The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-08-18 00:00:00

TATTERSALL'S.-THURSDAY

The St. Leger betting exhibited no improvement in extent,
and very little in character. We need only state that 3to 1
was taken eagerly about Launcelot, and that a marked anxiety
to back Gibraltar caused the offers against him to fall a point,
no one venturing to exceed 7tol at the close. 10 to 1 was
laid against Crucifix to a small amount, being an advance on
Monday's odds. Maroon was on the decline ; ditto Galen,
against whom •Broadwath was backed, with a call of 6 to 5 ;
his actual price did not transpire. The bets against Theon
and St. Andrew are in accordance with the last quotations
from Wolverhampton. Closing prices .

THE ST. LEGER.
3 to 1 agst Marquis of Westminster's Launcelot (tk)
7to 1 „ General Yates's Gibraltar (take 7-1 to 1)
10 to 1 „ Lord G. Bentinck's Crucifix (taken)
13 to 1 „ Mr. Meiklam's Broadwath
14 to I „ Marquis of Westminster's Maroon (tk)
25 to 1 ~ Duke of Cleveland's Theon (tk)
25 to 1 „ Mr. Robinson's St. Andrew (taken)
40 to 1 „ Mr. Shepherd's Viceroy (taken)
50 to 1 „ Mr. St. Paul's Calypso (taken.)
THE DERBY, 1841.
20 to 1 agst Capt. Williamson's Mobarek and St Cross (tk)
25 to 1 „ Mr. Wreford's Margelina colt (tk)
30 to 1 „ Mr. Greville's Jack Sheppard (tk)
30 to 1 „ Mr. Payne's Escort (tk.)

THE CORN LAWS AND FACTORY SLAVERY

(From the Morning Herold.)

The state of the crops throughout England is, at this
moment, an object of the deeeest interest. Accounts differ
widely as to the probable results of the harvest; some cal-
culators anticipating superabundant crops, others proclaiming
that the fields, however rich they may appear to be, will
yield us less than an average supply. The corn jobbers are,
of course, busy. They talk loudly about blight, and mil-
dew; and occupy themselves incessantly in arranging fictitious
sales of wheat, in order to raise the averages, and liberate all
the bonded wheat without payment of more than a shilling
duty. In proof of their industry in this respect, it may be
stated, that in recent returns from Mark-lane, 15,000 qrs. of
wheat were " set down," as having been sold at 80s. a qr.—
the price secured by the farmer for his very best wheat being
notoriously not higher than 725.

The truth is, that amongst the manifold hardships to
which the English corn-grower is subjected, not the least
vexatious is the mode in which the averages are taken. The
returns are supplied by corn-jobbers, not by corn-growers—
are supplied by men who have a perpetual interest in ex-
aggerating the apparent price of British wheat, and who, by
a system of fictitious sales, have it in their power, to a great
extent, to exhibit, at critical periods, the results that best
suit their interests. The same parcel of wheat is not noire-
quently sold a dozen times in one day, without ever changing
hands. The price of bread gets, consequently, higher and
higher—while the duty on foreign wheat lessens in the same
proportion. The magical average of 735. is at length attained.
The speculator in foreign corn realises immense sums—while
the consumer of bread is cheated in the price of his loaf,
and the English farmer of his honest profits.
The returns of corn sold, and of the prices at which it is
sold, ought undoubtedly to he supplied by the farmers who
grow the wheat, and not by jobbers, whose interests are in-
variably opposed to the interests both of the English con-
sumer and of the English produce of wheat.
The corn-laws are charged as the cause why wheat in Eng-
land is dear—while the corn-laws, notoriously, are the sole
cause, why the larger portion of the British soil is kept in
I cultivation. Throw the poorer lands of this country out of

cultivation, and—despite all the promises of cheap bread—
bread must, in the nature of things, become dearer than it is
at present, inasmuch as the foreign corn grower, and the
English corn jobber, would then he invested with the privi-
lege of setting what price might seem good to them on the
first necessity of life !

The corn-laws, again, are charged as the cause of nearly
all the evils which press on the labouring poor of England—
are charged, specifically, amongst other things, as the cause
of factory slavery, A provincial free-trade paper, now before
us, discourses in the following strain, in reference to Lord
Ashley's recent motion :

" To attempt to devise a remedy for such a state of things
wold be a mere waste of time. To attempt to regulate by
act of parliament the time when the children shall work—the
number of hours which they shall be allowed for rest and
amusement—the amount and quality of the education which
they shall receive, would be only temporising with a symp-
tom, while the cause of the disease remained untouched. The
employment of their children is forced upon parents by the
struggle required for the maintenance of a family in this
country, where food is kept at the highest possible price, and
labour receives the lowest possible remuneration, and the
inquiry which Lord Ashley prays for will, if properly con-
aucted, show our present bread tax as the cause of this de-
structive employment of the rising generation. The class of
legislators composing the House of Commons refused to per-
mit any inquiry into the effects of the corn-laws, because
they knew that such an exposure would be made as would
render it impossible for them longer to retain their mono-
poly ; but when one branch of the same subject is submitted
to them under the specious names of charity and humanity,
they pretend to be horrified at the facts adduced, and are
eager that an inquiry should take place. We repeat that
this infant slavery, for it is nothing better, is only a symp-
tom of the deep-rooted disease under which the labouring
classes of this country are now labouring, and that no means
can ever be adopted to put a stop to it, so long as our mono-
polists prevent labour finding those markets wherein it will
meet with adequate reward. It is the difficulty of obtaining
food which compels the labouring classes to enslave the
minds and bodies of their children, at that tender age when
the utmost care is required to lay the foundation for future
moral and physical health, thereby sowing the seeds from
which springs a future unhealthy, vicious, demoralised ge-
neration. "

It might be well, if the inditer of these sentences, before
again venturing to connect together the corn-laws and factory
slavery, as cause and effect, would answer the following
questions. How happens it, that in Naples, in Tyrol, and in
Belgium—in every continental state, in short, .in which the
factory system prevails—the amount of daily labour is,
despite the cheap bread of the Continent, more severe than
in England ? In a speech on this question, last year, the.
pharisaical Mr. Baines lamented much the interference of
government with the factory owners of this country. Amongst
the hardships to which English mill-owners are subjected,
Mr. Baines enumerated these—that they pay 30 per cent.
more for the bread which their labourers consume, while
they are not permitted by law to extract so much by at least
20 per cent. out of their labourers, in the shape of toil. The
amount of factory labour in the cheap bread countries is, on
the admission of Mr. Baines himself, greater by two or three
hours a-day than in England.

How happens it, ye-t
again, that if the corn-laws be the
cause of factory slavery in Lngland, the horrors of the fac-
tory system do not disappear when English corn approaches
to the continental level of price? Between the years 1833
and 1837, English wheat was scarcely dearer than continen-
tal ; yet, during these very years, the factory system ex-
tended itself prodigiously, without being divested of any of
its atrocities !