The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-12-14 00:00:00

THE LIVgRPOOL STANDARD.

TUESDAY MORNING, DEC. 14, 1847.

TO-MORROW (Wednesday) a Special Council will
be held, to which the Dock Committee will sub-
mit their draught of the bill for the purchase of
lands. and the construction of additional wet docks,
and the erection of warehouses upon their quays.
To the scheme itself and to the granting of the full
powers required, we do not anticipate that any
general objection will be raised, although, perhaps,
Mr. Eyre Evans will oppose any further extension
of dock space, contending that with his favourite
warehouses surrounding our existing docks, such
extension, and the expense to be thereby imposed
upon the estate, will be rendered unnecessary.
But, with respect to one point, we are of opinion
not only that a strong opposition will be offered,
but that it ought to be offered by the Council, as
trustees of the interests of the burgesses at large.
We refer to the omission of any clause imposing
upon the Dock Committee's warehouses the same
contribution to the rates of the town, which is paid
by private owners of the same description of pro-
perty. _ _ _

We are not aware of the object of the Dock
Committee in not, in the first instance, tendering
in their bill, this concession to public opinion.
The precedent has already been established by the
insertion of a clause in a former bill, rendering the
Albert warehouses liable to be rated ; and the
principle, if sound in one case, is equally so in
another. There is no reason why warehouses on
one part of the dock estate should be taxed to-
wards our local burthens, and in another be free.
We are about to permit our Dock Committee to
appropriate a large plot of land, covered at present
with valuable property, paying a large amount in
rates ; and when it is not asked that we should be
empowered to tax that portion of such property which
will be covered with docks, or converted into open
quay space, we have, at least, a right to stipulate
that for the buildings which they erect upon it they
should pay in proportion to the burthens borne by
tho3e who will be called upon to enter into com-
petition with them.
It may be that there is some point of form
involved, which prevents the committee, from
themselves, offering such a clause, It is so very
obvious, however, that the burgesses will insist
upon it, and that Parliament will grant a demand
so reasonable, that we cannot believe that either
the Dock Committee or the Council can think of
offering any hindrance to its being made a part of
their bill. The proper course, would, therefore, be
to concede the point at once ; and not to throw
upon either the public estate, or the ratepayers the
intolerable expense of an opposition in committee.
We believe, in fact, that such a course will be
adopted.

THE effect of our free-trade policy, if carried out,
in determining the fate of our West Indian colonies,
is, no longer a question for speculation. Furnish
whatever facilities for immigration we may; give to
the planter a supply of labour, procured and paid
for by the government of the mother country ; the
aid thus afforded is only prospective, and will not
tempt the present race of proprietors to continue
the cultivation of the soil, with the certainty before
them, for some years to come, of a ruinous sacrifice
upon every crop which they raise and bring to
market. We have now before us a report of an
important meeting of planters, held on the 30th
October, in the parish of Metcalfe, Jamaica, by
the speakers at which this fact is fully established.

" From my experience in the management of estates in
this quarter, (remarked the first speaker at the meeting in
question, Mr. Westmoreland) I am satisfied it costs us
not less than 255. per cwt. on good estates to produce
sugar, all charges included, excepting interest of capital.
Now the Gazette price of sugar by the last packet was 255.
10d., exclusive of duty ; if, then, you deduct from this the
cost of freight, insurance, and other charges, which
amount to Bs. per cwt., it will give us a nett value of 17s.
10d. for what under favourable circumstances it costs us
255. to produce. It is therefore very plain that to go on
with the cultivation of sugar must involve a certain loss--
besides there is every probability of its value being more
depreciated, when the product of the additional properties,
which have been settled in the slave colonies since the
equalisation of the duties is brought into the market."

How manyyearsmust elapse before the planter can
be enabled to cheapen the cost of production 7s. 2d.
per cwt., or 30 per cent., besides meeting the further
deterioration in price which will take place when the
foreign producer has brought a largely-increased
quantity of land into cultivation, we need scarcely
inquire. Still less need we glance at the fact that
such reduction of the cost of production must, in a
great measure, be relieved by a reduction of the
wages of the free labourer, and the lowering of his
social position and comforts to something near the
level of the slave labourer, with whose products he
has to compete. To the professing friends of the
negro, this consideration has always operated
powerfully as an argument against any interference
with the supply of labour to these colonies. The
planter has been accused of selfishness in seeking
cheaper labour. It has been said of him that he
wished to reduce the condition of the free negro to
that of serfdom ; to drag him from his plot of
garden ground to toil continuously amongst the
sugar canes as an inevitable necessity of his lot.
The introduction of an increased quantity of African
labour was utterly to change the face of society in
that negro's paradise, which British humanity had
created ; to check the progress of cultivation in our
colonies, and to deprive the negro population of all
but the bare name of freemen. Yet our free-trade
policy, which compels that population to embark in
a struggle of competition with the slave labour of
foreign countries, renders inevitable the course,
against which the supporters of emancipation have
all along been protesting, unless, indeed, it is
decided that the attempt to raise tropical produce
with free labour is to be abandoned. And, more-
over, the fact is fully appreciated by the coloured
population of our colonies themselves. At the
meeting to which we have referred, a number of
the labourers are stated to have been present, and
to have taken a considerable interest in the pro-
ceedings ; and one of them, we find, spoke upon the
question in language, whose plain practical common
sense' is sufficient to overturn all the ignorant
assumptions of our theorists and mock philan-
thropists. We make no apology for quoting his
remarks. entire :

" Mr. Smart (a respectable black inhabitant) next
spoke.—l feel extremely sorry to see how we are getting
on. Some time ago we were much better off ; but since
the price of sugar has been reduced, we have Suffered
great loss; everybody feels it—the labourers themselves.
If sugar and coffee do not bring a good price, we shall

not be able to get on. The proprietors will say to the
labourers, in consequence of the reduction in sugar, we
are not able to pay you what we were in the habit of pay-
ing ; your wages must be reduced ; consequently the shop-
keepers will feel it. I am feeling it already. It is ve-•y
wrong in the government of England to call upon us to
work as cheap as slaves. It is not just that the people of
Cuba should be laughing at us ; and we must by word
do all in our power to tell the government what we are
suffering. lam glad to see so many of the labourers pre-
sent. Every one of us must feel deeply interested, and I
do hope that the people of England will assist us."

We are perfectly aware of the jeers and scorn
with which the prayer of these our fellow-country-
men for protection, will be met by a portion of the
British parliament and the British public. They
will be told that it is impossible to go back to a
policy so unfashionable as that which fosters the
industry of our own people, and prohibits that of
the foreigner; that they must meet-the competition
to which they are subjected by increased energy,
improved modes of culture, and better machinery.
The planter will be urged to become resident upon
his property, and to economise his expenditure.
But the answer to all this dogmatic philosophy is,
that the reduction to he accomplished of one-third
of the cost of the article produced is utterly beyond
the reach of the means possessed by the planter,
and inconsistent with the state of society existing,
or which can be found in our colonies. We can-
not exact from a race of freemen, in a soil where
the necessaries of life are raised with a minimum
amount of exertion, the same continuous labour
which the lash exacts from the Cuban or Brazilian
slave, until we have made the supply of that labour
a drug ; and then our tardy remedy of immigration
will cease to be effective. It is to a comparatively
high rate of wages that we must trust for any great
influx of Africans into our West Indian colonies.
Withdraw this temptation, and the African will
remain upon his own soil, surrounded with his na-
tive barbarism. Human nature is the.,same under
whatever skin we find it, and it has been the cha-
racteristic of human nature in all ages of the world
to be averse to change of country without the
prospect of bettering its lot.
What the West Indian planter asks is not at all
so unreasonable a request as it will doubtless be
called by the free trade legislators of Great Britain.
He asks for " protection" indeed, and the term is
an unpopular one. But it is protection from a
monopoly which is demanded. He says to us—
" You have surrounded me with restrictions, and
cast upon me burthens, which, you are powerless
to enforce upon my foreign competitor. The re-
sult is that you give him a monopoly in your mar-
kets." He asks us only to afford him a prospect
of being able to compete on fair terms, and shows
us convincingly that we have framed the scale of
our fiscal policy so as to shut him out from that
prospect. He takes, moreover, a higher ground
than this, and reminds us of the national hypocrisy
which has made him its victim. Upon this part of
the subject we cannot resist quoting the eloquent
appeal of Dr. Clarke, one of the speakers of the
Metcalfe meeting :
" If," says Dr. Clarke, " it were a question purely of
free-trade in the fair acceptation of the term—that is of
the free interchange of commodities between people all
obtaining their goods by the same honest means, or with-
out any obvious dishonesty, we might be contented to
confine our views to those resources, and others of an in-
ternal nature. But our position is such that unhappily
they do not touch the fatal wrong which has laid us pros-
trate. There is an antecedent—there is a paramount
consideration, which even with abundant labour and
capital, and with ample resources, must be guaranteed
not less to whole communitks, before they can lay their
account with any profit-upon mere honest industry, and
that consideration is PROTECTION AGAINST CRIME.
Slavery is robbery : robbery of human life ; and before we
can pursue our honest cultivation with any prospect of suc-
cess, we must look for a defence against this robbery. We
obtain our labour and pay for it under the sanction of
legal obligation and moral principle—we recognise as
civilized beings their claims, and exercise our calling under
their just restraint, and under the severe but just tax
which in a thinly-populated country they impose upon
us : and Government forces us to do this. Is it an un-
reasonable purpose,' or is it a reasonable expectation of
ours, to ask that the power which denounced and prohi-
bited the crime of Slavery on our parts should protect
us against that crime at the hands of others ? Is it
right, or is it not right, that the State—thepaternal State—
which has stripped us of our weapons of labour, on the
ground that they were cruel and unjust, should forthwith
turn us out unarmed and naked to an unequal contest
with others in full possession of taeir weapons, equally
cruel and unjust and exercised by them with ten-fold
cruelty and injustice? Is it consistent with national
honesty, with sound policy, or with the common principles
of right and justice, that Slavery, denounced by you as
guilt—prohibited by you here as guilt—should in foreign
colonies, and for exchequer purposes, be by you suborned
to our ruin ?"

We really know not with what arguments such
an appeal as this to the justice of the nation can be
met. Assuredly, if ever there was a case in which
the princidle of free trade might with propriety be
departed from—if ever there was a class which
should be excepted from its general application—
these are to be found in the British West Indies.
Should parliament persevere in subjecting the plan-
ter and the free labourer to the cruel competition
to which they are now subjected—should the nation
thus doom to destruction property worth millions,
and a population which, cherished by paternal
legislation, might be made the most potent instru-
mentality in human hands of civilizing and spread-
ing the blessings of Christianity over an entire
continent—should it wilfully abandon one of the
most noble efforts of philanthropy on record—the
British nation will deserve to be branded through-
out all time as having been guilty of hypocrisy
more glaring thaii has ever before been exhibited
to the world. We may withdraw our cruisers from
the pestilential coast of Africa, strip off our boasted
garb of humanity, and stand up in our true charac-
tet of a people willing, for selfish saving, to sacrifice
" the freedom of man for the freedom of trade."

IN introducing to our readers the following ex-
cellent petition of the ministers and members of
St. Jude's congregation, praying the legislature to
refrain from passing a bill for the admission of
Jews to the privilege of sitting in Parliament and
legislating for this Protestant and Christian realm,
it was not our purpose to have done more than in-
timate to our readers the fact that similar peti-
tions are about being adopted by the members of
other congregations. A few remarks, however,
upon the bill in question, which appeared in the
Liverpool Albion of yesterday, afford us an oppor-
tunity of saying a few words upon the subject.
But first we give a copy of the petition itself :
To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled.
The humble petition of the undersigned, Ministers and
Members of the congregation of Saint Jude's Church,
in the town of Liverpool,
SIIEWETII,
That your petitioners rejoice to know that Christianity
is as yet, professedly at least, part and parcel of the law
of England.
Your petitioners can recognise no force in the argu-
ment which urges, that, because some steps have been
taken in a direction which they deem injurious, therefore
it has ceased to be wrong to take a still further and more
fatal step in the same direction.
Your petitioners have no sympathy with those who de-
sire what is called the separation of Church and State;
and they perceive that by the admission of Jews to the
Legislature of the country, the advocates of such separa-
tion would have an additional ground of appeal on the
more palpable absurdity of so mixed an assembly legis-
lating for the Church. And even if your petitioners
looked upon the, separation of Church and State as a good,
they could not advocate what they deem an evil, in order
that good might come of it.
Your petitioners deem the admission of Jews into Par-
liament an evil, because it will proclaim to the country
that our rulers consider Christianity unnecessary for a'
legislator : it will thus encourage the people to consider
Christianity unnecessary for manufacturer or merchant,
for landlord or tenant, for master or pervant, and thereby
disparage the Holy. Scriptures, offend Almighty God, and
seriously disturb the peace and good order of society.
Your petitioners therefore pray that your honourable
house will continue to require all your members to profess
" the true faith of a Christian."

And your petitioners will ever pray,'
&c., &c. . •

In this ably-drawn up document we have clearly
set forth the principle upon which a large portion
of this Christian people object to the admission of
Jews into the legislature—" Christianity is as yet,
professedly at least, parcel of the law of England."
The connexion of the Church of England with the
State is equally part and parcel of that law ; and
the admission into Parliament of a body of men,
who are opposed not only to Christianity, but as
well to the connexion in question, tends to
strengthen the hands of those who are seeking the
separation of Church and State, and at the same
time to proclaim to the country that our rulers con-
sider Christianity unnecessary for a legislator, or
to be professed by us in the other relations of so-
ciety. Our contemporary, however, urges, as a
valid ground of granting the concession, that—
" We allow them to be mayors, sheriffs, aldermen,
common council-men. We permit them to elect mem-
bers of Parliament, and then, by by a most inexplicable
p we command a halt, and
inconsistency,
Uthemselves elected."
willand ninoytsterisuffneurathienmco to
We can see many good and sufficient reasons for

commanding this halt. One, however, is sufficient,
viz., the fact that Parliament has to legislate for the
religious institutions of a Christian people; and
the Jew believes Christianity to be a fable and
Christ himself an impostor. We have already
established the necessity of a limit to the conces-
sion of civil privileges somewhere. We give the
Atheist the protection of the laws.. We allow him
to vote for members of Parliament, and tolerate
him in the possession of other civil rights. But
we deny to him the right to give his evidence in a
witness box in cases either involving the security
of life or of property.
We grant our contemporary the truth of all that
he says as to the respectability of the great body of
the Jewish people, both in Liverpool and elsewhere.
We know them to be charitable to their own peo-
ple ; and that many of them contribute munifi-
cently to our leading philanthropic institutions,
irrespective of any consideration as to the creed of
those to be benefitted by them. We know them
to be clever, respectable, and intelligent. But that
is not the point. The question is, first, are the
Jews aggrieved by not being admitted to the privi-
lege of sitting in a legislature which makes laws
for a Christian church; and, secondly, is it safe
or right on the part of a Christian people to ad-
mit them to such privilege ? The fact urged by
the A?bion that they are too few in number to do
harm is mere trifling.

We are not at all disposed to doubt that the step
taken by the Watch Committee in resigning into
the hands of the head constable the appointment
and absolute control of the police force, has been
determined upon by them in the full confidence
that in so doing they were promoting the public
advantage, and securing the more efficient working
of the force. At the same time we much regret
that we cannot ourselves arrive at the same conclu-
sion. To us it appears somewhat at war with the
premises on which it is grounded. The effect and
the cause stand apart. There is a haste, too, and a
mystery about the whole proceeding, which induce
a fear that it has received much too little consider-
ation.

It is urged that of late the police, as a body,
have decreased in their efficiency, Why have they
so decreased ? No doubt there are many causes
from which such a body may have become, as it has
been said to have become, demoralised. The high
rate of wages which the class of able-bodied men,
such as are required for the service, have been re-
ceiving during the last few years may have caused
the best charactered amongst them to be drafted
off to other employments, and deterred equally
qualified individuals from offering themselves to
supply' their places, We believe that, to a consi-
derable extent, this has been the case. There may,
too, have been something faulty in the system upon
which they have been of late controlled. The
former of these causes can only be met by offering
increased inducements to good men. The latter
possible cause affords rather a subject for inquiry
than for the withdrawal of the control of the daily
boards and vesting almost absolute control in the
head constable. We want to see it clearly made
out that Mr. Dowling's energies have been at all
checked by the interference of the Watch Commit-
tee. We want to discover what regulations of his
the committee have upset; what scheme of im-
proved supervision he has proposed which they
have refused to adopt ; what ground there is for
the assumption that he will be able to effect alone
what he has been unable to effect in conjunction
with a daily board. It is not sufficient to tell us
that the police in Manchester and Birmingham are
under the sole management and control of the
respective head constables of those towns. There
may have been special reasons for so placing them.
The Watch Committee in both may have been
unable to devote the necessary amount of leisure to
the assistance of the head constable ; but in Liver-
pool we are not in that predicament. We have a
body of gentlemen residing in various wards of the
town, engaged in its leading businesses, acquainted
with local details and local requirements, and
capable, day by day, of offering to the head con-
stable valuable suggestions and information ; and
we protest, we cannot see why that officer should
seek to be deprived of their active co-operation.
It may be an object to Mr. Dowling to pick and
appoint his own men; to punish his own men, or
reward them by promotion; but we have certainly
never heard that suggestions of his, with respect to
such appointments have been lightly treated by the
committee, or that his efforts to improve the
morale of the force have been obstructed by the
committee's introduction of had materials to work
with.

Obvious enough it is that there has been defective
management or imperfect superintendence some-
where. The men have been too much their own
masters ; but why, we are not informed. Perhaps
the staff of inspectors and superintendents has been
too limited, or they have imperfectly performed their
duty; but we cannot discover what additional op-
portunities of seeing that such duty is strictly
attended to will be afforded to the head constable
by the change proposed,. The hours devoted by
him to attendance upon the committee may indeed
be a slight tax upon his time; but we should ima-
gine that the same attendance at the office will have
to be given to receive the reports of the various
superior officers, and to investigate the truth of
complaints ; and, moreover, the hours in the fore-
noon thus employed are not those in which it is
most desirable that the head constable should be
engaged in visiting the different divisions of the
town, and personally seeing that both inspectors,
superintendents, and their men, are doing their
duty. There is ample time left for all this ; and
we are not aware that in the bestowal of that time
the Board has ever been an obstruction.

It is much to be questioned whether the moral
influence of the head constable over his men will be
increased by his increase of absolute power over
their appointment and control. We suspect that it
will be decreased; that good men will not feel their
position improved by being subject to the orders
of an individual instead of to the sense of justice of
a board. What is to prevent imputations of favour-
itism being made ? What is to satisfy the force
that merit in\ one member is overlooked, whilst it is
rewarded in another? What, moreover, is there to
assure the public, a daily board being discontinued,
that Mr. Dowling himself is devoting sufficient of
his own time to the duties of his office, and is not
trusting too much to the delegated authority placed
in the hands of inspectors and superintendents ?
We must contend that it would have been infi-
nitely more satisfactory to the community to have
had a strict inquiry instituted into the causes of
police inefficiency, than to have to take it for granted
that such inefficiency can only be removed by the
adoption of a new pattern imported from Birming-
ham or Manchester. We know that, along with
the existence of a daily board, we have had in Liver-
pool an efficient police force ; and we want to know
why we cannot have one now. We have had it
when party spirit ran high both in the Watch Com-
mittee, the Council, and the town at large ; we have
had it when we were compelled to work with and
to bring into .shape very rude materials. Surely
what has been done with the same machinery may
be done again, without our venturing upon a novel
experiment, which may very possibly result in
failure, and increase the disorganization of which
L we complain.

The leading oracle of Free Trade--Mr. Richard
Cobden—has at length spoken out with respect to
the non-realization of his previously expressed pro-
phecies, as to the effects of Free Trade upon the
welfare of the manufacturing community; and it
is happy for him that he has chosen to do so in
addressing the Free-trade gulls of Stockport, rather
than the British public in the proper place, where
such an apologetic effusion should have been ad-
dressed—viz., in the British House of Commons.
What would have been the reception in the latter
place of the clap-traps which he has ventured upon
in the latter enlightened borough ? A few extracts
from his speech may serve to satisfy our readers :
" Our opponents," he says, " tell us that we have had
free trade, and it has not answered ; but I say we have
had thirty years of monopoly, and have not got free trade
yet. Further, it is said that free trade in corn has caused
those disasters to the trade of the district which we have
at the present time to lament. Why, we have not had
free trade in corn yet ; we have only been passing through
a transition state ; we have not got through the three
years we were to have had of the fag end of monopoly,
and have not yet had trial of our principles at all."
Why, one of these principles was that, for our
increased imports of breadstuffs, we should have
increased exports of manufactured goods. Has
this promise been fulfilled ? Certainly not. Oh
but, remarks our philosopher, " we have not
had Free Trade in corn, yet." We have certainly
i
had corn imported duty free; and, if that s not
free-trade, what is it ? "We have only b. en pass..

ing through a transition state," he says ; and eer,
tainly a sad transition state it has been for the
British merchant, the weaver, the spinner, and the
manufacturer. Keep us from such "transition
states." -

Mr. Cobden tells us that " he never dealt in
prophecies," but he " possibly might have told the
working men that with free trade in corn we should
have American flour at 1 d. per lb." He might
also have said that "we' should have more mills
and more employment, more houses, more car-
riages" !—(for the manufacturer, of course)—
" more churches and chapels." Has either of
these prophecies been fulfilled ? Neither. The
farmer, he says, has not been ruined. Why ?
Because American flour has not been selling at
it'd. per lb.; and the farmer has been able, by the
price which he has been receiving, and because we
have not yet had free trade, to buy from the manu-
facturer, and to employ the labourer. Without
the home trade, where would have been the manu-
facturing interest at this moment?

But the leading excuse of the charlatan is that
he has not had cheap Cotton. That material
however was as cheap to him as the rest of the
world, except to the producer ; and everybody told
him. that the producer would keep back that com-
modity from the British Manufacturer, Spinner,
and Weaver for 'himself. Then we have the pota-
toe rot dwelt upon ; but all this time in forgetful-
ness of the promise that the more we bought of
the foreigner the more he would buy from us. We
have the railways too flung in our face ; but why
not construct more railways as well as more mills,
more houses, and more carriages ? The wind-up
of this lame and impotent story is the assertion
that we may save £1r,000,000 a-year in the expenses
of the army. the navy, and the ordnance. We
could save infinitely more by withdrawing the sub-
sidies granted in various ways to such shallow
empirics as Mr. Richard Cobden.