precisely the same way to depress small
individual capital, as the large individual capital
complained of.
Connected also with the subject are the changes
which have taken place in the relative proportions
of town population and rural counties population ;
and the extraordinary inequality which is being
produced in the various sections of the working
classes, some of whom are still in a position of
moderate comfort, whilst others are reduced to a
state of continual struggle against actual pauper-
ism. In the latter class the increase during the
last twenty years has been fearful ; and their phy-
sical condition, closely packed as they are in the
worst and most filthy parts of all our great towns,
imbibing vice from constant association with vice
and disease from daily contact with it, and from
the habits which engender it, is one of the most
alarming features of the present times. After
remarking that some parties attribute the decline
in the condition of the people generally, and the
difficulty experienced in supplying the exchequer
to imprudent remission of taxes, in which argu-
ment he is not disposed to coincide, as accounting
for the change which has taken place, Mr. Alison
thus sums up the second chapter of his pamphlet :

" That some great and overpowering cause has para-
lysed the financial resources of the country during the last
five-and-twenty years, to which it formerly was a stran-
ger, is evident from the following consideration. The
sum raised by taxes in the year 1815 was £72,000,000 ;
and the population of the empire was at that period about
eighteen millions. Deducting the property and war malt-
taxes, which were repealed in 1816, and amounted to
£18,000,000, there remains £54,000,000 raised at that pe-
riod, by indirect taxes, on eighteen millions of inhabitants.
These eighteen millions have now swelled to twenty-eight
millions in the present year ; and if none of the taxes had
been repealed, and the resources of the empire, as mea-
sured by money, had continued unimpaired, these twenty-
eight millions should now have produced, at the same rate
per head, £80,000,000 a-year of income. But the re-
sources of the empire, as proved by its exports, imports,
and shipping, have increased in that time not fifty, but
above a hundred per cent. ; the exports alone, which were
then £51,000,000, being now £130,000,000, and our im-
ports, which were then £32,000,000, having now risen to
£70,000,000. There cannot be a doubt, therefore, that
had no extraneous cause intervened, the exports of the na-
tion having more than doubled, the imports doubled, and
the population advanced a half, the revenue raised by taxes,
supposing the rate of taxation to haveremainedunchanged,
should have been at present at least £00,000,000 yearly.
Is there any man supposes it possible, by an effort, to
raise such a sum at this time from the empire, when, with
the aid of a fine harvest, prosperous commerce, and the
income-tax, the revenue raised in 1843 was only
£56,000.000 ? It was evidently impossible, situated as the
country has been for the last twenty-five years, to have
kept on the large indirect taxation existing at the peace,
and under which the nation throve and prospered during
the war."
The vie

hich Mr. Alison entertains as having
~..._ ..._ __range and disastrous state of things
we shall endeavour to give, with a portion of his
statistics in our next. We shall content ourselves
now, by stating his opinion to be that the root of
all the evil is a contracted currency, caused by the
attempt of Sir Robert Peel to base it upon gold
at a fixed mint price.

The doleful lament of the Mail over the defeat of
Lord John Manners is really very funny. Our
contemporary begins by expressing, as a set-off
against his regret at that event, the "consolation"
which he has, that it has "for ever put an end •to

the Conservative Association," and "prostrated
bigotry and intolerance in the dust. That the
Noble Lord," he adds, " and Sir Digby Mackworth
Would both have been returned if there had been
any union or fair dealing on the part of Sir Digby's
senseless friends, there can be no doubt." The de-
feat, moreover, is owing in part to "the paltry
prejudices and remarkable ignorance of. Sir Digby
Mackworth," and in part to the " bigotry and
arrogance, and, we might add, the bad and unchari-
table feeling and conduct of Messrs. Thomas Berry
Horsfall, Francis Shand, Samuel Hohne, and -John
Lawrence." What follows is so rich in absurdity
that we give it verbatim :

" These personages were leading members of the Con-
servative Association, and they were bound in honour and
common honesty to support the candidates recommended
by that body (!) They refused to do this. They talked
with unbounded insolence (! !) of their conscience and
their principles, as if no other gentleman could have a
conscience or principles different from theirs ; and boasted
that they had four thousand staunch supporters, chiefly
Orangemen, who would vote for their low church candi-
date, and no other, on the day of the election. This idle
boast has now been exposed, and their arrogance openly
punished, and at this punishment, which they so richly
deserved, we heartily rejoice."
We shall not insult the four gentlemen, here
singled out for abuse, by any defence of ours.
Their character is known to their fellow townsmen.
We shall content ourselves by asking our irate
contemporary a few plain questions upon the re-
marks generally, which we have quoted. First,
does not our contemporary think that they would
be " senseless" people altogether, who would sub-
mit to be dragooned or dragged into " any union "
in support of a candidate, whose organ charac-
terizes themselves as "bigoted and intolerent,"
and their candidate as having " paltry preju-
judices and remarkable ignorance ? ' It would
have been " charitable indeed of Sir Digby Mack-
worth's friends , but not very sensible, to assist
poor Lord John Manners out of the cruel dilemma
into which his own friends had deluded him ; but
will the Mail tell us how, out of the few plumpers
recorded for Lord John Manners he could have re-
turned the obligation ? His lordship recorded the
surprising number of 2,413 votes, including splits ;
and nine-tenths of the plumpers recorded for him
were those of persons most bitterly opposed to Sir
Digby's principles and party. Whether it was an
"idle boast," which the Mail talks about, that Sir
Digby had "four thousand staunch supporters,
chiefly Orangemen," is best ascertained by the fact
that he polled 4089 votes, the majority of them
plumpers. The splits from Sir Digby were prin-
cipally those of parties, many of them Orangemen,
induced to vote for Lord John partly through mis-
understanding, and partly upon the question of the
Navigation Laws. Take away those splits from
Lord John Manners's miserable minority of 2413
votes, and his position on the poll would have
been ridiculous indeed !

" We," says the Mail, " offered to suppress our
opposition to the disqualifications of Sir Digby
Mackworth, and cordially give him our second
votes, if they would stretch their Consciences !
waive their Hypocrisy ! ! and—recipocrate," How
magnanimous I Was it the Conscience stretching,
the Hypocrisy waiving (on both sides we presume),
or the Votes, which were to be reciprocated ? If
the latter, the reciprocation would have been rather
a losing one to Sir Digby. "Mr. John Lawrence,
of Great George Ward," our contemporary com-
plains, " refused or neglected to send out Lord:John
Manners' cards." More honour to him as a con-
sistent man, when the candidate for whom he was
working had distinctly refused to have any con-
nection with Lord John Manners, as our contem-
porary himself very well knows.
But we cannot follow this ridiculous and laugh-
able tirade. We can imagine our contemporary
indeed to have been laughing himself as he wrote
it, and to have laughed ever since. As for the
portion of his columns which he has devoted to our-
selves and a contemporary, we shall merely cull out
a few of their literary objugatory elegancies for the
admiration—we trust not the imitation—of the
noble lord and the gentlemen of his party, who
selected the Mail as their champion in the late
contest. Here they are :

"The now deg;aded Standard, and the con-
temptible and puritanical Courier." " Most paltry
lies" " Low quibbles." " Cockney vermin." "Low
and vindictive hirelings." " Clerical incendiaries."
" Mean spirit of disgusting malignity," &c., &c.
His imputation to us of interested motives—of
being influenced by any well understood pressure
from without—in the course which we have felt it
our duty to pursue, we can well afford to disre-
gard. It is absurd, and were we disposed to adopt
our contemporary's vocabulary, we might give it a
worse name.