The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-09-11 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We will endeavour to find room for the letter of " Laicus" next
week.
We regret that we could not find room this week fur the inte-
resting letter on the translation of the Chinese scriptures.

LtberpOOl &tanbarb,

TUESDAY MORNING, SEPT. 11, 1849.

ON the 13th of this month of September, in
1759—just ninety years ago—after a murderous
encounter with an army, composed of Canadians
and Indians, supported by a strong force of veteran
troops from France, the British standard was
planted upon the heights of Abraham, and the
foundation laid of a colonial empire, which has had
year by year drafted into it some of the beat blood
of the mother country, and a few years ago was
rapidly progressing towards wealth and importance.
The gallant Woolfe fell on that field in the hour
of victory ; and his equally gallant opponent,
Montcalrn, shouted his last battle-cry on that
memorable day. The conqueror and the con-
quered sleep beneath the same sod, for the pos-
session of which two great nations had thus put
forth their best energies, and expended the lives of
thousands of their bravest sons. What a contrast
there is presented between the policy of ninety
years ago, and that which animates the councils of
a British government in the present day ! -Our
ancestors regarded the conquest of the Canadas as
an 'achievement worthy of being gained at any
sacrifice of blood and treasure. One of the regi-
ments who fought in that memorable battle bore,
for fifty years, the lily of France upon its colours,
with the same pride with which we now emblazon
the newer honours of Busaco, Vittoria, Salamanca,
or Waterloo itself. The name of the victor was a

household word. Modern statesmanship cannot
blot out the glorious record • but appears to have
determined that it shall have been written and
sealed with blood in vain. We are endeavouring,

by every sort of insult and injury, to drive the
Canadas from our side. We have made the loyalty
of our brethren in these colonies a ground for
their exclusion from all honour and office, and are •
re-establishing once more the baneful domination
of the Gallic race, which our forefathers toiled and
suffered to put down. In a word, we are hurrying
on the period when Great Britain shall not own a
subject, or a friend, in the vast American continent.
It is broadly urged by a certain class of politi
cians that the possession of these and other
colonies is non-essential to the greatness and the
power of the British nation. The world has been
in error in supposing that it is desirable to hold
distant possessions any longer than is required to
enable them to protect themselves from hostile
aggression, or than they can be used as recipients
for our convict or emigrant population. Our
British American brethren, the politico-economists
of the Manchester school contend, will free trade

with us as largely as an independent country, or as
a portion of the neighbouring union, as they are at
present ; and we shall save the cost of supporting
there an army and an executive. We maintain the
very reverse; and that, with a view to the,:success of
the free trade system, and to the promotion of manu-
facturing industry at home, nothing can possibly
be more disastrous than the loss of those colonies.
We put out of consideration altogether the advan-
tages which they afford us as a maritime people;
and are prepared to argue thy question of their
retention upon commercial and fiscal ;grounds.
The Canadas are the only lever which we possess to,
enable us to protect ourselves from the high tariff
party in the United States. An exclusive and
ultra-protective policy on the part of the United
States is impossible, so long as we possess an exten-
sive frontier, over which British products can be
. readily introduced. The smuggler is, in fact, the
most potent friend of the British manufacturer on
the American continent; and by none'is the fact
better known than by the legislature of: America
itself.

We cannot, however, look to the continuation,
for any long period, of our connexion with the
Canadas, without an amelioration in their favour of
our present commercial policy. We may have
fanned the flame of dissatisfaction in these colonies
by the recent insults levelled against the loyal party
there. We have provoked the passions of these
men, by setting up over them an insolent and an
alien faction—by rewarding known rebels and
slighting true subjects. But the abiding cause of
discontent is that commercial policy, which has, in
effect, severed the strongest tie of connexion with
the mother country, and withdrawn from the
colonies every advantage of that connexion.
It is galling to the feelings of our colonists to
see, upon the opposite shores of the great lakes, a
people living Under free institutions, enjoying the
benefits of a cheap form of government, and whose
industry is strictly protected, growing in prosperity,
and enabled to undersell the products of colonial
industry in the British market ; whilst they them-
selves, although British subjects, are hampered
with costly institutions, ane harassed at every step
by official meddling and mismanagement. They
see, too, that neighbouring people, although thus
favoured by the mother country, rigidly exclude
themselves from their markets, and refuse all offers
of reciprocity; and they are naturally beginning to
speculate upon the advantages which they would
derive from being embraced within the arms of the
American Union, and to weigh against them their
present anomalous position. We do not regard as
of very immediate import the exhibitions of angry
feeling which have lately taken place in Canada.
We do not imagine that it is in the power of
any party to excite for awhile any serious move-
ment against British rule. It will not be mere
passion which will originate any movement exten-
sive enough to be an object of fear to a determined
government at home. Its great impelling cause
will be a conviction' on the part of the people
that separation from Great Britain will be beneficial
to British America; and that conviction is rapidly
spreading, not amongst political firebrands and
senseless mobs, but amongst a deliberative, calm,
and respectable portion of the people. We have
driven them to think by our unnatural commercial
policy. We are goading theta on to act by our
insulting administrative policy.

THE report of the Medical Committee of the
Vestry, in reply to the charges brought against that
body by the Central Board of Health in London,
is now being prepared ; and, although we should
gladly have had it before us, previously to offering
a few remarks of our own upon the subject, we con-
ceive that, in common with many of our fellow-
townsmen, we are already in possession of sufficient
information to enable us to dispose of most of the
charges in question. Vie can very readily conceive
how those charges have originated. Central boards
generally work through local agencies. They have
their feelers abroad ; their private channels, through
which information is distilled into their ear. k ran-
sacking of the portfolios of Messrs. Chadwick and
Colleagues would disclose correspondence which
would startle the world, and cause some to inquire,
seriously whether espionage so inquisitorial is con-
sistent with the liberties and the security of pro-
perty, which ought to belong to a free people. It
is not in our power, however, to go thus into the
recesses of the Central Board's proceedings, or to
examine the intricacies of their machinery. We
find quite sufficient matter for our purpose upon
the surface. . . .

The central body charge the Vestry with having
omitted to provide, beforehand, for the approach of
cholera, and with having neglected the warnings of
its officers to fit up hospitals in the most suitable
localities for the reception of patients. 'With respect
to the first of these complaints, we are provided
with quite a sufficient answer in the following do-
cument, which was prepared in June last, and
which received the signature of some of the most
eminent of our medical practitioners :
" The District Medical Offieers having requested us to
record our opinions, with reference to their capabilities to
perform the duties of house-to-house visitation in those
streets of their respective districts in which cholera pre-
vails, and having explaided to us the exact nature and ex-
tent of those duties, required as they are at a time when
the amount of general sickness is considerably diminished,
we, the undersigned, impressed with the conviction that
the district officers are conversant with the individual
localities of their respective districts, as well as with the
general habits of the residents in those parts of their dis-
tricts in which the disease exists, most readily assert our
conviction that they are fully competent to undertake
those duties, and that they can discharge them more effi-
ciently than if those districts were confided to the hands
of strangers. (Signed)
" ROBERT BICKERSTETH, ARNOLD J. KNIGHT, M.D.
J. VOSE, SAML. M'CULLOCH,
JOHN O'DONNELL, M.D. DAVID MACRORIE, M,D.
W. WRIGHT MANIFOLD, HENRY STUBBS,
JOHN MAURICE BANNER, THOMAS BLACKBURN.
EDWARD BATTY,
Liverpool, 19th June, 1849.

We were at this time, as we have been all along,
in advance, instead of behind hand, with respect to
every means provided to meet ttre4irergency which
has presented itself. And with respect to hospital
accommodation, we possess it now, as we have done
all along, in excess. In the Southern Hospital the
Vestry have accommodation for, at least, 150 cho-.
lera patients. We have at present availing them,:
selves of that accommodation only eleven. In fact,
we have more doctors than patients ! In the North-
ern Hospital we have accommodation for upwards
of 150; yet we have never had fifty cholernpatients
in the place. We may remind the Central Board
that their general practice has all along been opposed
to hospitals for this disease. More eases have died
during their transport to them than have been
recovered when there. Our poor are most averse
to be removed to them ; and we may state, in proof
that they are regarded with • disfavour, that,
although the Vestry has provided two sheds, to be
used if required, as additional hospitals, it has only
been considered judicious to fit up beds in a portion
of one of them, so little likely are they to be wanted.
Let us just examine what are the circumstances,
in other respects, under which the people of Liver-
pool are held up to' the censure of the world as hard
heartedly grudging a proper provision for the sick
poor thrown updo their bounty. We repeat, em-
phatically, the expression thrown upon their bounty;
for it is a fact that the hulk of the cholera cases for
which the palish has had to provide have consisted
of immigrant vagrants from Ireland, whom, accord-
ing to the
,Striet letter of the law, we had no right
to provide with medical relief, our duty being only
to pass them back to their settlements, if these
could be discovered. In proof of this assertion, as
to the class principally affected, we can state that
up to ,the last fortnight two of our most efficient
practitioners had not had even a solitary case. We
followed, however, that humane spirit of the law
which forbids that any fellow-creature should be
permitted to perish in a Christian land for want of
the necessaries of life, although we were in a posi-
tion, and had made previous sacrifices, which might
well have pleaded for us had we chosen to pursue a
contrary course. Two years ago we expended, for
the relief of our suffering Irish brethren, the enor-
' mous sum of £70,000, wrung from the suffering
ratepayers of this parish. Since that period our
local hurthens had continued to be enormous; in
utter disproportion to our means to meet them.
We had expended within the last two years an
enormous amount in improving our sanatory con-
dition—an expenditure which, we believe we are
quite within bounds in saying, has, by increas-
ing local hurthens, decreased the yield of property
at least twenty-five per cent. We had com-
mitted ourselves to a threatened expenditure for an
increased supply of water of from half a million to
a million sterling. We had provided a permanent
staff of medical officers, costing us from five to six
thousand perannum. Yetwe did nothesitate to sacri-
fice more largely than this. We have now provided
a staff of sixty medical practitioners and lay visitors.
We have three dispensaries, open night and day,
for the gratuitous supply of the poor with medi-
cines. We have additional druggists' establish-
ments in various wards of the town, for such gra-
tuitous supply to all afflicted with bowel complaints.
And to carry out the efforts of the authorities of
the Vestry an expenditure:is at present going on of
at least £15,000 per annum.
Such are the circumstances under which we are
this accused of neglect and inhumanity; and what
is the body by whom we are accused ? What has
this body effected ? Where is its diploma of com-
petency, and where the beneficial result of its
labours ? There is scarcely a locality in the empire
which has not been disturbed by its meddling. It
has upturned sewers, (lived into cesspools, closed
up inhabited cellars, ventilated unhealthy courts,
swept,. washed, and cleansed throughout the land ;
Yet, here we are in the midst of cholera, as rife and
as fatal as when first it appeared amongst us, as a
new complaint, seventeen years ago ! We have
still our regular visitations of lever and epidemics;
and there seems no perceptible difference in the
average rate of mortality anywhere. It is not too
much to say that some millions have been expended
in the prevention of disease; but an inscrutable
Providence mocks the efforts of the Charlatanrie,
which thus sets itself up as gifted with infallibility.
Before we were blessed with the interference of the
Poor-law Commissioners, and before we had any
Central Boards at all, the medical wants of this
parish were efficiently supplied for a sum not ex-
ceeding £1,500 per annum. Our permanent me-
dical staff now, without the presence of cholera, and
the consequently added efforts required, costs us
between £5,000 and £6,000 per annum; and, we
ask, where is the improvement observable ?
We ate not at all disposed to deny that much
may be done for the improvement of the health of
the population of this or any other community by
attention to sanatory regulations—by a better sup-
ply of water, better cleansed houses and streets,
better sewers, and more personal cleanliness. The
great question at issue, however, is whether each
community is not the best capable of judging of its
own circumstances and wants, and of applying the
'remedy required. We conceive that it is so; and
we claim the privilege of being allowed to do so for
our own locality at all events. We claim it as
being peculiarly situated ; as being rather the reci-
pients of alien disease than as breeding it; and we
tell the Central Board that an ocean of rose water
would, not suffice to purge away the filth with which
we are invaded from tl.e sister isle. We tell them,
moreover, that until they succeed in removing the
impurities existing under their own noses ; until
Lambeth, Whitechapel, and other receptacles of
putridity, and consequent disease, are cleansed ;
until there are no more revolting graveyards open
to spread pestilence through the heart of the metro-
polis, we shall abstain from asking for any of their
aid. They will have quite enough to do at home.

THE recent doings among the Methodists fur-
nish
another, to the many proofs from time to
time revealing themselves, of the instability of
mere codes in securing compactness and harmony
to a religious body. There is an essential differ-
ence between a Christian Church and a Christian
society. An institution may be planned with oh-
jects of the purest and most Christian character,
and may work to the benefit of religion or charity
by human means, as long as that institution is
only subsidiary to the great design of Him who
has defined the economy of the church so clearly
that naught but the perversion of the human in-
tellect can refuse to comprehend it. Such an insti-
tution being nothing more than a club of Chris-
tian men, may, in the course of events, suffer from
any one of the variety of causes by which human
determinations are frustrated, and. may sustain a
commensurate amount of damage, nay, even an-
nihilation, without any considerable injury to the
Christian church. As it was never more than an
agent to the working of the great design, another
may be substituted, or even the disrupted machi-
nery may be reconstructed. But a Church pro-
perly so called, is not framed of materials so pliant :
there is no such elasticity about its elements as will
admit. of the collisions or temporisings of its exe-
cutive to pass over without damage to the fabric.
It may be all very well.for a set of men to consti-
tute themselves a church, and lay down rules and
laws for their governance, but will they ensure the
sanction and essential blessing of the Great de-
signer of all things ?
Dissenters from the Church of England have,
among other complaints, set up that of a want of
independence on the part of her ministers in the
daily practice of their sacred duties, and therefore
have held, that among themselves a sort of repub-
lican ministry was the only efficient agency. How
these views have been realised in the case of the
Wesleyans recent events explain. In consequence
of that body being governed by a code of purely
mortal invention, and being held together by bonds
of no greatcr*tenacity than those that usually
coalesce societies of men for less important ends, it
is obnoxious to the animosities and heartburnings
that will ever ooze out in human institutions. Re-
garding that body in this view, we can understand
how it comes to pass that a clique, ostensibly of no
greater dignity than ordinary ministers, has pos-
sessed itself of a degree of power which enables it
to dictate to those who conceive themselves to be
on an equal footing, and to influence the affairs of
the whole body in a manner so direct as to stultify
all pretensions to independence. Thus, also, with-
out imputing improper designs, we can comprehend
how motives of aggrandisement can take the place
of right principles, and, in short, bow the original
design may be utterly frustrated. The recent act
of conference in principle challenges any of the
arbitrary vetos of the Inquisition, and comes before
us in a guise peculiarly inconsistent when we regard
it as the deed of men who have been apt to congra-
tulate themselves on the fact of their ministers being

free from the restrictions 'liable to be imposed by die:-
nitaries'in the parent church. The man, however, who
has arrogated to himself a more than papal power, will
soon sees reason to lament the exercise of his self-
delegated authority ; the summary expulsion of his
refractory brethren is a fatal act, the contingencies
of which will be seen at work in the .whole body—
a schism is now arising which threatens to un-
hinge, if not to destroy the sect, despite the exhor-
tations of the expelled to the people to maintain
their position regardless of passing events.

OPENING OF THE LIVERPOOL EXHIBITION.

The Liverpool exhibition of the works of modern artists
will open for the season to-morrow; and, from a hasty
glance through the rooms, we can venture to promise the
lovers of art in our town a great treat. We observe
several pictures of much excellence, and more than the
usual number of contributions from metropolitan and
other artists of the first rank, amongst whom are Poole
A., Johnston, Frith A.., Horsley, Lees, R.A., Lee and
Cooper, R.A., Sir Wm. Allen, R.A., Fielding, Lander,
Cooke, Watts, Lance, Uwins, R.A., Hannah,
Jenkins, Anthony, Ansdell, Danby, and others. The
talent ofour own town is represented by Barka.. WTestcott,
Dawson, Oakes, Huggins, Robertson, Pidgeon, Buchanan,
Bishop. arid others. Some of the pictures are very large ;
but these are generally by first-rate men, who mar be
excused ior occupying so much of the space in an exhibi-
tion. The portraits, which are not so numerous as
usual, are generally of a very superior class.
The association's prize of £5O was yesterday awarded
to Mr. Alexander Johnston, for his very clever painting
of a scene from Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake. It we
remember right, one of this gentleman's productions—
Prince Charles and Flora Mac Ivbr—was :last year vex)
nearly being placed first by the judges. The present is a
production of similar character, and is a very fine concep-
tion of the stirring scene in the poem. We shall, how-
ever, have a further opportunity of noticing the picture
in detail.

A CURE FOR CHOLERA.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

SIR.—I feel it a duty incumbent on me to inform.you,
that I h ive kept camphorated spirits at my office. and at
my house, for the use of any who may be affected with
pain in the bowels, (the last about two months,) that in
every case, and they .have been numerous,—dock gate-
men, police-officers, &amen, and women, to a consider-
able extent,—have recovered, feeling beneficial effects
immediately on taking it. Those to whom I gave it,
satisfied of its efficacy, have purchased some, and sup-
plied their neighbours, with equal success. The dock
gateman that diqd is thej only one who did not take it.
I can with confidence recommend it.
CHARLES PURNELL.
Dos E.—l give about 20 drops in a teaspoonful of sugar
and water, or on sugar alone.

TO THE COMMISSIONERS OF HIGHWAYS, OR
TO THE BOROUGH ENGINEER, OR TO ANY
PERSON WHOM IT CONCERNS.

GENTLEMEN,—SeveraI requests have been made from
time to time, by the inhabitants in the neighbourhood, to
have Rice-street re-paved, but all to no purpose. I write
to suggest, that now will be a very appropriate oppor-
tunity, as about one-third of the paving of the street is at
present broken up, in consequence of a large sewer being
now in the course of building through the middle of the
street.—Yours,. &c.,

A RATE PAYER.

Liverpool, Sept. 8, 1849.

RETIRING COUNCILLORS.

The following gentlemen will retirq from the Council on
the Ist November next, their period of office—three years,
having then expired :
Everton.. William Atherton.
S.mtland
Vauxhall
St. Paul's James Stitt.
Exchange James Tyrer.
Castle-street Tames Aikin.
St. Peter's. John A. Tinne.
Pitt-street Thomas Toulmin.
Great George John Rogers. •
Rodney-street Samuel Holme.
Abercromby . . Thomas Kaye.
Lime- street
St. Anna's William Bennett.
West Derby G. H. Lawrence.
South Toxteth
North Toxteth Robert Benn.

So strong is the feeling in the town on the questions of
water supply and the desirability of rating the docks to
the relief the poor, that it is confidently expected that the
majority of these gentlemen will be replaced by others.
An opposition is organising even against Mr. James Aikin,
for Castle-street ward—a gentleman whose services to the
town, have been great, and whom we shall .be sorry to see
deprived of a seat in the Council. Mr. James Tyrer is
another gentleman who ought by no means to be removed.