The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-04-19 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

sons of the middle classes—have received a mechanical,
but neither, a moral nor a religious education ; and as
they set an example to the class immediately under them,
the consequence has been that vice has flung, as the this-
tle does, its down to the winds ; crime has expanded its
arms, the pride of virtuous poverty has lost its charm, in-
tegrity, even in worldly transactions, is at a discount;
cautious dishonesty has become a principle, and a wide
spread demoralization, striking at the very roots of so-
ciety, and the institutions of Christianity, is in active and
increasing operation.

As with the moral and religious, so also with political
institutions and ancient laws of the country. We shall
not go back to the accession of George the third, as
Mr. Cobbett has done—we shall not even go so far back
as fifty years—but let us take the last fifteen years, and
consider them as bearing upon the true interests of the
people of England. Where is there an act of parlia-
ment which has, as a general measure, applicable to us
all, effected any truly beneficial change ? No law can
be passed which would not benefit one class and injure
another. We are not contending that certain parties have
not been benefitted. We admit the fact. But we contend
that the general operatiOn of these changes has been
mischievous, inasmuch as we see that the country has
declined, in all its relations, in all its branches of indus-
try, in the profits and wages of trade, and as respects
the physical comforts of the poor, ever since a certain
coterie of philosophers began to tinker and reform, re-
model and improve, the laws and institutions of England.
Our opponents, we know, are ready to assert that if
these changes had not taken place our condition, as a
nation, would have been worse than it is at present.
This is invariably the defence of all bunglers, from the
prime minister down to a repairer of watches, and an
Irish corn reaper. Had you not adopted my bill, says
the statesman, you would have had a famine, or, perhaps,
a revolution. It is true, says the bungling watch-maker,
that your time-piece goes an hour too fast per day, but
if I had not repaired it, it would have gone two hours too
slow. I admit says the reaper that I have lost one-third
of the grain, but it was, as you know, too ripe, and if
any body else than myself had cut it you would have lost
a third more.

Such is the sort of apologetical stuff which we hear
every day in parliament and other places. But we
utterly deny that there is a particle of either truth or
logic in such reasoning. England formerly never was
at the mercy of the other powers of Europe, but now she
hardly maintains the station of a third-rate power. Her
trade formerly was protected with a rigorous hand, but
now it is exposed to the competition of nations who
would have no trade at all were we not liberal enough to
give them a share of that which more properly belongs
to our own merchants and shipowners. We have nursed
the commerce of the Baltic into an importance which it
could only receive at our hands, and this we have done
at the expense of the shipowners of England. We have
called into existence nearly three-fourths of the trade
of Norway and Sweden, and this also ,we have done at
our own expense. The people of Hamburgh and the
north of Germany nearly supply the whole of those ma-
nufactured articles which were formerly exported to Par-
ugal by this country. The Americans fish in our own
waters, and supply the markets in the Mediterranean
which were in better times exclusively supplied by
England. In short, every act of legislation, almost with-
out an exception, has proved detrimental to the national
interests ; and we say, as Cobbett has said of the cri-
minal statutes, that if every act of parliament passed
during the last fifteen years were flung into the fire it
would confer a lasting obligation upon every class of
the community.