The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-09-10 00:00:00

A NEW ANTI-CORN-LAW LEAGUE

The illustrious O,Cobden, we learn from the :Morning
Chronicle of Wednesday last, has just laid down for the
itinerants of the league a new course of agitation against the
corn-laws. The attempt to cram the nostrums of this cotton
quack and his fellow-illuminati down the throats of thinking-
and sane MEN has failed. Amongst the mercantile classes it
has signally Ailed. The attempt is now, however,, to be
made upon the rising generation—upon our juvenile. mer-
chants. We are to have forthwith established in the metro-
polis, and no doubt eventually throughout the provinces as
well, a "Young Men's Anti-Corn-Law League," in whose
ranks are to be enrolled all the sucking talent which is now
occupied ingloriously in copying letters, snaking out invoices,
or labelling samples; and from henceforth the councils Of
the nation and the experience of " bearded men" are to be
turned aside by the sage vapoutiings of crotchetty boys, who
have devoted their unfledged wits to the pursuit of political
economy, when they might have been more usefully employed
in fathoming the mysteries of the multiplication table or en-
deavouring to master the intricacies of a custom-house entry.
The youths at present in our mercantile offices, argues
O'Cobden, will compose the merchants of a future day ; ergo :
, the importance of inoculating them in time with the anti-
corn-law virus. The matured intellects of the existing race
are impenetrable to all our attempts upon their credulity ;
ergo, we must direct our free trade artillery against the im-
mature embryo and train him up to our purposes. We can-
not move the oak, but we may bensi the growing twig, and
thus work into distortion the future tree. A hopeful scheme,
truly—worthy alike of its projectors and their philosophy !
But there is just one little drawback, which Mr. O'Cob-
den his fellow
hsae:•eiouy loslt sight of, and which
Ne retard their efforts
o ' f
e n o
al
cantile class. The rising
ti n plotters
au
generation of Great Britain is strongly conservative; and
the youth's who occupy the junior stools in our large mercan-
tile establishments are especially so. Here and there, perhaps,
may be found the leaven of which the agitators are in search-
-young men more deeply read in politics and philosophy
than in morals or arithmetic ;--u ho entertain a profound
contempt for the " ancient ways " of prudent and plodding
industry by which their fathers rose above the mass, and who
would gladly discover in the doctrines of free trade, or any
other set of doctrines, a royal road to wealth and independent
station ; but these, unfortunately for the leaguers, are pre-
cisely the young men who are the least likely to form the
future race of British merchants. The world has certainly
witnessed strange things in this age of joint-stock banking
and kite-flying ; and comets, such as Mr. Cobden and his
class, have become somewhat more numerous than of old.
But after all, we imagine, it will be discovered, that the
qualities most surely to be depended upon, to enable their
possessors to rise to eminence in a mercantile sphere, are of

a solid and sterling character; and there is certainly not

much fear. that the league can make any great impression
where these qualities exist, as we thank heaven they do, in
our rising mercantile generation.

Should this scheme fail, as we venture to predict it will, we
should recommend the gentlemen of the league to direct their
operations a little nearer to the nursery. If the young men

in our merchants' offices refuse to become disciples of O'Coh-
ben, why not try the infant schools and get up a " league "
amongst the new-breeched and short-frocked ? We might
have an anti-corn-law alphabet, as well as a corn-law
catechism ; and should teachers be scarce, possibly an anti-
corn-law knight or two might be found who would not object
to resume the rod for so truly laudable a purpose, as that of
birching Cobdcuism into the system of our merchant juveniles.