The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-05-25 00:00:00

" Mr. Earle having consented to act as the society's re-
presentave in directing the progress of the arrangements on
the spot, a deputation was sent by the counsel to the autho-
rities of the town, and was received by Mr. Bolton, the pre-
sent, and Sir Joshua Walinsley, the late,mayor, with every
mark of interest and respect. This deputation reported to
the council the result of their personal inspection, when it
was. resolved that the piece of ground termed the old infir-
mary yard, and offered by the mayor and corporation, should
be accepted as the site for the dining-hall ; that Falkner's
Fields, offered by Mr. Falkner and Mr. Lace, should be se-
lected for that of the cattle-yard ; that the rooms of the Me-
chanics' Institute should be accepted for the use of the
finance and dinner committee; and Mr. Lucas's Repository
for the purpose of the Wednesday's dinner.
" Having ascertained from Mr. Manning, the contractor
for the Cambridge works, that his present engagement would
preclude his undertal-.:Lig the works this year at Liverpool,
the council decided to appoint a surveyor of works, who
should report the progress of their erection; and Mr. Wild
having been elected to that office, lie has proceeded to Liver-
, pool for the purpose of making arrangements with the con-
tractors to be employed.
"The council having decided that there should this year
be two days for the exhibition of the stock, instead of one, as
formerly, the exhibition of the implements will open on
Wednesday, the 21st of July, and that of the cattle on Thurs-
day, the 22d, the stock remaining open till two o'clock on
the Friday. The dinner of the society takes place on the
Thursday. They have also directed that catalogues, contain-
ing a list of all the subjects of the exhibition, shall be pre-
pared for sale before the time of meeting; that only the
printed forms shall be allowed for the certificates of the exhi-
bition ; and that the awards for implements shall be an-
nounced at the same time as -those for cattle. They have
decided that the sale of dinner tickets shall only take place
at Liverpool, commencing on Tuesday, and continuing open
to members in general on the two following days ; each day,
however, a certain number of tickets being reserved for old
members—viz., for such as were elected by the 24th of March
last ; and that, after the first week in July, no further elec-
tion of members shall take place until after the meeting.
"The council having maturely considered all the compara-
tive advantages offered by various places for the next year's
meefing, have decided in selecting the city of Bristol as the
most suitable locality for the annual country meeting of 1842.',

SIR ROBERT PEEL AND THE, NIANCIIESTER

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

(From the Times.)

In the debate on Lord Sandon's motion, Sir Robert Peel,
as Our readers will doubtless recollect, alluded to a conversa-
tion which he had recently had with a quaker gentleman
named Ashworth, who had waited upon the right bon. bait.,
as part of a deputation from the Chamber of Commerce at
Manchester. Under the manifest conviction that Sir Robert
is on the eve of assuming the reins of government, the depu-

tics were anxious to lay before him their free opinions upon
trade in all its multitudinous branches : and in the progress
of this discursive lecture, which was conducted in the most
amicable spirit, Mr. Ashworth, by way of fortifying the
Chamber's hostility to prohibitory duties, requested the pre-
mier elect to peruse a certain pamphlet by a Mr. W. R. Greg,
on the unanswerable force of whose reasonings, as inevitably
insuring the right ..hon. baronet's assent, the worthy quaker
declared that he was quite willing to stake the entire question
of an unfettered commercial intercourse. With no small
misgivings lest his long-established sentiments might be tho-
roughly overturned by the lauded pamphleteer, Sir Robert, in
his usual candid way, agreed to give it his best consideration.
A careful perusal was. immediately bestowed upon it--when,
to his utter astonishment, the sharp-witted statesman dis-
covered' that the production •recommended to him by Mr.

Ashworth afforded in truth a strong confirmation of his own
views : and as he had apprised the deputation that he should
reserve an explicit developement of those views for his place
in parliament, Sir Robert felt at perfect liberty in the course
of his speech on Tuesday to detail the particulars of his-in-
terview with the deputation, and especially the grotesque
effect of Mr. Greg's pamphlet in absolutely annihilating the
dogmas of its free-trade panegyrists. This he did, in a strain
of graceful and good-natured satire, which convulsed the
house for several minutes. The unctuous and refined ten-
derness of Izaak Walton in impaling his dear little worm
upon a comfortable new hook was nothing to it. The Cham-
ber of Commerce at Manchester has had some untoward pas-
sages in its time. It has, before now, been cruelly burlesqued
by its own chairmen, as Mr. G. W. Wood can testify : but
never till Tuesday night was that unfortunate corporation's
capacity of endurance tested to its full extent. Altogether
it was a scene of the most courteous and insupportable tor-
ture which the Chamber has yet experienced—its own depu-
ties, as a perverse fate decreed, having been once more the
principal instruments of the infliction. Wherefore, it is not
unlikely, we think, that deputations may stand some chance
of going out of fashion.
That Mr. Henry Ashworth, the chief leader in this species
of " chambering -and wantonness," must have felt sorely
chagrined at the tremendous retribution which it led to, was
only to be expected : and accordingly, he has sent a very
egotistic letter to the newspapers, i n which, what with expla-
nations, disclaimers, and non ini ricordos, the highly estima-
ble gentleman has, as is usual, with talkative ignoramuses,
placed his case considerably more in the wrong than when he
first submitted it to the eagle eye and frightful talons of Sir
Robert Peel.
What, then, does the worthy quaker say for himself ?
Keeping in mind that his main subject of discuSsion with
the right hon. baronet- had reference to the necessity of
adopting free-trade doctrines, and that, on a parenthetical
allusion to slave-traffic (in regard to which he " was but
too much delighted to hear Sir Robert's expressions of in-
dignation,") he earnestly recommended a particular pamphlet
for his distinguished friend's perusal—adding, that " he
would abide by tke decision which Sir Robert might come
to upon it,". let us now recur to the exact words of Mr.
Ashworth's explanatory letter :
" Upon our recent interview, as an anti-slavery man, I
was but too much delighted to hear thee express so empha-
tically, thy indignation at the horrors of slavery and the
slave trade ; and not being in the secret of what might be
the import of Lord Sandon's amendment of the following
day, I did not hesitate, as an individual, to draw thy atten-
tion to the observations of W. R. Greg on the cruelties of
the middle passage, as well as the loss of British life and
money in the preventive service on the coast of Africa ; also
on the recent embarkation of still more life and property
engaged in the Niger expedition. My note, accompanying
the pamphlet, also directs thy attention to this point, and not
to Mr. Greg's leaning to protection, which, when I read
four mouths ago, I esteemed unsound, and not expecting
Lord Sandon's amendment, had entirely forgotten."
Now, does it not seem marvellously odd, that after being
delighted with the right hon. baronet's anti-slavery views,
this respectable deputy should have proffered to him the pe-
rusal of what he deems a convincing pamphlet for the express
purpose of converting' him ? Nay, is it not perfectly plain
that, knowing Sir Robert's entire concurrence with the pam-
phleteer on the slavery question, Mr. Ashworth was desirous
that some subsidiary views in the same performance, on
which the conservative leader was believed to be less sound,
should receive from him an equally full assent—an assent so
confidently anticipated, that the excellent deputy declared
his willingness to abide Sir Robert's own decision. Our
manufacturing friend could scarcely be so fond of superfluous
undertakings as to insist upon a much-occupied statesman
reading a work on the main facts and reasonings of which he
already agreed with the writer. Neither can we well imagine
that the proverbial caution of the Society of Friends could
be so dormant in Mr. Ashworth as to have betrayed into the
indiscretion of staking his free trade case upon a pamphlet
whose views upon that subject he had, four months ago,
known to be unsound, but had very strangely forgotten them.
Our own conviction is (though without impugning Mr. Ash-
worth's shrewdness to any greater extent than he himself
impugns his own memory), that up to the day of Sir Robert
Peel's speech on the subject of the said pamphlet, the free
trade deputy had blindly imagined it to be all on his own
side. To his extreme surprise and mortification, Sir Robert's
superior acumen has shown him his egregious mistake. Mr.
Greg, on the soundness of whose fiscal opinion the repre-
sentative of the Manchester Chamber so complacently re-
posed (his anti-slavery views having been avowedly coincided
in by Sir R. Peel), expresses himself as follows :
" This country is not called upon to exclude cotton, be-
cause it had never been excluded ; but it was bound to exclude
slave-grown sugar, because since the enactment of negro
emancipation it always had been excluded, and the admission
of it no w,would be the greatest possible incitement to slavery
which Europe, for thirty years, had been lavishing her trea-
sures to abolish. * * * The only method of abolishing
the slave-trade was by destroying the demand for slave pro-
duce ; that object could only be attained, and would be at-
tained, by encouraging in the West India colonies a superior
cheapness of free productions ; and the prosperity of those
colonies would be insured, and could only be insured, by ex-
tensive and systematic emigration, and by a temporary con-
tinuance of the present discriminating duty on sugar!'
So much for the boasted pamphleteer, on whom the Man-
chester Chamber relies as the Coryphceus of free trade !
Viewed on its own merits, Mr. Greg's pamphlet, we own, is
scarcely deserving of notice ; but as indicating the unbiassed
opinion of the cottonocracy " four months ago" (before the
present crisis was thought of), and as showing the doubtful
competency of that wealthy class to comprehend the suicidal
pamphleteering of:their.own members, and, finally, as fur-
nishing incidentally a new proof of the blundering diplomacy
of deputations, Sir R. Peel has certainly laid the country
under additional obligations to him, by deigning to point out
to Mr. Ashworth and his associates the extent of their igno-
rance and dogmatism.
In the worthy Quaker's letter, though very communicative
on points whereon his opinion is unsought, not one word
does he utter in reference to the government's encourage-
ment of slave-grown sugar. Now, friend Henry, we must
respectfully telrthee, that this is sly and shifty. If the Qua-
kers blink the slavery question at the approaching general
election, their high character as a religious society is irre-
trievably ruined.