The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-09-22 00:00:00

just acknowledged the fact in a letter, dated from
DeTrynane, in which he; says—" Food the people
want, and food it is the duty of everybody to provide
for them : as well the Government as the Landlords;
in short everybody having any means whatsoever."
Will Daniel. O'Connell, then, we ask, perform
his part in the work in which "every body having
-any means whatsoever," is to bear his portion ? He
holds in his own possession, or at least he has re-
ceived within the last few years and not accounted
for, some hundred thousand poun Is, or upwards,
contributed by the miserable peasantry of Ireland,
to he devoted to an object which he must know to
he impossible of accomplishment, and which he
has apparently shelved to dip his fingers in official
pay and patron ige. We remind him that now, by
his own admiSsion, it is "food the people want,"—
not a delusive dream of a Parliament in College-
green. Let him throw open the Repeal chest.
Let him give back to a misera'de people the
thousands of the Repeal fund. Will he do this ?
Will his regirrient of reverend agitators urge him to
a step like this—of common honesty towards his,
and their, poor fellow-countrymen ? Alas, we fear
that their patriotism is of a different description.
They will urge upon the landlords of Ireland, and
the people of England, `• the duty" of providing
for the wants of Ireland; but the Repeal funds will
not be given up—the weekly rent will be looked for
at Conciliation. Hall—the hat will still be sent round,
and the " Liberator" will still demand to be fed by
a people, thetmelves subsisting upon elymosynary
contributions from a country which they are trained
up to hate, and for whose humiliation and destruc-
tion they are taught to pray.

The voracity of our contemporary of Friday for
misrepresentations of Mr. M'Neile is truly asion-
ishina. On Sunday week the Rev. Gentleman's
text in the forenoon was from the proptitt Habak-
kuk, chap. iii verses 16. 18, " When I heard, my
belly trembled ; my lips quivered at the voice : rot•
tenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in
myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble," &c.
He described the effect produced on the Prophet
by the majesty of Jehovah in connexion with his
predicted judgments against a guilty nation. Af-
terwards when he referred to the painfully distress-
ing accounts of the destitution of so many of our
poor Irish brethren, and described the effects
which such a calamity ought to produce upon truly
sympathetic Christians, he intro iuced a repetition
of the words of his text with a thrilling energy.
The result was practical ; producing, as we men-
tioned in our last, a liberal contribution. On Fri-
day we, in common with many others, were dis-
gusted by the following paragraph in the Mercury

Toe Rev. Hugh 111'Neile, if we are to believe the state.
meat of that gentleman himself, has become infected with
the potato disease. tie said, on Sunday last, to the
astonishment of some of his bearers, that, attrr reading
letters received from Ireland, "rottenness entered my
bones."

This in itself is simply ridiculous, and, as far as
the reverend gentleman is concerned, it is utterly
contemptible ; but we think it deserving of notice,
as a fresh specimen of that aptness in malice, that
inventive ingenuity in detraction, by which the
Mercury has exerted itself for many years, to the
best of its ability, to injure an able and zealous
clergyman. Truly; the determined perseverance of
that journal to damage Mr. M`Neile's reputation
can only he equalled by its total want of success.
It has, indeed, contributed considerably to a con-
trary result, because, lynx-eyed as it has been in
its espionage over the reverend gentleman's proce-
dure, and ready as it has ever proved itself to
make him an offender, if possible, for a word, it
has never been able to establish any thing
against him. And we must repeat what we had
occasion to say but a few weeks ago,—that its wil-
ful repetition of known falsehoods is as disgraceful
to the paper, as it is honourable to the distin,uished
object of its calumny. Against its opposition to
Mr. M'Neile's opinions, whether religious or politi-
cal, we say nothing. It is all fair; and no one courts
fair discussion more than Mr. M‘Neile himself; but
against misrepresentations of matters of fact, amount-
ing to known falsehoods, we must reiterate our pro-
test as against a base abuse of the liberty of the
press.

Although we have already gone far towards get-
ting rid of our pious horror of slavery and the slave
trade, and are stimulating, as much as in us lies,
the consumption of foreign slave-grown produce in
our own country, it is gratifying• to have it shown
to us that there is still a prospect of procuring from
our own possessiOns, in sufficient abundance for our
wants, a supply of that article—sugar—the culture
and manufacture of which are the most oppressive
to the tropical labourer, without the neces•ity of
having recourse to slave markets. This assurance
we have brought before us in a letter addressed to
"tbe cotton manufacturers of Manchester and the
adjacent localities interested in the India trade, by
D. C. Aylain, of the firm of Messrs. Aylwin and
Co., of Calcutta," the substance of which we shall
endeavour to condense for our readers.

It will be remembered by most how largely public
expectation of a supply of sugar from our East
Indian possessions was raised a few years ago, to
result from the equalization of the duties upon the
East and West Indian article. In 137-38 the
export from Calcutta in bazar maunds (82 lbs.) was
814,771 maunds ; in 1838-39 it was 869 107
maunds ; and in 1839-40, 843.889 maunds. Up
to this period the cane was cultivated by the ryots,
or villagers, mainly for their own consumption, and
was not looked upon as an article of profitable
export. But when the sugars of East India were
placed on the same footing in our markets with
those of our Western colonies, the rise of price to
the Eastern cultivator—who, Mr. Aylwin says,
" was enabled to net a profit of say from 100 to 150
per cent."brought large supplies into the market
from districts where previously the existence of the
cultivation had been unnoticed ; and in the year
1840-41 the export from Calcutta sprung up to
1,784,791 maunds.
The anticipation of an increase in this amount in
succeeding years—natural, when wa consider the
low rate of wages in the country, and the fact that
the cane is grown in nearly every district at a com-
paratively trifling expense to the cultivator—has not
been realized. On the contrary, the export fell in
the following year, 1841-42, to 1,522,092 maunds,
where it has remained stationary•, having been in
1844-45 only 1,539,117.
The question with most commercial men, and
with statesmen, has been—how is this apparent
anomaly to be accounted for ? Here is an article
the production of which is one of acknowledged
!NIA!, and for which the East Indian farmer and
peasant possess great advantages. Great Britain
offers them a highly remunerating market. The
continent of Europe is open to them. Yet industry
flags; and the export of an article, of which the capa-
bility of production,at present estimated at 1,250,000
tons.per annum, the hulk of which is retained for
home consumption, is almost limitless, retrogrades
instead of increasing.
Mr. Aylwin accounts for this fact by the general
poverty of the East Indian cultivator, and the heavy
drain upon his resources, created Ily the East India
Company's tax on salt, which, with sugar, is the
most necessary article of domestic use. To " pro-
cure a supply of this indispensible condiment, the
Ryot," he says, " has t i surrender as much as three
months of his annual labour." That the reader
may be in a position to judge for himself of the pres-
sure of the tax in question, we subjoin Mr. Aylwin's
explanatory note :

"The value of salt, "free on board ship" at Liver.
po(.1 is 155.. a ton. The tax on Salt in India is £8 6d.
per ton. The ret,il price in theint, ricr is about 211. per
Pound. The consumption est ithated. even " by the Indian
Government." at 12 pounds per head, or :say half that of
England : the average number compris'ng one family.
5 persons; and the rate of wages in many parts in the
interior, only 1:1 16s a year on vsli:ch the wretched
Ryot has to feed and clothe himself, and also buy salt."
When so large a portion of labour is thus required
for the payment of the tax on salt alone, there is
little surplus time or means left, after earning or
raising the remaining necessaries of life, to extend
the cultivation of sugar.
Mr. Aylxin argues, and we think most satisfac-
torily, that the removal, or the reduction, of the salt
duty, say from three rupees to one rupee per maund,
or from £B.3s. 6(1. per ton to ' 2 15s. 6d, the Indian
agriculturist would he enabled to bestow more at-
tention upon the cultivation of sugar, as a means of
adding to his personal comforts, and procuring a
more abundant supply of clothing, by which the
demand for British manufacturcd fabrics would be
largely promoted.
" If, he say. we compute the total production of sugar
in India at 1.250,000 tons a year. out of which 75.000 ire
abstracted for Issportation, we should, estimating the ip.
creased production arising from increased facilities of
labour at only one. twelfth t or one month's average labou,
144,11 at oncq a further supply for the purpose of exporta.