The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-11-30 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

Several communications are postponed.
We are compelled to postpone some remarks on the Seim
Question, in reply to the Journal.

Ein -Zibrrpool ivtanDarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 30, 18

We may have appeared to our readers occasion
to have gone out of our way to remark upon the

portance of the question of IMMIGRATION as applied
to our West India colonies ; and we have repeatedly,
for doing so, been met with the taunts of that portion
of the press which is opposed to us, as being " the es-
pecial advocates " of the interests of those colonies.
Would that we really deserved the imputation ! We
can see nothing which is disgraceful—nothing which
can be regarded as other than praiseworthy—in having
stood forward, at all times and with all our humble
powers, to protect the interests and to advance the
growth of those noble possessions, in whose prosperity
is embarked the liberties of millions of the human
race; but, on the contrary, we should regard it as our
proudest boast if we could say that any effort of ours
has contributed to call attention to the wants under
which they are at present languishing, and in the sup-
ply of which the cause of humanity and freedom is so
deeply interested.

Entertaining these views, it is gratifying to us to ob.
serve that this subject, the immigration of free labour.
ers into our tropical colonies, has at length begun tc
attract, from our brethren of the Contervative press,
the notice which it so eminently deserves. The illorn•

ing Herald of Thursday last, in the course of a lo
and able article, which we regret we have not space

give entire, enters fully into the question as :one wa
_ _

of the serious consideration of the legislature,

confirms strongly the opinions respecting it which fro
time to time we have felt it our duty to lay before o
readers and the public. Repudiating, as we have ev

done, the audacity with which the late unprincipled ad-
ministration proposed the introduction into Great Bri-
tain of the slave-raised sugar of Cuba and the Brazils,
to appease the clamorous outcry of a faction of free
traders and to gratify the hoarded malice entertained

against colonial interests by a busy knot of pseudo
philanthropists, our contemporary has, we think, clearly
and conclusively shown that it is within the power of
government,—by a wise and well-regulated encourage-
ment of the desire recently developed amongst the free
negro population of the United States and of Sierra

Leone, to emigrate to our West Indian islands, and

pecially to Guiana and Trinidad,—to provide for t

country a more than adequate supply of tropical pro
ducts at a reasonable price and raised by free labour

and at the same time to render those possessions of in-
finite value as consumers of the products of the mother

country

To one portion of our contemporory's remarks we
cannot resist calling the attention of those advocates of
the cause of negro emancipation, (of whom that emi-
nent anti-corn law and anti-slavery oracle, Mr. Joseph
Sturge, is the most prominent,) who, whilst in their
zeal for the interest of the slave they would even incur
the risk of embroiling us with the slaveholding states
of the American union, would gladly witness the with.
drawal of that legislative protection by which alone,
until provided with a measure of immigration, the
free labour colonies of Great Britain are enabled to
maintain themselves amidst the difficulties by which
they are surrounded.

" As an inducement," observes the Herald, " for
the immigration of the degraded free blacks of the
Union, Government might, we think, at once safely en-
courage the voluntary removal of the 15,000 negroes
who are now inhabitants of Canada, where they add
very little to the development of the resources, and
where, we fear, they are only less uncomfortable than
they were in the slavery of the republic, from which
for the most part they have escaped. The contented
and happy settlement of these Canadian blacks in Tri-
nidad and Guiana would greatly encourage the migra-
tion of their brethren, now degraded residents in the
United States, to these colonies. The coloured popu-
lation of the republic watches with eager interest the
progress of emancipation in the West Indies, and the
great obstacle to a general emigration thither of several
hundreds of thousands is an apprehension—not wholly
unwarranted by past events, and greatly augmented by
slander and maudlin sentimentality, but which will ra-
pidly be dispelled by good works—as to the course of
conduct which the planters will pursue towards them.
A class of proprietors with better feelings, and imbued
with a knowledge of their wants and their duties, is
rapidly springing up in our west Indian islands, and
from it we anticipate a future period of unexampled
prosperity,—present difficulties being overcome. To
it we commend the cultivation of immigration from
the United States."

From a journal which has ever been foremost in the
advocacy of enlightened humanity, as has the Morning
Herald, such a declaration in favour of the policy of
encouraging immigration will, we are confident, have
its proper weight upon the honest and reflecting por-
tion of the anti-slavery party itself, accustomed as they
are to look with an eye of jealousy upon every proceed-
ing of the planters of our colonies, and occasionally to
confound colonial interests with that slavery itself
which they have succeeded in putting down. Let them
weigh well the fact which it discloses. The liberty and
happiness of two millions of enslaved human beings
in the United States—in that land to which the hand
of " Liberalism " ever points as its " pattern repub-
lic"—the happiness too of millions to whom as yet
the horrors of the middle passage, the fettered limb
and the chained soul, are things *unknown are
dependent upon the issue of the attempt which is at
present being made to raise the products of the tropics •
by free labour; and can we contemplate the failure of
that attempt—which must dash to the earth those excited
hopes and annihilate every reasonable anticipation of
the permanent security and freedom of the entire negro
pain and bitter disappoint-
race—without feelings of

With respect to immigration from the coast of Africa
itself, and to the effect upon AFRICAN CIVILIZATION
and upon the AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE which might
result from the establishment there of a well-regulated
system for its encouragement, the remarks of our con-
temporary are equally just, and contrast strongly with
those upon the same subject which appear in the city
article of the limes of the same date, whose attention

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lave trade"

In the few remarks which we offered upon the occa-
sion of the decease of the late Mr. Egerton Smith, we
were careful to abstain from expressing any opinion
which could bring under discussion, at such a moment,
the political character of the deceased. We were far,
however, from anticipating, on the part of the admirers
of that gentleman, and particularly on that of the. con-
ductors of the Liverpool Mercury, the adoption of a
similar course; and we have no complaint, therefore,
to make of the substance of the long and highly co-
loured panegyric which appeared on Friday in the co-
lumns of our contemporary, however dubious we may
be with respect to its propriety and good taste. We
are not willing, however, to permit the editor of the
Mercury, or the " Friend" who executed the clumsy
daub which is intended as the portrait of Mr. Smith,
to mingle slander against the living with his fulsome
laudation of the dead. Canonize, deify, if he will, the
object of his admiration; but why rake up in our me-
mory and in that of the public forgotten falsehoods,
which, having served their unworthy purposes, ought
to have been allowed to sleep with him for whom or by
whom they were invented.
The slander to which we allude is contained in the
following quotations, which we need scarcely charac-
terise as unworthy and contemptible in expression and
in spirit. "The West Indian Interest "—writes this
panegyrist of the deceased—" the West Indian or
slave-owning interest requited the noble exertions of
our lamented friend in this (the anti-slavery) cause, by
attempting the ruin of his business." And again—
" He certainly forfeited the regard of men who declared
their longing to devour the heart of Wilberforce, and
actually attempted to assassinate Clarkson." We
need scarcely proclaim the deliberate falsehood of these
abominable imputations upon the character of a portion
of our fellow-townsmen; and shall only ask of our
readers and the public, what can they think of the de-
cency of an individual or a party who can descend to
cloak the utterance of their rancorous malignity
against the living under the hypocritical pretence of
respectful affection for the dead ? How ineffably dis-
gusting is the mawkish sentimentality which fills up
the remainder of this tribute (!) of love, when it is
placed side by side with these vulgar outbreaks of the
rank and lying spirit which animated the heart of the
writer, and which not even the mournful occasion upon
which they were uttered was able to control !

The anti-corn-law empirics have discovered a new
remedy for the evils of thd times, and we dare say are
quite prepared to puff their nostrum, and placard the
walls with a most fascinating history of the marvellous
cures which shall hereafter be effected by it—and other-
wise, and in every possible way, convert it into an in-
strument of agitation. The new remedy is simple, and
if it were safe to use, doubless of extraordinary efficacy;

t consists in merely relaxing the " money screw ;" and,
is want of demand arises (in their view) solely front

want of the money to purchase—augmenting the cir-
culating medium in proportion to the stocks of goo&
manufactured, or unsold, buyers and sellers must be
wrought together by some means ; and if the mountain
won't go to Mahomet, Mahomet must be brought, by

some means, to the mountain.
A London contemporary, in discussing this interest-
ing, proposition, commends the propounders, who are
certain associators of Birmingham, for their prudence
in dropping all allusion to the corn laws, and professes
desire to meet them on the inquiry in a friendly spirit.
A. season of public calamity, or even one in which a
riore than ordinary measure of privation has befallen a
)ortion of the community, is certainly one in which
nuch forbearance ought to be extended to parties who,
a an honest spirit, and with a pure desire to contribute
0 the good of their country, suggest what they con-
:eive to be remedies for existing misfortunes ; but it is

, - -
me also in which we ought to be especially upon our
;uard against those who, in proffering their cures for
he body politic, give us reason strongly to suspect that
hey are only actuated by selfish or factious motives.
Ye should like to know, in the first place, if those Bir-
❑ingham doctors who now assure us that all our em-
iarrassments would be removed by a liberal enlarge-
aent of our paper currency, are not the same who a
hart time since insisted, and who still in some other
hape, or under some other name maintain, that the
orn laws are the monster grievance of the land ? And
this be the case, with the best possible disposition,
ay the most Christian patience towards our volunteer
hysicians, what degree of faith can we possibly repose
the new recipe, so far as esteem for the adviser, and
at the advice, is to go for any thing ? That they are
ae and the same party, we need not to be told; we
ace their identity at once in the pious horror which,
rider whatever name they give themselves, they inva-
ably evince at the words " over-trading" or " over-
)pulation." "'The doctrine of over-trading," say

" is a dangerous and cruel fallacy, and when

coupled, as it generally is, with that of :Over-popula-
tion,' is a most dishonest and disgraceful absurdity."
Fine words, truly, and pungent exceedingly! but words
which, however full of " sound and fury," signifying
absolutely " nothing" against that array of evidence
vhich can, with the utmost ease, be brought forward

o convict some of the noisiest of the grievance-tnongers
,f the authorship of tiloss facts whose existence they
,ow deny in such terms of indignation. Nothing can
,e more unwelcome, unquestionably, than to be told

our own faults at the very moment that we are open-
g out against wh.it we hold to be the vices of others..
he memory of journalists is particularly inconvenient

ornetimes to these great reformers of other people,.
nd of every thing under heaven but themselves. We.
Lave ourselves taken occasion to give them a jog when.
re found them romancing at some insufferable rate of
xtravagance, and we should hope that the admonition
as been found useful. Our example was well followed

p a short time since by our contemporary the Shef-
eld Mercury.

At the anti-corn-law meeting held in that town, the
main points relied upon were, that the depression of
the Sheffield trade arose from German and American
competition, and that a greatly-increased quantity of
cutlery would be sold to the Americans, if we would
but take their corn in exchange. On this occasion
our contemporary wielded the argumentain ad kominem
with what we should anticipate to have been good
effect.

4 As respects the havcc made in our trade by foreign com-
petition" he observes, " is it quite clear that we have not in
some . instances created, and in others strengthened and
rendered more powerful the rivalry of which we complain ?
A good deal is said about the scissor trade. Has not that
trade been grievously injured by the manufacture of virgin
steel scissors,' the base quality of which rendered any coin_
petition, however sluggish and clumsy, comparatively suc-
cessful ? Competition in price is much snore easy than
competition in quality ; and if scissors sent from this town
had always been equal in quality to what they were in appeal.
ance, the scissor trade would have been a less easy prey to
German competition. And then Mr. Ibbotson admitted the
existence of an element in the question
which went far to
annihilate his argument—the difference in the habits of the
German artisans as compared with those of the English. Too
little notice is taken of this fact ; be it to our advantage or
not, there can be neither honesty nor use in keeping it in the
back ground. Mr. Ibbotson's allusions to the axe trade and
the saw trade, as two branches which have left or are leaving
our shores. were extremely unfortunate. The Germans, says
Mr. Ibbotson, supplant us because of price, and the Ameri-
cans are making saws and axes for themselves. And do the
Americans beat us out of the market by underselling us ?*
the inference deducible from Mr. Ibbotson's speech would,
be to that effect, although the speaker neither made, nor could,
ncl
(lot se
be Ehe intend to make, any such assertion. The Americansm.
an very
axexespefraiielnedcedtheAmmieiriictahne:
Ilsaitiligu.faetAure7jaaxiles
ca because
nerchant, without. knowing that axes were exported from the,
leighbourhood of Birmino'liam—some without a particle of
steel in them, and others with a wafer ofsteel -
rascally ni-
ierted, ' just enough to swear by.' Were these fit tools to.

immigration from the coast of Africa " a new descrip-
should he created; and with a

jealousy worthy only of .an Old Bailey attorney, sug-
gests that, "by adroit management, there might he but
little difference in the state of the colonies from that

from which they have recently and at immense cost
been emancipated." Our contemporary's fears are
really, we think, a little overstrained. The planters in
our West Indian colonies are perfectly ready to submit

to any degree of supervision, by the home government,
of their internal arrangements and the condition of
their labourers; and the correspondence relating to the
subject of immigration from Sierra Leone, copied in
the same article by our contemporary, and from which,
by the bye, we quoted the most material portion in our
publication of the 9th instant, ought to have satisfied
him that, externally, no crimping, no unworthy induce-
ments of any description, are required to promote the
object which the planters have in view, and which we
think no sincere friend to the interests of the negro
race is justified in attempting to decry.

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