The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-11-19 00:00:00

upon some localities most ruinously. A great pub-
lic work, fer instance, is projected-7say the docks
at Birkenhead—and the execution extends over five
years. It requires a thousand excavators, and ano •
ther thousand mechanics. These men have children
born to them, which under the former clause are,
by birth, settled in Birkenhead. They contrive,
themselves, to scramble through five years, "ordi-
narily maintain themselves "—and extraordinarily
thieving or starving, we presume—" in or near
thereto"—(how near ?); and at the conclusion of
their undertaking they are settled in Birkenhead—a
pleasant sort of incumbrance to that prosperous
locality! But how is this five years of residence
and "ordinarily maintaining in, or near," to be
proved. Upon whom is to be the burden of proof?
The old test of ratepaying was clear enough, and in-
volved the same principle upon which this clause
appears to be based; hut, in the case of such men
as these, mostly lodgers, a five years test is sheer
absurdity.
And, now let us see with what object so sweeping
a change is brought forward—a change which must
unsettle and throw into inextricable and continual
confusion every parish in the kingdom ? It has
appeared to Sir James Graham and the commis-
sioners, that the law expenses attending removals,
and disputed settlements, are, under the existing
act, excessive, having amounted last year to £84,750.
Overseers and masters of union workhouses cannot
for less than this amuse themselves with this fa-
vourite pastime of playing at shuttlecock with pau-
pers; and it is sought to indulge them by decreas-
ing the cost of the amusement. Yes, in pursuit of
a trumpery saving, which cannot be, at the utmost,
more than some £40,000 per annum throughout
the whole of England, and is more likely to bring
an increase than a saving, the whole fabric of our
existing settlements is to be taken to pieces and re-
constructed !

We put it to any impartial mau—any man not
besotted in his fondness for the inhuman and selfish
principle of the New Poor Law—whether such an
act as this ought to he permitted to pass into a law.
We say that it should not. We say, moreover, that
it is the bounden duty of every parish and every
community in the United Kingdom to offer it their
most determined opposition.

The manufacturers of Manchester appear, at
length, to have discovered, almost when too late,
the urgent necessity of directing the just influence
which they ought to possess with the legislature
towards objects ofipractical utility. A few years
ago, we urged upon them the consideration of the
injurious operation of the tax upon raw cotton—
the sublime financial achievement of that precious
specimen of a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Lord Althorp ; but we urged in vain. The League
was then in the full zenith of its power—the acme
of its baleful influence; one half of the cotton-
spinning and weaving world were bemused with
the speeches of muddy-witted spouters, or wrapped

in visions of cheap corn and cheap productio-n of
their commodities ; whilst the other half held,
sulkily or hopelessly, aloof, and refused to mingle in
the troubled waters of politics for any object, how-
ever attainable and useful. In the meantime, the
injurious operation of this tax—which we pointed
out, and all the world admitted—has gone on, pro-
ducing its natural results : setting up and fostering
foreign competition in every land, who undersell
them, and laugh at their wilful folly; and only now,
when the mischief has almost gone too far to be
remediable, have our cottonocracy consented to lay
aside their contentions and unite in an effort for its
removal. Better late, however, than never.
A special general meeting of the Manchester
Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturers was ac-
cordingly held on Thursday last, which was attended
by the most influential members, of every shade of
politics, at which a memorial to government, pray-
ing for a repeal of the cotton duty, was unanimously
agreed upon. We shall not here remark upon the
speeches of some of the gentlemen by whom it was
addressed. We shall not incur the risk of damag-
ing a useful movement by the introduction of topics
calculated to excite division and bitterness of feel-
ing, although these gentlemen found it impossible
to refrain from doing so. On the contrary, we say
to the merchants of Liverpool, of all shades of opi-
nion, " lay aside your political differences for awhile,
and back, by your influence, the efforts of the cotton
manufacturing interests to procure the removal of
an impost which is inflicting a serious injury both
upon you and them, and crippling your operations
in every foreign market." A duty of 5-16ths of a
penny per pound appeared trifling enough when
first imposed, at a time when the price of cotton
ruled high, when we had, in exchange for it, a relief
from the print duty, and when, moreover, the rival
manufacturers of other countries possessed not a
tithe of our skill, and were almost entirely without
our machinery. A duty of 5-16ths of a penny upon
cotton at Bd. or 9d. per pound was a trifling per
centage against us ; but this duty upon the same
description of cotton at 31. to 4d. per p tt id, is a
bonus to the foreign manufacture of upwards of 10
per cent. The political economists have, in addi-
tion, given to that foreigner our best machinery ;
and it is' little wonder, therefore, that in every neu-
tral market—in Brazil, in China, in the Mediter-
ranean, and even in some of our own colonies, the
heavy fabrics of the American and other manufac-
turers have already supplanted our own, and that
we are fast losing our superiority in the production
of the finer fabrics.

This is a state of things not to be trifled with;
and we call earnestly upon the merchants and ship-
pers of Liverpool to join heartily in the movement
against the tax which has mainly tended to produce
it. The question is not a manufacturer's question
alone. It is a merchants and a national question.

Mr. Commissioner Dowling is a great man—a
very great man ; and the departed Whig faction
which fastened him upon the town, at a cost to the
borough fund of £5OO per annum, with travelling
expenses for all his little jaunts in search of petty
larceners and pickpockets, showed that they pro-
perly appreciated his greatness ! Mr. Commissioner
Dowling, in addition to his commissionership,—the
duties of which office, we dare say, are quite as well
conducted as if his whcle time and talent were
devoted to it,—is, at this present moment, " Acting
Head Constable,"—a sort of substitute for the
veritable official himself, provided in accordance
with the same philosophy which prompts boys to
rig out, on the sth of November, a stuffed "Guy,"
in the absence of the flesh and blood original. In
this capacity Mr. Commissioner Dowling has just
distinguished himself by the discovery of a mare's
nest, affecting, or intending to affect the character
of Nlr. Parker, the Conservative member for St.
Anne's Ward, and a member of the Watch Com-
mittee, which yesterday afforded to our worshipful
borough magistrates another opportunity of dis-
playing to the world their desire to usurp the
functions of that body, and to arrogate to them-
selves the sole control of our Borough Police.
The proceedings, and the evidence taken, will be
found fully reported in another column; and we
willingly leave them to have all the effect which they
were expected to have upon the public. But we
must take exception against the misapprehension of
their powers displayed in the evidence Jf Mr. Dow-
ling and his superintendent Jones, end the subse- ,
quent resolution of the magistrates. "At half-past
one o'clock in the afternoon of the sth instant," says
Mr. Superintendent Jones, " I was informed there
were two Orange flags hanging out from the second
window of the house of John Allen, who keeps a
public-house in Mill-lane, Shaw's-brow." And
what then ? We ourselves, four days previously,
saw a green flag hanging from the window of Mr.
Holt's committee-room in Toxteth-park. Why is
he emblem of loyalty to be visited with the hand of
assumed authority, whilst the emblem of rebellion
flaunts in the wind unrebuked ? By what right did
Mr. Superintendent Jones and other officials inter-
fere in the matter? The solution of the question is
to be found in the evidence of Mr. Commissioner
Dowling. That gentleman, in answer to a question
by Mr. Rushton, informed the bench that "he
had directed the officers, in the ordinary discharge
of their duty, to go to the house and request."—and
the request of a superintendent of police is generally
received as a requirement—" that the colours might
be taken down. This was not in consequence of
any communication with the magistrates, but in
his discharge of the duty of head constable, in con-
sequence of the report made to him by Superin-
tendent Jones."
And what had this Jones remarked at Allen's
house to call for Mr. Dowling's stretch of his duty
as head constable. Had he seen anything likely to
lead to a breach of the peace—any symptoms of
popular ferment ? Mr. Superintendent Jones saw,
and therefore could report nothing of the kind. He
saw the usual concomitants of an anniversary—a few