The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-08-17 00:00:00

,dy admitted

[s the course of action pu:

3 cannc

e formation of railw

creation

m pti on" has

;ell ; nor shall we

which is th
-as onnd ani

as valuable prop( _
or the land itself, am

ion our c

as wa can find

fir to this nation as mills or mines
as good even as gold, so long
give for it, which can be

a represents

transactions—can be a source of danger to the
nation, or is the cause of our present emba

ments, until we are convinced that railway

s are mac

.e or tt.

precious meta

these commodities are embedded in embankments.
Our embarrassments flow solely from the absurd
attempt to regulate our standard of value by that
of an article which is of fluctuating value ; to
regulate prices by the supply of an exportable
material, which is liable to be drawn from us
whenever our imports exceed our exports, and to
carry on a continually expanding commerce by

- . .
means of a circulating medium whose basis is
short in supply to meet the wants of this country
and the world.

THE drama, which has for months been perform-
ing, and of which the chief scenes have been laid in

trophe

The glorious autumnal sky, under
_
i we have for the last few weeks been

rejoicing,

e actors and prompters, scene-

shifters and property men—the last of whom have
left behind them, as relics, the machinery, which
they have heretofore found so useful, and which
only failed them at the last hour. Amongst the best
known of these is the asserted potatoe rot, which is
so far worn that it is not thought it can be of any
use in another season, and has been bought for an
old song by one or two of our contemporaries.
In more intelligible and business-like language, the

famine-panic has broken down, despite all the ap-
pliances used to keep it up ; and its promoters and
dupes are about to receive their reward, which, we

trust, will he meted out to them in somewhat lea

than the sharp practice of the former an(

e other woiA.

fully v

In ofd times our ancestors witnessed th

sea bubble and its bursting. A year ago we wit-
nessed, ourselves, the railway mania and its cala-
mitous issue. Wise people—prudent men—talked,
with disapproving shakes of the head, of the evil of
withdrawing capital from the legitimate channels of
trade, and of the folly of urging forward the con-
struction of railways, although everywhere around
there were evidences of the vast boon to mankind
conferred by the railways already in existence, and
the further boon to be conferred by the formation
of additional railways, to promote the cheapening
of the cost of transit, the developement of the
resources of the soil and, most important of all,
the increase of civilization amongst, the people.
Yet, no sooner did we see the end of the railway
mania than we had, got up by the same wise people
who denounced it so vigourously, a famine mania.
The potato crop of last year was a failure : ergo

they said it was to be a failure again. Our supply
of bread stuffs was short ; and straightway they
acted as if the bounty of Providence would never
enable us to repair our deficiency—never enable us
to overtake and to conquer the evil. To the last
too many have clung to this delusion. They have
hoarded and hoarded ; they have exacted famine
prices, they have revelled in the prospect of imagin-
ary gains to the last. Men of all sorts and con-
ditions—capitalists and beggars—men of money
and men of straw—merchants, brokers, shop-
keepers and even clerks, with pittances barely suffi-
cient to keep whole coats upon their shoulders,
have abandoned their ordinary and legitimate avo-
casions, and rushed to the lucky marts at Mark
Lane and elsewhere, to possess themselves of bush-
els or barrels of the fortune-creating commodity;
and, having succeeded in this object of their am-
bition, they have closed their eyes to the acts and
accidents of the world around them, and fancied
themselves moderately or immoderately rich, accord-
ing to the amount of their respective ventures.
The world has gone round upon its axis all this
time, The §emon§ have followed in their coupe