The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-17 00:00:00

Ministers of State are merely servants of the
people ; but the Constitution recognises them as
responsible advisers of the SOVEREIGN. For all
public acts they are accountable ; and, as far as
concerns the views to which HER MAJESTY may
give expression, she has as much right to consult
her husband, as any man has a right, if he so
pleases,to be guided by the opinion of his wife. Thus
much for that portion of the charge which accuses
his Royal Highness of being present at Ministerial
audiences. It may be true or false ; but, though
it is of trifling consequence, if true, we should
be more inclined to judge by the past, and refuse
to believe that Prince ALBERT has all at once for-
feited his previous high character for prudent
reserve, particularly when it would be difficult to
show that any object has to be gained by his inter-
ference. There may, however, be something to
gain from the charge. The Coalition Ministry
have deservedly acquired popular odium for their
foreign policy, and the cowards, to screen their own
misdeeds, circulate insinuations that the Prince
CONSORT has been the cause of them. Such a
charge is worse than contemptible. No act of
Sovereignty can be done except through a Minister ;
and if the Royal will is contrary to his sense of
duty, he ought to practise the virtue of resignation—
a task more difficult to a Whig than to stoop to the
most pitiful evasion.

THE very high price of the chief article of
food, which has been augmenting for some
months past, has led to riots and violence in
several towns of the West of England ; and as ill
deeds, when there is no lack of a stimulant, rarely
want imitators, it is to be feared that we have not
heard the last of such displays of popular violence.
When the orators of the Manchester League were
full of their great design to throw open the trade
in corn to unrestricted competition with all the
world, it was confidently predicted, and the con-
trary would not be listened to, that the effect
would be not only to ensure abundance, but such a
steady range of prices as completely to obviate the
fluctuations which had taken place under the pre-
vious system of corn-laws. The sliding-scale was
denounced as worthy only of barbarians, and as all
wisdom was in the Whigs, so the only wise plan
of dealing with the food of the population was in
that freedom of trade by which the poor were to
have permanently secured to them a cheap loaf,
unembittered by the sense of injustice. The old
system was unsparingly denounced as impolitic
and unjust, leading to mischievous fluctuations,
and benefiting the producer to the injury of the
consumer, while the new system was lauded to the
skies as the only one which would ensure our
population a sufficiency of food, which would be-
nefit the manufacturers, without, in any way, doing
injury to the agricultural classes. It may be use-
less to repeat the assertion that the Anti-corn-law
League was established by the manufacturers of
Manchester, in the first place, to distract the at-
tention of their operatives from their threatened
attacks on the cotton-mills, into which they were
goaded by the agitators against the new Poor-law ;
and, in the second place, to enable them to reduce
wages by the promise of cheaper bread. But we
have the simple fact before us, that twice within
the few years since the repeal of the Corn-laws
bread has been at so high a price that men have
broken out into open violence and robbery, in
order to save themselves from starvation, while, in
the interval, the price of wheat has been so low
that farmers seriously debated the necessity of
discontinuing its cultivation, because the crop
would not pay the expense of producing it. Such
was not the result of the sliding-scale introduced
by the DUKE of WELLINGTON, during the thirteen
years it was in operation the price of wheat having
averaged seven shillings a bushel ; whereas, since,
it has been lower than five shillings and as high
as seventeen shillings. The country has become
so inoculated with notions of the benefits of free
trade—forgetful that all the alleged advantages
have been directly produced by the gold discoveries
in California and Australia—that it is difficult for
a nation to confess the egregious error into which
it has fallen ; yet it might be as well to consider,
with more deliberation than it has yet received, a
subject of commercial policy which was adopted in
haste, carried by treachery, and persevered in from
an obstinate pride to be consistent even in error.
We shall be told that human laws can have no
controul over climates and' seasons, and the pro-
ductiveness of harvests ; but reverses in the hopes
of the husbandman from inauspicious weather oc-
curred as often during the days of protection as
they have done since, and yet, without the huge
supplies of foreign corn which have since been
received, bread never reached a famine price dur-
ing all the time that the sliding-scale was the law
of the land. It may be difficult for the public
mind to trace effects to their causes, or even to
perceive the importance of a population being in-
dependent of foreign nations for a supply of the
first necessaries of life, but surely they can under-
stand the simple fact, which the inclemency of the
weather will make more impressive, that bread is
now, for the second time within seven years, at a
much higher price than it had reached before Sir
ROBERT PEEL cancelled the services of a long po-
litical life, by turning traitor in his old age to all
his previous convictions. It may be prudent to
give way for a time to ainational mania, untilthere
be a return :to common sense ; but it will be a
mania, notwithstanding, as was the rage above
twenty years ago for that reform which its chief
author is now so studious to undo. If the people
are wise, the system of free trade in corn will
undergo further consideration ; and, if it be judged
by its fruits, the verdict of those who suffer by it
will hardly be favourable.

THE mania for railway speculation which afflicted
the country a few years since was attributed, in a
great measure, to the abundance of unemployed
capital, and the subsequent reaction to the conse-
quence of more capital having been employed in
this pursuit than could be spared with safety from
the ordinary requirements of business. Viewed
in this light, it was believed by numbers who suf-
fered from the depreciation of this description of
property that time only was requisite to retrieve
much of the loss which they had experienced, and
that, when capital should again be abundant, rail-
way shares would once more rise in the market.
Money has since been plentiful, bullion has been
almost a drug, interest has been at its lowest ebb,
the Funds have been above par, so as to tempt a
CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER to reduce the
National Debt, and yet all have been unsuccessful
in restoring public confidence in the security of
railways as a means of investment. The hope of
revival has proved a delusive dream, and some
other cause must be sought for railway depression
than the mere want of means to embark in such
enterprises. Something must, of course, be at-
tributed to the bitter experience of previous ven-
tures in this direction, to the sad fate of those who
gave £250 for shares for which now they could
not obtain £9O, and who eagerly paid a high pre-
mium for scrip which since has become worth
something less than waste paper. Many, also,
must remember the large amounts in law costs
and other expenses which they had to pay for the
questionable honour of being members of provi-
sional committees ; and wounds were inflicted
during the railway panic which have not since
been healed over, while many a princely fortune
has through the same means—the indulgence in
the sinful haste to get rich—been scattered to the