The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-02-01 00:00:00

THE LTVERPOOL STANDARD, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1,

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TUESDAY

MORNING. FEB. 1, 1853.

THE LATE BUDGET AND THE
ARTERLY REVIEW.
a last number of the Quarterly Review contains

a critique on Mr. DISRAELI'S financial statement.
It is ascribed to Mr. WILSON CROKER, and is said

to be written in revenge for Mr. DISRAELI having
caricatured that gentleman in his novel of " Co-

the name of " RIGBY." There
_s little in the article itself to warrant such an accu-
sation ; for though it contains an able exposure of
the faults of the Budget, the writer pays the follow-
ing just tribute to the merits of Mr. DISRAELI :
" No one, of whatever political creed, can now
" affect to doubt or disparage the many high par-
" liamentary qualities of Mr. DISRAELI. His re-
" solute spirit has Leen conspicuously displayed
" under very extraordinary difficulties. He has
" combined an indomitable perseverance with great
" fertility of resource. In opposition he has been,

SINGSBY,

under

" and, if he does himself justice, he must again be,
" most formidably influential : he may yet acquire
" whatever he needs for the discharge of the high
" functions of a minister. He has shown himself
" at once a brilliant orator, and, what is still rarer,
" a powerful debater ; but he has not, as yet, we
" think, earned the reputation of a statesman."
The writer, however, condemns the bringing for-
ward of the Budget before Christmas, as an unne-
and impolitic experiment, and stigmatises it
as a common-place Budget, of which the three main
features were halving two existing taxes, doubling
another, and extending a fourth. But slightly
passing over the proposed reduction of the Malt-
duty, which he condemns for reasons similar to
those which we advanced at the time, the chief part
of the article ie devoted to thoco prnpnoitionz of th'
late CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER which
more immediately affect the Shipping Interests, and
these are dealt with seriatim. The statement of
Mr. DISRAELI, that the practice of the Shipping
Interest paying the interest for the purchase cf
private lights is indefensible, the reviewer con-
demns, upon the ground that the private lights
were erected and subsequently purchased for the
benefit of the Shipping Interest that the purchase
money, which amounted altogether to £1,250,000,
has, by careful management, been reduced to
£lOB,OOO, and will shortly be paid off altogether;
and that those who now pay for lighting our towns
ought not to be burthened with the additional ex-
pense of lighting the Channel and the North Sea.
Mr. DISRAELI'S proposal to relieve the Shipping
Interest from contributing to the charities of the
Trinity Corporation, the reviewer objects to, on the
ground that they are bestowed exclusively on worn-
out merchant seamen, pilots, boatmen, and their
widows and orphans, in no case exceeding 6s. per
month to a destitute master, 4s. 6d. to a mate, and
3s. to a seaman. _

cessar

Vv
The next point is the alleged grievance of paying
passing tolls, which, the writer says, only applies
to the maintenance of four harbours of refuge—
two on each side of the mouth of the Thames, and
which have proved of inestimable value in the fre-
quent hour of danger, not only as shelter for ship-
ping, but also for assistance in anchors, cable, and
boat-help, which are not els where within reach.
The writer does not, however, state—which is the
fact—that the passing toll is only a halfpenny a ton
upon the ship's registered burthen, and that the
master or owner has the right to charge the same
rate upon every ton of the cargo ; so that the toll,
except in a very few cases, is no charge whatever
upon the shipowner.
The remarks of Mr. DISRAELI upon the alleged
anomaly in the system of Pilotage, the reviewer
equally condemns. The alleged hardship of a pilot
from the Thames to a Cinque port not being al-
lowed to take a vessel back, he says, is no hardship
at all, as the shipowner would in any case have to
pay for each service, and the advantage of the pre-
sent system is, that an efficient body of pilots is
kept up at the outports, which would not he tbe
case if pilots to vessels outwards were allowed to
return with vessels homewards.
The next item in the list of Shipping grievances
proposed to be remedied is that of Salvage, to which
the reviewer takes exception as founded on erro-
neous premises. The services of officers and sea-
men of the Royal Navy are often of the greatest
importance to merchant vessels in danger and dis-
tress ; hut, so far from their being paid at the same
ratio as other salvors who risk their vessels as well
as themselves, those only who are actually engaged
are remunerated for their personal services, which
are altogether additional to duties they are paid to
perform. He further states, that, so far from its
being an Admiralty grievance, as asserted by Mr.
DISRAELI, the Admiralty has nothing to do with
Salvage. It is not collected under their authority,
nor in any way subject to their jurisdiction. It is

a branch not only of our own most ancient statute
law, but of the law of nations. And it is singular
enough that the only trace we find in the " Admi-
ralty Instructions for HER MAJESTY'S Service at
Sea," is a provision, not that the QUEEN'S ships
should receive salvage, but that they should pay it
to merchant ships in case of assistance.
Another of the alleged Admiralty grievances is
that of a seaman being allowed, when in a foreign
port, to enlist in a ship belonging to the Royal
Navy, and demand his wages - by which, says Mr.
DISRAELI, the captain of the merchant ship not
only loses one of his crew, but is called upon im-
mediately to pay wages which are not due till the
ship's arrival in port ; and, to remedy this, he pro-
poses that the seaman so enlisting shall not receive
his wages until the rest of the crew are paid off.
The reviewer, quoting the authority of officers of
high rank and experience, defends the present sys-
tem, upon the ground of its being a measure of
police and protection for the men when in foreign
parts against ill-treatment; that in practice it has
been as far as possible discouraged ; and that, so
far from the wages being paid in cash, the more
ordinary mode is to accept an order on the owners
at home.

We come next to Mr. DISRAELI'S proposal to
relieve the Shipping Interest from the alleged
grievance of a merchant vessel being disturbed in
its anchorage by the superior claim of a ship be-
longing to the Royal Navy. The reviewer denies
the existence of the grievance in toto, and, to prove
his position, gives the following extract from the
Admiralty Instructions for the general conduct of
the Naval Service :
" Ch. v. § 39. Whenever the Captain of one
" of H. M. ships shall have occasion to anchor, he
" is to be extremely careful to place the ship in a
" safe berth, and so as not to endanger any OTHER
" ship which may be already anchored."
The concluding remarks on this subject by Mr.
DISRAELI, with reference to the restrictions upon
manning he mercantile navy, the reviewer sup-
poses must allude to the regulation by which the
crew of a British ship must consist of at least two-
thirds British seamen. He argues, that, although
the abrogation of this law might be a relief to the
Ship-owners, by enabling them to man their ships
cheaper with Danes, Swedes, or Germans, it
would be the destruction of the merchant service
as a nursery of seamen for the Royal Navy, and
prove, in short, a burning of the candle at both
ends. He proceeds to comment upon Mr. Drs-
RAELI'S objection to the system upon which the
Royal Navy is manned, of which he enters into an
elaborate defence, and concludes with an apology
for the EX-CHANCELLOR, upon the ground that
he was addressing " the feelings" of what he signi-
ficantly termed " a modern House of Commons."
The writer says :
"No doubt every Minister must consult the
" reason, and even the feelings of the House of
" Commons which he addresses, but we will venture
"to assert that the Old House of Commons showed
"a good deal more solicitude about the Shipping
" Interests than its modern' successors have done;
" nor can we help adding, in justice to modern
" Houses of Commons, our conviction that if any
" one of those alleged grievances Clad been real,
" they would not have been left for twenty years
" unredressed by the reformed Parliament."
We have thus given a necessarily brief sketch of
this able critique on that portion of the late Finan-
cial Statement which was put forward as a relief to
the Shipping Interests, and which will, of course,
excite public attention on the renewal of the session,
as it is not to be supposed that any Ministry can
leave so important a class of the community without
a more substantial remedy for their grievances than
that which has just been disposed of. The object
here has been to show that the proposals of Mr.
DISRAELI were illusory, and it will now be advi-
sable on the part of those who are most familiar
with the details to point out those particulars in
which the interference of Parliament would be be-
neficial. We cannot, however, anticipate any ad-
vantage from the present ill-assorted Coalition
Ministry, and we conclude by giving the reviewer's
regret at the resignation of the late Administration,
for reasons in which all our readers will concur :
"Our regret is, that the Government should
!time gone out—on what principle ex even point

"we really know not—without having shown any
"sympathy with the feeling that was most pro-
" minent and decided at the late elections—the yin-
" dication and maintenance of the PROTESTANT
" CONSTITUTION ; and that the ostentatious viola-
" tion of the law by Dr. MAcHALE and his fellows
" has been not only sanctioned by impunity, but
" crowned with the very triumph which his audacity
" foretold."

THE FRENCH EMPEROR'S MARRIAGE.

ON Sunday last, according to official announcement,
and for which the most elaborate preparations were
made, Louis NAPOLEON celebrated his union with
the Spanish beauty, whose charms are his consola-
tion for his rejected attempts to ally himself with
any of the royal families of Europe. If the ques-
tion were viewed simply as one on which a philoso-
pher might moralise, there seems something har-

monious in the Emperor, who prides himself on
being the elected of popular suffrage, allying him-
self—for better motives than those which usually
influence the matrimonial contracts of royalty—
with a lady, whose character is unquestionable,
whose position is at least as respectable as that of
her royal consort, and whose personal charms will
prove a centre of attraction in a capital more no-
torious for frivolity than solid worth. By this mar-
riage LOUIS NAPOLEON has cut the Gordian knot
of diplomatic difficulty, which might have hampered
the independence of his position, had he the family
interests of a wife to consult, and he is as free to
act as he was before his alliance. Of the new
Empress it may not he so easy to speak with con •
fidence. After all that has been said of her beauty
and fascinating manners, we can hardly believe her
to be inspired by any more tender sentiment than
the gratification of a not unnatural female ambition
to shine in the proud position of an Empress, for
lar ca» a nko Lan vy; rt, nsfamy
as to the future out of consideration. The chance
was open to her, and she accepted it ; and she pos-
sesses the advantage over her husband in having
attained her elevation by a less questionable path
than he reached his. But while the appropriateness
of the alliance may be admitted as more suited to
the antecedents of LOUIS NAPOLEON than an ad-
mission into any of the royal families of Europe,
the very isolation of his position renders him a more
dangerous neighbour. As yet his policy has been
peace, but his main, if not sole, object has been his
personal aggrandisement. From President to Dic-
tator, and thence to Emperor, the upper round of
the ladder was reached. The marriage is but the
legitimate mode of providing for the permanence
of the NAPOLEON dynasty, without resorting to the
collateral line of his uncle JERONIE, which is most
distasteful to the French people. The progress
hitherto has been all action, and, so far, the French
love of excitement has been gratified; but where
are the guarantees for his maintaining his position,
when, like ALEXANDER, he can do nothing, unless
he can discover new worlds to conquer. Will
Frenchmen be content to see their new Emperor, the I,
ambitious nephew of his ambitious uncle, quietly
settling down with his new wife to play DARBY and
JOAN, when half a million of soldiers, and a fleet of
war steamers to match,have nothing else to do but to
look on in restless inaction ? The recent fall in the
French funds has alreadysupplied a significant warn-
ing that the name of NAPOLEON is ill-assorted with
the patient industry which can alone secure the
blessings of peace, and Algeria will no longer afford
the safety-valve for military ardour which served
Louis PHILIPPE so long, and shattered his Go-
vernment at last. The history of France during
the last sixty years has shown the utter inaptitude
of its institutions to permanent peace, and every
change of Government has been for the worse.
This has been prominently exemplified in the career
of Louis NAPOLEON, who has only been able to
preserve his position by a severity of despotism
unknown in modern history. Every man opposed
to him has been imprisoned or banished; political
discussion is altogether forbidden; the Press is the
mere organ of the Government ; and throughout all
the provinces the creatures of the Emperor exercise
absolute sway. The only really efficient instrument
of popular strength, if it can be so termed, is the
army—won over by German sausages and cham-
pagne, and kept in hand by implied promises or
allowed hopes of military conquest. When LOUIS
NAPOLEON has nothing more to do for himself,
what plan more feasible to keep a hat he has got—
what project more popular with the majority of the
French nation, than an attempt to revive the glories
of the Empire with which the name of NAPOLEON
is alone identified ? There may be nothing to gain,
and much to lose, but the danger is to France and
not to the Emperor ; and when did Frenchmen
ever calculate consequences, when it interfered with
the gratification of the impulse of the moment ?
The French papers have lately taken to criticise the
comments upon their Emperor by the organs of
public opinion in England, as though anxious to
discover a cases beili which may serve for want of
a better ; and some of our pusillanimous contempo-
raries have treated the mushroom monarch with
honeyed phrases, as though they deprecated his
anger. But independent English journals, which
freely comment on their own rulers, will scorn
to truckle to a neighbouring potentate, because
he rides roughshod over his own apologies
for newspapers. He has attained a position
which it is far more difficult to keep than it
was to arrive at, and the only solution of the diffi-
culty can be found in his giving employment to
that vast materiel of war which he has been so care-
ful to collect. Time alone may serve to discover
where the blow will fall, but: wherever the
point at which the present position of the States of
Europe may be attempted to be disturbed, England
must be prepared, if she would preserve her own
integrity, to maintain the same high place in the
Councils of Europe which the skill of the illustrious
WELLINGTON won for her at the close of the last
war. The French Emperor, by his marriage, has
given not the slightest security for the preservation
of peace, but rather the contrary; and it is our
duty, while we may hope for the best, to be pre-
pared for the worst.

MINISTERIAL DIFFICULTIES.

IT does not seem to have required a Parliamentary
campaign to expose the utter weakness of that un-
natural coalition which is put forth as the ABER-
DEEN Administration, and boasted of by Liberals
and renegade Conservatives as comprising "all the
talents" of the country. Rumours are already rife
of serious disagreements on important subjects,
and changes in the highest offices are talked
of. It is said that the Earl of ABERDEEN will re-
sign the Premiership, on the plea of ill-health, and
that his place will be supplied by Lord JOHN
RUSSELL. If this be true, it will prove that the
whole fabric has been raised on false pretences—
that the affair has been a wholesale swindle, for the
sake of entrapping reluctant PEELITES,—and that
the real object is to restore the party who this time
last year, with a more favourable House of Com-
mons, confessed their inability to carry on the
Government of the country. This view is further
confirmed by the report that the vexed question of
the Income-tax has proved a stumbling-block to
financial unity, and that Mr. GLADSTONE, the new
Chancellor of the Exchequer, unable to agree with
his colleagues—which no one ever fancied he would
—has been required to give place to a man of more
Whiggish tractability. The next rumour will be
that Lord PALMERSTON has resumed the seals of
the Foreign-office, with which he has been so long
familiar, and that each of the few remaining
PEELITES has found some convenient pretext,
apart from acknowledged political disagreement,
for surrendering his office, in order that there may
be no clog to the march of Liberalism. It is evi-
dent that there is something wrong, that either the
PEELITES are ashamed of their position, or find it
impossible to go the lengths demanded of them,
and in either case the time cannot be far distant
when the Earl of DERBY may be called upon to try
his hand once more at the formation cf an Adminis-
tration. He win nave toe advantage of
and be better able to select his officers, with due
regard to their capacity for fulfilling the duties they
will have to perform. Nor would it be at all sur-
prising, after what has taken place, if some of the
moderate members of the PEELITE section give
their adhesion to a DERBY Cabinet, and excuse
their apparent tergiversation by attributing their
late adverse votes to their objections to the DIS-
RAELI Budget. There is no doubt that the Earl of
DERBY may make some alterations in the selection
of his colleagues with advantage to the country.
The Earl of MALaiEsnußv has not been most
felicitous in his essay at Foreign diplomacy, and
many may he of opinion that, with Mr. HERRIES
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. DISRAELI
as Home Secretary, a Conservative Cabinet would
enjoy a larger share of the confidence of the House
of Commons. Under any circumstances, it is next
to impossible that the present Cabinet can endure,
for it will have to encounter the enormous strength
of the Conservative phalanx, in addition to the
Romish Brigade and the disappointed PEELITES.