The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-08-24 00:00:00

M 41ff

App qfp Mri-OR

'PPM Wtt,if.'

wit eAr4tl 4374,-;10Itt;ay
aoked for a atnelling-bottle

tally zic,k luair

This was a happy circrim.

stance.
With regard to 'the roaring, or braying rather, it
consisted of but one miserable stave throughout, with-

out variation or change of any sort. It wvs plain that
there was but a single master to all the performers,
and that they all servilely and closely rehearsed the
lesson they had got. First, each was to make a report
of lamentable distress, and then he was to :ssign,
" monopoly, monopoly !"—iterum, iterumque, as the
cause : having done this, his part was over, and the
millocrat league kindly stepped in to do the rest. Now,
such a spectacle, for its absolute hollowness and trum-
pery character, as well as presumption, was, we will
say, contemptible in the extreme, and if useful for
any purpose, only for showing the uttter insufficien-
cy of the Anti-corn-law pretended demonstration.
We will suppose that there is a certain amount of
truth in what they insist upon so much, which mainly
is, that a repeal of the corn laws would lower the price
of corn, and promote trade. We do not deny the pro-
position stated in these terms; but our admission thus
far does not by any means preclude us from raising
our voice against the measure proposed notwithstand-
ing. The conference gentlemen imagine that the case
is settled when they assert, or even prove the proposi-
tion to which we advert; and cry out, what more is to
be said ? It would be admitted that giving drink to an

inveterate drunkard' would allay for a moment the
craving of his appetite; but it would not follow that
the temporary relief thus afforded, would be substan-
tially, and in the end, a benefit to him. And so with
regard to an abolition of corn duties ; we may concede
that it would supply a temporary stimulus to trade, and
by that means some partial relief to existing distress;
but the question yet remains far as ever unsettled,
whether this remedy would or would not be a danger-
ous and unadvisable one, and, in the end, only a deep
and serious aggravation of evils? The real question is,

would it be safe and far-seeing of the British statesman
to give up the domestic source of maintaining the peo-
ple, and to cover the land with factories ? This, we
may say, would promote trade, and increase population
at a rapid rate ; but what would be the consequence if
this stimulated and stimulating process should, after
a few years, come to a sudden stop ? Consider, then,
how infinitely worse would the state of things be. We
should then be absolutely and entirely at the mercy of
the stranger ; we should have our manufacturing popu-
lation perhaps doubled, and no resource left either for
their employment or provision. It is fearful to con-
template a state of disorganization and calamity on so
stupendous a scale. There may be a temptation in the
scheme of relaxed corn duties, for with man it is diffi-
cult, as our great lexicographer has said, to make "the
distant and the future predominate over the present ;"
but it is the temptation only of a temporary and un-
wise gratification. The question in its true simplicity
is this, will you turn England into a great factory mill
—will you destroy her agriculture, and render her en-
tirely dependent on foreigners for the absolute neces-
saries of life ? Will you still drive on the artificial
state with the experience you have already had of the
wide-spread evil which attends even its least derange-
ment ?

A Mr. Curtis from Ohio, United States, was put
forward at the Conference to tell the ministers, and of
course the world at large, of the immense food-
resources of America,—of the inexhaustible riches of
the great Valley of the Mississippi, and of the pro-
digious mine of agricultural wealth generally possessed
by the federal government; and he spoke of the
willingness of America to take our manufactures in
exchange for her corn and flour ; he also said, that by
dealing for grain with the Northern States, we should
be aiming a blow at the slavery of the Southern States,
who at present hold the northern in vassalage, in con-
sequence of our dealing so largely with them for
cotton.

But this American spouter did, in our mind, greatly
over-do his part. As well might you describe the
ocean to a man labouring under hydrophobia, as at-
tempt to moderate the just alarm of the British farmer
by talking to him of the " great Valley of the Missis-
sipi3" what other effect could it have upon him, but
to require you more earnestly than ever to close your
ports firmly against so overwhelming an invasion.
Oh, but says the crafty American, we will take your
commodities in exchange. We ask who made Mr.
Curtis plenipo to the Conference ? Where are his
credentials ? " Whatever may be our legislature,"
says a London Contemporary, and we agree with the
remark, "it will have no effect on American man-
ufactures : there is a determination in the Northern
States of the Union to manufacture for themselves and
their country, which will overturn all obstructions,
should they even emanate from Congress itself." But
free trade by enlarging our dealings with the Northern
States would be a blow at slavery in the Southern !
How ? Surely the more we increase our manufactured
cotton exports to the Northern States, the more need
we shall have of the slave-cultivated raw cotton of
the Southern, and consequently the more we shall en-
courage the slave system which they carry on. Oh
fie, Mr. Curtis, we really are amazed at you ; how
could you think of deceiving the poor, simple-minded,
slavery-hating ministers, in so gross a manner ?
We shall return to the ghostly argumentation,
ridiculous as it is ; but we cannot close for the present,
without observing that from reverend men we never
met so many parts of speech, and speeches, which to
us, appeared downright irreverend, indecent, and pro-
fane. "If an angel were to come down from heaven"
said a Rev. Mr. Berry, "to .declare that it was right to
tax the poor man's bread, to put high rents into the
pockets of the landowners, I would reply, Go home
again to your celestial regions ; you don't understand
our affairs on earth.' "—(Laughter.) Another spoke
of John the Baptist as a " teetotaller ;" but no re-
monstrance that we, or others, might make on such
levity, could, we presume, have any effect, for another
said, "To those who complained of our politics he
would say, that there were those who were politically
religious, but we know what it was to be religiously
political. This was a day of scarecrow's ; and our
opponents put up the scarecrow of political ministers'
to frighten us, and they frightened those who had no
souls ; but they did not frighten us." In shmrt, a pack
of more irreverend, profane, and as far as they might
be, mischievous incendiaries, we have never met" with;
but with such arguments as they have put .forth,
shallow and worthless as they are, we would wish to
deal fairly, and we shall return to the subject.

THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN AND

OURSELVES

Our contemporary of the Manchester Guardian is well
known amongst his fellow-towsrnen as claiming to exercise
a supremacy, both of opinion and of information, upon all
matters connected with the trade of the district which he
illuminates. A glance at his columns will generally inform
us with respect to the particular opinions which prevail with
the strongest body of his readers—for the Guardian is a little
fond of being on the warm side of the hedge ; and we are at
once enabled to ascertain whether, for the time being, the
chamber of commerce or the league, the moderate or the
ultra body of commercial reformers, is uppermost, and
whether the currency or the corn-laws is the prevailing
hindrance to commercial prosperity. At present, it seems
that the league is most in favour, and its anti-corn-law nos-
trums the most palatable to the Manchester cottonocracy ;
and, although we do remember a time when the currency-
doctors of the chamber being in force, the Guardian was a
little disposed to throw up its heels at the gentlemen of the
league, yet we are not at all surprised to observe our con-
temporary at present very composedly eating up his then
acknowledged opinions, and sailing, with due forgetfulness
of all save present expediency and ease, in the wake of that
body which has " ruffled itself" into the leading place.
In a late publication, it seems, we crossed our contempo-
rary's path by directing the attention of our readers to the
fact—perhaps an unpalatable one—that a great portion of
the embarrassments at present complained of in the manu-
facturing districts, and of the individual failures which are
daily paraded before our eyes, is attributable to the reckless
baste with which the power of production has been increased
within the last ten years and the inordinate eagerness with
which individual manufacturers have pressed forward in the
race for sudden and great commercial gains. In corrobora-
tion of this view of the subject, we referred to a statement
of Lord Sandon, made during the recent election in Liver-
pool, which showed that during the past ten years the cotton
manufacture alone had sustained an increase of 82 per cent.,
the weekly consumption of cotton having been, in 1831,
16,513 bags, whilst in 1840 it bad reached to 30,089 bags.
Such a statement it may well be conceived was calculated
seriously to impede the endeavours of the anti-corn-law
league and its organs to attribute the whole of our existing
manufacturing distress to the operation of the corn-laws ;
and it might, perhaps unpleasantly, remind the Guardian