The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-11-30 00:00:00

ment ?

With respect to immigration from the coast of Africa
itself, and to the effect upon AFRICAN CIVILIZATION
and upon the AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE which might
result from the establishment there of a well-regulated
system for its encouragement, the remarks of our con-
temporary are equally just, and contrast strongly with
those upon the same subject which appear in the city
article of the limes of the same date, whose attention

the citintiort of irnmige

unaetteroug gpirit,

professes his fear lost by tbs one

!ouragement of

immigration from the coast of Africa " a new descrip-
tion of slave trade" should be created ; and with a
jealousy worthy only of an Old Bailey attorney, sug-
gests that, "by adroit management, there might be but
little difference in the state of the colonies from that
from which they have recently and at immense cos t
been emancipated." Our contemporary's fears are
really, we think, a little overstrained. The planters in
our West Indian colonies are perfectly ready to submit
to any degree of supervision, by the home government,
of their internal arrangements and the condition of
their labourers; and the correspondence relating to the
subject of immigration from Sierra Leone, copied in
the same.article by our contemporary, and from which,
by the bye, we quoted the most material portion in our
publication of the 9th instant, ought to have satisfied
him that, externally, no crimping, no unworthy induce.
ments of any description, are required to promote the
object which the planters have in view, and which we
think no sincere friend to the interests of the negro
race is justified in attempting to decry.

In the few remarks which we offered upon the occa-
sion of the decease of the late Mr. Egerton Smitb,we
were careful to abstain from expressing any opinion
which could bring under discussion, at such a moment,
the political character of the deceased. We were far,
however,,from anticipating, on the part of the admirers
of that gentleman, and particularly on that of the con-
ductors of the Liverpool Mercury, the adoption of a
similar course; and we have no complaint, therefore,
to make of the substance of the long and highly co-
loured panegyric which appeared on Friday in the Co-
hn-sins of our contemporary, however dubious we may
l.):! with respect to its propriety and good taste. We
are not willing, however, to permit the editor of the
Mercury, or the " Friend" who executed the clumsY
daub which is intended as the portrait of Mr. Smith,
to mingle slander against the living with his fulsome
laudation of the dead. Canonize, deify, if he will, the
object of his admiration; but why rake up in our me-
mory and in that of the public forgotten falsehoods,
which, having served their unworthy purposes, ought
to have been allowed to sleep with him for whom or by
whom they were invented.
The slander to which we allude is contained in the
following quotations, which we need scarcely charac-
terise as unworthy and contemptible in expression and
in spirit. " The West Indian Interest "—writes this
panegyrist of the deceased—" the West Indian or
slave-owning interest requited the noble exertions of
our lamented friend in this (the anti-slavery) cause, by
attempting the ruin of his business." And again—
" He certainly forfeited the regard of men who declared
their longing to devour the heart of Wilberforce, and
actually attempted to assassinate Clarkson." (I) We
need scarcely proclaim the deliberate falsehood of these
abominable imputations upon the character of a portion
of our fellow-townsmen ; and shall only ask of our
readers and the public, what can they think of the de-
cency of an individual or a party who can descend to
cloak the utterance of their rancorous malignity
against the living under the hypocritical pretence of
respectful affection for the dead ? How ineffably dis-
gusting is the mawkish sentimentality which fills up
the remainder of this tribute (!) of love, when it is
placed side by side with these vulgar outbreaks of the
rank and lying spirit which animated the heart of the
writer, and which not even the mournful occasion upon
which they were uttered was able to control !

The anti-corn-law empirics have discovered a new
remedy for the evils of the times, and we dare say are
quite prepared to puff their nostrum, and placard the
walls with a most fascinating history of the marvellous
cures which shall hereafter be effected by it—and other-
wise, and in every possible way, convert it into an in-
strument of agitation. The new remedy is simple, and
if it were safe to use, doubless of extraordinary efficacy;
it consists in merely relaxing the " money screw ;" and,
as want of demand arises (in their view) solely from
want of the money to purchase—augmenting the cir-
culating medium in proportion to the stocks of goods
manufactured, or unsold, buyers and sellers must be
brought together by some means ; and if the mountain
won't go to Mahomet, Mahomet must be brought, by

some means, to the mountain.
A London contemporary, in discussing this interest-
' ing proposition, commends the propounders, who are
certain associators of Birmingham, for their prudence
in dropping all allusion to the corn laws, and professes
a desire to meet them on the inquiry in a friendly spirit.
A season of public calamity, or even one in which a
more than ordinary measure of privation has befallen a
portion of the community, is certainly one in which
much forbearance ought to be extended to parties who,
in an honest spirit, and with a pure desire to contribute
to the good of their country, suggest what they con-
ceive to be remedies for existing misfortunes ; but it is
one also in which we ought to be especially upon our
guard against those who, in proffering their cures for
the body politic, give us reason strongly to suspect that
they are only actuated by selfish or factious motives.
We should like to know, in the first place, if those Bir-
mingham doctors who now assure us that all our em-
barrassments would be removed by a liberal enlarge-
ment of our paper currency, are not the same who a
short time since insisted, and who still in some other
shape, or under some other name maintain, that the
corn laws are the monster grievance of the land ? And
if this be the case, with the best possible disposition,
nay the most Christian patience towards our volunteer
physicians, what degree of faith can we possibly repose
in the new recipe, so far as esteem for the adviser, and
not the advice, is to go for any thing ? That they are
one and the same party, we need not to be told; we
trace their identity at once in the pious horror which,
under whatever name they give themselves, they inva-
riably evince at the words " over-trading" or " over-

population." " The doctrine of over-trading," say
they, " is a dangerous and cruel fallacy, and when
coupled, as it generally is, with that of ' over-popula-
tion,' is a most dishonest and disgraceful absurdity."
Fine words, truly, and pungent exceedingly ! but words
which, however full of " sound and fury," signifying
absolutely " nothing" against that array of evidence
which can, with the utmost ease, be brought forward
to convict some of the noisiest of the grievance-mongers
of the authorship of those facts whose existence they
now deny in such terms of indignation. Nothing can
be more unwelcome, unquestionably, than to be told
of our own faults at the very moment that we are open-
ing out against what we hold to be the vices of others.
The memory of journalists is particularly inconvenient
sometimes to these great reformers of other people,
and of every thing under heaven but themselves. We
have ourselves taken occasion to give them a jog when
we found them romancing at some insufferable rate of
extravagance, and we should hope that the admonition
has been found useful. Our example was well followed
up a short time since by our contemporary the Shef-
field Mercury.

At the anti-corn-law meeting held in that town, the
main points relied upon were, that the depression of
the Sheffield trade arose from German and American
competition, and that a greatly-increased quantity of
cutlery would be sold to the Americans, if we would
but take their corn in exchange. On this occasion
our contemporary wielded the argumentu;n ad hominem
with what we should anticipate to have been good
effect.

" As respects the havoc made in our trade by foreign com-
petition" he observes, "is it quite clear that we have not in
some instances created, and in others strengthened and
rendered more powerful the ri'ialry of which we complain ?
A good deal is said about the scissor trade. Has not that
trade been grievously injured by the manufacture of virgin
steel scissors,' the base quality of which rendered any com-
petition, however sluggish and clumsy, comparatively suc-
cessful ? Competition in price is much more easy than
competition in quality ; and if scissors sent from this town
had always been equal in quality •to what they were in appear-
ance, the scissor trade would have been a less easy prey to
German competition. And then Mr. Ibbotson admitted the
existence of an element in the •question which went far to
annihilate his argument—the Terence in the habits of the
German artisans as compared wit h those of the English. Too
little notice is taken of this fact ; be it to our advantage or
not, there can be neither honesty nor use in keeping it in the
back ground. Mr. Ibbotson's all usions to the axe trade and
the saw trade, as two branches wl rich have left or are leaving
our shores. were extremely unfortunate. The Germans, says
Mr. Ibbotson, supplant us becam ie of price, and the Ameri-
cans are making saws and axes fi rr themselves. And do the
Americans beat us out of the u iarket by underselling us ?
The inference deducible from M r. Ibbotson's speech would
be to that effect, although the speri ker neither made, nor could
he intend to make, any such assertion. The Americans
manufacture axes because Engli sh axes failed them in the
using. A man cannot be a v ery experienced American
merchant, without knowing that i ixes were exported from the
neighbourhood of Birmingham— some without a particle of
steel in them, and others with a wafer of rascally steel in-
serted, just enough to swear b .y.' Were these fit tools to