The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-21 00:00:00

amount of the distres

inplained of, that, first, the

complainers are chiefly a body of wealthy manufactu-
rers who put themselves forward as the mouthpiece of

others, and not as the immediate sufferers themselves ;
and secondly, that the proclamation of ruin sent forlh
at all their assemblages, ends uniformly with the one
note—repeal of the corn laws With regard to the
first ground of suspicion upon the evidence, we would
not dwell much upon it ; it is not of any great validi:v.
We can conceive men of capital—men placed above

the reach of any pressure of the times, so far as they
are themselves concerned,-,--yet under a state of great
anxiety and concern for the sufferings present or anti-
cipated of others—and agitating very busily and noisily
and incessantly for the averting of calamities to which
in any urgent sense, they are, or would be, themselves

strangers. This is not impossible, though formerly it
was more common to permit distressed operatives to
tell the story of their own sufferings, and the voice of
complaint was rarely heard till some extremity com-
pelled it to an utterance. The new system—if arising
from the benevolent foresight of wealthy capitalists and
employers—from tender concern in the rich for the
poor, and of masters for their workpeople—the new

system is, we say, under such circumstances, a vast
improvement, and we hail it as a sign which does ho-

❑our to our times,

Btit with regard to the second ground of distrust,
we fear it cannot be so easily got over. :When we find
the one body of men fertile in inventions of agitation
which,- all concluding with the one cuckoo note of—
repeal the corn laws—and after exhausting all devices,
at last raising a cry of unparalleled distress—which
ends still with the old refrain—one is irresistibly led
to conclude, or at least vehemently to suspect, that the
distress has been got up for the sake of the corn laws,
and not the corn laws for the sake of the distress—that
distress is only made use.of as a means to an end, and
that free trade in corn is :not honestly and fairly soli-
cited as the appropriate remedy for the evil.
If the agitators had no other object in view than to
make the depressed state of our manufactures gene-
rally known, or to quicken the attention of government
to circumstances of the first importance connected with
our commercial interests, they would content them-
selves with statements of facts, and leave the remedy
in the hands of those who may be fairly supposed to
be the best judges of the case, and most skilful in dis-
cerning the treatment suitable to it; but, they invaria-
bly offer themselves to notice both as patients and doc-
tors, and clamour rather more for a particular mode of
cure, than, as we suspect, from the pure anguish of
suffering.

These distress meetings are supposed by the concoc-
tors to be working wonders in favour of free trade ;
but the connexion between the two things is not so
evident ; it is doubtful ; and, moreover, it is denied.
To what purpose, then, is all this agitation ? Will it
convince any reasonable man who has reflected upon
the subject, and has come to a conclusion different
from that drawn by these gentlemen, that the Corn-
laws ought to be repealed ? Certainly not. Their
noise and brawling cannot make the slightest impres-
sion on his reasoning faculties—and, indeed, we ap-
prehend it is not for the reasoning faculties, but for the.
fears of the weak, they are intended. They are only a
sort of Irish artifice for increasing the pressure from
without—for beguiling attention, and for adding the
force of terrorism out of doors, to the awful voice of
the Cobdens and others, when they rise in parliament
to advocate the cause of the manufacturers against the
agriculturists—universal free trade against native cul-
tivation and self-support.
In this point of view, such agitation is scarcely inno-
cent; it is turbulent and factious, and of evil tendency,
and ought in every way to be discountenanced. It is
an attempt to accomplish an object of at least a ques-
tionable efficacy, by unconstitutional, and we might
almost say, seditious means.
The sort of reasoning employed at some of these
meetings is really curious. At one of them, a Man-
chester manufacturer says :

" I have an agent at Chemnitz, in Saxony ; he is there
constantly, for the purpose of buying on the spot, and send-
ing me his purchases from week to week. lam regularly
importing German hosiery, and selling it to merchants,
after paying a twenty per cent. duty on import, cheaper
considerably than they can buy the same articles of British
manufacture. I bought last year 8,000 pair of English cot-
ton gloves for exportation ; now I buy them all in Germany,
and shall not be able to buy any more gloves of this style of
English manufacture at all. I can import them from Saxony
full fifty per cent. cheaper than I can possibly buy them in
England. There is, beyond this, a considerable importation
of German frame gloves, for the English home market,
which is increasing from year to year : their goods, I should
say, average at least thirty per cent. cheaper, and some—
particularly cotton gloves—average fifty per cent. cheaper
than ours."

Here is a lively sympathiser with the distress of
English operatives who carries on an extensive busi-

ness in a foreign importation, which goes directly. to
throw the English workmen out of employment, and
to cause that distress for which he, nevertheless,
affects to feel so much ! Nor is this all ; he is a wit-
ness, be it remembered, for fra,trade, and yet, truly,
if he proves any thing, it is that trade is a great deal
too free, and that the free importation of this German
hosiery, which can be sold after importation so much
cheaper than our own, ought immediately to be put a
stop to. Other evidence given by these agitators at
their meetings is just as conclusive against their own
theories, and shows in the most satisfactory manner,
that the free trade of which they are in pursuit, or pre-
tend to be in pursuit, is in reality the most eggregious
of humbugs.

At the present moment every suggestion which
tends to throw a light upon a question so complicated
in its nature as the degree and kind of protection to be
afforded to the British agriculturist is calculated to be
of use in arriving at a plan for its settlement; and we
have, therefore, pleasure in giving insertion to the let-
ter of Mr. E. W. Jackson, addressed to Sir Robert
Peel, upon this important subject. For the particulars
of the scheme of our correspondent we refer to his
communication itself, which will be found in another
column; and in the few remarks which we shall make
upon it our object will be only to correct an error of
expression which, it appears to us, implies a meaning,
and would establish a principle quite foreign, we think,
to those which the writer must have had in view.

Our correspondent has given us three scales of
prices—the first ranging from 525. to 6oB.—the second
from 48s. to 56s.—and the third from 445. to 525. He
suggests, also, for selection, by the premier, 3 scales
of duty—the first ranging from 12s. to 4s.—the second
from 10s. to 2s.—and the third from Ss. to Os. We
shall give no opinion as to these various scales ; and
indeed Mr. Jackson gives no- preference to any of them
in particular. We must protest; however, against the
principle which would be established by the calcula-
tions with which he illustrates their operation. For
example,—taking the first scale of prices at the average
of 56s.,and the duty and charges at 18s. (10s. charges
and Bs. the average duty) then the price realized by the
foreign importer of wheat will be, of course, 385.; and
the charges ISs. being to this price of 38s. as 47 to
100, Mr. Jackson assumes that the British agricultu-
rist has thus a protection of 47 per cent. against the
foreign grower. The incorrectness of this assumption,
however, becomes apparent when we lower the scale of
prices ; for taking the third scale of prices, which
brings the average down to 48s.—and keeping the
same rate of duties Bs. and charges 10s.—the price
realized by the foreigner will be only 30s.—and the
protection will, therefore, be apparently GO per
cent. Perfectly correct as these calculations are
arithrnetically—(and there is no wonder that they ap-
peared to our 'orrespondent extraordinary)—they lead,
nevertheless, to the inevitable and manifestly incorrect
conclusion that the lower the pivot from which the aver-
ages are taken, the greater the protection to the British
farmer We cannot, however, believe that Mr. Jack-
son meant to countenance any such principle as is in-
volved in this mode of calculation, or rather, perhaps,
(for it does not affect the practical working of his pro-
position,) of this mode of describing them.
The suggestion of our correspondent with respect to
the mode of taking the averages too, is, we think, lia-
ble to animadversion ; for, although on the other hand
it is quite probable that the present period of six week's
average, as the criterion of the duties, is too long, one
week is, we think, quite as much too little.
An unfounded panic, aided by speculation for that
space of time, raises the market, to the positive ruin of
the farmer, where a somewhat longer period would not
afford the same facility to the scheming capitalist, for