The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-09-17 00:00:00

It is a tact, believe, that vorking

short time

beg increase in game degree the post of the article ma-

nufactured ; and it is not, therefor, surprising that we
find Lancashire cotton-spinners anxiously looking about
for some means of remedying, in their eyes, so vast an
evil. The public; howeVer, may he a little surprised,
considering the profession of regard for the condition
of the working classes which have of late emanated
from the cottonocracy of the manufacturing districts,
that the remedy is to be effected at the expense of the
working man. ". Reduction of wages l" the reader ex-
claims ; " can such a thing be possible ?" No. A re-

action of wages would be a clumsy expedient, and one

which it would he peCuliarly unadvisable for the " li-
beral" manufacturer at the present moment to be de-
tected practising. But if one operative spinner could
be made to do the work of two, and by this plan the
same quantity of work could be procured at half the
cost in' wages, the reader will at once perceive that a
great portion of the difficulty will be got over. " Work-
ing short hours ";will, by this ingenious process, be-
come a profitable operation, and the spinner who adopts
it will be able to give our languid markets another im-
pulse downwards by the production of goods "cheaper

;an ever

Such a scheme, we find, has, during the past week,
been in active progress in the neighbourhood of Bol-
ton. The spinners of that enlightened locality, we
learn, have discovered that one operative can manage
two mules at once; that instead of attending to twelve
hundred spindles, he can attend to twice twelve hundred
at one time; that, in short, he can do two men's work
for one man's wages ! and, as a matter of course, one
half of the operative cotton-spinners of Bolton are to
be forthwith unemployed. This is no mere supposi-
tion, reader, as to what manufacturers will do under
certain circumstances, but it is what they actually are
doing at this moment. The adult cotton-spinner is
leaving his mule, not because it is unworked—not be-

cause its twelve hundred spindles have ceased to re-
volve—but because the reckless cupidity of his em-
ployer insists that one eye and not a pair shall in future
be paid for watching its revolutions !
And these are the men who clamour for cheap food—
for the poor man's sake ! Out upon the hypocrites !

The French society of assassins would seem to have
changed their object of attack ; having tried their wea-
pons so often in vain against the father, they now turn
them against the sons ; but the charm, or rather that
Providence which has hitherto protected the one, ex-
tends to the others, and they escape unhurt. Such
crimes evince a deplorable state of things. Arrest and
punishment appear to produce no effect in restraining
them. Fresh victims are ready to offer themselves the
next moment, as if they felt that dying by the hands of
the executioner for such an offence were a glorious sa-
crifice for the good of their country. Well may Louis
Philippe commit himself and his descendants to the
care of a merciful Providence; for when so perverted
a state of opinion prevails—when men think that their
destruction would be virtue, and only long for an op-
portunity of performing the act—and when rivals for
the distinction are so numerous, it must be manifestly
vain for him to suppose that by any prudence or cir-
cumspection on their own part, they can preserve their
lives. What compensation can the honours of a throne
offer for such a threatened and worried existence as the
royal family of France at present enjoy, or rather suf-
fer ? There is but one solid consolation for them, and
that is, that they are in the path of duty, and living
rather for others than for their own sakes. If Louis
Philippe be what we would willingly suppose, he may
derive much satisfaction from this reflection ; for, we
would ask, if he cannot govern the French, who can ?
—or if the system on which he acts fail to keep the
state machinery together, what will be able to do so ?
The attempted assassination of last Monday we at-
tribute to the social disorganization of the country.
All the attempts of this nature have sprung, directly or
indirectly, from the same cause, and they are doubly
alarming as the indices of a deep-rooted political dis-
ease. It is very unlikely that the crime originated in
any mere feeling of jealousy towards the 17th regiment
of Light Infantry, of which the Duke d'Aumale is
colonel, as conjectured by the correspondent of a Lon-
don journal;. it is unlikely, we say, that Nicholas Pa-
pard, the sawyer, of Paris, would have devoted himself
as a national victim merely for the sake of gratifying a
jealous or revengeful feeling of this sort; it is much
more probable that he was the member of some secret
political society—of which there are many at the pre-
sent moment, and all in a high state of excitement and
activity—and that like others who have gone before
him, he was possessed with the enthusiasm or mono-
mania of serving his country by destroying the off-
spring, as they had attempted to destroy the person, of
him who is esteemed a tyrant by all the rebellious.
France is described as ripe for movement in all her de-
partments, and as prevented from breaking forth into
open rebellion and anarchy solely by that effective
military despotism which her prudent Sovereign has
established in the country. Emeutes are of frequent
occurrence, and usually attended with serious loss of
life; her present dynasty has little root in the affections
of the people--and, as a popular commotion created,
a popular commotion would very quickly, and without
the least remorse, overturn it.

We ought to wish for the stability of the Orleans
branch of the Bourbons on the throne of France, for
we can hope for nothing better to succeed them ; they
ought to have the sympathy of the other royal families
of Europe. Meanwhile, with what lively feeling of
satisfaction and gratitude may we not compare our
own beloved country in every conceivable relation with
that of our restless and ambitious neighbours. With
the cry of liberty, liberty, ever on thei r lips, and, after
having sought it through bloody revolutions and
changes without number, they have never found it; it
has ever eluded their grasp—ranishing from before
them like a phantom—whilst we have been long familiar
with the practical perception of its blessings—the most
ample and universal enjoyment of its fruits. On the
throne we have a Sovereign who needs no army to
protect her ; she has a willing soldiery for that purpose
in all her subjects. Nor is devotion to her hereditary
rights less strongly implanted in the mind of all her
people, than a tender and sympathising regard for her
personal happiness. We enjoy the blessing of a settled
monarchy, and of a Sovereign worthy of our attach-
ment, and now surrounded by advisers chosen from
the wisest, gravest, most experienced, and best among
her people. Nor is this all ; the nation is sensible of

these great blessings, and, consequently, tranquil,

peaceable, contented. We are not without our diffi-
culties, true; but how light, how trifling, how insigni-
ficant are they compared with those which agitate the
French, and shake their country to its very centre ?
Under any other government, under an administration
of a different order, we might feel even alarm ; but
under a ministry composed as the present is, we can
look forward to nothing but the removal of difficulties,
the disentanglement of embarrassing circumstances,
and the increase of the nation in every incident and
accompaniment, as well as essential of prosperity and
good. Nor do we forget what the foundation of this
happiness is ; if we were disposed to forget it, we are
happy to perceive that there are other and more influ-
ential journals ready to remind the nation of it ;—it
is CHRlSTlANlTY—Christianity nationally received,
adopted, taught, promulgated. This is the foundation
of all our liberty, happiness, and prosperity. It is the
want of it—a want for which nothing of human in-
vention can compensate=that renders France what she
is ; possessed, as it were, with a troubled spirit, vexed,
tossed, tormented ; seeking rest perpetually, and find-

mg none

Mr. Acland, the anti-corn law agitator, has not been
elected for Tamworth. This will be a serious disap-
pointment to the Manchestrians, and Tamworth will,
of course, be entered in their books as a stupid,
bigoted, intolerant, and intolerable monopolist rotten
borough. But Tamworth does not stand alone in this
re-electing process. There have been nearly thirty
seats vacated by members both in and out of the cabi.
net, and Mr. Acland is likely to stand alone in his
glory as the opponent of ministers at the hustings;
prodigious honour is this Mr. Ac— or Lack-land
likely to acquire for himself. The Tories will all be
re-elected without any further opposition. Thus far
fortune favours them out of doors ; but what shall we
say if the Irish demagogue's story be true, that there
will be no opposition within-:—none at least, save that
exclusively Irish Repeal party, of which he has consti-
tuted himsolf the head ? As to the Chartists he de.