The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-09-14 00:00:00

he would undertE

the channel fleet

tion or, we dare say to

diminishing the amount of their purchases from u;.
How does free trade account for this ? India and
China have nothing to do with potato rots, Irish
famine, or expenditure of English capital upon
English railways. We have taken our ordinary
supply of produce from these markets, and they
ought to have taken their accustomed quantity of
manufactured goods from us in return. From
Europe, the United States, and our corn-growing
colonies, we have imported vast quantities of grain.
We have trebled the money productiveness of their
last year's harvest. We have poured into these
countries a flood of a commodity, which they have
never before seen in anything like the same amount
—English gold. Yet where are their purchases of
manufactures in return ? They are not to be traced.
With an English piece of gold in his pocket, the
Russian, the Polish, the Danish, or the American
farmer has found that he can buy either cotton
goods or cutlery, linens or woollens, without the
necessity of trafficking with the British manufac-
w days ago came 1 ture

.ve the still more difficult problem—what are we
do with Ireland ? Our contemporary affects all
s knowledge ; and with infinite confidence pro-
is, one day, to settle the affairs of Turkey, with
ch ho is intimately acquainted, even to the
ip of the another day to
Law Guardian or
imself to a grand

mperial seral
ome unfortunate Po(

mmissioner

Anon he t

te amongst railway direc

Ts, engineers, solici-

secretaries, and provisional committee men,
?m he scalps remorselessly ; and next he is to
ound upon the Bench, lecturing judges, magis-

3 and barris

solicitors, ..tind witnesses,

t they are all wrong,
that there is no right except what is dictated
uch by our contemporary himself. His genius
niversal. He is the only safe guide for either
dic opinion or statesmen to follow. He is the

During to convince them tha

versal arbiter who must be called in, or allowed
tep in of his own accord, to settle every body's
Mites.

this capacity the

rd unsolicited, tc

controversy, which

an additional fact, we believe that, by

,prung up

,nd reta

c., and the ma-
cturers of those articles with respect to the
ber of inches which ought to make up a yard's
th. The retailers and warehousemen complain
t the length of pieces of cloth has been of late
finishing, to such an extent that both are con-
tia,lly subjected to claims for remuneration for
Irt measure;
.and they propose the adoption of
Lniform

,cturec

)ttons, woollen

lave enabled him more
advantageously to operate in the markets of the
world as our competitors in various articles of manu-
facture. Not long ago to have hinted to any free
trader that the manufacturer, as well as the agricul-
turist, required protection, would have drawn down
upon our heads a storm of ridicule. They only
wanted the removal of the bread tax—" a clear
stage and no favour"—to enable them to compete
with all the world. They are too late in discovering
their error. The German, with his cutlery ; the
Swiss, with his watches and clocks ; the Russian
and German with linens ; the Hamburg artisan
with his cabinet furniture; and the artisans of
other countries, supplied, as they now are, with all
that they have hitherto been short of—a good
market and capital—are teaching the free trader a
different lesson. Birmingham confesses itself out-
done in cheapness—Sheffield is hard run, and the
hitherto confident Manchester man, unwilling to
confess his defeat, is fighting shadows, set up as
convenient recipients of the abuse and spleen which

price of his grain, we

standard of -measure, to consist of 37
thus allowing room for the

les to the yard

tion of the old pract

ce of measurement, by

hich a thumb's breadth or nearly an inch was
—ard. This claim the Times sets

vau every y

awn as unreasonable, arguing that 36 inches is
le imperial yard, and that 36 inches and no more
3ght to be given. The material question however
with respect to uniformity of measurement. The
taller or the warehouseman would be glad to find
rery yard charged for in his bills of parcels by the
ianufacturer to consist of 36 inches ; to-morrow
e may'even have 37 inches; but as a general rule
e has only 35 inches. And thus having calculated

,g that he was buy-
honest and full measure-
- mulcted of that

profit upon the understand
and selling goods of

ought, if directed properly, to be visited upon his
own overweening stupidity.

Art, he is cont We are not at all desirous of convicting these
ofit by deducting for short measure. self-satisfied gentlemen of their error. We shall
The Times is not content with placing his veto not trouble ourselves with the task of shewing them
on this attempt of the retailers and warehouse- the connexion of their present difficulties, and the
to place their transactions upon a footing of country's sufferings, with the working of their own
-r certainty, but, in his ignorance of the real mad and selfish policy. It is enough to point to
of the question, must of necessity throw 1 the crisis which is now upon them,—which was to
lonest motives. The promoters have been rendered for ever an impossible occur-
,his movement, he says, want to be enabled to rence, but which is here nevertheless. We prefer
inquiring when, and how, the community are to
,T 37 inches of manufactured goods for the price
36 inches,—to compel the operative to manufac- emerge from its pressure. Is there any course
which the wisdom of Liberalism can devise to mai-
re 37 inches for the wages of 36 inches. Unfor-
lately for the pertinence of our contemporary's i gate the sufferings of the country ; or, is the harrow
rge, the operative is manufacturing already not 1 to be driven over -us all indiscriminately, leaving it
aches but 39 and even 40 inches; for the wages
Ito the chance of circumstances how large a portion
retailers and consumers of
r of the mercantile community may escape being up-
not that pieces of calico, of
rooted by its teeth ? We have heard something of
- . „ it_..l this kind, maintained—that we shall not have a
'te of things until this process of weeding

inually heir

%nd impute di

! What
oths complain:of is

,6 inches

they are woven, a

or so each is filched

,ealthy sto

is effected

,he bleacher, the

In the Meantime, we suppose the poOr
he labourer, and the artisan, must stand