The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-07-25 00:00:00

SPAIN.

Advices from Madrid have been received to the 16th
inst. Narvaez arrived on the 15th before Madrid. The
municipality replied on the lith to his summons, that
Madrid would remain neutral, but would not open its
gates until the termination of the struggle. The national
guards are under arms. Yesterday a slight engagement
took place ; a captain and two national guards were killed.
There is great agitation in Madrid.

EGREMONT HOTEL AND FERRY,-It will he seen in
an advertisement which appears in another column, that
both these concerns have now passed into the hands of
the respected landlady of the Egremont Hotel, Mrs.
Sharpies ; and, as in every case it has been found that
such an arrangement has conduced to the convenience of
the Public, we have no doubt that, in this particular case,
it will be found to have especially done so, and that not
only the casual visitors of this delightful part of Cheshire,
but the inhabitants as well, will profit by the change.

ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE.—During the past week and
yesterday evening, several novel and attractive pieces have
been produced at this theatre, and we are happy to an-
nounce that the audiences have been numerically more
important than heretofore. This evening Mrs. T. Car-
man takes her benefit. The pieces selected for the occa.
sion arc from her own pen--and from the celebrity she
has already gained as an authoress, we fervently Lope this
appeal will be a successful one.

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It may be alleged, that for any very extensive increas
in the producing or consuming powers of India, we must
wait the gradual developement of her resources ; and that
the position of Great Britain, embarked as she is in an
extensive manufacturing system which cannot, if even it
was desirable, be checked without danger to her internal
tranquility, she cannot wait;—she must at once plunge
into that wild career of change, in her inter-national and
inter-colonial arrangements, which are fabled to produce,
at once, such an increase of her commercial activity as
will give employment to her population. Such a neces-
sity, if it did not exist to the extent which is alleged, it
would certainly be necessary for a wise government to
meet. But does it exist—can it be proved to exist to the
extent alleged ? Or is it certain that, in the destruction
of our colonial interests, which is openly sought by philo-
sophers of the Cobden and Hume class, and in that race
of competition sought by ultra free-traders, are the prompt
and efficacious remedies by which it is to be met? We
say, not at random or in a spirit unworthy of so import-
ant a matter, " No !" We say that the development of
the resources of India is to be found a more prompt and
efficacious, and what is above all, a more enduring re-
medy, than any ultra system of free-trade can furnish us
withal. Let us examine the progress thus far of our com-
merce with India, as described in the valuable paper from
which we have above quoted :
" During the five years ending with 1811, the total
amount of exports by British subjects to India, did not
exceed £2,000,000: and of these, it is remarked by Mr.
' a very considerable portion cons of

military stores. The legitimate trade with India and its
100,000,000 of inhabitants was really, therefore, of hardly
more importance than that with Jersey and the Isle of
Man.'

" Since the abolition of the monopoly of the East India
Company, the trade has increased very considerably.
There can be no comparison between the advantages of a
trade opened to general competition, and one that is con-
fined exclusively to one large company. In the Report of
the Committee of the House of Lords, on the foreign
trade of the country, printed in May, 1821, it is stated,
the greatly increased consumption of British goods in
the East since the commencement of the free trade, can-
not be accounted for by the demand of European resi-
dents, the number of whom does not materially vary ;
and it appears to have been much the greatest in articles
calculated for the general use of the natives. That of the
cotton manufactures alone is stated, since the first open-
ing of the trade, to have been augmented from four to five
fold (it is now augmented from fifty to sixty fold). The
valke of the merchandise exported from Great Britain to
India, which amounted in 1814 to £870,177, amounted in
1819 to £3,052,741 ; and although the market appears
then to have been so far overstocked as to occasion a di-
minution of nearly one half in the exports of the follow •
ing year, that diminution appears to have taken place i❑
more in all articles intended for the consumption to
Europeans than of natives, and the trade is now stated to
the committee by the best informed persons to be re-
viving.' _ _

" By the Act 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 85, for continuing
the Charter of the East India Company until 1854, it was
enacted that the Company's trade should cease on the 22d
of April, 1834 ; and that the Company should, as soon
after that period as possibls, dispose of their stocks on
hand, and close their commercial business. The Com-
pany's commercial character has therefore been at an end
since the 22d of April, 1834. Since that period the trade
to British India, China, and the East generally, has been
open to free and unrestricted mercantile enterprise, and
is destined to attain an extent and magnitude of which at
present no definite idea can be formed. The trade in cot-
ton alone, which in 1814 amounted only to about £llO,OOO,
amounted in 1835 to no less a sum than £1,801,775."
Up to the year 1835, then, we had progressed in the
value of our relations with India to an unparalleled extent ;
and if since that period our commerce with that country
has been marked with vicissitude and not a little disaster,
the cause—an ample one—is to be found in her financial
weakness. We withdrew the powers of the East India
Company before we had prepared India for the change.
We threw the immense monetary transactions hitherto
regulated. imperiously enough, by that powerful company,
into the hands of private traders; and the result was a
series of disasters which must for a time have paralysed
the energies of the East Indian or any other commercial
community. According to the Calcutta Monthly Journal
of February, 1838, the defalcations of six of the houses
conducting the monetary affairs between Calcutta and
Europe, stood as follows :
Palmer and Co.'s defalcation .
Alexander and Co.
Macintosh and Co. ..
Ferguson and Co.
Colvin and Co.
Cruttenden and Co 1,350,000

X 14,330,000

Such an amount of loss, inflicted upon the traders and
natives of the East Indian community, must have been
productive of serious inconvenience and suffering; and,
with the course of aggression pursued by the late govern-
ment of India, and consequent additional drain for money
which took place, is quite sufficient to account for the
temporary stoppage which occurred in the progressive
developement of the resources of the country.
This arrest of the onward course of India is now, we
trust and believe, at an end. With a pacific policy on the
part of its government, and the devotion of its energies
and those of the British nation to the improvement of the
condition of the Indian people, we shall have ere long in
that country the most valuable customer of Great Britain
—the most fertile producing country on the globe! The
most important desideratum of India is a sound banking
system, by which her cultivation can be carried on with-
out the payment of those exorbitant rates of interest for
the capital necessary, which has hitherto depressed the
condition of her agriculture. This desideratum is being
successfully furnished. By the formation of joint stock
banks in all her presidencies, the wants of her trading
classes are being adequately and advantageously supplied,
and the exactions of the native usurers put down ; and the
success with which the operations of these establishments
have been attended, fully justify the belief that at no
distant period the capital of Great Britain will secure in
that country abundant and profitable investment, ferti-
lising in its progress and reflecting back the prosperity
and civilization which it spreads abroad to the cottage of
the humblest British labourer, who is at this momen
pining in compulsory idleness in the midst of an amoun
of unemployed wealth greater than has existed in any
country in the annals of the world.