The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-11-30 00:00:00

Elit Eiberpool Otanbarb.

Yearly Subscription.'
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TUESDAY MORNING, NOV. 30, 1847.

WE give in another column, the particulars of
the intelligence brought from America by the
steam ship Caledonia. The New York papers are
in raptures as to the continued success of the mili-
tary operations against Mexico, which is represented
"as settling down gradually into a country almost
annexed to the United States." General Taylor
was coming home and General Scott was expected
to be relieved. The attention of the American
public was, however, taken from this subject by the
approaching contest for the Presidency, for which
the most prominent candidates were, Mr. Van
Buren, Mr. Clay, General Scott, and Mr. Polk.
The Caledonia has brought £156,000 in specie,
which makes upwards of £200,000 received in this
port from New York in five days. The steam-ship
Washington was expected to bring the same
amount of specie as the Caledonia.

It will be seen from our Foreign Intelligence, in
another column, that important news has been re-
ceived from Switzerland. Lucerne was taken by
the Federalists on the 24th inst., after a sharp action.
We are glad, however, to find that France has
joined, without hesitation, in the counter project
proposed by the British government as the basis
of mediation in the affairs of Switzerland. We
confidently hope that this co-operation will have
the effect of restoring peace to that interesting and
by no means unimportant part of Europe. The
Times, of yesterday, gives us the following informa-
tion on this subject. A protocol or diplomatic
convention was signed in London on Friday last
by the Duke de Broglie and Lord Palmerston, with
the knowledge and concurrence of the ministers of
the Northern Powers in London and Paris ; and
Sir Stratford Canning has already left this country
for Berne, taking Paris in his way, for the purpose
of urging the Federal authorities of Switzerland
to suspend their violent proceedings, to arrest the
effusion of blood, and to submit the terms recom-
mended by the principal Cabinets of Europe to the
consideration of both parties in this unhappy war.
No man could have been chosen for this important
service more qualified than Sir S. Canning by
diplomatic experience and by personal rectitude to
perform it with prudence and resolution.

We have repeatedly called the attention of our
readers to the unjust way in which our colonial
interests have been treated by the powers that be.
The most urgent remonstrances have been made
in vain, and although the strongest representations
have been made from the West Indies of the in-
evitable ruin which hangs over those valuable pos-
sessions, no effort whatever, corresponding to the
emergency, has been made, and the small instal-
ment of relief recently granted by the government
is not likely to be productive of any very wide-
spread benefit, as is evidenced by the following
communication from a well-known correspondent :
" It is an axiom in colonization, that where land is cheap
hired labour can hardly be obtained. In Jamaica we get
it as a favour, and at the price the negro chooses to ask,
generally half a dollar for six hours' wretched work, and
then it must be done in his own way and at his own time, so
that economical improvement, by means of agricultural in-
struments, &c., can hardly be effected. I lately sent out a
superior agriculturist to tile-drain my estate, and otherwise
. cultivate it on modern English principles. He writes as fol-
lows :—" Draining is out of the question ' • not a negro will
use the spade. I wished the ploughman to alter his mode
and go a little deeper. He swore at me and said, if his way
did not suit me he would leave the estate.' I went a
little further, and observing the cattle out of condition, I
said to the youth who was attending them, ' Come home
with me and I will give you some rock salt to put in the
peas.' He poured forth a volley of curses and swore he
would leave the property rather than lower himself to
carry salt." Surely Lord Grey misunderstood the depu-
tation when he said, in his letter to the governor, we did
not complain of a want of industry, but want of numbers.
Could we get a real day's work for our money we might
double the production with the present population.
" I have on my estate about 100 resident creoles, and
have lately added 60 coolies ; I have only 200 acres in cul-
tiVation for canes, and yet I cannot keep them half cleaned
or manufacture them in proper time. The creoles, for
about a month at Christmas, three weeks at Easter, and
fora week or so at a time at other periods, will not work at
all. The coolies take example by them and are also physic-
ally inefficient. I have now a vessel at Madeira in search of
Portuguese labourers. Now, at last, when the mischief is
done, and too late I fear for a remedy, the Colonial-office
says we shall have free trade in labour ; that we shall be
permitted, at our own great expense and risk, to send ships
to Africa ; but, alas ! few among us have the courage, and
fewer the means left to do this. A year or two ago and we
should have hailed the tardy justice with eagerness and
hope; the results of last crop have fatally paralysed our ener-
gies, and our means, and this reluctant concession, unless
regard is paid to the other claims in the Jamaica memo-
rial, will not justify a prudent man in fitting out a vessel
for Africa. I think you, Sir, will do justice to the tone
of our memorial ; we do not dispute the principles of
free trade, though the effects have been our ruin. I ask,
and surely with reason, that at least the present
discriminating duties be temporarily maintained in
consideration of our peculiar position, and until we have,
by an adequate supply of free labour, a fair field of com-
petition with slavery. Lord Grey says, ' Public opinion
has willed, that if the cultivation of sugar by free labour
cannot be maintained by free trade it cannot be main-
tained at all :' but it must first will to give us free labour,
or the experiment cannot be tried. Its will is otherwise
a tyranny and a mockery. The corn grower has the pro-
tection of freight and expenses against the foreigner ; we
have none whatever."

The Manchester Guardian on Wednesday last,
heralded to the world a discovery, which he ap-
peared only just to have made, and which has been
revealed to him by the result of the recent failures
of houses engaged in the East India trade. We
shall allow our contemporary to state the discovery
in question in his own way :
" Many times, during the present year, we have—fol-
lowing the general character of the Indian advices—ex-
pressed our surprise at the accounts which, for two or
three years back, have been received of the continual
losses by which that trade, both outward and homeward,
was said to be attended. It became, at last, a perfect
puzzle. Cotton twist and cotton cloths cheaper in Cal-
cutta than in Manchester ; sugar, indigo, silk, and lac dye
always dearer in Calcutta than in London ; losses of at
least the freight, insurance, and commission on manufac-
tured outward—and of even something more on all kinds
of produce homeward—formed the ruinous monotony of
Indian news, mail after mail, month after month, and
year after year. In vain we asked ourselves, why are the
exports of goods continued to be sold at a loss ? why are
prices paid in Calcutta for produce higher than those re-
ceived at the time in London. These were questions
which we and others continued to ask, sometimes with a
tone which betokened a doubt of the fact, and which
sometimes betrayed a fear of the fatal solution which,
some day or other, such events must receive. The time
has arrived when they have received their solution ; and
it is one which, in its history and its conclusion, deserves
to be closely marked and studied by the commercial com-
munity of this country—to be set up as a beacon of warn-
ing to our merchants in future."

" The system which these recent failures have brought
to light, explain the puzzle of endless losses which our
India trade presented. When we see the naked facts, we
only wonder that those losses were ever owned to, or that
we should ever have heard of anything but extraordinary
gains. Of late this trade seems to have been converted,
by those large houses, simply into a convenient means of
" raising the wind," and with little or no bona de object
of entering into transactions for the sole sake of the profit
they would yield. Obtaining advances seems to have
been, in too many instances, the primary object, while
profit or loss has been only the incidental consequence.
Purchases, therefore, were not made—whether as regarded
quantity or price—so much with reference to the wants of
the market to be supplied, as to the financial obligations
which it was necessary to meet.
" The India trade has been one huge system of credit.
If goods were bought in Manchester by a house in Lon-
don, they were paid for by bills at six months date ; and,
as soon as shipped, an advance was obtained again by a
bill at six months for a large part of the first cost, by the
consignee, who again, in his turn, not unfrequently drew
upon the house in India, against the bills of lading when
transmitted. The shipper and the consignee were thus
both put in possession of funds months before they actu-
ally paid for the goods ; and, very commonly, these bills
were renewed at maturity, on pretence of affording time
for the returns in a long trade.' Moreover, losses by
such a trade, instead of leading to its contraction, led di-
rectly to its increase. The poorer men became, the greater
need they had to purchase, in order to make up, by new
advances, the capital they had lost on the past adventures.
Purchases thus became, not a question of supply and de-
mand, but the most important part of the finance opera-
tions of a firm labouring under difficulties.
" But this is only one side of the picture. What took
place in reference to the export of goods at home, was

taking place in the purchase and shipment of produce
abroad. Houses in India, who had credit to pass their
bills, were purchasers of sugar, indigo, silk, or cotton—
not because the prices advised from London by the last
overland mail promised a profit on the prices current in
India, but because former drafts upon the London house
would fall due, and must be provided for. What way so
simple as to purchase a cargo of sugar, pay for it in bills
upon the London house at ten months' date. transmit the
shipping documents by the overland mail, and in less than
two months the goods on the high seas, or perhaps not
yet passed the mouth of the Hoogly, were pawned in
Lombard-street—putting the London house in funds
eight months before the drafts against those goods fell
due. And all this went on without interruption or diffi-
culty as long as bill-brokers had abundance of money at
call,' to advance on bills of lading and dock warrants, and
to discount, without limit, the bills of India houses, drawn
upon the eminent firms in Mincing-lane. But the first
breath of discredit, the first great scarcity of money, has
thrown the entire system into confusion. The first link
that broke shattered the whole chain to pieces. But we
fear that in the fall many houses, deserving a better
fate, actuated by more legitimate and bona fide motives,
have been carried away in the common wreck."

We give the Guardian every credit for the cor-
rectness of his statement of facts ; but we demur
to the existence of anything in the nature of a
discovery. Any tyro in commercial affairs well
knows that this apparently unsound mode of con-
ducting our commerce with distant markets has
existed almost time out of mind. Shippers of
manufactured and other British goods have for
years past given long-dated paper in payment for
them, or received such paper in advance upon their
invoices. Shippers of colonial and foreign produce
have also, from time immemorial, drawn upon the
consignees in Great Britain. How the large opera-
tions resulting from our export trade could be
otherwise conducted, it is difficult to discover.
With the exception of the use of longer-dated
paper, our trade with the nearer markets, and even
our home trade, is conducted upon the same prin-
ciple. The party selling manufactured goods, or
British produce, is seldom the party directly im-
porting the remittance in foreign commodities.
In the meantime the bills drawn as the representa-
tives of the value of either constitute a circulating
medium, which answers, in ordinary times, all the
same purposes as if the British manufacturer and
the foreigner transacted their business in the way
of barter.

That the system is liable to be abused, is per-
fectly true. That it has been abused from time
immemorial, by scheming adventurers, and by
parties placed in positions of temporary difficulty,
is also true. But it is neither true that its abuse
is confined, or ever has been, to the mercantile
houses trading with India; nor that the operations
of those houses have been of that reckless character
described by the Guardian.. A large portion of
our entire foreign trade has for years past been so
carried on that—to use the words of the Manchester
Guardian—" it became a perfect puzzle" how
"cotton twist and cotton cloths" could be sold
"cheaper in Calcutta than in Manchester." For a
large portion of our fabric, the various foreign
markets have served the manufacturer as wholesale
slaughter-houses. The London market frequently
serves him in the same capacity. Consignments
to the latter are made, and drawn against, and have
been done so for years, more frequently " fog the
purpose of `raising the wind,' and with little or
no bond fide object of entering into transactions,
for the sole sake of the profit they would yield."
But with respect to the alleged reckless character
of the transactions of the large India houses, de-
duced from this fact that goods appeared to be
selling at lower rates in Calcutta than in Manches-
ter, and the conclusion formed that such goods
were only purchased to enable the buyers to meet
current engagements,—in a word to sustain insol-
vency, our contemporary has omitted a few con-
siderations which, duly weighed, would go far to
diminish the onus, which he throws upon the houses
in question. In the first place, he omits to remind
his readers that, whereas low prices have of late
awaited our shipments of goods to India, the losses
thus entailed upon the exporter have not, as in
ordinary years, been balanced by profits upon the
produce returned. We have been sending goods
to a market from which our free-trade policy has
prohibited a profitable return in many of its most
imilortant staples. A bale of Manchester cottons
may have been, a few months ago, sold in Calcutta
at less than its money price in Manchester. It,
however, still bought the same quantity of sugar
which the merchant had been accustomed to receive
for it; and had that sugar brought in the British
market anything like its ordinary value, the appa-
rent loss submitted to would have been made up.
But we have brought down the price of colonial
free labour sugar by our free-trade measures to the
level of the foreign slave planter's prices. Our
currency system has aided in the work of deprecia-
tion, in this and other descriptions of Indian pro-
duce. And hence our ruin and sacrifice which have
ensued.

Undoubtedly some of our large East India houses
would have acted fortunately if they had sus-
pended their business sooner. But it is as little in
our power always to decide for the best, as it is to
foresee coming evil. Men will naturally hope for
a turn in the tide of affairs, when it has set in
against them; and many, who thus held out until
the action of the government upon the Bank
Charter afforded them a relief from the pressure
for money, will ultimately be enabled to conceal
from the world the fact that they were ever within
reach of the same fate as the vilified parties who,
previously to that time, were compelled, or advised,
to yield to the storm. It must be borne in mind
that, whatever may prove to be the description of
balance sheets which the suspended houses in trade
exhibit in these disastrous times, when the depre-
ciation which has taken place in every description
of property is so overwhelming, that, but for a
shock which few commercal communities could
have stood, the bulk of the houses in question
would have been perfectly solvent, and some of
them of undeniable wealth.

As the result of the present state of things, con-
nected with the East India trade, the Guardian says:—
" There is, at least, one consolation. The system is
exposed; the bubble has burst, and the honest merchant,
who has hitherto conducted his trade on true and legiti-
mate grounds, but whose efforts have been rendered fruit-
less, by the unequalled competition of reckless specula-
tors, will now find the atmosphere cleared, and the markets
in India controlled by the simple and certain law of sup-
ply and demand. Supplies of British goods will be kept
down to such a quantity as will secure a profit, and the
price of produce to such a rate as will insure to the ship-
per a fair remuneration. Trade will resume a healthy
tone, being governed by no other motive but that of fair
and legitimate profit. But, in order that it shall continue
so,—in order that the just recompence of capital and in-
dustry shall not again be sacrificed to the mere commer-
cial adventurer,—the whole system of long credits, hitherto
granted in the India trade, must henceforth be abolished.
If not, the severe ordeal through which we have now
passed will have been in vain as a lesson for the future."
Of course, having ruined one race of merchant
princes by our capricious policy, we shall have a'
new race of smaller men, blowing themselves up to
a size sufficient to fill up the same space in the
world, and to explode at length with the same
loudness of report. Supplies of British goods will
be kept down to such a price as will secure a profit ;
and hence, the manufacturer must produce a little
less. In the meantime, however, it is quite pos-
sible
that the supply of that quarter of the globe
with European commodities may fall into the hands
of some fortunate people, who have neither a cur-
rency screw at one end of the commercial chain,
to keep the home merchant vacillating between a
condition of wealth and of insolvency, nor a legis-
lature willing to vary its fiscal system at the dic-
tation of every fluent demagogue, whom a mob of
fools may choose to exalt into an oracle.

There is no truth in the report contained in the Man-
chester and Salford Advertiser of Saturday last, that
the Burnley Branch of the Craven Bank had suspended
payment for fourteen days.
The Rev. Wm. Pollock, M.A., of St. Mark's, has been
presented by some of the ladies of his congregation, with
hangings for the pulpit and reading desk, and cover for
the communion table, all of velvet, carpet for the chancel,
and a very handsome set of books.
We deeply regret to state that the body of Mr. Thomas
Lunt was found in the canal near Chisenhale-bridge, yes-
terday morning, soon after five o'clock. The last time he
was seen alive was Sunday afternoon. Mr. Lunt was a
highly respectable man, and occupied, as a flour dealer
and bread baker, three shops in various parts of the town.
One was in Gerard-street. _ _

THE WEATHER, since our last, has continued as mild
as in the previous week, portions of some days being as
mild and sunny as if it were spring. The sowing of wheat
has nearly been completed in the districts around us, and
in some fields, where sown lately, it is already well above
the ground. The grass fields continue to look beautifully
green.
COMMITMENTS AT THE POLICE-COURT YESTERDAY.—
Mary Roberts was committed for one month, for robbing
a man of £2 10s.—James M'Connell, for stealing a pig of
iron from the quay ; and James Passington, for stealing a
similar article from a cart, were each committed for 21
days.—A woman named Mary Jones, was committed for
trial for having on Saturday stolen from the shopdoor of
Mr. John Bradshaw, ready-made linen dealer, in Scot-
land-road, a shirt, which, on her being followed and
searched was found concealed under her shawl,