The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-10-26 00:00:00

vA:', pm' ,:4-itaiibarb•

,übtvrip.ion :

1;1 255.

I;qt Credit, I.

I(
i 'li~~ r~. ~

TWINING, OCT. 26, 1847.

THE eventt_, he past week have staggered even
r those who incs- sanguinely etomised us that the
_,cloud was passing away. L s now almost uni-
versally fickn.,e•ged that .‘crust is not over;
- that the cornli,k communi::. left by the almost
,'eriminal aptuhy Goverrmee to shift for them-
selves, rtri througll al, the severity of
`whieh has never been paraLeit:(7 within memory,
and which ,e)! -tMect not the leviathan -speculator
--only— not th,ee. souses who 7 reproached with
having- exten,led 'heir ope.ralin. beyond the limits
of their ca;:ifelL hoot the hurniq, tradesman its Well,
who haS not so <coned ; who iw.3 neither dabbled
in eett,m or in railway ':;hares or in scrip. It
,floes not ev!,. e) here. The mechanic and the
labourer, vch- •1 for his daily' wage, must endure
alike with periori in staiion. Already. we
hear increasli: lounCE ments of suspension of the
productive indu yof the co nary, by which thou-
sands must intO:ably be depeived of employment
and of bread ; and 11.:i,-Ss some prompt measure of
relief is•sneedily.46l,..ted, the prospect is before us
of a winter of anarchy and, for the working classes,
of actual famiy,f.
In the worst stages of most human difficulties
- there is to he (I'r3ecrned a tertei,ation soineWhere.
41.0wever long IL. vista of evil lirough which we
.have to pass, there is a light, though it be a distant
one, which :Thews where we May hope to emerge
into the sunshine. At preSent, however, we see no
such indications of a. period being_ put to the coun-
try's sufferings. The superlatively wise philoso-
phers, who have embarked us in cur present course,
are themselves unable to chew as a gleam of hope
of-extrication. All that they tell us,dn reply to our
appeals for help, is that we nrlst struggle on with-
out a- deviation to the high' or to the left; and that
however manta those whom they have impelled
upon that struggle may fall down by the way,, ulti-
mately a few may battle to the end. But they
. cannot convince us that whilst the banker, the
'merchant, and the manufacturer are thus groping
their way to a termination of their monetary diffi-
-cultieS, the million& willing to foil, and anxious to
be fed and clothed, will be content to watch the
experiment and starve in quietness: They cannot
• tell, us how the Government itself can exist with a .
. deficient revenue long enough to, be'enabled to
-witness the result. It is easy to say to individual
-sufferers you must pay the penalty of your miscal-
culation.; you .must forfeit a portion of your pro-
:p"erty. to secure the rest ; you: must realize your
corn,.your 'cotton, your railway 'stock, and other
descriptions of convertible property, and cease to
:import until the drain upon the country is met by
the increased amount of imports.; but it is not
uite so easy to inform us how goods are to be pro-
duced and paid for without money ; how pro ierty
is to be converted without buyers, or how hands,
• are to be made to work without mouths being

kr may not be uninstructive to examine a few of
;the recipes which are proposed to us in lieu of the only
=real cure, the retracing of the policy by the party
whose crotchets have brought us into • our present
.dilemma. " Stop the Railway Expenditure" ex-
claim some of those parties. Well, what will that •
step effect ? It will throw probably a million
labourers, artizans, miners, workers in iron, &c.,
into a state of compulsory idleness.; deprive them
of the power of consuming the grain of the farmer
and the importer, of buying the goods of the ma-
nufacturer, or the prodnce of our Coloniei or of the
forein'ner. It would involve the merchant, who has
'stocks of these commodities, stored up, in ruin ;
decrease the trade of the shopkeeper; and strike off
a few,millions per annum from the national revenue.
" Wait until our gold comes back"_ is the cry of
another set of people. But how long are we to
wait for such an issue? When we stop our pro-
duction of exportable commodities ; stop our mills
and our mines, we ensure the continuance of an
adverse rate of exchange and take the very course
by which our gold will be prevented from returning
to us. The instant that we resume our commercial
and industrial activity, so as to enable us to export,
we begin to consume in greater quantity imported
products. We spend in short as much as we can,.
or a little more, until having inoreased our produc-
ing power to its full capability, we are hurried on
to a crisis like the present, in which we find our
Circulating medium insufficient for the required
magnitude of our transactions.
There does it seems exist another source of relief.
it is understood that the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer is looking forward to an investment by the
Emperor of Russia of three millions sterling in the
British Funds. By selling to that monarch the
public securities at 80 per cent., the Bank of En-
gland is to be released from its- present inability to'
accommodate the commerce of the empire. A
'host Inimiliating admission for a British statesman
it is that this is the only staff upon which he has to.
lean! It is however not at all an improbable sort
Of speculation on his Majesty's part. Consols at
80 per Cent., which may in a few months be once
mores worth go per cent., leave a fair margin of
profit for the royal speculator. But it woud be..
quite as well if such a personage as Sir Charles
Wood, would condescend to lay aside his preten-
sions to infallibility; and, candidly confessing that
he knoWs as much about the commerce and the
currency of the country as he knows of Sanscrit,
allow its interests to be relieved without the Emperor
dipping his hands into our pockets..

TILE Budget of the present Whig Ministry, if its
members hang together long enough to produce
one, will Undoubtedly be a very ingenious affair,
We presume that some attempt will be made to
regulate our expenditure with the national revenue;
and as cutting down expenditure is,by no means
ap:operatidn in favor with Whiggery, some novel
expedient must be found for increasing the pro-
ductiveness of the sources from which that expen-
diture is supplied. At present our Customs and
Excise, our Stamps and Taxes are in a lethargic
state. A population, of which a large portion is un-
employed cannot consume largely, A Commerce,
which is almost suspended, does not require the
ordinary supply of stamps to carry on its trans-
actions. Even an Income Tax, with all its inqui-
sitorial racks and screws, cannot drag money much
loilger from merchants and traders, whose balance
is on the wrong side of the account. There is no
hAppy windfall, however, to be expected from
China, or elsewhere, and we dare not in the pre-
sent condition of European affairs economise one
shilling of the cost of maintaining the efficiency of
the army and navy. What then is to be the de-
vice by which the income of the country, already
showing symptoms of proving by next Easter three
orrfour millions sterling below its expenditure, is
to be patched up, and that awful stumbling-block,
which trips up Whig ministers a deficiency—
avoided ? •
,Borrowing will not do just now. We should be
paving off, instead of increasing, the amount of
the national indebtedness. A few months ago we
heard a good deal of some further carrying out of.
the measures of free trade—some further removal
of duties on foreign products; . but as that course
in itself involves a sacrifice instead of an increase
of income, we presume that at present it cannot be
thought of, although nothing is more popular with
the many-headed multitude, whom Whiggery wor-
hips, than such reductions.. The common sense
course seems to be in any opposite direction: If
our present customs' rates upon the amount• of
consi:mption which we may look forward to for
the next twelvemonths are unequal to provide us,
with the required income they must he raised, or a
new element of taxation be found. The same re-
mark anplice, to the Excise, with
.the difference
only, that ra'isinfr the impost upon native produc-
tions—as malt, British spirits, &c., cannot be
thought of by any man in his senses. The Stamp
Duty is sufficiently high already; the Assessed
Tdxes already too burthensome and impolitic be-
sides; and the proposal, now, to raise the rate of
poStage, in the hope of drawing a revenue from
that department, would draw down upon its pro-
poser the ire of every epistolary young lady and
gentleman in the United Kingdom. The Income
and Property Tax, then, is our last resource. We
must double that, or extend its application to
persons with an income of under a hundred and •
My pounds per annum ; or, but for the dislike of
our political economists to its very name, we might
even have it regulated upon the principle of a
sliding scale.

We can imagine some little hesitation of manner

in the worthy Chancellor of the Exchequer—a little
abatement of his usual flippancy and self-satis-
faction—whilst announcing, at the conclusion of
the first year of Free Trade in Corn, the existence
of the necessity of increasing the Taxation of the
Country. Of course he will have reasons " plenty
as blackberries " to urge, as having brought about
this sad contretemps. There will be the effect of
the Potatoe rot, although that is a little worn out.
He-may, perhaps, read a lecture, after the manner
of The Times, to the merchants- of Liverpool, ac-
cusing them of over-speculating, and importing too
largely; and if no twinge of memory reminds hini
that such very Increase of importations was calcu-
lated upon to take place., as the result of free-trade
measures, and to diffuse universal prosperity over
the country, he will ride off on this topic in tri-
umphant style. We shall be told of the Railways',
too, attempted too rapidly to be constructed ; and
much-excellent indignation may he directed against
'directors, provisional committee-men, solicitors,
secretaries, and shareholders, unless the worth
gentleman is pulled Up short in his diatribe by
question from Mr. Hudson, or some other Railway
representative, how much further our consumption
of Foreign commodities, and consequently of the
Revenue derived from them would have been
decreased, had the mouths of some five hundred
thousand navvies and their families, and of -the
numerous other classes dependent upon Railway
formation been closed ? or he is asked by the
representative of some manufacturing community
what he considers has been the effect upon the
home trade for. our manufactures, of all these
families having been enabled to 'clothe themselved
in something better than the rags of an Irish
peasant, or the scanty covering of an English
ditcher.

The most perplexing topic, however, with which
Sir Charles will have to deal, will he the fact of
our decreasinr, exports of manufactured goods in
the face of largely increased exports; the closed.
mills and the idle machinery and labour of Man-
chester and Stockport, Leeds and Huddersfield
contemporary with the increased ability of the
foreigner to consume our goods. Where is the
realization of the glowing picture drawn of the
universal exchange of commodities, which was to
be the result of Free Trade—of the Manchester
weaver giving his labour to the Polish, the Rus-
sian, or the American farmer, in payment for their
cheap breadstuffs ? It has not been realized ; and
it would probably puzzle wiser people than Sir
Charles Wood to tell us when it is likely to 'be
realized.
It will perhaps not occur to the mind of the honl
hart., 'unless his opinions shall have -Undergone
some very material alteration in the interval, that
one great reason why the glowing picture has not
been realized,—why the mills of Manchester and
Leeds are not in full work, why manufacturers are
not exporting goods to foreign markets, why the
operative is not employed, not consuming, and not
creating revenue,—is that the . merchant, or the
agent, is not able to procure discount for the bills,
remitted in payment of such goods, except upoji
terms which sweep away all, chances of profit from,
such transactions. We hope that some provincial
Member—Mr. Brown could do it very satisfactorily*
—will inform him of the numberless orders from
foreign markets, which have been compelled to
• remain unexecuted from this cause. Any manu-
.facturing member could assure him that it is not
•from any want of capital that exports are not made
—that imports are not paid for in goods instead of
in bullion ;—for the goods are already in existence
and paid for, a drug in the heaped up warehouses
of Manchester and other towns—but solely because
the medium for effecting the exchange is not in ex-
istence, or is too costly to be employed.
That the Government can ever weather over ,
. such a financial expose, we have not the slightest
expectation. They must give way to other men,
who are not so obstinately wedded to a theoretical
measure, which has broken down in working. They
must go out, leaving the stigma fixed upon their
name of having permitted the revenue once more
to fall into deficiency. Yet, except for their obsti-
nate rejection of counsel, the stigma in question
cannot fairly be attached to them. They have
fallen into a trap cunningly baited for them. On
the two successive occasions on which they have re-
cently
held office, the
,periodical revulsion of corn-
mercial and Monetary affairs has taken place. The
cycle contrived by Sir Robert Peel's Currency Bills
has shown its dark side towards them. That most
astute tactician knows well what is required to
make it revolve with a quickened motion—how its
axis is to he oiled and the bright side to be again
resented to us;. and he will be under no delicacy
in applying the remedy, whenever he can secure the
helui in his hands, and in appropriating to himself
the honour of having restored again the credit and
the revenue of the country.

WITH some degree of sorrow, although it is
" reqUired" from us " a's an act of justice," we
give insertion to the following letter addressed to
us by the Rev. Cecil Wray, Incumbent of St.
Martin's. It is painful to us to see a.gentleman
occupying, like Mr. Wray, the positidn of a clergy-
man of Christ's Church, descending, had even the
tone of our rem-arks been such as to furnish an
excuse for so doing, to language so unworthy of
his sacred office as that contained in the letter in
question. We are, however, willing, so far as we
are ourselves concerned, to waive all notice of the
unseemly and undeserved acerbity of language, in
which we are addressed; to set it down as an ebul-
lition of temper, which the rev. gentleman has no
doubt before this
.time regretted. We had pre-
pared a reply to the various points into which the
rev, gentleman has chosen to divide his- general
charge of "falsehood " against us, but which the
pressure upon our space, this day, has reluctantly
compelled us to withdraw. We shall, however, be
able to find room for the article in our next ; and,
in the meantime, we request our readers to re-
peruse the article in our last, which has given rise
to Mr. Wray's attack upon us, and to say whether
his letter meets any assertion which we have made.