The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-06-22 00:00:00

z pledged putioan

The grand question then are the people of Erigia"
favourable to the Russelliies ? Will they give them a
new lease of their lives at the next election ? We can
only answer for our own borough—but we can venture
to say positively that Liverpool will not. The true
feeling of all the worth and intelligence of this great
town has been called forth in a manner so decided—

so enthusiastic, within a short period, as to leave no
doubt whatever on thi,i subject. The revolutionist
ministry will be gloriously flogged, if the knight and
his sleeping partner,—we mean the lord—shall really
have the hardihood, or the folly, to persevere in the
attempt of claiming Liverpool as the seat of Liberalism
and anarchy. As to the rest of the kingdom, our hopes
are sanguine, and we look forward to the most fa-
vourable result.

We refer, with pride and pleasure, to the addresses
of Lord Sandon and Mr. Cresswell, which will be
found elsewhere. They abound with evidences of the
greatest research and consummate ability—are filled
with useful practical details, and cannot fail to raise
the speakers still higher in the estimation of their con-
The meeting yesterday was truly enthusi-
astic—nothing could exceed the applause and delight
with which the sentiments of the members were lis-
tened to and appreciated. Liverpool is highly favoured
with having such talented, business-like, persevering
men to watch over her interests; and whilst we think
it unnecessary to imitate our radical contemporaries in
calling upon the electors to secure the return of Lord
Sandon and Mr. Cresswell—that we consider done
already—we do most urgently exhort them to show
such a majority as will set an example to the rest of
the empire.

stituents

The land-proprietors deprecate the notion of free
trade as applied to the article corn ; and it would be
very extraordinary if they did not, seeing that, so far
as they are concerned, the talk is very plain. They are
not treated to any refined or delusive augmentation ;
there is no mystification with them as there has been
with other interests; they are distinctly apprised that
the price of their goods must come down ; that they
must be contented to share the market with foreign-
ers ; and that to some extent they must give place al-
together to the stranger. They are assured that the
scheme will work beautifully for the whole country,
however ill it may do for them, and that, being but a
class, they have no right to stand in the way of the
" greatest happiness principle," and the curious felicity
of its operation upon the community at large. The
land-proprietors are not sufficiently philosophic to ac-
quiesce in this superlatively fine doctrine. Their ro-
bust minds do not exactly take it in. They have not
graduated at Manchester, nor paid sufficient attention
to the lectures of Professor Cobden. If they had,
they would perhaps have thought it a glorious thing to
be depressed or ruined for the good of foreigners and
factorymen. They would have submitted, like some
miserable dog, to be emboweled alive upon the anato-
mist's or lecturer's table, and endure unknown suffer-
ing for the benefit of science. But what can we ex-
pect from farming people ? The march of intellect has
not reached them ; they are exceedingly obstinate, and
they will howl most provokingly if one lays a finger on
them.

We turn then from the landowners as a class un-
willing to be experimented upon, and a class who can-
not, from their own obstinate resistance, speak experi-
mentally on the subject; we turn from them to the
Shipowners. They have been to the fasting man, and,
doubtless, can tell us of the miracles he has wrought
in their behalf. To be sure, it is a doctrine among our
modern economists that all other people understand
any man's business better than he does himself. They
will not allow that a shipowner or any other owner
knows his own business best; and, accordingly, when he
alleges that his freights decline, or his trade pines away
under the management of free-trade doctors, they as-
sure him that it is quite a mistake, and that he is really
getting fat and rich. However, audi alteram parti is a
good maxim ; so just let us bear what the shipowners
say.

On Friday the annual meeting of the General Ship-
owners' Society was held in London, and a report for
the year, of great length, was read, by which, and
speeches subsequently delivered, it clearly appears that
the shipowners are any thing but converts to the new
Ministerial doctrine of free trade. The sudden an-
nouncement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on
bringing forward the budget, of the intention of her
Majesty's government to propose an alteration of the
timber duties, by a reduction of ss. per load from the
duty now payable on the importation of foreign, and
an addition of lOs. per load to that chargeable on
colonial timber, it is stated, excited in their mind the
utmost alarm, and their committee took the most prompt
measures for averting the threatened evil. Nor was
this the only item which occasioned uneasiness in their
mind; the anti-protective principle avowed both with
regard to colonial, and to home agricultural interests,
was displeasing to them. Their committee, in their
very interesting report, say,—
" It was not alone the extent of the changes proposed to
be made in fiscal arrangements affecting navigation, disas-
trous as those changes might have proved, that constituted
the master evil of the ministerial propositions. It was the
death blow aimed at the protective principle itself, in the
character of the measures and of the avowals, more or less
explicit, by which their introduction was accompanied, that
was most to be dreaded. In the consequences of the main-
tenance of this principle, or of its subversion, every interest
of the country, agricultural, manufacturing, colonial, or com-
mercial, is, equally with that of shipping, deeply involved.
It did, therefore, appear plainly to your committee to be
consistent, and just, and politic, that if opposition were to be
given by the shipping interest on such an occasion, it should
not be in a narrow and selfish opposition, but should embrace
views of a larger and more comprehensive character. It did
appear to them, that while insisting on protection for them-
selves in the carrying trade of timber and sugar, it would
have been inconsistent and nnjust to have separated them-
selves from the agriculturalists, who were expressly con-
nected with them in the very measure they were called on to
appose."

see, then, how utterly thrown away upon the ship-
owners is the Ministerial bait of Free Trade ! They
won't be caught. The unfortunate fluke, trout, or
salmon, though he has had the hook in his gills many
times and has had the luck to escape, will yet snap
again and again till he is at length brought up, and
fairly handed over to be cooked. The shipowners,
however, are no such fish, flat; or round,—and having
had the free-trade bait once stuck in them, they are
determined to eschew it altogether. Alas for the
Ministerialist and mill-men,—here is a fresh host of
enemies raised up against them, and resolved not to
be idle either in their opposition. The shipowners are
not free-traders in the Alinisterial anti-protective sense
of the term, and of course they will range themselves
at the present moment, in a body, upon the Conserva-
tive side. This is delightfnl. We can scarcely express
the satisfaction we have felt at the intelligence. It is

most cheering.

But the shipowners, as we have remarked, are men
of experience—men who have endured the hacking and
Cutting of free trade operators, and their testimony is,
that the anti-protective system has been most injurious
to British interests, and to their own in particular.
The report supplies a number of statistical details for
which we cannot make room; but the conclusion from
the whole is, in the words of the report, as follows :
" The inferences deducible from such facts are illustrative
and startling. They show, conclusively, that which more
detailed statistics will fully corroborate : first, the prepon-
derating value of the colonial trade : and secondly, the cer-
tainty that, in unprotected competition with foreign naviga-
tion, the British ship-owner will infallibly be outstripped by
his less burdened rival ; and hence will at once appear the
manifest and deep interest which all who possess any stake in
British shipping have, in opposing the substitution of foreign
timber and sugar, to the importation of which British and
foreign shipping are alike by law admissible, for timber and
sugar of colonial production, which can only by, law be yo-
ported in British ships. Nor is it from these illustrations
easy to escape the further conclusion, that even from an in-
creased importation of foreign corn, the British shipowner
could scarcely hope permanently to derive any material ex-
tension of employment, which must eventually devolve into
the hands of those by whom navigation can be more cheaply
conducted than by the highly-taxed and restricted ship-
owners of this country."

" Free Trade " was the last card of the Melbourne-
O'Connell Ministry, and it is even now plain, we think,
that the game is up. Their last card will fail, nay has
already failed them. But hear Mr. Robinson, one of
the speakers at the meeting we have been referring to
—a meeting, be it observed, not of politicians, or
electioneerers, but simply of traders, of British ship-
owners

" With regard to the advantages of free trade, about which
so much had been said, he (Mr. B.) would only say that he
had never yet seen any disposition on the part of other na-
tions to follow our example in regard to free trade. He had
never yet been able to discover any such disposition on the
part of any great or commercial community. The statement
that free trade would benefit this country was a gross delu-
sion attempted to be practised on an unsuspecting people.
In a country so artificially circumstanced as this a system of
free trade could not be beneficially adopted, except on the
principle of bonafide reciprocity. (Hear.) It had been as.