The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-28 00:00:00

little courage iu the investigation of sober realities. A
suffering population would feel little obliged to that
misjudging and most mistaken sentamentalist who
would prevent them bettering their condition from
such fantastical antipathy to the process, or rather the
name of the process, by which a consummation so de-
sirable ought to be effected. He calls it transporta
tion ; they, perhaps, would deem it an agreeable
change of scene—an excellent transition. A thriving
population, he alleges, is the true wealth of any state,
and their number ought not to be reduced with a view
to the upholding of unjust preferences arid monopo-
lies. Granted. This is sound doctrine ; but it is not
applicable to our case. We are no MalthuSians ; we
advocate no unnatural checks upon popular increase ;
we shall ever rejoice in seeing a British Sovereign ru-
ling over a numerous as well as happy people; but
the wealth of the state doeS not consist in having a
merely numerous population; it consists in having it
both numerous and thriving. This is the correct
enunciation of the doctrine; and it goes some way to
reconcile those extremes which have at different times
been put forward on the subject. The Malthusian
holding with the founder of his sect, that " the popu-
lation of a country doubles itself in twenty-five
years," and "increases in a geometrical ratio, whilst
the supply of food augments only in an arithmetical,"
dreads nothing so much as the multiplication of
and commits the restraint upon numbers, to either what
he calls the positive check, that is, the diminution of
the species by actual starvation, or the preventive,
which means the non-intercourse of the sexes. He
lives in actual fear of the species increasing too
fast ; he apprehends that the world may be over-
stocked ; he proscribes marriage, and deems
numbers not the wealth, but the weakness of
the sovereign power. By a doctrine so monstrous and
impious, and so easily and satisfactorily disproved,
many have been beguiled, and it has, in its time, done
no small amount of mischief; but it does not argue a
man to be the dupe of that exploded fallacy, to contend
that, under a certain condition of things, people may
have multiplied too fast in particular districts, and that,
in such cases, the emigrative, or diffusive process, may
be brought into operation with the happiest effect. By
this process, if the migration takes place within the
dominions of the state, there is no loss of subjects to
the sovereign : the transportation is only a move from
one part to another; and if it be a move of people
from a place where they are over-crowded, and only in
each other's way, to one in which inhabitants are scanty
and wanting, it is a change at once healthful and useful,
and highly beneficial, not only to the individuals re-
moved, but to the state itself. The anti-corn-duty
party have nothing to say against this theory in the
abstract, and their answer is to the effect that the ex-
pense of this transportation may be avoided by using
their remedy, and letting food into the country free of
import charges. Do away with protective duties, say
they, on provisions—let trade in the necessaries of life
be unfettered—and there will be no need to remove
any portion of the people. These anti-protective con-
federates are as obstinately bent on " not letting the
people go" as the wicked Pharoah, king of Egypt, and
to all applications and arguments on this subject they
only repeat this, their favourite dogma.
A full answer to this position would involve a dis-
cussion of the whole question of the corn and other
protective duties, which we do not mean at present to
inflict upon our readers : we shall merely remark, that
this " not letting the people go," in the way of emi-
gration to Canada or some other of our colonial pos-
sessions, implies provision for them at home, and pro-
vision by means that may he either questionable or
objectionable in the highest degree. It is questionable
that withdrawing protection from home-raised articles
of food would make the means of living more easily
obtainable by the classes at present distressed; but
that they should be maintained at the expense, and by
the spoliation of other classes, is the doctrine simply
of anarchists, revolutionists, and scoundrels. The pro-
vision which emigration offers to the suffering or uu-
employed portion of the community is certain, and un-
objectionable in every point of view : that which is con-
tended for by the anti-protectionist, or Pharaoh party,
is neither the one nor the other. You may make pro-
visions cheap, but unless you, at the same time, pro-
vide employment for the unemployed, or if, at the same
time, you reduce the wages of those who are partially
employed, or fully employed and yet ill paid under ex-
isting circumstances, you will not thereby improve in
the least the condition of the poor man, and you keep
him at home -only to starve and persecute him, or for
some selfish purposes of your own, in which he is sa-
crificed, in order that these may stand a better chance
of being accomplished. The anti-protectionists are no
friends to any comprehensive scheme of emigration.
No; of course they are not: it would remove a mate-
rial element of their agitation. It is not for the distress
of operatives they care; it is not to improve their con-
dition they itinerate from place to place; a mass of
distress would rather subserve their ende. The an

protectionist is wise in his generation ; he is judicious
in his use of means. We will not allow, however, that
he is truly wise ; we do not admit that he is wise in the
choice of his object; we are persuaded that if he were
to obtain the object he seeks, he would be most griev-
ously disappointed, and therefore, for his own sake, as
well as for that of the community at large, we feel
bound to oppose his proceedings.
'e leave some interesting points, connected with
this subject, untouched, but shall take another oppor-
tunity of adverting to them.

The advocates of the cosmopolitan system in o

corporation schools are qnite aware that judgment,
though not pronounced, is ready to be given, and will
certainly he delivered against them. The fore-know-
ledge of this event, however, produces no effect in re-
straining the exercise of their great argumentative
powers; on the contrary, it seems rather to increase
their desire to display them, and to convince the world
that, though might prevails, and conquers them, they
are not yet silenced. For our part, we shall feel happy
to see these gentlemen easing their minds, and have
no wish that the controversy should be discontinued,
even after the schools have been remodified. There
are a great many analogies connected with the school
question, and if this one complication be well under-
stood, and rightly solved, other questions of conside-
rable moment, which concur with it in all essential
particulars, will be more easily comprehended, and
solved at the same time. We are pleased, therefore,
to see our Liberal contemporaries pursuing the specu-
lation with so much ardour, and turning the screw

with such force upon their ingenuity; we conclude
that the people will be well instructed on this point,
and that whatever other subjects they may be ignorant
of, it will be next to impossible that they should be un-
informed upon this. The newest thing that we have
seen in the process ratiocinative, was put forward by
our contemporary the Journal, in his number of Satur-

day. It appears in the shape of a compound proposi-
tion, which, however, may be easily divided into two
simple syllogisms, and is contained in one short sen-
tence. We submit it, and beg that the Gentlemen of
the Council will examine it with all due attention :

"A parent," says our contemporary, "who accepts
or his child a religious education which he believes to

be false as the price of a secular advantage, is guilty of
of a great crime, no matter whether the religion he ac-
cepts for his child be true or false; and whoever tempts
him to do so, by the offer of a temporary reward, is a
suborner of apostacy."

This, it will be observed, is a very nice, and deli-
cately constructed piece of sophistication, and intended
for two classes of persons, namely, Romanist parents,
and Members of the Council. To the former, it says,
send not your children to the reformed schools on any
account; you will be guilty of a "great crime" if you
do, because you will do so against your conscience, and
for the sake of a bribe, namely, secular education gra-
' tuitously bestowed. This is a species of reasoning
much in vogue with the priests in Ireland, and has
served on many occasions to bother poor Patlanders,
who, owing to the excessive liberality of the legislature,
have the misfortune to be freeholders. If you vote with
your landlord, argued his reverence—(probably front
the altar)—if you vote with your landlord, you vote
against your religion, and consequently against your
conscience—and moreover, you are a bribed wretch,
and the interest you have in the land you hold is the
bribe you take; you will be guilty therefore of mortal
sin, and if you die unabsolvecl, you will certainly he
damned for ever. Now, precisely similar to this is the
logic employed by our Liverpool contemporary. To

the scrupulous parent lie conjures up the idea of
"bribery," and would persuade him that it is only
for the sake of filthy lucre—for a " secular advantage"
—that he would send his child to the reformed corpo-
ration school, and consequently, that in so doing. he
would be guilty of a "great crime." The argument is
enbtile, and truly Popish. It is manifest that it denies
to the parent all right of judging for himself—that it
permits him to have no conscience but what the priest
allows him, and that it is devised solely with a view t°
.propping up the tyranny of priestcraft. The existing-
system of the schools was an emanation from the same
power, and we do profoundly offer our homage to the
new for this, amongst other reasons, that it has a ten-
dency to work in opposition to that usurped authority.
The Journal assumes that the Romanist parent who
sends his child to the new schools, must act against his
conscience. But, why so ? Might he not approve of
his child being taught to pray once, or twice, in the
day, and enjoined to read a portion of holy scripture,
without note or comment, in the authorised version ?
Might not his conscience concur with his judgment on
this point, and in that case would not the charge, or
even suspicion of a latent corruption, fall to the
ground ? We know how the Journal, if it acted
as the
organ of Popery, would answer; it would say, that the
man had no right to judge for himself—that the
" church" took that duty upon itself, and was alto-
gether the keeper of his conscience. The new system
will help to loosen the joints and bolts of this horrible
oppression, and is on this ground alone worthy of our
best support.

But the second point is more immediately for the
Council; and, Oh, ye timorous and over-scrupulous
members, we beg of you to pause, and observe what a
tremendous weapon is ready to be flung at your heads.
in case ye rally your wandering spirits sufficiently to
vote in contravention of the laws of priestcraft, and
liberal journalism ! Mark this dogma—fresh, we scau`id
think, from Clongowes or Stonyhurst—" ily waver
tempts the Roman Catholic parent to send his child t°
a school constituted according to the new mode!, by
offering him gratuitous education for his child, is a
suborner of apostacy! Think of that oye coun-
cillors ! Ye will be " suborners of apostacy," if ye
open your schools to Roman Catholics, and other sects'
gratuitously ! According to this principle, it must be
rather a ticklish affair to open a free school on Church,
or Protestant principles, at all; or, to please our con-
temporary, Romanists should be expressly, and by
name, prohibited from sharing in its advantages ; and
the objection to the new plan in the municipal schools
is, not that Roman Catholics as well as Protestants are
freely admissible therein, but that they are not distinctly
prohibited and excluded therefrom !
Such is the precious nonsense to which men who
have enlisted themselves in a bad cause are driven ill
their efforts to maintain it. We will not pay the intel-
lect of any member of the council so bad a compliment
as to insinuate that they need the least assistance for
destroying so miserable a web of sophistry as this.
They are not, like Romish priests, the keepers of other
men's consciences; what Romanist parents may, or
may not do, is no affair of conscience with them ; their
proper and only business is, to provide that which
they conscientiously believe to be the purest, safest,
and best system of education for all classes of the com-
munity. Less they cannot do with a clear conscience,
and when they have done so much, they have fulfilled
their office. We can venture to assure them with some
confidence, that all the other bugbears of the liberal
press are not a whit more intrinsically formidable than
this most ludicrous and laughable one to which we
have just drawn their attention. They are no more
than air-drawn daggers, and vanish at once when
with a small effort of courage one endeavours to clutch
them.

laws may
no matter how dissimilar the subject of the
" Repealers " have a natural affinity for each other,
be which they severally desire to have repealed. They
have a common sympathy in " undoing " ; and though
the one should seek merely to abrogate a Custom-
duty, and the other should hope to dissever a kingdom,
nevertheless they shake hands, and recognise each
other as brethren; they are both " repealers."
was on this principle, that we accounted for the
dial reception which two gentlemen from this country
—Mr. Bright of Rochdale, and the celebrated
George Thompson—met with last week in Dublin
from the repealers of that metropolis. Mr. Bright
and his companion (the Anti-Slavery man) are
out on a tour of fraternisation ; and in what
quarter should they be likely to receive the hug fra-
ternal with warmth and affection, if not in Ireland?
So to it they went—a deputation from the great Anti-
Corn-Law League—with instructions to extend the
combination, to establish branches thereof, and to get
up in Ireland meetings, petitions, and all other usual
and necessary accompaniments of agitation—all for
the repeal, not of the Union, but of the corn-duties.
It would seem surprising that the Irish, who are ex-
clusively agriculturists, and who have so obvious an,
interest in keeping the English market to themselves,
should be at all disposed to join in a clamour to open
the same market to foreigners, and to raise up a com-
petition which would be of decided injury to them-
selves. This would certainly seem extraordinary; but
then there happen to be two distinct classes of Irish-
men : there are the Queen's, or the Lord Lieutenant's
Irishmen, and there are the Lord Mayor's Irishmen"'
orders, or races, as different as Indian castes, and as
unlike to each other in their mental phenomena, as if
they were of a totally different organisation and co-
lour; and we must be careful not to confound them.

The mission of the gentleman from Rochdale and his
anti-slavery friend is, we are persuaded, to the Lord
Mayor's Irishry only, amongst whom we shall not
wonder if they meet with great success. For, in the
first place, this wonderful Lord Mayor has himself
given them the " hundred thousand welcomes " of the
country, presided at a meeting to do them honour,
and stamped his warmest approbation on their pious
labours; and with this passport, or finnan, they will
pass through the country, and be everywhere re-
ceived with acclamation by his people. And in
the second place----but why should we • go fur-
ther ?

Our first head contains within it the con-
creti and essence of all other reasons ; the auto-
crat of a servile herd gives law to all who ac-
knowledge his supremacy, and since the " Lord
Mayor" is gained over, the deputation will at once
command all the objects who wait upon his nod.
Within his own august bosom are locked up the reasons
of state which have induced him to take this high re-
solve. Perhaps " a thousand pounds—say a thousand"
—may have had some little share in prevailing with
him; the league is rich, and the Lord Mayor is noto-
riously soft on this side ; the thing is not unlikely, but
it is wrapped in mystery for the present. Perhaps his
lordship, who, though his nose be cocked and vulgar
in shape, is famous for a goad smell, has been able to
scent the battle afar off, and in supporting these
leaguers, conceives that he is affording hit contribu-
tion to the promotion of sedition, anarchy, and embar-
rassment in the land of the Saxons, whom he hates
with all the bitterness of his soul. For our part we
close in with this conjecture. Our notion of the entire
baseness of the man is fixed, and it jumps with all our
other convictions concerning him, that this is, perhaps,
the most influential reason of all for the patronage
which be gives to the ambassadors and missionaries of

the Manchester league. He scolds them because he
spies mischief to England in their operations ; he helps
them, not because he likes, but because he hates
them ; he would concede to them the repeal they want,
in the hope that it would conduce to that repeal which

he wants himself; and upon this basis he will readily
enter into an alliance with them. And the Saxon
leaguers are content with such a bargain ! Out upon
them—confederates of the arch-traitor—the Popish
demagogue—the wooer of American sympathy—the
fleecer of the starving Itish—the.— Oh, it is foul.
If men are to be known by the. company they keep,

we own we are now better instructed upon the cha-
racter of these league gentry than we have been before,
and we rejoice that they begin to show themselves in

their true colours. Let it not be forgotten that they
have now entered into a league with the Irish traitor
party, and that hereafter they must ever show them-
selves tainted by such a compact. ,

great power, erected in Dr. Raffles' new cha-
pel opened " yesterday week ; on which
occasion rigpvlp
airir otof 00, f,ia7's ,
Popish Mass, in Latin. (Agnus Dei,) was
performed. En e take the above paragraph from the Bristol
Journal of last Saturday, and the mere mention of the cir-
cumstance is sufficiently indicative.]