The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-03-17 00:00:00

tending to redact: the extent of our own mane

to degrade t

condition of our manufacturers,
d thus to secure for the aristocracy by-and-bye a

!vver in Eng

rnd, as rend

presen

uooaen and the weavers. We cannot suppose any
way by which Sir it, bert Peel has secured the support of
those independent members of the aristoc acy, who are
favourable to hie measure, in the face of the scorn of their
friends and the inward contempt of their former political
adversaries, but by their seeing it to be the ultimate
interest of THEIR CLASS.

Sir Robert Peel may have shown them that, as they
individually are now able to submit to a loss, they should
do so, as this would be the only means of roiling back the
tide of popular feeling in politics, aria securing the re-
duction of every interest in the country into the narrow
limit that formerly enabled them to coatrol the govern-

ment of the country

Sir Robert Peel's measure, in fact, as he well knows,
while he puts all interests down, puts down the manu-
facturing interest more than any other, and will eventually
make it a secondary interest in England.
Sir Robert Peel's measure may deprive the landlord of
luxuries, or even comforts, which an artificial, state of so-
ciety has named necessaries, hut the weaver will be de-
prived Of ACTUAL EMPLOYMENT (as a weaver): thus,
Ist. The landlords who are not driven to become absen-
tees will not be able to pay for seventy-five per cent. (or
three-fourths) the amount of goods they now take, and a
large part of that diminished quantity will be foreign
manufactures.

2nd. The tenants and agricultural labourers, even if
they take as many goods, (a thing impossible,) will, like
the other classes of the community, prefer some (less or
more) foreign articles, and thus a falling off in the manu-
facture of the British article will accrue; bat as the
British agriculturists and weavers will both have to com-
pete with foreigners of less expensive habits or modes of
life, who are, in fact. content with coarser food than the
English get in workhouses, and not require the same
amount of fuel or clothing—their views in these respects
must no doubt come down to prevent them starving amid
so cruel a competition (foreigners having the run of British
markets, but not the British in foreign markets.)
3d. The colonies will, in the same way, take fewer
British goods, under free trade between each colony and
all the world even if their means of buying were not
reduced. It is self-evident, however, that, to the extent
that their wheat, or their sugar, or their timber produces
less money, they must take fewer goods.
4th. The manufacturer will not have all these deficien-
cies in demand from British and hitherto favoured chan-
nels made up to him by a similar or greater amount of in-
crease in the foreign demand. On the contrary, instead
of increasing, the foreign demand will gradually fall off;
governments abroad will, by their duties, prohibit British
goods the more they see that they can in British gold for
their products find for a few years that impulse for their
domestic manufactures which hitherto they have wanted,
but which in a few years would not only create in an in-
creased manufacturing population a great enduring home
market for their produce (enduring if they don't take up
free trade theories), but enable them to compete with
England in other foreign markets, if not in England itself.
So that the independent aristocracy see, that though
the ordeal will be a fiery one to their neighbours whose
lands are in debt, and a more fiery one still to the manu-
facturers, or rather weavers, the final result will assuredly
be, that the landowners will be the permanently predo-
minant and popular or powerful interes►, the weavers
having been one-half driven back again to the fields by
want of manufacturing employment. The effect, in fact,
of Sir Robert Peel's measure will be to prevent all pro-
gress in manufacturing, and reduce the whole of the in-
terests of the country into a narrower compass, in which,
in the way we have pointed out, agriculture will loom the
largest, not because large, but because ail other interests
have been made smaller in proportion by Sir Robert
Peel's liberal measure.

Without imputing improper, or rather dishonourable
motives to Sir R. Peel, we assert beyond the fear of con-
tradiction, that at present be is the means of misleading
the public mind. Towards the end of his great speech on
the evening of the 16.. h ult. he says—
And sup

p6se the tenant said, ' But this is a labonr:r'. que

tion ?" 1 silould answer,." Then my good fellow if we make this
land which now produces three quarters, produce five quarters,
we shall employ more labourers. There will he a greater de-

mulct for labour, and all parties will be benefited. The estate
will be benefited ; the guarantee for the rent will be improved;
your comfort will be increased; there will be more labour em-

hat saving

which the lion. gentleman _
tariff 1 introduced (loud cheers

ys the rich are to derive from the

Those business men who cheered Sir Robert Peel knew
full well, if he did not, that his remark if true of any land,

, and that showing that
some lands could grow two-thirds more wheat, is just
showing that the price of wheat would be so reduced with
free trade as to make it necessary to throw the poorer lands
(such as would yield no more than the present crops) into
woods or grass, as being worth no rent at all for purposes

y true c

he very

jest lan(

of cultivation
Tf

he poorer hinds are thrown out of cultivation, it will
be impoe•sibie to mire up the I.)ss out of an increase of
even two-thirds on the better lands, and there will be
nothing like the means in the country to buy manufac-
tures.
Mr. Hudson, in his speech, elites—

That the pro Cat

would be from 355. to {Os. aluarter.
The hon. member's calculation will prove quite correct.
Let ns suppose a farm now let let thus—

aining to the tenant ..
me that neither tenant nor

assur
bourer

ricultural 13.

till absolut,

necessity compels it, work for

t present; and that the first brunt of this free
trade in corn Rill some ou the two extremes, the landlord

We think that foreign competition will lead to the fol-
lowing resu!t in the case of the best lands:—

4 L 0 quarters

,t I is. Id. clear profit

Leaving the same result to the tenant
But take the case of land whoa
reaFed—

yie:d cannot be in-

4'66 13 4
16:i 13 4

The produce, 300 quarters at I Is. Id., clear pal

Leaving the same result to the tenant
acres ftlrnierly nrortnrorl son /mart, re

eioo 0 (

The 100 acres now produce 300 quarters at 365. 3d

en 7 10 0
543 15 0

The ability of the country trade is reduced, or one

33 15 0

But the landlord could not stand by and see his pi o-
petty wl,olly sacrificed, so that this, land will be forced
back into grass or woods, as the colonies will be forced
out of our hands by the competition of foreign corn, in-
stead of, as Sir Robert Peel assures us, creat;ng more em-
ployment or labour for the surplus population of the coun-
try) Yes, the Premier triumphantly concludes—

- -
This is what you have to decidi by your vote on this ques-
tion—Will you advance or will you recede? Which is the po-
licy best suited to the commerce of this great empire ?
And again—
What should be the motto of a country like this ? Should it
be advance or retrograde ?

Now, we deny alit Sir It. Peel bas shown how any One
of the great interests of England is to be advanced, or
how (under free trade with all'the world) it is possible to
prevent less or more sacrifice to every great and vital in-
terest in the country.

He talks, indeed, of the trade in feathers! as if the dis-
tress of all the dealers in feathers in Europe were equal
with us to the want of agricultural employment in one of
the 12000 parishes of England, or to the distress of the
little Scotch town of Paisley, which came to a crisis in
1812 in consrquence of the export of gold for wheat, espe-
cially in 1833, reducing the demand for fancy goods or
luxuries.

ir Robert Peel professes that he is about to remove all
restrictions from the food of the people, but he does riot
show how that greatest restriction, the want of employ-
ment or means to buy food, or, in other words, how Is.
bour is to be supplied.

Like the 7

Sir Robert Peel see

to suppose that

journal, which been as
_much or more

the sclual cause of the attempted rep(al of the corn-laws
as Sir R. Nei or Lord John Bussed, says in one of its
late numbers—

What would have resulted from a deman,l for labour, it scrn
had not been cheap and plentiful? Suppose a nat:ou-• it is only
too easy to suppose it—it is only too nec,ssary to anticipate it—

utkertaking
great " activ

can be on

rtskit gs

caee