The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-31 00:00:00

It does not follow, that because some men steal all men are
dishonest ; and it does not follow, that because there are im-
postors among persons that are poor that there cannot be
any poor person who is an impostor. It does not follow,
that because some persons dare to swear falsely that all are
perjured who take an oath. Yet, by the framers of the new
law, who, for the purpose of being on the safe side, have
arranged it so, that the evil and the good, the vicious and the
virtuous, are to be dealt with alike.

For example, because some persons have obtained pecu-
niary out-door relief, under false pretences, the workhouse
must be converted into a kind of debtor's prison for all the
parish poor. This, the first unpleasant feature by which the
public recognise the new law ' • it seems to take for granted
that poor people have no right to breathe the air of liberty
outside of certain walls. Things are shown best by contrast,
and here is a subject for a contrast. Formerly, many thou-
sands of our necessitous in this parish were relieved by the
overseers at the rate of a few shillings per week ; this relief,
we suppose, was insufficient for anything like a competent
maintenance, but it afforded them, durinz its continuance,
" half a meal, and liberty ;" and their own exertions super-
added to it, eked out a little more ; the widowed female in-
creased her scanty allowance by her employment as a laun-
dress, a charwoman, a sempstress, or schoolmistress; and
the male portion of the poverty-stricken augmented theirs by
some trifling, but ill-paid, labour ; all this was Christian-like
and pleasant; imposition vo.s seldom or ever heard of; if it
bad, the vigilance of visitors soon effected its detection. But,
under the new law lately introduced, it is said out-door relief
is to be done away with ; there is no room to be left for the
poor to employ themselves, or to make any attempt at bet-
tering their condition; all alike are to be crowded into that
improvement of prison masonry, and prison regulation,
within whose spacious area husbands and wives, parents and
children, brothers and sisters, exist as separate relations ;
and all this because some persons have obtained out-door
relief heretofore by false representations.
I do not wish to designate our present workhouse by any
of the foregoing epithets,—it has always been excellent
among workhouses, and none of these refinements of cruelty
have ever disgraced it, that I am aware of.
Another example ; because some persons dare to swear
falsely, alt persons are perjured by taking an oath ; this is the
second unpleasant feature in the new law, and it is illustrated
by the letting any violating ruffian go unpunished, while any
poor, weak, simple victim of seduction, rendered, perhaps,
parentless, friendless, and houseless, is compelled to support
and to maintain the unfortunate fruit of her transgression,
where, in many instances, through the misfortune, she is
rendered incapable of maintaining herself ; here is a premi-
um for the ravisher—here is an ofikor for libertinism. A
father is not compelled to support his own child ! Surely it
only requires to be nationally known to be nationally dis-
gusting. Well may we hear of the secret places of the city
being furnished with dead infants. Well may the lake, and
the canal—well may the Thames, and the Serpentine, afford
subjects for the inquest of the coroner !
' The last example, and the third unpleasant feature in the
new law is, its provision for the peremptory collection of the
poor's rate :--when the guardians want money they must go
to the churchwardens ; if the churchwardens have received
none, they must, where the occasion is urgent, levy a dis-
tress on them: consequently the rate must be collected at
the point of a bayonet, that the churchwardens may not be
sacrificed, that is, summoned, and distress warrants must be
the order of the day. Surely our late legislators never read
the paragraphs in the newspapers respecting the state of
trade. Was they looking forward to the banishing of poverty
entirely by their contemplated fixed duty of eight shillings a
quarter on foreign wheat, taking the place of the sliding
scale ? Did they imagine that when the reform bill became
a law, any cotton mill could be closed, any manufactory
cease to diffuse employment, or that any person could go
into the gazette without a full pocket Surely they did.
Surely then they are qualified to instruct us, that when thou-
sands of men are thrown out of subsistence at Leigh, at
Cborley, at Bolton, or anywhere else, the shopkeepers and
publicans, amongst whom their wages money was known to
circulate, can pay the poor's rate as well as ever they did;
nevertheless, this supposes another absurdity. Some say
they won't pay it if they can help it; therefore, those that
will pay it, and those that won't, must be terrified out of it
alike. So the new law concoctors seem to have reasoned,
and so the new law manifests its efficiency by its defaults,
its perfection by its imperfections.
The compass of the present letter will be a sufficient in-
fraction on space, at all times valuably occupied, in excision
of other particulars ; therefore, having named a few things,
I have to hope that reflection will not slumber as to those
remaining things necessarily omitted ; but which are equally
unjust and equally oppressive.
How long shall we rejoice in giving pain by summonses
and distress warrants ?—how long shall our poor brothers and
sisters in adversity be unpitied and unprotected ?—how long
shall their cries ascend a vengeance cry to God?—how long
shall suicide and murder be forced on those
" Who loved not wisely, but too well ?"
Where are our country's patriots ?—where are our Christian
philanthropists ?—where are our guardian powers of inno-
cence ?

Is not some smiling hour at hand,
With peace upon its wings ?
Give it, oh God,.thy swift command,
'With all the joys it brings."
We have no room for despair. Those that love Liverpool's
houses of mercy are yet alive, and their heart-burnings are
great for the suffering needy ; in whose memories their short
and simple annals are unforgotten ; in whose utterance the
advocacy of their cause is ever found. England's water walls
and wooden bulwarks yet gird in a nation of Protestants, one
of the glories of whose achieved reformation was legislation
for the poor, and we may not be discouraged. The charity
which begins at home is already at work, in preparing a local
act for ourselves. Once obtained here, our sister towns will
follow our example, and, finally, the new law, if it does not
become an entire dead letter in the country, may, at the fur-
thest, be confined to those few districts in Great Britain in
which its operations can be alone tolerated. Let this, then,
in the absence of a more perfect production, bespeak the at-
tention of the influential of our good old town to the proposed
measure for its exclusion hence.—l remain, Mr. Editor,
your's. most respectfully, C.
Bridgewater-street, Dee. 29th, 1841.
P.S.—My old signature of a Conservative having become
another writer's property, I am obliged to be contented with
an initial.

AMERICA AND THE SLAVE-TRADE

I'o THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

I trust, Mr. Editor, -that you will give me credit for sin-
cerity when I state, that I am not actuated by any ill feeling
towards the United States, in making the following few re-
marks on that portion of the President's late message to
Congress, in which he treats of the inhuman traffic in our
fellow-men. . .

Admitting as he does, that " the American flag is grossly
abused by the abandoned and profligate of other nations,"
is not that circumstance an imperative reason why the right
of 'search should be rigorously exercised ? Great Britain
and the other powers, who have recently formed a noble
coalition in favour of the much-injured negro, are fully jus-
tified in asserting that right, as the American government
are now notoriously unable (or unwilling) to prosecute, with
the necessary vigour, the measures requisite for coercing
their subjects, or those professing to be such, into an aban-
donment of the villanous slave-trade. With a revenue in-
sufficient to meet their expenditure, supplies are called for
to provide a larger naval protection for their extensive ma-
ritime frontier ; and with several of the states on the verge
of, if not actually in, a state of insolvency, can it be reason-
ably anticipated that this is the period when they will (to
use a mild term) arouse from their apathy on this subject ?
I fear not. In the meantime, all right-thinking men will
feel convinced that England is fully justified in carrying out
her present measures for the suppression of the vile traffic.
It. D.

THE RADICALS AND THE PARISH-OFFICE

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD,

SlR,—The radical press are very prompt in announcing
the dismissal of a collector or a clerk from the Parish-office,
(they being tories); but I do not recollect them putting the
question—Why was the treasurer's own son dismissed some
three months ago ? I suppose they were fearful of losing the
printing, so nicely dealt out amongst them by that function-
ary.—l am, sir, ONE OF YOUR READERS.