The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-11-09 00:00:00

POLITICAL MISCELLANY.

The Queen's speech on the opening of Parliament will
be delivered on the 23d instant.
On Thursday, Mr. Roebuck was presented with a tes-
timonial of £5OO by his late constituents at Bath.
The corporation of London have resolved to petition
parliament to abolish the privilege from arrest enjoyed by
members of the House of Commons.
Viscount Enfield (better known as the Hon. G. S.
Byng) has retired from the secretaryship of the Board of
Control, and is succeeded by George Cornwall Lewis,
M.P. for Herefordshire.

Mr. James Stephen has retired from the Assistant
Under-Secretaryship of the Colories, and has been ap-
pointed a member of Privy Council. Mr-. Merivale,
author of Lectures on Colonisation, has been appointed
to Mr. Stephen's vacant situation.
The Manchester Courier, affected by a peculiar form of
the prevailing
,panic, asks, " What has become of the
Cobden fund ? ' The " managing committee," it is in-
sinuated, have " managed" to make away with it, and
" doubts and apprehensions", in consequence " beset the
free-trade public. '
The Times says that parliament is not convened for a
loan to Ireland, and that no loan will be demanded, the
funds and stores in the hands of government being happily
sufficient for the present need. Indemnity for the " sus-
pension" of the bank charter, it adds, is the sole object
of the November session.
AN ENGLISH FREE TRADER'S ENCOURAGEMENT
OF FOREIGN MANUFACTURES !—Mr. Lefevre, brother
to the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the brother
to a gentleman holding a high office in the Board of
Trade, has invested £60,000 in a spinning factory at St.
Petcrsburgh. Is this a proof of the blessings of free
trade ?
INTERVIEW OF THE BIRMINGHAM DEPUTATION WITH
LORD JOHN RUSSELL.—On Thursday, the deputation
appointed at the meting recently held in Birmingham, in
reference to the financial and commercial condition of the
country, had an interview with Lord John Russell. Mr.

G. F. Siuntz, Mr. R. Spooner, Mr. §cholfield, Mr. Ma-
son, Mr. Harlow, and Mr. Salt were the principal speakers,
and they walked into the government pretty handsomely.
Mr. Salt at the close of a powerful speech that must tell
greatly with the country, and which from its open, candid
character, was wortn all the orations we ever heard in
Parliament, required that a large measure of relief should
be immediately given, that money should be freely ad-
vanced at moderate rates on all good securities—and that
meanwhile a full inquiry should be instituted, with a view
to permanent legislation ; and he thought it his duty to
warn his lordship that if the ministers would not give re-
lief he should feel it his duty to apply to her Majesty for
the immediate dismissal of ministers. The minister
would promise nothing.
FREE TRADE AND THE:CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY.
—We should be sorry to affront our readers by offering
any comment up on the following paragraph, which we find
in the Times of Thursday. All that we shall presume to
do is to hint, civilly, that free trade is in a hobble. like a
detected impostor; and that our contemporary is per-
forming the friendly office of a Confederate, by trying to
persuade its enraged dupes that they are sadly mistaken
in supposing they have been cheated :—" Perhaps the
very worst argument of all the bad arguments ever used in
this world is that which is brought against good principles
from any accident or exception that may delay, or
impair, or conceal their effects. Every sot has his
catalogue of temperate men whom he has survived, and
every shifty vagabond can tell you of honest and hard-
working plodders who attained not to riches or honour.
The grandest policies have been thwarthed for a time, and
the divinest surmises of human sagacity have suffered
their periods of contempt. The chapter of accidents is
the Bible of the fool. It supplies him with a text against
everything good, or great, or wise. At any vicious and
casual impulse he can trump up a petty induction to es-
tablish some rule of selfishness or extravagance. He can
demonstrate the dangers of heroism, the cost of liberality,
the fallibility of prudence, or the tter precariousness of
all results wlfatever. Hence when the question of free-
trade came fairly before the legislative sense of the nation,
we deprecated any predictions of early and unqualified
benefit. We said the question required a long run to
prove it. It was not in the power of 'man to command
success." This very edifying homily is followed by at-
tacks upon Mr. Bankes, the Earl of Winchilsea, and Mr.
Blackstone, who, with many others, have had the audacity
to declare that we may read the history of free-trade, as
far as it is yet written, in the present deplorable condi-
tion of the country. " Fine words butter no parsnips."

THE LATE UNDER-SECRETARY FOR THE COLONIES.—
The Morning Chronicle of Monday contained a laudatory
notice of the late Mr. James Stephen, on his retirement
from the Colonial-office. Next day the following rather
more correct sketch appeared in the same paper:—'` We
have no desire to do injustice to the right lion. gentleman.
Mr. Stephen is undoubtedly a man of very great intellectual
power; his mind has been highly cultivated ; his views are
frequently original and always worthy of consideration ; his
information is varied and extensive ; andhis style of literary
composition is rhetorical and glittering. He fai led in the Co-
lonial- office, and injured both this'country and its colonies,
not from want of ability, and not from absence of op portnnity
to serve them, but because he had been & heated in ahollow,
insincere, presumptuous, selfish, and intolerant school, and
became master of that school. Craft, policy, intrigue, jea-
lousy, and chicanery were the characteristics of the Colonial
Office during Mr. Stephen's long direction of it. No one
connected with it bad, till lately, confidence in its justice,
its honour, its integrity, or its generosity : the Colonies
feared it ; the colonists hated it ; merchants connected
with the colonies despised it ; and every one who knew
aught of its mechanism attributed its defects, its faults,
its crimes to Mr. James Stephen. Some of the ablest
statesmen of the day were its chiefs whilst Mr. Stephen
was Under Secretary—Lord Ripon, Lord Stanley, Lord
John Russell, Mr. Gladstone, for example ; but all failed ;
signally and disastrously failed therein. These statesmen
failed, because success under our present colonial system is
not within the range of possibilities or of human ability, for
it is a system that teases, irritates, worries, and overgoverns
the colonies; and of that system Mr. Stephens was the
life, whence it moved, breathed, and had its being. No
one in our time had such ample opportunities of seeing
and feeling its evil consequences : he saw and felt them in
rebellions in Canada, in Cafl're wars at the Cape, in war
and insolvency in New Zealand, in crimes abhorent to
human nature in Van Dieman's Land, in ruin and devas-
tation in New South Wales, in the gradual extinction of
capital in the West Indies, in dissatisfaction and animosity
in every colony and in every colonist. But experience
taught him nothing ; he persisted in the system which a
stroke of his pen, or one generous thought, might have
altered ; and he leaves the system rampant in mischief."

CHEAP SUGAR.

(To the Editor of the Times.)

SlR,—Your talented correspondent, Jacob Omnium,
has described what he saw in Cuba, at the commence-
ment of this year. As I was at that time in Jamaica, will
you allow me to state, as a contrast, what I saw there,
though my powers of description are so spiritless when
compared with his, as the proceedings under free labour
are when compared with those under the slave driver,
armed with whip, sword, and bloodhounds. Five weeks
after Christmas, I was in the parish of St. Mary's, which
once produced more sugar than any other in the island,
on my way to visit a gentleman cultivating his own estate.
I mention what I found the state of affairs there, not as
beingivrmeeimpression
required
Christmas,ss peculiar, eoaeunt i
oistal
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weeding
eihehtncehgatewuhoestereiarmmteaheshae.
making
idwsnot
gbar stranger
inefinngmtneonyer
ost
roaduhawngeaoydrr made
1w al
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oeaseue
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ndnes
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overseer
rbseeweeriomanteinimsq.aunfii
inquired
dt
awwbohortektt,lheb:ratntldh metely some ne-
groes galloping down to the bay, probably to drink Hodg-
had occasionallybegun
work in other parishes, and speculated on the possibility
of his own people turning out next Monday, (that was, if
they had spent all their money). I found that the gen-
tleman I had come to visit was, if possible, worse off than
his neighbours, as he had more canes that required cut-
ting. My host was a gentleman who, after some years in
the army, had undertaken the management of his own
estate, and had resided on it, constantly working harder,
as I have been told and believe, than any agriculturist in.
England-ever works ; yet he was utterly unable to carry it
on in a profitable manner from want of labour. He told
me that if he had forty Africans he could do well ; as it
was he feared he should soon be obliged to give it up.'
On the best situated estates in this parish the rate of
wages is Is. lid. a-day : the labourers will only work five
days in the week, and take a month's holiday at Christ-
mas, and a fortnight after the Ist of August to com-
memorate emancipation. They are of course quite re-
gardless as to whether the canes are ripe or not at these
seasons. Imagine an English farmer, with fine crops on
the ground, yet unable to reap them from the want of la-
bourers; then, tell this man that he has to compete with
what he delights to call the "serfs" on the continent,
and forbid him to import any of these serfs to work for
him ; you will have then a faint notion of the hardships of
the Jamaica planter, now that he is made to compete with
the cuba slave-holder. His only hope lies in procuring a
supply of African immigrants. The British government
will not allow him to send a ship to procure them for him-
self, and has as yet done nothing to assist him. It ap-
pears that one vessel, the Growler, is taking labourers to
Guiana and Trinidad. Unfortunately, at the time of her
equipment, we had no governor in Jamaica to represent
our claims. On my arrival in England, having left every
planter in Jamaica crying out for more immigrants, I was
told by Mr. Hawes that it appeared we did not want more
labourers in Jamaica. True we had declined to pay for
any more expensive and often useless Coolies, but on the
subject of African immigration I never heard but one opi-
nion. In fact the experiment has been tried in the parish
of St. Thomas-in-the-East, where nearly all the Africans
that have arrived are settled, and this is the only really
thriving parish in the island. Mr. M'Cornock, the Custos
of the parish, says that their prosperity is entirely owing
to this cause. Perhaps, as a proprietor, I take a preju-
diced view in thinking that we are hardly treated with
fairness by government ; it seems to me that it would be
even cheaper in the end to put us in a position to compete
with other sugar growers, than to ruin us and then as in
the case of the Mauritius planters, pension us off with
£150,000 a-year, for what is done this year for that island
will require to be done again ; and if ruin is to constitute
this claim I am much mistaken if Jamaica will not soon
have an equal right. I think, with the following small
concessions, we might, in the hope of a rebellion in Cuba,
struggle on for some years. If we do not obtain them.
the sooner we abandon the unequal struggle with slave-
grown sugar the better.

. A large supply of African labourers.
2. A reduction of the duty on rum.
3. A moderate protection on sugar, to diminish gradu-
ally for ten years.

Your obedient servant,
A PLANTER

Nov. 9, 1847.

COURT AND FASHION.
.
Her Majesty and the Court are gone into mourning for
Count Hugo Mensdorff, eldest son of Count Mensdorff
Pouilly. He died at Godfeaberg in the 42d year of his
age. He commanded a regiment of Cuirassiers in the
Austrian service. His mother was the eldest sister of her
Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, and of the late
Duke of Saxe-Coburg.
The Duchess of Cambridge, the Princess Mary of
Cambridge, and the Prince of Hesse landed at Dover on
Wednesday.
An interesting event occurred last week at Cbarlecote
Park, near Stratford-on-Avon, (immortalized by Shak-
sperian recollections,) in the marriage of a female descen-
dant of the house of Lucy to Thomas Lloyd Fitzhugh,
Esq., of Plas Power, Wales. The tenantry of the lady's
brother presented her with a diamond bracelet, value 100
guineas, and a magnificent jewelled bracelet was also pre-
sented to her by Sir Watkyn Williams Wynn, Bart.