The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-10-15 00:00:00

ELECTROTYPE CLOTH PRINTING

The SECRETARY then showed several specimens of cotton
cloth, the principal or flowered portion of the pattern of
which was effected by a new application of the electrotype pro-
cess, invented by our townsman, M r. Spence,. The ground-work
on the copper printing rollers was first engraved in the usual
way, and the flowers or other portion of the design afterwards
affixed to it, slightly in relief. Mr. Spence stated that he
had frequently gone to Manchester at his own cost, and as-
sisted the house that printed the cloth to perfect the process ;
but though they had saved some thousands of pounds by it,
they had made him no recompense whatever. He could only
attribute this to the fact that he had only invented it, but had
not applied it practically.
The SECRETARY lamented that men of genius should thus
find their valuable achievements unrequited. The case of
Mr. Spence was analogous to that of Henry Bell, to whom
was due the first successful application of steam to naviga-
tion, but whose merits had been grievously overlooked while
others derived the advantage.
It was announced by the CHAIRMAN that Mr. Dirks was
under the necessity of resigning his office as Secretary, as he
was about to change his residence. He eulogized that gen-
tleman's exertions on behalf of the society, and stated that
Mr. Salt had been appointed in his place pro. tem. until the
next general meeting. _ _ _ .

The thanks of the meeting were proposed and heartily given
to Mr. Williams for his communication, and to Mr. Dirks
for his services. The latter replied in a neat manner, stating
that he hoped to be serviceable to the society, though absent
from its meetings. .

Several gentlemen were nominated and seconded as can-
didates for membership at the next meeting. The members
and their friends then partook of tea and coffee- in a room ad-
joining the theatre, and afterwards departed, highly gratified
by the intellectual proceedings of the evening.

POPISH LOYALTY.-At an entertainment given on Mon-
day week, by the Roman Catholics of Staley Bridge, to com-
memorate the opening of their new church, the Rev. Mr.
Anderton proposed first " Pope Gregory XVI.," and then
" The Queen.' Several priests and between 400 and 500
other persons were present.

HORRIBLE CRUELTY.—On Wednesday night week, some
ruffian entered a field belonging to Mr. W. Hunt, of Rush-
ton, near Tarporley, and so brutally cut and hacked a fine
cart mare on her hinder parts, that before morning she bled
to death. A reward is offered foe the detection of the brute,
which, as the police are actively inquiring into the matter,
it is hoped, will soon take place.
THE NEW AMBASSADORS.—The appointments of the re-
presentatives of her Majesty in foreign states, under the pre-
sent administration, are now, we believe, finally arranged.
Lord Cowley will be the British ambassador at Paris ; Sir
Robert Gordon at Vienna; Lord Stuart de Rothesay at St.
Petersburg; and Sir Stratford Canning at Constantinople.
Mr. Fox will, it is believed, remain for the present her Ma-
jesty's Minister at Washington. No immediate change is
in contemplation in the British embassy at Madrid ; nor is
it probable that any important change will take place in the
representation of Great Britain at any of the European
courts, with the exception of those already mentioned, and
the Court of Naples.

.
The infusion of new elements of democracy into the con-
stitution, the adoption of the ballot, the abolition of the rate-
paying clauses of the reform bill,—all or any of these expe-
dients would not, we are confident, produce such a parliament
as would be required to realize the dream of Mr. Richard
Cobden and his fellow leaguers. Such a parliament as would
be returned by the aid of these concessions to democracy
would doubtless be prepared to rush with all due haste to
the settlement of the corn-laws, the timber duties, or the
sugar duties ; but it is equally certain that they would also
be prepared to go much further—far, in fact, beyond the
point at which the league would have them stop. The mill-
owners of Manchester and Stockport are not disposed, for
instance, to trust the settlement of the factory question into
the hands of their own enfranchised operatives; and yet the
working classes of the manufacturing districts would most
assuredly be prompt in demanding such a settlement. They
are scarcely more disposed to place the settlement of the
poor-law question in the same hands. They are not anxious
to see the propriety of taxing mill machinery seriously
I mooted ; or to witness the starting of a hundred other similar
questions, into the discussion of which democracy would un-
hesitatingly: plunge.

the nanufacturing azitators, with the fear of

Chartism before their eyes, have assuredly little hope of
working out the objects for which they clamour so loudly, by
the infusion of additional democracy into the constitution;
and as little, we think, from any effort in a contrary direc-
tion. The parliament, which a reformer of the league school
requires, is one which will devote itself to the securing of a
free trade in corn, labour, and every other commodity ; but
will not enter upon the task of alleviating the pressure of the
new poor-law upon the poor ;—a parliament of Unitarian
philosophers—of men steeped in the heartlessness of the fac-
tory system ; and we venture to question, not whether the
materials for such a parliament could be found—(for they
are abundant)—but whether, until the character of English-
men be changed utterly, it is possible in this Christian
country to devise any system by which constituencies could
be formed to return such a parliament, or a power strong
enough to afford it protection from the storm of execration,
which its acts in one session would drawn.
That the government of Sir Robert Peel is not willing to
yield to the dictation, or to be terrified by the bluster of a
party so utterly powerless—so hopelessly isolated—so tho-
roughly bankrupt in the sympathy or respect of any influen-
tial portion of the community—is scarcely surprising ; but
we may well wonder at the suicidal blindness of the whig
party—or of the respectable portion of it, at least, if any such
portion is remaining—in allying themselves with such a mass
of vapouriug and conceited helplessness. Surely neither
Lord John Russell nor Lord Palmerston can have the pre-
posterous folly to suppose that such an alliance will shorten
by one day the period of their exile from the regions of
Downing-street ! Surely neither of these acute politicians
ca❑ ever dream of being borne into office upon the shoulders
of the paltry spouters of the anti-corndaw league, or floated
out of the " slough of despond," which they now so worthily
occupy, by any influence which can be exercised upon the
public mind by the malthusian supporters of those twin
abominations—the new poor-law and the factory system.

THE OPPOSITION TO SIR ROBERT PEEL'S
GOVERNMENT.

The system upon which the opposition to the government
of Sir Rober Peel has thus far been conducted by the free-
trade agitators in parliament and their allies throughout the
country, presents a remarkable resemblance to the practice
of Mr. St. John Long—a quack as eminent once in the me-
dical world, as Doctor Bowring, Mr. Cobden, or any other
corn-doctor, can ever hope to be in the world of politics.
The principle of the quack medical was, that disease of the
corporeal frame was to be expelled by the creation of an ex-
tensive sore ; and the quack political appears equally san-
guine that a conservative government—in his eyes " the
rankling evil which afflicts the state"—can be removed b)
the creation of similar sores upon the body politic. There
is this material difference, however, in the course by which
the former practitioner arrived at his results, and that con-
templated by the latter. Mr. St. John Long looked for the
actual absorption of latent humours by the real suffering
which he produced ; and thus there was a spice of philosophy
in his practice, despite its quackery. His imitators, howe-
ver, in the spirit of the vulgar showman, are satisfied with
the profit to be reaped from the mere exhibition of the mi-
sery which they conjure up, and of the frenzied contortions
of the patient during the process of ulceration.
That the practitioners upon the body politic have been
moderately successful in their efforts hitherto, we are com-
pelled to admit. The virus in their possession has been
widely distributed; excoriation, bodily and mental, has been
abundantly produced ; and a mass of misery and, withal, of
exasperated feeling spread through our manufacturing dis-
tricts, which it is distressing to witness in the heart of a
Christian land, and which. moreover, could not coexist with
a poor-law administered in any other than a Malthusian and
unchristian spirit. Nor were they less successful in their
choice of the exhibitors, by whose hands the veil was to he
withdrawn from before the dark picture of living horror
which their art had conjured up. What tongue more fitted
than that of a Cobden to dilate upon misery almost unendu-
rable—to paint it in due melodramatic colours, and with
proper conventicle solemnity ? Who more capable than Mr.
Thomas Milner Gibson to throw a dash of bitterness into
the picture—the bitterness with which the conscious spirit
of the apostate ever teems? Or who more eminently quali-
fied to work out its details than the statistical, pure, and
patriotic Doctor Bowring?

And yet with all these appliances, and notwithstanding the
undoubted fitness of the instruments, the result towards
which they were directed has not been achieved ! The exhi-
bition was opened in St. Stephen's ; night after night the
curtain rose before numerous and respectable auditories ;
Mr. Cobden exhausted all his show-booth oratory—fumed,
fretted, -and stamped—" tore his passion to rags," and
" split the ears of the groundlings " ; the peripatetic doctor
dived into the cellars and alleys of Bolton with an alacrity
which is wonderful—since it is not paid for—to drag his
quota of famishing weavers upon the stage; we had marvel-
lous stories, from others of the corps dramatigue, of families
subsisting upon sawdust—a feat which the pigs of the sister
island, unfortunately for them, could never accomplish ;
and yet parliament has been dissolved, just at the precise
time when it would have been, had all this display of zeal
for the suffering poor, CO on the part of the anti-corn-law
impostors, never been made; and the administration of Sir
Robert Peel, in despite equally of agitation and quackery,
still stands firm in all its integrity of purpose, and in all its
unassailable strength ! The onus of the wretchedness dis-
played has not recoiled upon his head, or upon those of the

c. re-at conservative party by whom he is supported ; but upon

that wretched and worthless faction by whose imbecility so
vast a mass of suffering—and that it is vast who can doubt?
—has bean permitted to accumulate without even an attempt
at a remedy until at the last hour, when they felt that office
and its advantages were slipping from their grasp !

But have these exhibitions been made in vain? Has an
observant and reflecting people contemplated unmoved the
scenes which have been revealed to them ? We say most
unhesitatingly it has not ! The people of England know
that for years past a tide of unexampled wealth has been
pouring into our manufacturing districts ; and they ask now,
with a start at the contemplation of these highly wrought
horrors—" Can it be that starvation and famine are so very
close attendants upon manufacturing prosperity ? Js there
no middle state between the Elysium of ample demand and
this dark and despairing picture ?" Anti well, indeed, may
they ask these, and even more searching questions. Well
may they pause before consenting to hazard their all—to rest
the security and well-being -of the industrial interests of an
entire community—upon a foundation so unstable and so
perilous !
The exhibitions, however, have now ceased for a time, upon
the metropolitan boards at least, and the performers have
returned to carry on their laudable avocations in the pro-
vinces. The. process of excoriation will he recommenced ;
fresh virus will be infused into each smarting sore ; and the
unhappy victim of their practices will he racked by his tor-
mentors to the extremity of human endurance, in the hope
of wringing from his misery some wild convulsive effort, in
the midst of which a reckless faction may be enabled to
scramble back into the occupation of those seats from which
an indignant and insulted people have so lately hurled them ;
but we ask, seriously and advisedly, have the reckless agita-
tors calculated all the chances of the game in which they are
embarking ? Are they sure that, even with the aid of the
reverend gentlemen, whose aid they are about to embrace,
they can controul the' storm which they are bent upon rais-
ing ? Is it so certain that the rage of an infuriated and hun-
ger-stricken population may not at length turn upon the gad-
flies which sting them into madness, or lacerate the hand
which, to goad them into outrage, snatches the food from
before their expectant lips ? We have for a reply :
We certainly do not anticipate such an ebullition of feeling
as will hazard the safety of conservatism, however eagerly
directed to this end may be the efforts of the League and its
reverend allies, during the parliamentary recess. We have
that confidence in the good sense which pervades the working
areactthie onin
classes of Great Britain, to trust that they will not be seduced
into violent outbreaks, to further the designs
tioiefy a
f
Whose inmost hearts they must know that
ob-
jects of the bitterest contempt, and whom they have never
yet trusted without being deceived and betrayed. But we
are by no means so confident that the endurance of a people
under torture and maddening agitation can be depended upon
by those within, the immediate reach of their first frenzy.
The engineer" may be " twist with his own petard," whilst
he, against whose walls the engine is directed, remains unin-
jured ; and we scans the Cobdens and the Bowrings, and
some gentlemen, too, who are nearer to us than these cham-
pions of the League, that the course upon which they are
bent is one of which the danger to the operators is imminent,
although the results to conservatism we do not fear 1

Wheat
Barley
Malt
Oats .
Rye . .

Qrs. 3911 I
Qrs. 7
Qrs. 10
Qrs. 3-
Qrs.

Beans
Pease . Qrs.!
Shelled Barley . Qrs.l
Indian Corn . . . Qrs.
Rapeseed
Oatmeal . . . . Loads ,
Flout . Sacks
Ditto Bris.'