The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-11-12 00:00:00

OUR PORTFOLIO.—No. VIII

There are many good things in the world spoiled, by being
put out of their place. " I pity the man„' says Sterne,
" who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, tis all
barren—and so it is, and so is all the world to him who bears
about with him a distempered mind." We hate your uni-
versal denunciators ! but, at the same time, the consciousness
that there are ,uch men in the world, should make us cautious

and discriminating_
Now there is nothing which tends so effectually to deprive
the censorious of a theme, as keeping things exactly in their
proper place. This is a matter of the very first importance ;
but one often too much neglected—and when so neglected,
not unfrequently the cause of direct confusion and trouble.
We would name as one instance, that dear and delightful
thing called Liberty. Your misanthropes, your Timons,
your wholesale satirists, would ask us perhaps to tell them
what it is?—would declaim upon the vanity of human wishes
and pursuits, and tell us that it is but a plunistone, a dream
by which countless multitudes have been beguiled to their
destruction, and which has introduced into the world little
else than an incalculable amount of evil. Now there is truth
in this cutting observation. We cannot deny that the foul-
est crimes have been committed in the name of liberty ; we
cannot deny that rivers of blood have been shed in seeking
its attainment, and we cannot deny that the proportion at-
tained in the world hears no comparison with that which has
been found to be unattainable. Is Liberty then not a good
thing, or is it a good wholly forbidden to the aspirations of
mortals, or wherein has the error consisted? We answer,
that the error has consisted in a slight invertion of the order
of things—in making liberty wholly an end, when it should
he looked for only as an accident. Read the works of our
poets ancient and modern, and what epics, what cantos, what
odes and sapphires will you not find addressed to Liberty.
She is converted into a goddess and worshipped ; happiness
and misery are at her dispensation, and temples are, or should
be, erected to her honour. No wonder if people's heads
were turned by such incantations. Nor were our bards the
only fools hi this species of ill-regulated enthusiasm;
grave philosophers were their associates • multitudes
participated in their feelings, and woe betide the man
who would venture to utter one word in disparagement
of the idol supremely worshipped by so many. We
would only remark that unless the term " liberty" have
some conventional meaning, (which it frequently has,) this
deification of liberty in the abstract, is a species of heathenism
quite unworthy of au age which enjoys the glorious light of
Christianity. A well regulated freedom is the precious, the
invaluable incident of a diffused Christianity, and Christian
institutions ; sought for independently, or wooed for its own
sake, and you grasp a shadow, or embrace perhaps an inani-
mate carcass.
Now Commerce is another of those good things spoiled by
this process of undue exaltation. Excellent and valuable as
it is, in its place, we find in some men a disposition to extol
it beyond measure, and to treat it as a substantive thing,
rather then the handmaid, and instrument to something else
to be estimated not by its own extent or power, but by the
purposes which it subserves.
" To you, Gentlemen," says Dr. Charming, in his address
to the Mercantile Library Company of Philadelphia, " Com-
merce is the commanding interest ; and this has no limits
but the habitable world. It no longer creeps along the shore,
or lingers in accustomed tracks, but penetrates into every
inlet, plunges into the heart of uncivilised lands, sends its
steam-ships up unexplored rivers, g=irdles the earth with rail-
roads, and thus breaks down the estrangement of nations.
Commerce is a noble calling. It mediates between distinct
nations, and makes men's wants, not, as formerly stimulants
to war, but bonds of peace. The universal intellectual ac-
tivity of which I have spoken, is di IC, in no small degree, to
commerce, which spreads the thong its, inventions, and writ-
ings of great men over the earth, aid gathers scientific and
literary men every where into an int ellectual republic. So it
carries abroad the Missioanry, the. Bible,
such Cross, and is
universality to true religion,"—&c. &c. In language as
this, it is evident that something w mre is attributed to the
commercial principle than, if close ly examined, it will be
found to be entitled to. If the I )octor's description were
quite correct, commerce and civilisation, commerce and
Christianity, would be found moving universally hand in hand,
and both alike diffusing blessings through the world ; but,
unfortunately, facts do not bear oast the description ; com-
merce, we are grieved to say, hi ts beets no such angelic
missionary to the world. Let us b ike just one passage from
George Catlin, on the manners, t :ustoms, and condition of
the American Indians in proof of t his assertion ; it is one of
the first that comes to our hand,—
" The Indians of North America," he says, " are copper--
coloured, with long black hair, black eyes, tall, straight, and.
elastic forms, are less than 2,000,000 in number, were origi-
nally the undisputed owners of the: soil, and got their title to
their lands from the Great Spirit who created them on it,
were once a happy and flourishing people, enjoying all the
comforts and luxuries of life which they knew of, and conse-
quently cared for ; were 16,000,000 in numbers, and sent that
number of daily prayers to the AL-nighty, and thanks for his
goodness and protection. Their country was entered by
white men, but a few hundred years since • and 30,000,00.0
of these are now scuttling for the goods and' luxuries of life,
over the bones and ashes of 12,000,000 of red men ; 6,000,000
of whom have fallen victims to. the small-pox, and the re-
mainder to the sword, the bayonet, and whiskey; all of which