The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-05-14 00:00:00

ments which have been used by Sir James Graham
to gain over to himself a majority upon this ques-
tion. It has not been altogether the fear of Sir
James Graham's threatened "retirement into pri-
vate life," which has led Mr. Liddell to announce
his determination to vote contrary to his convic-
tions, or Mr. Gaily Knight to declare that, "having
had time to reflect and sober," he is determined to
vote as he is bidden upon this question, and to
conduct himself in future as a well behaved Go-
vernment hack. No, no—the astute Home Secre-
tary has gone on a very different tack ; and will be
found to have created a far greater amount of that
kind of sobriety, which leads men to stultify them-
selves, than the world at present imagines. Sir
James has told country gentlemen that a Ten
Hours' Bill will destroy the foreign trade of the
country, unless the increase in the cost of manu-
factured goods, which it will occasion, be balanced
by a concession to the manufacturer somewhere ;
and has hinted that the likeliest direction, for such a
concession to be made is in that of the corn-laws.
" The question"—he has urged—" is not one of
straightforward operation merely—not one which
will only bring about the object it professedly seeks.
On the contrary it is one which must produce a
convulsion of our entire commercial fabric, which
can only be restored to its equilibrium by a repeal
of all protective duties, and the resort to an entirely
new system of raising revenue." Such a represen-
tation of the result of a measure of justice to the
labourer is well calculated to startle unreflecting and
selfish men ; and will be found to have done so, by
the result of the division upon Lord; Ashley's
amendment.

Of course, we deny utterly the conclusion to which
Sir James Graham would fain lead—nay has already
led—the agricultural supporters of the rights of
humanity. We have no fear of any material injury
to our foreign trade, to arise from moderately re-
stricting the hours of labour. But were it even the
case, that some injury might arise—that in some
markets we might be met by a competition which,
without unlimited power over human labour and
human life, we could not successfully overcome, we
should say that it were better—far better, to resign
those markets to others, than to purchase them at
the cost of the moral and physical health of our en-
tire labouring community—at the cost of the com-
forts which ought to belong to the working man's
home, and by the perpetuation of a state of society
degrading to our human nature, and dangerous to
the national safety.
But let us ask of those gentlemen, who draw back
their hands from the good work of emancipating the
slaves of toil, because they imagine they see, as the
result of such emancipation, some little danger to
their order, whether there is not infinitely more dan-
ger in withdrawal, upon such grounds. The existing
protection of agricultural productions is endangered
they say—or Sir James Graham leads them to infer
—by any measure which interferes with the power
of the capitalist over human labour. Surely this is an
impolitic admission; for what is it but to tell the work-
ing man that he must submit to his present long hours
of toil, not for his own benefit—not his employer's
benefit, but for the benefit of the owners of the soil ?
Let such an admission once go abroad amongst the
working population of the manufacturing districts,
accompanied with the news of the contemptuous
rejection of their prayers by the House of Com-
mons ; let that population be told that the British
landowner, alarmed for the permanence of his own
protection, has withdrawn all protection from the
labourer, and selfishly consigned suffering women
and children to a toil beyond their strength; and it
will not be necessary for the demagogue to inflame,
or a seditious press to infuriate them to attempt
their emancipation, by the sacrifice of that very class
which now imagines that it is insuring its own safety
by the blind course which it is pursuing. Hitherto
the labouring classes of Lancashire and Yorkshire
have spurned the approaches of the Anti-corn-law
League and of Liberalism. They have stood a firm
barrier between the constitution and that faction
which would fain overbear its voice by outrage and
violence. They have hitherto remained wrapped up
in their comparatively harmless crotchet of Chart-
ism, and refused to give the impetus of their vast
physical force to anti-corn-law agitation. But by the
rejection of this bill we are about to throw them—
excited, passionate, and despairing of relief from
other and legitimate sources—into the hands of a
body of men who have the power, and will not
scruple to use it, to wield them for the gratification
of any selfish object, however injurious to the corn-
munity, and however ruinous to their duped allies.
Give up the factory workers to the League ; and, one
fortnight of interruption of labour—one fortnight of
the screw of hunger—and the corn law—aye any
other law or institution, however sacred and how-
ever valued—is swept away For ever !
This is no chimera—no impossible or improbable
alliance. Already we have it announced in the
House of Commons that the factory population,
following up the heartless taunt of the millocrat
organs, are, if defeated in their hopes by Parliament,
resolved upon an attempt to work out the realization
of those hopes by a general strike; and surely, with
the occurrences of 1842 in our remembrance, such
a movement is not one to be contemplated without
serious apprehension, or one of which the seditious
plotters of the League will hesitate to convert to the
realization of their own dangerous objects.

There are a few features in the contest upon
which we are about to enter, and in the principles
and position of the two candidates, to which we feel
it imperative upon us to call the especial attention
of our readers.

We are told by the organs of the Radical party
that this is to be a struggle exclusively between the
principles of free trade and of protection ; that the
old terms " Whig" and " Tory" are to be laid aside,
and the question to be only—" Are you an advocate
of the abolition of all restrictions upon commerce,
or are you in favour of monopoly ?" Now we must,
along with Mr. Entwisle the Conservative candi-
date, protest against the right of our opponents to
place the question at issue upon this footing. Ra-
dicalism may choose its own war-cry, and prescribe
its own battle-ground ; but it shall not dictate ours.
It may hoist its one idea, " free trade" ; but it shall
neither compel us to fight for anything less than
the broad principles of Conservatism, nor to forget
that under its novel cloak still lurk the vicious
principles inherent in its nature ; that though
flaunting in borrowed garments, it is Radicalism—
un-English and nauseous Radicalism—still. It is
preposterous to ask us to lay aside, upon an occasion
so important as the selection of a member to represent
in the great council of the nation all the varied
interests of a locality like this, the consideration of
questions quite as important as is comprised within
the term dictated to us—of questions affecting the
interests of religion, of morality, and of humanity,
and the secnrity of the established institutions of
our country ; and it is just as preposterous to de-
mand that we should permit our opponents to gild
over every thing which is unpalatable in their
principles, with an attractive term, which they
choose very modestly to appropriate exclusively to
themselves. No, no; gentlemen of the League :
we meet you on this question as Conservatives, as
loyalists, and as advocates of the best interests of