The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-09-25 00:00:00

FRIDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER m, 1840

We have received a file of the Guiana Times to the
10th of August, inclusive. The Georgetown had just
arrived out with a very important piece of intelligence.
The Governor of Sierra Leone had received instruc-
tions to facilitate the deportation of labourers from that
colony to Jamaica, British Guiana, and Trinidad. The
Times states that this information is well authentica-
ted. We sincerely hope that such is the case. If the
news should prove to be well founded we shall have
every reason to congratulate the planters of British
Guiana upon the success of their agitation for free
labour immigration. The permission to remove from
the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone to the West Indies
will prove a boon of inestimable to the African ne-
groes, whose condition will be greatly improved by the
change.

It is with infinite satisfaction that we refer to a
powerful leading article which appeared in the columns
of the Times of Wednesday last, and which we have
transferred to our own columns, on the present state
and future prospects of our West India Colonies.
The Times remarks with great force that the present
state of the West India Colonies " is a subject which
engages the attention of every British statesman and
philanthropist." The truth of this remark it would be
folly to attempt to deny ; and yet how little notice,
comparatively speaking, has been bestowed upon this
impOrtant subject by the public press of the country.
If all the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire were
unemployed, and tumbling into ruin, we should find
the whole of the press busily employed in tracing out
the causes of such a ruinous depression of trade, and
in suggesting such remedies as might meet the
emergency of the case. But the West Indies, which
are of far greater value to this country than the fac-
tories in Yorkshire and Lancashire, are fast hastening
to poverty and ruin, and that in consequence of mea-
sures adopted by this country; and yet we hardly find
a word upon the subject in the columns of nine-tenths
of the newspapers of Great Britain and Ireland. One
might have imagined that the present high prices of
the principal articles of colonial produce would have
elicited a few occasional remarks on a topic of such
general interest. But we find that even self-interest is
not powerful enough to cause this topic to be agitated.
We hope, however, that the powerful advocacy of the
Times will induce the conservative journals in general
to take up the question without delay. It is seldom
that the Times takes up any subject in earnest without
giving the tone to the expression of public opinion.
We trust that the notice which that influential journal
has bestowed on West India affairs will not prove an
exception to the general rule.
The first point to which the Times adverts is, the
diminished production and high prices of West India
sugar. The statistical details which it furnishes on
this subject have already appeared more than once in
the columns of the STANDARD. They remain un-
contradicted up to the present hour, and give the lie
direct to the glowing exparte statements of the Anti-
Slavery agitators. It is of no avail to quote, in oppo-
sition to these official returns, the high prices recently
given in British Guiana for several large estates.
Those high prices have been notoriously given in
anticipation of increased facilities for the immigration
of free labourers into the colony. Remove the present
restrictions on the importation of the Hill Coolies and
of African labourers, and the prices of properties in
the West Indies will soon be doubled.
If we contrast the produce of the West Indies with
that of Mauritius, in the article of sugar. we shall find
that the latter Colony has already experienced the
benefits arising from an adequate supply of labour. If
the West Indies had been placed upon the same foot-
ing this country would not now have been under the
necessity of paying such a high price for sugar.
The remarks of the Times on the present actual con-
dition and future prospects of the West India Colo-
nies are characterised by " sound sense and great
moderation ; while its censure of the government for
its quiescence and inactivity in reference to the subject
will, we feel assured, be echoed by every unprejudiced
person in the United Kingdom.

We particularly wish to direct the attention of our
readers to the very pertinent observations of the Times
on the influence which the present state of the West
India Colonies must have in confirming slavery, and
increasing the slave trade in other countries. We can
never properly estimate the importance of the West In-
dia question without viewing it in connection with
the existence of slave labour in foreign countries. We
must either encourage slavery and the slave trade, or we
must encourage free labour in our own colonies. 'We
should ever remember that " Every hand abstracted
from sugar cultivation in our own colonies Without a

substitute, makes room for a fresh slave on a foreign
soil."

In other days, the present critical position of such
an important portion of the British dominions as the
West Indies would have rendered necessary the im-
mediate assembling of Parliament, in order to apply a
remedy to the evils of which we have so long com-
plained. The present ministry, however, appear to be
utterly regardless of the commercial interests of the
country; and it is in vain that the ruined planters
look to them for assistance. They will never interfere
until driven to do so by the irresistible demands of the
people. Let the people of England, therefore. demand
" justice to the West Indies." This is the only way
to procure a supply of cheap sugar. This is the only
way to annihilate slavery.

The note of preparation for the approaching muni-
cipal elections has already been sounded on both sides.
Meetings have already been held in several wards, and
others are announced to take place in the course of the
present and ensuing weeks. This is as it should be.
It is highly necessary that the candidates should be
fixed upon, and that they should have an opportunity
of stating in public their political sentiments. It is
equally necessary that arrangements should be entered
into, as speedily as possible, for carrying on an active
canvass among the electors. We rejoice to find that
our advice has not been thrown away upon the conser-
vatives of Liverpool, and that they seem determined to
fight in earnest for the ascendancy in our municipal
council. The time has arrived when the people of Li-
verpool seem resolved to get rid of the Radical incubus
that has so long oppressed the " good old town."
As very little time now remains for the work of pre-
paration for the approaching contest, we sincerely trust
that our conservative friends will turn every moment
to the best account. The corporate functionaries—the
paid canvassers of the Market and other Committees—
are busily at work, straining every nerve to serve their
masters, and using all those arts of cajolery and inti-
midation which long practice has rendered so familiar
to them, in order to secure as many votes as possible.
The greatest vigilance and activity are, therefore, in-
dispensable. The enemy must not be suffered to steal
a march upon us. We must not slumber at our posts.
Above all, let there be no more bungling on the part of
the Conservative ward committees. 'We have already
lost too much by " mistakes."

The atrabilious editor of the Liverpool Albion is
very severe in some of his strictures on the proceed-
ings of the recent great meeting of the Diocesan Board
of Education. It was not to be expected that such a
decided and uncompromising enemy of the Established
Church, as the editor of the Albion, should pass by
these proceedings without giving vent to his feelings.
While the Albion affects, in a tone of mawkish libera-
lity, to give credit to the members of the Diocesan
Society, for honesty of purpose and purity of motive,
he takes good care to neutralise the effect of such an
extraordinary concession, by imputing to the most
zealous and active amongst the friends of the society
motives of a different and totally opposite character.
While he expresses bis conviction that the majority of
those who attended at the Amphitheatre had the real
good of society and the advancement of religion at
heart, he sneeringly insinuates that "it is not impos-
sible that the whole proceeding, and even the society
itself, may produce results exactly the reverse." Then
follows the cunningly devised and most jesuitical ob-
jection that the Diocesan Society has made " religion
the antagonist of knowledge." This charge is plainly
implied in the remarks of the Albion, though it is not
expressed. A more glaringly false insinuation was
never indulged in. The editor of the Albion knows
full well that the Diocesan Society does not oppose re-
ligion to knowledge. It only wishes to render know-
ledge subservient to religion. It seeks to persuade the
public that religion is the highest species of knowledge
to which the human understanding can aspire. It as-
serts that, unless religion be made the foundation on
which all human wisdom is to rest, knowledge is no
longer a blessing, but rather a curse, to the great fa-
mily of mankind.
The Albion asserts that " science is only another
term for truth." We must demur to this proposition.
What is considered demonstrably true, on strictly sci-
entific principles, in one age, proves frequently, in the
next age, to be utterly false. Look at the innumerable
changes and vicissitudes to which what is called "sci-
ence" :has been subjected, from one generation to
another, and then inform us, good Albion, how it comes
to pass that what you call "truth" so frequently con-
tradicts itself.

We have always regarded the Albion as, in some
degree at least, the organ of the dissenters—we mean
the orthodox dissenters—of Liverpool. We believe
its editor either is, or was, in the habit of frequenting
an Independent Chapel in town. We now find that
we have been labouring under a very erroneous im-
pression. From an expression in the Albion of Mon-
day we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that the
editor is a disciple of that school of pigmy geological
philosophers, who profess their disbelief in the Penta-
teuch. Unless the Albion belongs to this semi-infidel
sect, how can we account for the strange declaration
that " the better informed among divines have learned
that Moses and geology are not quite so irreconcileable
as was, at first, by themselves asserted." We posi-
tively deny that any well-informed divine has learned
any such thing. The so-called science of geology is
utterly at variance with scripture—we mean, of course,
in its chronological speculations. We do not deny that
Moses has furnished us with a history which fully ac-
counts for all the facts which the geologists have been
endeavouring to generalise into a scientific system ; but
we deny most emphatically that any consistent di-
vine of the Church of England has ever allowed that
the " system" of modern geology is reconcileable with
the chronology of Moses. We are aware that the
Albion can quote against us the names of several cler-
gymen who have avowed their belief in the antedilu-
vian dreams of the geologists ; but we deny that such
clergymen have any pretensions whatever to the cha-
racter of well-informed " divines." They know just
as much about theology as the editor of the A/biots
does about the objects of the Diocesan Society.
The Albion then accuses the Diocesan Society of
entertaining " a dislike to knowledge not in the
Church." The society acts upon no such feeling. It
professes an anxious desire that religious instruction
should proceed pari passu with secular education ; but
what man is there who is so insane as to imagine that
this profession implies anything like an abstract hatred
of knowledge " not in the Church ?" Does the Albion
believe that the members of the Diocesan Society have
any dislike to the admirable parochial school system of
the Church of Scotland ? Is he prepared to maintain
that the clergymen who assembled at the Amphitheatre
have any hatred towards the knowledge communicated
in the various Dissenting Sunday Schools throughout
the kingdom—the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures
We feel convinced that the editor of the Albion must
be constrained to answer in the negative : and yet the
knowledge thus communicated is not in the church.
The Albion ridicules the idea of " godless know-
ledge," as "an absolute nonentity, a thing devoid of
existence, (the tautology is not ours,) and one of those
airy nothings which inhabit unhealthy brains." Ac-
cording to the sage of the Albion " godless know-
ledge" is "an unknown monster, a palpable contra-
diction in tern i." The only reason, if reason it can
be called, wh.,4!a the Albion adduces in support of these
assertions, is, that " knowledge is another name for
God himself" ! While we admit that the "knowledge

which maketh wise unto salvation" may, in a modified
sense, justify the expression which we have quoted
from our contemporary, we cannot acknowledge the
truth of the remark as applied to knowledge in general.
Indeed, it appears to us to fall little short of absolute
blasphemy. The devil possesses knowledge, but are
we to worship that knOwledge as the Deity ? The in-
fidel philosopher, who denies the very existence of
God, may boast of his extensive acquaintance with the
arts and sciences ; but are we to identify his knowledge
with the sacred name of the Deity ? The thing is
manifestly absurd. The Albion surely cannot mean to
assert that the knowledge of the mechanism of a steam
engine or a watch is but " another name for God."
We cannot pass by one remark made by the Albios
without expressing our astonishment at the consum-
mate ignorance of the writer of the article on which We
are commenting. We allude to the extraordinary de-
claration that " Protestantism," in the opinion of the
editor of the Albion, "had so much confidence in reh-