The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-07-21 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

Our correspondent "One of the Aggrieved," does not appear
to have a very correct idea of either the duties or the privi-
leges of the press, in asking us to insert his letter. In the first
place, he does not give us his name, as a guarantee of the
truth of his statements and of his own disinterestedness ;
and, in the next place, it does not follow that because we have
spoken highly of the ability shown by a party in conducting a
certain establishment, the excellence of his apparatus, and:the
proficiency of his pupils, we are to be answerable for any sub-
sequent moral delinquency. With respect to the party referred
to by our correspondent, we cau only say that the importance
of the branch of education and training which he proposed to
-teach, and did teach well, was impressed upon us by several
medical men. We were induced to visit his establishment,
and we expressed an honest opinion of what we saw there.
it seems that such opinion was fully borne out by his conduct,
and that he possessed the full confidence of his pupils up to a
week or two since. Our notice was published about January,
and we certainly could not foresee what was tole ccur fully six
months afterwards. The task, therefore, does not at all de-
volve upon us by right to expose the party offending, and
thereby to bring ourselves within the fangs of the law. His
pupils who are aggrieved have ample remedy in their own
hands, by a process which will involve sufficient exposure.

c ~ ~j~

itherpooi ptanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 21, 1846.

The following announcement of the terms, upon
which Ministers will endeavour to effect the settle-
ment of the Sugar Question, we copy from the
London Times of yesterday, which may, upon
questions of free trade, be considered as the Go-
vernment organ. Of it correctness we do not feel

)n ; neither is it

to exi,i es

worth ‘v h

_ )babilay we shall have an
_ portunity of giving the official statement in an
early second edition :

" Wiithout making any pretension to the perilous
function assigned to us by the honourable member for
Finsbury, we believe we may confidently acquaint our
readers with the outlines of the plan in which the Cabinet
deliberations on the sugar duties have finally resulted_
It is not such as was remotely contemplated at the very
commencement of the month by the chiefs of the still
unformed Cabinet, though, on the other hand, a some-
what more modified measure than that which a contem-
porary has been at considerable pains to force upon the
Government. The distinction between slave and free
grown sugar is, of course, immediately to cease; on that
roue thorn haa bacn no alteration. Instead however. of
a three years' maintenance of the existinc, protection
against foreign sugar of free growth, it will be proposed
that the gradual diminution shall immediately commence.
According to a scale which has been shown to us, the ab-
solute duty on foreign sugar will for the ensuing twelve-
month be about 215., and the protective duty will finally
expire at the end of five years, when all the sugars of all
the world will be, admitted on the 14s. duty, to which our
own colonial sr-- enbject."

igar is nrT

It is of little use to attempt further confutation of
the absurd falsehoods levelled by our Whig-Radical
contemporaries against his Worship the Mayor.
The share of objurgation which has fallen upon
ourselves, we treat with the most profound con-
tempt. We are neither the hired nor the prompted
advocates of the Mayor; and we should be sorry—
we should be ashamed—to be numbered amongst
the tools of his or any other man's personal ene-
mies. Our contemporaries, however, are laying
themselves open to the latter supposition. People
are asking, Whence this rabid persecution of the
chief magistrate of our town ? There is obviously
a sore somewhere or other. Whig-Radicalism is
offended, for some cause, or no cause. His worship
has, perhaps, not invited to his table this or that
Whig-Radical member of the fourth estate. Some
people are fond of dining out—fond of turtle—of
Town-hall cookery and Corporation wines. Some
may be fond of spouting their own praises on such
and all available occasions. The main question,
however, presses,—Whence all this rage against an
individual gentleman, invested with a high office,
upon an occasion so interesting as the visit of the
husband of our gracious Sovereign to this town ?
It is inexplicable to men of ordinary information.
Those who are behind the scenes can easily enough
answer it.

It galls the Whig Radical faction in Liverpool
that a Protestant and Tory mayor should have the
chance of dispensing the hospitality of the town to
a royal visitor. Everybody understands that; and,
like children, their organs are finding fault with the
arrangements of the coming entertainment. The
quarrel is about as dignified as would be the ire of
an old Tabby, because she had been set down, at an
evening party, with the blue china, instead of the
green and gold. The whole thing is shameful—
nay, degrading. Surely, there are times when we
can afford to throw mere party to the winds; and
such a time, we should imagine, would be the occa-
sion which is approaching. There is a difference,
however, in tastes. Whig Radicalism has strange
notions of propriety and of decency. We are to
have party fights in the very presence of royalty;
and a condescension of the husband of the sovereign
is to be made the opportunity for a display of party
bitterness and vulgar vituperation.

We are confident that the Mayor will emerge
triumphantly from the cloud of imputations brought
against him. We can assure the gentlemen who
are devoting their weak wits and their weaker pens
to the odious task of vilifying him, that they cannot
earn honour—we fear, scarcely their own heart's
approbation—from the course which they are pur-
suing. They may disgust their fellow-townsmen.
They cannot effect, what they are striving for, any
diminution of the honour, or the pleasure, which
his royal highness's presence amongst us will confer
upon loyal men and good subjects.

A few hours will probably put us in possession
of the views of ministers with respect to the sugar
duties ; and, if any conclusion can be drawn from
the hesitation displayed in propounding them, we
may anticipate an early crisis of the new govern-
me -it upon this question. A spirited opposition
must he directed against any proposal to submit
the produce. of our sugar growing colonies to open
competition in our markets with the produce of
slave-importing countries; and if, as is most pro-
bable, any considerable section of the followers of
Sir Robert Peel refuse to go the length of Lord
John Russell and the ultra free traders, an imme-
diate dissolution o f parliament is the next step in
the drama. The inquiry therefore suggests itself—
upon what principles is the battle to be fought be-
fore the constituencies ?
The question involved in the settlement of the
sugar duties is obviously too narrow a ground for a
great constitutional
struggle. The whole question
of protection to native and colonial industry might
have formed such a ground ; but this isolated rem-
nant of it cannot be made a test of the opinions of

the country, upon the general policy which is to I
regulate the administration of its affairs, or serve as

a basis for the re-construction of parties, at present
so utterly broken up. It is quite possible that,
upon this single question Lord John Russell might
secure a majority sufficient to enable him to carry
out his views. The agricultural constituenc'es
might not be disinclined to see the same rule ap-
)lied to the great staple of the colonists which has
en forced upon themselves. But to the other
ladical crotchets, which we are threatened

\ big-

A mi-
)trap cry of cheap

with, they will remain resolutely opposed
nistry seated in_ power by the claj

sugar could only exercise its functions, in dealing
with other questions, by usurpation, and must spee-
dily be brought once more to a check.
It is clearly the duty of the constituencies to take
wider ground than this question of protection or
non-protection of colonial industry in their selec-
tion of candidates ; and never perhaps did a crisis
present itself more favourable than the present for
the leturn of a parliament, with opinions and prin-
ciples in general unison with those of the intelligent
masses of the people. For years past the leading
questions at the hustings have been on speculative
and theoretical matters; questions as to the mode
in which the commerce of the country is to be dealt
with, or the more abstract ones of constitutional
change, whilst the more vital considerations, affect-
ing our moral and social improvement, have been
thrown into the shade. We have had reforming
parliaments and free trade and protectionist parlia-
ments. We want a parliament, now, which will
take a more extended view of the country's require-
ments, and apply itself to the removal of evils,
which have been overlooked in the late rage for
mere fiscal changes, or treated as too deeply seated
for legislative handling. Happily we have got rid
' of the bulk of those questions, which have served
to mislead the national mind from a consideration of
the true interests of the country, and the best means
of securing the happiness of the people. The bulk
of our purely selfish and commercial questions are
set at rest, and we have leisure to turn in another
direction. The business of " the shop," as it were,
being arranged, we have time to look into the state
of the household and examine the moral and phy-
sical health of its inmates.
What a field we have here for the statesman.
Let us just glance at the most prominent objects
which it presents. The first and most important of
these is the question, which must now come to an
issue—are we henceforth to he intitled to the name
of a Protestant and Christian nation ? For years,
whilst absorbed in the selfish considerations of
trade, or legislating for speculative reforms, we have
been frittering away that character, undermining
our National Church, and pampering the heresy of
Rome. The question must be broadly put to the
nation, and must be the leading one asked of every
candidate at the hustings,—is this system of bit by
bit concession to the demands of error to go on ? If
it is, let us know our fate at once. Tear the mask
from off the face of the foul thing, and let English-
men say whether they will submit to hug and feed
its deformity.

Again, if we call ourselves a Christian nation, we
must set ourselves to the ta=k of providing for the
religious wants of our population. We have grow-
ing up around us, attracted by the employment
afforded in manfacturing and commercial pursuits,
vast masses of labourers, mechanics, and traders,
immersed from morning until night in their.various
avocations, and imperatively requiring the teaching
and the comforts of religion, How are these to be
provided ? Individual exertions cannot do it. We
are too deeply sunk in selfishness to spare from our
superfluity enough to furnish the means of supply-
ing a sufficiency of buildings and ministers for the
worship of God and the saving of souls. Our com-
mercial and manufacturing capitalists can raise hun-
dreds of thousands to push forward any measure of
class aggrandisement, or to reward some successful
agitator; but, when appealed to on behalf of thou-
sands perishing for the lack of knowledge of the
truth, how slowly their contributions come in, and
how miserly their amount ! The legislature—the
nation, as a national matter—must take into its own
hands this duty. If influenced by no higher and
holier considerations, they ought to perform it
from considerations of mere worldly expediency.
As a community, we- erect prisons ; we dis-
burse the cost of the national crime ; we provide
penal settlements, and pay fur death being ad minis-
' tered by the hands of the executioner. Why not
expend a portion of the national funds in meeting
the source of the crime which we punish, by hold-
ing up to our erring fellow beings a knowledge of
di() truth 141441 saves from crime, and its worldly
and eternal punishment ? By party, as it has
hitherto been formed—by Conservatism, its expedi-
ency policy and its cowardice, or by Whig-Radical-
ism, with its excessive liberality, or more properly
looseness of principle, this cannot be effected. We
must have a party formed to effect it, with loftier
aims, with a more extended and a purer object in
view, than any of those emasculated things, in ho-
nor of which we have been in the habit of hurraing
at public festivals, or declaiming from the hustings
or the platform.
We are told that the present ministry is about to
devote itself to measures of social amelioration, to
impravement of the sanitory condition of our towns,
and to the provision of some new-fangled system of
secular education. In a portion of this policy there
may be good involved. In the educational fea-
ture of it there is unmingled evil. But can we,
amongst our measure.; of social amelioration, over-
look the duty of removing that cauterizing blister
which we have fastened upon the bodies and the
souls of our unfortunate poor? Our atrocious new
Poor Law, with its heartless provisions and its utter
tyranny, must be got rid of. We must have no
more bones-crushing and bones-gnawing; no more
starvation dietaries ; no more separation of man and
wife, parent and child; no more bandying of poor
starving human beings from workhouse to work-
house ; no more premiums offered for infanticide
and for murder. This wretched system—an abor-
tion conceived by Whig-Radicalism, and supported
by those mongrel politicians, who call themselves
Conservatives—the nation would willingly be rid of.
Our labouring masses implore its removal. It has
fixed the social comfort of our population too low.
It places the rate of wages at the precise points at
which a human being can be supported in worse
than a felon prison. Talk of the absence of protec-
tion ! Here is protection to the capitalist against
the legitimate demands of poverty. Here is the
machinery by which a fair remuneration for labour
is filched from a helpless class of our fellow-beings;
i by which human nature is ;'egraded to the level of
the beasts, and charity, religion, brotherly love and
common justice are made mockery of and outraged.
Such questions as these it must be which ought
to influence us in the selection of members for the
next Parliament. We have a determinate policy now
to fix upon for the future government of the coun-
try, which is not to be dictated by considerations of
temporary expediency or party necessity. We can-
not every day afford to throw domr. a buttress of
the constitution, or to submerge some important
interest of the country in ruin, to prop up a minister
or to feed his time-serving satellites. The affairs of
a great nation must be regulated upon some fixed
principles ; not like a game of chess, where a pawn
is given to bring a knight out of difficulty, and a
castle is brought out to stave off the capture of a
queen or a check-mate. The figurative allusion, we
regret to say, is but too apposite. Statesmen and
parties have been playing at political thess too long.
It is time for us to remember that the stake perilled
is the moral and social greatness of the British
empire—the temporal and eternal happiness of the
British people.

The noble effort to provide for our seamen an
escape from the harpies who live upon their plunder,
the first active step in which is to be made next
week, suggests the existence of another monster
evil existing in our town, which we believe to be
remediable. Whilst proceeding along our magni-
ficent docks, his Royal Highness may perhaps be
struck with the vast numbers of migratory popu-
lation continually landing and departing from their
quays. He may be told that five or six thousand
persons, during the summer months, are domiciled
temporarily in our town, waiting for an opportunity
to emigrate. An equal number, perhaps, of a lower
class, are passing to and fro with produce from
Ireland, or to seek for harvest or other employment;
and the thought may naturally occur to him, where
do these poor unfortunates find places of rest and
shelter during their residence amongst us ? Have
any means been provided for securing to them a
healthy night's lodging, or protection from imposi-
tion, or from moral or physical contamination ?
The answer will be, that there are no such means
provided ; that the poor wayfarers are left to draft
themselves off to filthy lodging-houses, in back
streets and courts, to herd with the most dissolute