The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-21 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

" Waltoeiensis" was received too late.

The letters of " A Protestant Churchman," and " A Real
Protestant," are now unnecessary.
We are unable to fathom the meaning of " A Bystander."
The advice of " Veritas" is taken in good part.

THE POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY.—A typographical error ap-
peared in the report of the meeting of this society, in our
last paper, which, thouzh obvious from the context, requires
notice to prevent possible misapprehension. The depth of
hold of a merchant ship of 400 tons, of dimensions proposed
by Mr. Melling—she being 114 feet in length, and 28; feet
beam—is stated, in figures, to be 13 feet, in place of 19
feet. The patent windlass exhibited, was also, by a mistake
of the Secretary, stated to be the invention of Mr. G. P.
Payne, instead of that of Mr. Holt.

Ll)Pfin post &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 21, 1841

The successors of the late Mr. Egerton Smith have
made a demonstration in the last number of their pa-
per, which will go a great way to satisfy all the admir-
ers of that gentleman, that his mantle has fallen upon
the shoulders of individuals who are prepared to carry
out all his views both in the letter and the spirit. The
demonstrative article in which this consolatory fact is
made to appear, goes at once, and with much light-
hearted gaiety of manner, to vital matters, and can
leave no doubt upon the mind of the most cursory
reader, that the Mercury is resolved to stand forth,
henceforward and for ever, the dauntless foe of " fana-
ticism"—a terror to the over-religious—a sword sus-
pended over the head of all evangelical preachers—
snd a very dragon in the way of newspaper Conserva-
tive editors. " Fanaticism" is the great enemy which
he means to seek out and destroy—fanaticism which
he conceives generally to be the " besetting sin of our
country," and that species of it, in particular, which
he has found, by sad experience, to be most fertile in
practical results.

The leading promoters and agents of this great de-
lusion, the successors of the late Mr. Egerton Smith
allege, are of two classes ; first, the anti-popery par-
sons, and, secondly, newspaper writers—" knaves"—
whom it is not surprising to find " abundant, " when
there are so many "fools" to be made subservient to
their purposes, "under the pretence of doing service
to religion." From this it may be collected that the
fanaticism which these gentlemen have taken upon
themselves to deal with, is chiefly, if not altogether, of
one kind, and that in every instance it wears the cha-
racteristics of zeal for the Established Church and its
religion, and hatred of Popery and its superstitions.
Every anti-Popery parson, therefore, and every Con-
servative newspaper writer, is, according to these draw-
cansirs of scepticism, a " fanatic," and not only a
fanatic but a " knave;" and no man is wise, sober,
sensible, or even " honest," who is not of their own
party. It is a melancholy reflection that pure rationa-
lity is thus not only a monopoly, but a monopoly in
the hands of a party which has grievously declined of
late, which is still waxing less and less, and we may
fairly expect to see soon extinguished altogether, at
least in these parts. Liverpool grows every year, we
might almost say every hour, more and more " fanati-
cal," if the party of these new apostles of rationality
be compared with that which they would consign so
unceremoniously to the discipline of the strait-waist-
coat; and as in these days, the majority do on all oc-
casions display the utmost aversion to being treated
with magisterial airs by the minority, we think the
question is likely to be contested with some warmth—
which party is really the rational party, and which
otherwise; whether sound discretion and sound judg-
ment is exclusively the appendage and possession of
the Mercury-ices, or whether they have passed over,
with other acquisitions, into the hands of their Conser-
vative opponents ?

For the present the writers in the Illercury enjoy the
advantage of being the assailants, and commence the
onset by presenting us with a sketch of what we are
to receive at their hands as the impersonation of a
" fanatical" clergyman, or genuine " anti-Popery par-
son." The picture will be found at full length in the
columns of their journal. It is vastly clever, to be
sure ; but we fear the greater part of it is only a

thieving from Sam Slick ; certainly the portrait in one
of the series in the Clockmaker is before it in the order
of time, and has, therefore, of course, the better title
to being regarded as the original. However, great
minds do sometimes assimilate wonderfully in their
conceptions, and we forbear to stamp men with the
odious brand of thieves or copyists, till they are afford-
ed an opportunity of vindicating their pretensions.
The affair in the Mercury commences thus :

" A starving parson leaves his native bog, and drops down
in some community where the general intelligence is low,
but where bigotry is rife, and soon perceives the high road to
notoriety, if not to fame. He commences roaring, ranting,
and raving against Popery. He terribly shakes the nervous
system of delicate young ladies, who, nevertheless, like the

excitement."
'We have met a most marvellous resemblance to the
caricature in Slick, and no one of the disgusting de-
tails omitted. The "starving parson from his native
boy"—[by the by, wherever the Irish Popish priests
may be, we must tell these ignorant daubers, that the
Irish parsons to whom they, of course, allude, are very
seldom of the bog origin that they suppose ; the
Church in Ireland is, and always has been, almost ex-
clusively the profession of the aristocracy;] but this
" starving parson from the bog" is, of course, a very
vile character, a cheat, a hypocrite, and everything
that is odious and immoral. The painters seem here
to have forgotten that they were finishing their sign-
post for the meridian of Liverpool and England, and
not for America and the voluntary system, and, conse-
quently, that all the colouring they have thrown in
was not only superfluous, and in bad taste, but quite
out of character, and without vraisemblance. We
shall justify our conclusion by transferring a portion
of the patchwork to our columns ; we do so at the risk
of offending some of our readers ; but there is a ne-
cessity laid upon us by our own feelings which, for the
present, overbears every other consideration. The
filthy caricature then runs thus :--
"The fair devotees believe implicitly all their sable friend
tells them, however absurd, and are really willing to serve
him in all things, from pitch and toss to manslaughter. In
order to keep up the excitement, and to maintain his in-
fluence, our spiritual trader must necessarily indulge in all
he, consequently con-
a;and Judy box, where he
kindsv e rts hisof strange
pulpit
lpit
tiog tsk
ianndd
oNf. a
Pun
Punch
s
plays off his strange antics, to the great edification of his
long-eared followers, to the infinite merriment of the wicked
wags who go to the raree show, and to the great jealousy of
the true arid veritable Punch, who feels deeply injured by this
usurpation of his functions and privileges. More than one
blushand
stillallowwiththetheir
u of
fives shne ;
to be contaminated by the filthy trash of these blatant, brain-
less bellowers. The nastiness to which some of these par-
sons give utterance, under a pretended religious sanction,
would really expose a poor man to the exercise of the tread-
mill, and would cause any gentleman, who used similar lan-
guage, to be banished from all respectable society."

We are quite convinced that the authors of this
most atrocious and beastly libel felt in their inmost
souls that they were making their dastardly attack on
Christian clergymen and defenceless females, when
they sat down to their work of calumny. Had it been
otherwise they might not have feared to put forth the
falsehood, but they would have thought twice, most
likely, before they would have exposed themselves to
the consequences of a series of imputations so false,
slanderous, and abominable. As it stands, the thing
is cowardly and contemptible; and we have put it be-
fore our readers, in order that they may perceive to

what base shifts the enemies of our cause will resort
in their extremity. Our cause, indeed, will not be in-
jured by such egregious and glaring falsehoods ; not
because their tendency is harmless; not because lying
and calumny are devoid of their accustomed capacity
to do mischief; but because, as we well know, Con-
servatism is wide awake and prepared to meet and
frustrate the various tricks and devilish devices of the
enemy. A regulated system of the most monstrous
lying is not a thing in itself to be despised ; the Whigs
have found it before now a very powerful auxiliary,
and would do so again, if their mendacious inventions
were permitted to go forth unnoticed and unexposed.
The miscreant production which we have been just
noticing is a tolerable sample of the craft, and should
serve to fill every generous mind with indignation and
abhorrence against that detestable system which dis-
guises itself under the name of Whiggery or Liberal-
ism. So elaborate a piece of impertinence, however,
cannot be altogether disposed of in a single article of
any moderate length ; and we reserve a few farther
comments to another opportunity.

It has been the boast of some of the journals which
advocate the extreme views of the Oxford Tractarian
party, that their labours have contributed much to
strengthen the zeal, and increase the number of the
church's friends, and that, both politically and religi-
ously, they have done the Conservative cause some
service. That there is a sort of zeal engendered by
Puseyism, we should not think of denying; on this
head there is evidence enough ; but that it is a zeal cal-
culated to promote such ends as its advocates assume
for it, or that has in any degree produced them, we
deny, both from the nature of the thing in itself, and
from the absence of all evidence to support the position.
One of the advocates of the party, we remember, re-
ferred us, some time since, to Leeds as a locality in
which the preaching of very high church doctrines,
and a veneration for outward things, almost Tracta-
rian, had wrought marvellously in favour of the church
and established institutions. In reply to this refer•
ence, we asked how it happened, if this were the case,
that Leeds had been able to return but one Conserva-
tive rnember,—whilst here in Liverpool, where no such
" high" doctrines are taught by any of the clergy, we
have been able to elect and re-elect two staunch Con-
servatives—overturn all the long and high castle-build-
ing of the Radicals, and strengthen our cause by giving
to the borough the benefit of a Conservative Municipal
Council, as well as parliamentary representation ? We
do not recollect what reply, or whether any, was given
to this query; but as Leeds has been mentioned as a
quarter which has profited much by instruction in the
recondite mysteries of high churchmanship, we are
induced on this occasion to ask,, how it came to pass
that, last week, a church-rate for the purchase of a
piece of burial ground, confessedly much wanting in
the parish—the old church-yards being quite over-
stocked—was almost unanimously rejected, the rev.
and worthy vicar of Leeds himself presiding at the
meeting ? Of the churchwardens, it seems, seven out
of eight are Dissenters. It became the duty of one of
them to bring forward the proposition of the rate—
which would impose a trifling levy of not more than
eleven-pence in the pound on the rate-payers—but as
this gentleman did not happen to be the churchman,
of course he did not feel himself bound to say anything
in its favour. In fact the motion had no supporters,
and was condemned and lost without a single voice
being raised, or at least heard in its favour—and be it
asked wherefore ? Was it that there was no need for
the object proposed, or that the rate was excessive, or
that any reasonable ground of objection of such sort
existed ? Oh, by no means—the rationale of the thing
was not called in question at all ; its condemnation was
simply that it was " church"—of the church, and for
the church—and, therefore, odious in the eyes, and to
the taste of the assembled majority. The assembly
broke up in the highest state of satisfaction, and the
learned vicar descended from his chair without having
been able to advance the interest of his defunct parish-
ioners in any degree by his motion. Now, we ask, is
this a fruit—this one of the beneficial results which,
we are informed, we may look for from the promulga-
tion of Tractarian doctrines—this an evidence of the
zeal and love which her children may be expected to
display for the church, as the new leaven takes effect,
and duly operates upon their affections ? But there
was a little episode to the transaction which will bring
it in still more lively colours before our readers. Whilst
this church-loving assembly stood, or sat, in proud
consciousness of their unanimity and power, and in
joyous anticipation of putting a flat negative on the
dissenting churchwarden's bill, Mr. E. Baines, jun., a
Liberal of the first water, presented himself to view,
and was received with a storm of hisses and indigna-
tion ; and for this reason—there had gone a rumour
abroad that he had been gained over by the vicar, and
had promised to support the projected rate. So high
did the tide of passion end prejudice rise and run
against this once popular favourite and leader, under
the withering influence of this imputation, that he
would not be heard for a moment in his own defence—
and what he would have said, appears, ex necessitate
rei, as an article in his own paper next day.
In the article he declares that he is a much injured
man ; that, although he had distinctly allowed that
there was great want of more cemeterial accommoda-
tion for the church, he had never promised that he
would support a rate for procuring it ; that he had
supposed the levy to be imposed would be a burial-
ground rate, and not a church rate ; and that, finally,
his object in attending the meeting, and in attempting
to gain a hearing, was not to give any support to so
obnoxious and illiberal a plan as that brought forward
by the vicar and his party, but the contrary.
We have only one comment to make on this busi-
ness, and it is this—that if the doings of these Leeds
people be taken as a specimen of the direction which
high church preaching gives to men's thoughts and
actions, the less we have of it—for church and state
interests—surely the better.

Churchmanship at Leeds may be in a very high
state, for aught we know, in matters of ceremony, and
other affairs deemed of great moment by tractarian
writers; but for any useful ecclesiastical or political
purpose which men in general think important, it is
in an exceedingly low plight indeed. We have never
had any other idea of the tendencies of such church-
manship as the disseminators of Oxonian heresy preach
up. It is altogether too late for the present age. If it
were taught universally in our pulpits, it would drive
many out of the church into the ranks of dissent ; be-
tween dissent and the church it widens the breach,
and makes reconciliation hopeless ; and with regard to
the neophytes themselves, what should we expect from
men who descended from the " pure serene" of gospel
teaching to the beggarly elements of the world, and
let down their understandings, grovelling in the dark,
to all the contemptible materialities of superstition ?
We would humbly suggest that a deputation from
Liverpool should he sent over to the great cloth mart,
with a view to put their churchmanship and conserva-
tism, generally, on a better footing.

At the various great meetings which have been
lately held, in Derby, Leeds, and Manchester, for agi-
tating distress, strong, and perhaps we should say
startling, statements have been made by parties who
must be supposed to possess competent knowledge on
the subject, with regard to the declining state of vari-
ous branches of our manufactures. To refuse all cre-
dence to these frightful narratives would require great
power of nerve, or an extraordinary effort of scepti-
cism, arising from the lowest conceivable views of hu-

man nature ; and, for our part, we cannot go such
lengths. A certain amount of truth there must be in
such representations,—and if it be in the power of go-
vernment to afford a remedy for so calamitous a state
of things, no exertions on their part, -we should say,
could be too great to discover and apply it. At the
the same time, it is a circumstance which unavoidably
raises a doubt on one's mind with regard to the real

amount of the distreS6 eofnplained of, that, first, the
complainers are chiefly a body of wealthy manufactu-
rers who put themselves forward as the mouthpieco of

others, and not as the immediate sufferers themselves ;
and secondly, that the proclamation of ruin sent forth
at all their assemblages, ends uniformly with the one
note—repeal of the corn laws ! With regard to the

first ground of suspicion upon the evidence, we would
not dwell much upon it ; it is not of any great validity.
We can conceive men of capital—men placed above

the reach of any pressure of the times, so far as they
are themselves concerned,—yet under a state of great
anxiety and concern for the sufferings present or anti-
cipated of others—and agitating very busily and noisily
and incessantly for the averting of calamities to which
in any urgent sense, they are, Or would he, themselves
strangers. This is not impossible, though formerly it
was more common to permit distressed operatives to
tell the story of their own, sufferings, and the voice of
complaint was rarely heard till some extremity com-
pelled it to an utterance. The new system—if arising
from the benevolent foresight of wealthy capitalists and
employers—from tender concern in the rich for the
poor, and of masters for their workpeople—the new,
system is, we say, under such circumstances, a vast
improvement, and we hail it as a sign which does ho-
nour to our times.

But with regard to the second ground of distrust,
we fear it cannot be so easily got over. When we find
the one body of men fertile in inventions of agitation
which, all concluding with the one cuckoo note of—
repeal the corn laws—and after exhausting all devices,
at last raising a cry of unparalleled distress—which
ends still with the old refrain—one is irresistibly led
to conclude, or at least vehemently to suspect, that the
distress has been got up for the sake of the corn laws,
and not the corn laws for the sake of the distress—that
distress is only made use of as a means to an end, and
that free trade in corn is not honestly and fairly soli-
cited as the appropriate remedy for the evil.
If the agitators had no other object in view than to
make the depressed state of our manufactures gene-
rally known, or to quicken the attention of government
to circumstances of the first importance connected with
our commercial interests, they would content them-
selves with statements of facts, and leave the remedy
in the hands of those who may be fairly supposed to
he the best judges of the case, and most skilful in dis-
cerning the treatment suitable to it; but, they invaria-
bly offer themselves to notice both as patients and doc-
tors, and clamour rather more for a particular mode of
cure, than, as we suspect, from the pure anguish of
suffering.

These distress meetings are supposed by the concoc-
tors to be working wonders in favour of free trade ;
but the connexion between the two things is not so
evident ; it is doubtful ; and, moreover, it is denied.
To what purpose, then, is all this agitation ? Will it
convince any reasonable man who has reflected upon
the subject, and has come to a conclusion different
from that drawn by these gentlemen, that the Corn-
laws ought to be repealed ? Certainly not. Their
noise and brawling cannot make the slightest impres-
sion on his reasoning faculties—and, indeed, we ap-
prehend it is not for the reasoning faculties, but for the
fears of the weak, they are intended. They are only a
sort of Irish artifice for increasing the pressure from
without—for beguiling attention, and for adding the
force of terrorism out of doors, to the awful voice of
the Cobdens and others, when they rise in parliament
to advocate the cause of the manufacturers against the
agricult'irists—universal free trade against native cul-
tivation and self-support.

In this point of view, such agitation is scarcely inno-
cent; it is turbulent and factious, and of evil tendency,
and ought in every way to be discountenanced. It is
an attempt to accomplish an object of at least a ques-
tionable efficacy, by unconstitutional, and we might
almost say, seditious means.

The sort of reasoning employed at some of these
meetings is really curious. At one of them, a Man-
chester manufacturer says :
" I have an agent at Chemnitz, in Saxony ; he is there
constantly, for the purpose of buying on the spot, and send-
ing me his purchases from week to week. lam regularly
importing German hosiery, and selling it to merchants,
after paying a twenty per cent. duty on import, cheaper
considerably than they can buy the same articles of British
manufacture. I bought last year 8,000 pair of English cot-
ton gloves for exportation ; now I buy them all in Germany,
and shall not be able to buy any more gloves of this style of
English manufacture at all. I can import them from Saxony
full fifty per cent. cheaper than I can possibly buy them in
England. There is, beyond this, a considerable importation
of German frame glov.es, for the English home market,
which is increasing from year to year : their goods, I should
say, average at least thirty per cent. cheaper, and some—
particularly cotton gloves—average fifty per cent. cheaper
than ours."

Here is a lively sympathiser with the distress of
English operatives who carries on an extensive busi-
ness in a foreign importation, which goes directly to
throw the English workmen out of employment, and
to cause that distress for which he, nevertheless,
affects to feel so much ! Nor is this all ; he is a wit-
ness, be it remembered, for free trade, and yet, truly,
if he proves any thing, it is that trade is a great deal
too free, and that the free importation of this German
hosiery, which can be sold after importation so much
cheaper than our own, ought immediately to be put a
stop to. Other evidence given by these agitators at
their meetings is just as conclusive against their own
theories, and shows in the most satisfactory manner,
that the free trade of which they are in pursuit, or pre-
tend to be in pursuit, is in reality the most eggregious
of humbugs.

At the present moment every suggestion which
:ends to throw a light upon a question so complicated

in its nature as the degree and kind of protection to be
afforded to the British agriculturist is calculated to be
of use in arriving at a plan for its settlement; and we
have, therefore, pleasure in giving insertion to the let-
ter of Mr. E. W. Jackson, addressed to Sir Robert

Peel, upon this important subject. For the particulars
of the scheme of our correspondent we refer to his
communication itself, which will be found in another
column; and in the few remarks which we shall make
upon it our object will be only to correct an error of
expression which, it appears to us, implies a meaning,
and would establish a principle quite foreign, we think,
to those which the writer must have had in view.
Our correspondent has given us three scales of
prices—the first ranging from 525. to 60s.—the second

rom 48s. to 56s.—and the third from 445. to 525. He

uggests, also, for selection, by the premier, 3 scales
If duty—the first ranging from 128. to 4s.—the second

from 10s. to 2s.—and the third from Bs. to Os. We
shall give no opinion as to these various scales ; and
indeed Mr. Jackson gives no preferance to any of them
in particular. We must protest, however, against the
principle which would be established by the calcula-
tions with which he illustrates their operation. For
example,—taking the first scale of prices at the average
of 56s.,and the duty and charges at 18s. (10s. charges
and Bs. the average duty) then the price realized by the
foreign importer of wheat will be, of course, 385.; and

the charges 18s. being to this price of 38s. as 47 to
100, Mr. Jackson assumes that the British agricultu-
rist has thus a protection of 47 per cent. against the
foreign grower. The incorrectness of this assumption,
however, becomes apparent when we lower the scale of

prices ; for taking the third scale of prices, which
brings Neoverage down to 48s.—and keeping the
same rate of.Auties Bs. and charges ios.—the price
realized by the foreigner will be only 308.—and the
protection will, therefore, be apparently 60 per
cent. Perfectly correct as these calculations are
arithmetically—(and there is no wonder that they ap-
peared to our correspondent extraordinary)—they lead,
nevertheless, to the inevitable and manifestly incorrect
conclusion that the lower the pivot from which the aver-
ages are taken, the greater the protection to the British
farmer ! We cannot, however, believe that Mr. Jack-

son meant to countenance any such principle as is in-
volved in this mode of calculation, or rather, perhaps,
(for it does not affect the practical working of his pro-
position,) of this mode of describing them.
The suggestion of our correspondent with respect to
the mode of taking the averages too, is, we think, lia-

ble to animadversion; for, although on the other hand
it is quite probable that the present period of six week's
average, as the criterion of the duties, is too long, one
week is, we think, quite as much too little.
An unfounded panic, aided by speculation for that
space of time, raises the market, to the positive ruin of
the farmer, where a somewhat longer period would not
afford the same facility to the scheming capitalist, for