The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-09 00:00:00

r ; another plantation on the same coast is now the subject
of a treaty, preliminary to a similar purchase. If the present
high wages continue unabated, plantation will follow planta-'
tion. We very cordially assent to Lord John Russell's sen-
timent, that " there is nothing in this singular or culpable,
since no man in England, who has capital sufficient to keep
a shop or rent a farm, will follow the plough as a day la-
bourer." The purchasers of Northbroke did not know their
own motives of action as human beings, when they declared
their " firm determination, as a body, to continue to labour
daily on the several plantations where they were employed."
The officer whom they addressed displayed equal ignorance
of frail humanity, when he wrote of the rigid " rules of their
community excluding all besides the determinedly industrious
and sober." No one now seeks to compel these people to
promote the splendour of the empire by keeping its com-
merce up ; but why strive to mock, with ancient and obso-
lete munificence, the desolation of abandoned fields, or the
wild luxuriance of spots of ground, yielding sufficient subsist-
ence for the wants of the day, but nothing beyond ?
Without immigration, then, it is of no use to talk of your
civil list. But you say you will allow us to have immigrants.
Not, however, from Africa or the East Indies ; iu the latter
country, you openly contemplate the creation of sugar estates :
a scheme which possesses several of the ingredients necessary
to success, first, as it would benefit the Corporation of Lea-
denhall-street, next, as it would rescue the Coolies, con-
fessedly wretched, from sheer starvation ; thirdly, as it would
counterbalance the exertions of the foreign slave-dealer.
Now, how, with such a scheme staring us in the face, could
you ask us to consent to your proposals, submitting, at the
same time, to restrictions which must prove our ruin ? A
taunt about our wishing to deal in human flesh, comes with
but a bad grace from any servant of the local government.
Were that civil list granted, the immigrant's flesh, who arrived
here from the United States, could be said to be purchased,
as truly as that of the African or Cooly. It is inconsistent,
if such is the traffic which we actually wish to drive, to let
us deal in Americans, but to shut up the Indian market. The
government secretary, if he obtained his £2OOO, under the
conditions carried out by him, would owe the odd £BOO
a-year to the purchase of the sinews, bones, and flesh of his
fellow-creatures, fellow-immortals, aiming to fulfil the high
destinies of their moral nature, just as truly as if we had
agents in all the Presidencies, and along the whole African
Coast. But it is monstrous to set up a clamour of trafficking
in human flesh. Trafficking in human happiness, rather !
and adding to the well-being of thousands of individuals,
while we would develope the capabilities; and accumulate the
wealth of the state. Our financial representatives proposed
to give £7OO sterling a-year to each of the stipendiary magis-
trates, who were to be nominated by the home government,
and four of whom must speak the Hindostanee language. If
the liberality and sound discretion of this part of their offer,
do not very forcibly strike the British parliament, some ho-
nourable members mingled but little sincerity with their
high-sounding and ambitious declamations, against what
they denominated the Cooly slave trade.
But not only was the immigration offered by the local go-
vernment, as part of their consideration in the bargain,
limited in extent, but also _of the most precarious duration.
There was no guarantee given, of the perpetuity of the per-
mission to freemen to emigrate hither. The very year after
the.eommencement of the civil list cycle of twenty-one years,
pl'ohibitions the most stringent might have been imposed.
And only observe by what process the appropriation of money
was to have been regulated. The Governor 'Was to have
allowed, annually, such an issue for immigratiOn purposes,
as he might consider expedient. We know that, last year,
his excellency-sent home such representations to Lord Nor-
manby, that the noble marquis declared the colony incapable
of supporting the expenses of immigration, since it could not,
as he said, meet the exigencies of some of the most important
departments of the state. Now, nothing was more likely
then that some crotchet might enter into the head of the
ex cutive, which if the combined court rejected, the execu-
tiv e would not past immigration. Suppose that the govern-
ment candidates had been returned to the two financial serts,
at the late election, instead of the popular, and the votes in
the combined court been equalized, the governor having a
casting vote. The financial body must have quietly taken,
without murmuring, such despatches as his excellency chose
to lay before it. The civil list would have been passed, giv-
ing the governor £6000., the financial body not knowing that
there existed a despatch allowing his excellency a govern-
ment house out of the parliamentary relief grant. The-civil
list secure, the contents of the despatch would have gradually
leaked out. A future combined court, more popularly con-
stituted, would remember this double-dealing, and attack
sonic analogous annual allowance : the governor, in revenge,
would shut up all the immigration supplies, declaring the
more pressing exigencies of the country unprovided for. Co-
lonists, you can hardly have a conception of the dangers,
from which the vigilance of your representatives has rescued
you. You may despond as you see the executive now vin-
dictively locking up your own resources : your immigration
society, destitute of funds, appealing to your exhausted
purses : the very, items proposed for improvements by steam
machinery, rudely erased by the hand of authority. But,
recollect, the guardians of the public chest have still one
check left on official tyranny.
On the 6th of March last, the governor, in the court of
policy, read a minute, a solemn document placed on record,
in which be stated that he consented to let thirty thousand
dollars stand on the estimate for the use of the immigration
society. Au item thus placed there, must, of necessity, come
before the combined court, by which, beyond a question, it
would be carried unanimously. Will it be credited that his
excellency, to hamper the colonists, threatens to withdraw
this item from the estimate, and place it beyond the power of
the combined court even to entertain it ?' Ile has given the
instructions of Lord John Russell a retrospective effect,
menacing to violate his own high honour as a ruler. We
trust that he will withdraw this unjust and arbitrary proce-
dure. But if he do not, the colonists would, we are certain,
justify their representatives, if they threw such impediments
in the way of raising the yearly supplies, as would involve
him in difficulties, of the nature of which he has little con-
ception. The step is not to be taken rashly, but, once taken,
must not be receded from : for this tyranny is becoming in-
supportable, and must be shaken oil*. Whoever he be that
stands between us and our attainment of prosperity, or,
rather, the preservation of our being, must be punished for
his rashness, and held up, a conspicuous beacon, to warn off
all future rulers from those dangerous aggressions.
Last year, the governor also, in a minute or speech to the
court, declared that be " should not have felt justified, ac-
cording to his ideas of the prosperity of the country, to have
given his assent to the import tax." This year, he is willing
to allow an import tax, provided we allow him the civil list
which lie asks. Such a tax, (of course, on British goods is
meant,)was imposed sonic years back, levied for a short
time, and then suddenly discontinued. CoOld the financial
representatives have been satisfied with less than they
required, a guarantee that the import duty should be co-
existent with the civil list, of which it professed to be in aid?
But observe the cunning of even this proposal of a boon.
The local government offered, indeed, to permit an import
duty, but they themselves were to regulate its amount. Give
us permission to raise a' tax, while you retain its possible
amount in your own keeping, and your permission is totally
valueless.
An artifice was praCtised by the local government, when
they submitted to us the civil list as a whole. This was met
by the financial representatives, by a cordial anxiety to sacrifice
individual differences of opinion as to the details, In sanc-
tioning their conduct with his approval, a man does not bind
himself to anything beyond an acquiescence in the great
general principle of demanding an adequate and permanent
remuneration for the concessions which they make.
The civil list of the local government proposed for educa-
tional and ecclesiastical uses, 11,150, a sum ridiculously in-
adequate. That of the popular representatives, in round
numbers, £lO,OOO, (51,266d01., 67c.) Some fault may be
found with the distribution of this amount between the epis-
copalian and the Scottish communions. The local chief of
the Romish church has taken the alarm, and convened a Sun-
day meeting for the support, as he terms it, of the just views
of the local government. His notice is what may be fami-
liarly termed fussy, but is not likely to attract many ad-
herents : for the Romish bishop is so domineering, so un-
popular, so fond of keeping the management of the funds of
his congregation in his own hands, and conducting it in his
own way, that his flock are not likely to fall into the trap
which he has laid for them, or to wish to see a rapacious and
irresponsible man entrusted with additional means of spurn-
ing at them and outraging them. By the term " a few
financial representatives," the reverend gentlemen designates,
let us remind him, the whole financial body. The assertion
that the court of policy have voted the means of competent
support to the Roman Catholic clergy of this colony, but that
the financial representatives attempt to withhold it, is a false-
hood, disgracing the author's cloth, and affronting the cross
under which he ministers. The court of policy placed nothing
on the civil list for the Romish church. Every respectable
Roman Catholic, on the day of meeting, after he has humbly
offered his adoration to his Maker, will quit, we are certain,
in thorough disgust, the sacred edifice profaned by the brawl-
ing of that turbulent and grasping priest. If a discussion of
the minuti& of the civil list had been permitted to result in
separate divisions, some liberal modification might have been
made, of the provision for the two establishments. But now
the Romish bishop has sunk so low, as to fawn, in the hopes
of pecuniary aggrandisement, on an authority who professes
to hold him in such abhorrence, that he has vowed never to
sit again beneath the same roof with him.
And now, with these considerations before them, and a
hundred others which will be suggested to them by the peru-
sal of the recent debates or by their own reflections, our
readers may judge of the debt of gratitude they owe the popu-
lar representatives. The discomfiture which they have sus-
tained, ought to teach the members of the local government
to moderate their desires, and bound their aspirations after
emolument by their real usetulness to the country. Which
of them has ever introduced a salutary and practical improve-
ment into any of our institutions ? To which of them do we
owe any reforms in our legal code ? Is not the best of them
merely a respectable performer of • ordinary duties, in the
discharge of which he seldom, if ever, deviates from the
humble routine of his inglorious and forgotten predecessors ?
Does the honourable gentleman, whose talent is the most
conspicuous, exhibit any of the commanding genius that fits
men for conducting great enterprises ? Is lie niore than a
ready and eloquent debater, and a docile and clever servant ?
Are not complaints universal against the uncertainty of the
principles on which justice is administered? Which of the
most experienced of the practicioners at the bar, can cal-
culate the future decisons of the supreme court by past prece-
dents ? or understand the existing system of jurisprudence,
Dutch statutes interpreted by judges quite ignorant of the
laws and practices of Hollaud ? Do not the public buildings
form a vast castle of indolence, in which, beneath the very
eye of the executive, judges, sworn clerks of all descriptions,
magistrates, and custom-house officers, drag on, while the
public work is neglected, from day to day, a listless and lux-
urious existence, or if they are industrious, are active only
for the mischievous purposes of party politics ? But we need
not rest the rejection of the proposed civil list on the defects
or inefficency of the executive government. It is sufficient
to have proved that, while the revenue is annually falling off,
and the expenditure increasing, it is only immigration, and
an equal division of taxes, that could have enabled us to bear
the burden prepared for our shoulders by the local govern-
ment. It' we are to sink to the condition of a nation of pro-
vision growers and petty shopkeepers, the affairs of our state
can be managed well enough by members of our creole popu-
lation, who will be satisfied with emoluments proportionate
to the minor importance of their functions. There will be
no need to attract to our shores a horde of dependent stran-
gers, that we may pay them extravagently while in office, and
give them after they retire, an allowance which they shall
spend for the benefit of lands with which we have no manner
of sympathy.

POST-OFFICE PENNY LAIIELS.--It may prove an awk-
ward thing to give or lend a penny label to a neighbour, as
it subjects the party to be seized forthwith by the collar, and
lodged in gaol. By the 2d and 3d Vic., c. 52, sec. 8, the
rates denoted by the labels or covers are to be deemed stamp
duties, and the paper impressed with postage stamps is sub-
jected to all the regulations, pains, penalties, and clauses
contained in the acts relating to stamp duties. The labels
are, therefore, under the protection of the statute 3d and 4th
William IV., c. 97, by the 12th clause of which, if any per-
son shall hawk or carry about for sale any stamped paper,
" or shall utter or offer for sale or exchange, at any house,
shop, or place, other than the house or shop in which he
shall reside, or bond fide carry on his trade or business, any
stamped paper," he -shall forfeit £2O, and any man may
apprehend him. He may be further fined £2O for selling
stamps without alicense, and the informer may have all the
penalty, at the option of the commissioners of stamps. By
the same act, if any person shall fraudulently get out of, or
discharge from any stamped paper any matter or thing
thereon written, printed, or expressed, he shall be judged
guilty of felony, and be liable to be transported for life. The
same punishment may be awarded to any person who shall
knowingly use, or have possession of," any stamped paper,
from which any matter or thing shall have been fraudulently
erased, cut, scraped, discharged, or gotten.