The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-06-15 00:00:00

tion in favour of ministers?
Benjamin Powell.--No, sir, and I don't think above a do-
zen men of all who work in your mill will go, and that dozen
are Irish Papists, who know no better, and must do as their
priest tells them. They have been ordered to go because her
Majesty's present ministers are great favourites with the
Popish priests. Perhaps, master, you could tell us the rea-
son of that favouritism, for there is great talk about it, and
suspicious people are saying, that as " nothing for nothing"
is a maxim of the liberal school, it would seem that the mi-
nisters are doing the priests' work, or the priests and Mr.
O'Connell would not take so much trouble to serve the mi-
nisters.
Master.—Good evening, John, good evening. (Hear,
hear, and loud laughter.)
The reading of this dialogue was frequently interrupted by
the applauding cheers of the meeting, whose gratification at
its point and terseness seemed to have no limits. Silence
having been restored, the reverend gentleman continued his
address.—lf, he proceeded, we turn our attention from the
manufacturing workman to the agricultural labourer, we shall
see there, in like manner, that the poor man would not be
benetitted by lowering the price of bread. (Hear, hear.)
If the present plan proposed by her majesty's ministers were
carried into effect, it would throw a considerable part of
arable land in England and Ireland out of cultivation. (Hear,
hear.) This, I know, has been denied, and the denial has
been sustained by asserting, that wheat cannot be imported
into England from Dantzig for less than 10s. a quarter
freight. I believe this is a great mistake. if lam rightly
informed, the best red wheat can be purchased now in Dant-
zig for 345. a quarter, and imported into England for 4s. per
quarter. If you add the proposed duty of Bs. you have
Dantzig red wheat laid down in London at 465. a quarter
No man who knows any thing of the charges and processe,
of English agriculture will deny that this would throw i
large portion of England and Ireland out of cultivation
(Hear, hear.) Then, if it did, of course a number of agre
cultural labourers would be discharged, and what is to be•
come of those discharged labourers? (Hear, hear.) They
must first either go to the manufacturing towns, and lower
still further by competition the already-depressed wages of
the manufacturer, or, secondly, they must be expatriated
from their country under the fashionable name of "colonists,"
or they must, lastly, give themselves up to the tender mer-
cies of the new poor-law, and go into one of those union work-
houses which combine in themselves the characteristics of a
convent, a nunnery, and a bastile. (Loud applause.) I
am willing, my friends, to admit, that the present system
may be improved in many of its practical details of working.
I am willing to admit, that the places for taking the averages
might, with great advantage, be increased in number, and
that the time for making the returns might advantageously
be diminished. lam willing also to admit, that the scale of
duties ought, indeed, to be what it is called, a sliding scale,
instead of being what it is now—rather a jumping scale than
a sliding one. (Hear, hear.) The changes in it are too sud-
den. The various interests of the body politic are like the
various members of the natural body. If any one member
suffer, though it be out of a measure of preference to another
member, yet eventually, in the course of the circulation, it
comes round, and the whole body inevitably suffers with the
suffering member. (Hear, hear.) It is the general good
that we ought to promote, and not the good of a particular
class. (Hear, hear.) They are England's worst enemies
that make this a class question instead of a national ques-
tion. (Applause.) An equilibrium must be kept up in these
great interests, and how is an equilibrium to be kept up ?
Suppose you had a great beam placed horizontally upon a
pivot, and you want to keep it level, but you are liable to
varying weights by putting on at one and taking off at the
other end ; how, with these varying weights, are you to keep
the beam balanced? (Hear, hear.) Why, if you had a
self-adjusting pivot under it that would slide along as the
weights were put upon either end, you might do it. A self-
adjusting sliding pivot would keep the beam level, though
there were varying weights taken off or thrown on at either
end. (Hear, hear.) It is as obvious as any axiom in mechan-
ics, that if there be the slightest variation in the weights, no
fixed pivot can maintain the equilibrium of the balance.
No fixed scale, therefore, can maintain the equilibrium of the
great interests of this community. (Cheers.) A fixed scale,
fix it where you will, can not answer the purpose, for if it
be fixed at a point which gives any thing approaching
to protection in a time of plenty, it would be impossible to
maintain it, for it would be utterly a starving point, in a time
of dearth. If her majesty's ministers' plan were adopted,
and Bs. a quarter duty were fixed, you would presently have
no fixed scale ; a bad harvest would drive this Bs. duty like
chaff before the wind, and you would have no protection at
all. (Applause.) We admit, therefore, that in this process
of adjustment, improvements may be made, and we hope im-
provements will be made. I heard to-day that there is sonic
intention of making such improvements. Instead of having
few places for the taking of the averages, if the returns of the
retail trade were made to give averages, this would prevent
all jobbing and improve the working of! the whole system.
(Hear, hear.)
I wish to make a few observations upon another branch of
this subject. It is what the Manchester dictation gentlemen
call " the Bible argument." (Hear, hear.) I have here one
of the " Anti .bread Tax Tracts for the People," published
by these gentlemen. It professes to contain—
manin the gallery here caused some interruption by his
exclamations against the speaker.]
Mr. M`Netiae.—Do not mind that man. If he belongs
to the other side, Ido not wonder he is uneasy. (Loud ap-
plause.) There are what is called " authorities against the
corn-laws," in these Anti-bread.tax Tracts for the People ;
and the first head of authority is professed to be from the Holy
Bible—an imposing authority, and one which I trust English-
men will always be ready, promptly and reverently, to sub-
mit to. (Hear, hear.) Hear, now, the first text they quote
as an authority against the corn laws. In the Ist chapter of
Genesis and the 29th verse, it is said—" And God said, Be-
hold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon
the face, of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the
fruit of a tree yielding seed : to you it shall be for meat."
It is always suspicious when people stop their quotations in
the middle of a sentence. (Hear, hear.) Now I will read
you the finish of the sentence :—" And to every beast of the
earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that
creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given
every green herb for meat : and it was so." Here is the
universal grant of food from the Almighty to all his creatures
here on the earth, man and beast, fowl and insects. The
grant is equally to all. But by what means is this grant
made available? Are the means the same to all? (Hear,
hear.) Behold the fowls of the air : they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet our Heavenly Father
feedeth them ! (Hear.) They pay no tax on corn, yet our
Heavenly Father feedeth them. Well, " Why," ask these
gentlemen, " should man eat taxed bread seeing that God
sends untaxed rain from heaven, and causes untaxed corn to
spring from the earth, for the bird and the beast ?" We
answer, be consistent, gentlemen, let man neither sow, nor
reap, nor gather into barns, and then if our Heavenly Father
still feeds him with corn, undoubtedly it should be untaxed
corn. Being given without labour and without cost, it should
certainly be without taxation. But do we find corn a natural
production of the earth? Do we find wheat where there
has been no human labour? Certainly not. We find red-
berries, and blackberries, and nuts, and weeds, and various
sorts of wild fruits, appropriate food for birds, and monkeys,
and savages, and anti-corn-law leaguers. (Cheers and laugh-
ter.) All this we find beyond the precincts of taxation, and
beyond the precincts of civilisation ; but wheat we do not
find. (Hear, hear.) The means whereby it pleases God to
feed man are suited to the intelligent nature of man, just as
the means whereby he feeds the birds are suited to the instinct
of the birds. (Hear.) The means whereby he is pleased to
feed civilised man are complicated means ; they involve sow-
ing and reaping and gathering into barns; they involve sun-
ken capital and permanent periodical expense ; they must
not be looked upon in an insulated way, but as a part, as a
limb of a great living body ;—(hear, and loud cheers,)—and
belonging to such a complicated system of things they are no
longer to be put coolly and rashly on a par with the original
grant to beasts and birds and insects, but must be considered
with regard to the circumstances connected with themselves,
and in that they involve capital sunk and expenses incurred,
they are entitled to corresponding protection. (Loud cheers.)
Therefore, to quote this original grant of Almighty God, of
food to every Creature, as if it belonged to the subject before
us, is either wilfully to deceive the unwary, or else it is to
advocate a return to a state of nature ; to that happy and
delightful state of equal rights and total exemption from tax-
ation, enviable specimens of which are presented in the fo-
rests of America and in the jungles of Hindostan. (Hear,
hear.) Every lion in the forest is born to equal rights, to
equal liberty, and an equal right to eat untaxed food with the
others of his species, and when he comes to years of dis-
cretion, he takes theliberty of exercising those rights. (Hear,
hear.) To deprive himself of a portion of his personal
liberty and consent to eat his meat under any prescribed re-
gulations of order for the sake of improvement in the gene-
ral body, is disdained by the noble beast ; he is determined
to have his natural rights, and his untaxed food, therefore he
reigns in all the dignity of his natural liberty, in all the glory
of his unmitigated ferocity. (Tremendous applause). If the
lions could agree to subordination and taxation, the wilder-
ness would bloom and blossem as the rose ; improvements in
dens and dishes would immediately follow, and machinery
take the place of tusks and claws. (Enthusiastic applause.)
Now the anti corn-law gentlemen, like the uoble king of
the forest, disdain to give up their natural rights, and their
untaxed bread ; they disdain arrangements for order ; all
protective management is quite below their dignity, (laugh-
ter and cheers). What nave we here on this subject in this
" Anti-Corn-law Tract for the People?" Upon the autho-
rity of a Col. Thomson, whoever he is, (loud laughter) it is
here put forward that " All protection means robbing
somebody else!" (Hear, hear.) It is in vain to say this is
distorted from its context. If it be distorted from the con-
text, who is to blame ? They are to blame for it, who print
it to give away and circulate among the people. (Hear,
hear.) " All protection means robbing somebody else !"
That is all ! (Laughter.) What does it prove.? It proves
that all policemen who take care of our houses at night are
robbing the housebreakers of their " natural rights." (Loud
cheers.) Every gentleman who has a secret button to pro-
tect his pocket, or by a secret chain protects his watch, is a
robber, as, in the exercise of ungovernable selfishness lie is
depriving the pickpocket of his " natural rights. (Loud
laughter). All our lawyers, all our magistrates, and town-
councillors, all our mayors, and all our judges, all are no-
thing but a set of systematic robbers, giving protection to
some, and of course, robbing some one else ! (Loud cheers
and laughter.) This is a specimen of one of the " Anti
bread tax tracts for the people." (Hear, hear.)
But before 1 leave this subject, I want to call your atten-
tion to other quotations which they profess to give from the
Holy Bible, and which are quite as relevant to the subject as
the one I have just commented upon. There is a curious
specimen here. Among the quotations, professed to be ta-
ken from the Bible, there is a passage not in the Bible at all !
(Cheers and cries of " hear, hear.") It is taken from the
Apocrypha. Now no true protestant mingles the Apocrypha
with the holy scriptures. The dissenters throw the Apo.
crypha overboard altogether, and the Church of England,
which retains those books as an ancient record, having many
useful and valuable sayings in them, nevertheless, provides
against mingling them with the holy bible, both by separating
them in the arrangement of the books and by refusing to
appeal to them for any authority of doctrine. (Hear, hear.)
It is only the Church of Rome that mingles them ; and here
is rather a shrewd sort of a specimen of presumptive internal
evidence that the popish priests are in league with the anti-
corn-law leaguers. (Hear, and applause.)
Finding that none of their texts really applied to the tles.
tion before us, I was anxious to ascertain whether there was
anything in the bible that did apply, and I think there is a
text that will apply. (Hear.) I will call your attention to it.
It is written in the 12th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,
and 20th verse. Herod was highly displeased with them of
Tyre and Sidon. Herod was a petty prince of only a portion
of Palestine. Tyre was the mistress of the seas, and the
mart of the commerce of the then civilised world. The