The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-06-25 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 25, 1850.

IT is rather difficult for any individual to please
all his friends • but a journalist experiences ten
times more difficulty in this respect than ordinary
people. A shadow himself, he is surrounded by
unknown critics of all classes and tastes, half of
whom he is continually offending by the very course
-which pleases the other. One class complains of
too little attention being paid to local matters ; a
second asks why we do not discuss foreign ques-
tions, and treats the local news as idle tittle tattle ;
a third is almost exclusively interested in commer-
cial intelligence ; a fourth wishes more attention
-and space to be devoted to poetry, music, and
the drama ;—in short, to enable the conductor of
a publication like our own to please the entire
circle of its readers, it would almost be essential
that no two copies of it should be alike. Im-
pressed with this conviction we have almost invari-
ably been influenced more by our own judgment,
and that of known friends in whom v;•e could
confide, than by any hope of succeeding in the
difficult feat of pleasing every body.
As an instance of the unreasonable tone in which
we are sometimes addressed, we shall take the
liberty of giving the following, received in the
past week ;
" Sns,—lt is generally remarked that the LIVERPOOL
STANDARD is not very warm in the cause of Protection,
neither is it in the cause of Conservatism, although a
great number of conservatives read it ; you are more
impelled by the pressure from without, than entitled to
much credit for your exertions in directing the tide of
public opinion, or opposition to a Whig Government, you
are more the instructed than the instructor—As Lord
Stanley is not much of an agitator though he would reap
the fruits of what the country will do without much as-
sistance from him—neutral leaders will join in the vic-
tory, but not so much in fight. These things must be
well noted whenever there is cause for such an accusation.
" A CAPITALIST NEARLY SHUT UP."
It is a singular fact that our last publication was
the first occasion for months past in which we had
not prominently advocated the cause of protection,
or discussed some question connected with Conserva-
tive interests; and that we refrained from doing so
expressly because we conceived the various speakers
at the recent Amphitheatre meeting had given the
public quite sufficient for another week's digestion,
especially as we had for several weeks previously
received numerous representations of a precisely
contrary nature to the above, complaining that we
gave too much prominency to the demolition of
Free Trade opinions, and affirming that the STAND-
ARD was becoming little else than the " Protection-
ists' Gazette." There is one expression in our
correspondent's letter, but for which we should per-
haps have not given it any special notice. He
says that we are "rather impelled by the pressure
from without than entitled to much credit for our
exertions in directing the tide of public opinion in
opposition to a 'Whig Government." In what that
" pressure" consists we are really at a loss to know.
Our own experience tells us that the Conservative
body in Liverpool have, during the past few years,
been anything but pressing in their opposition to
Whig measures; that whilst a good trade was
doing some of them were beginning to think that
a cheap loaf was not so very bad a thing as it bad
been called ; and, in fact, the endeavours of the
Conservative press to warn the community of the
result of our free trade policy were treated by many
as rather a bore than otherwise. The only pressure
that we know of, as connected with the present
position of Conservatives, is that pressure upon the
pocket which our " capitalist nearly shut up," ap-
pears to have felt, and which has of late produced
some astonishing convictions, and awakened thou-
sands, previously apathetic, to a sense of their dan-
ger.
We may add that no paper in Liverpool has
done so much as ours to warn CAPITALISTS
" nearly shut up" of the difficulties which beset
them, and it is certainly not our fault if they
are not by this time fully alive to the monster
grievance with which they have to contend—the
disgraceful Currency Laws of Sir Robert Peel.

FROM the Monthly Colonial Circular of Mr. R.
Burn, of Manchester, giving the exports of cotton,
silk, linen, and woollen manufactures during the
first four months of the years 1847, 1848, 1849,
and 1850, we observe an increase to some markets,
and a decrease to others, which are very significant
upon questions, at the present moment of vital
importance to the true interests of the manufac-
turing and commercial portion of the community.
Take the first pOrt named in the circular in ques-
tion—Calcutta—we find an increase of 20,240,579
yards of plain calicoes in the first four months of
1850 over the average of the corresponding months
of the three years preceding, the exports this year
being above one-half those of the three preceding
years. Of printed and dyed calicoes we find the
increase to he 6,202,717 yards, the total of the
three preceding years being only 7,965,230 yards,
and the exports of the present year alone exceeding
those of the previous three years by 559,233 yards !
In both these articles there has been a large increase
during the past month over the average of the
three preceding months. To Madras there has
been a similar large increase this year; the exports
of both articles exceeding the gross quantity of those
of the four months of 1847, 1848, and 1849,
and those of the last month being upwards of a
third in plain calicoes, and a half of printed and
dyed, of the aggregate of the threepreceding months
of this year. To Sincapore and Manilla, to Batavia,
and to other ports of India, there is also a large
increase.

Now, we ask, how are we to account for this
vast increase of our shipments of cotton goods to
India, and what proof have we that they have gone
forward to a profitable market? fhe prices of the
leading articles of East Indian production have
certainly not increased materially during the past
year over former years ; and we are not aware that
the quantities imported into Europe have. The
prices of cotton goods, owing to the advance of the
raw material, have been anything but conducive to
their increased consumption in the Indian market.
The circumstance of this immense increase is the
more singular, inasmuch as we find no increase in
our exports of other textile fabrics to that market.
The
conclusion, then, is inevitable, that a forced
trade has been carried on ; that our cotton manu-
facturers, deprived of their usual home market,
have been driven to extend unwarrantably their
shipments to foreign and colonial markets ; and
the prospect of a profitable issue certainly appears
to us to be anything but promising, as will be seen
from the following extract from the commercial
intelligence brought to us by the last India mail
"The mercantile advices from India received this after-
noon by the overland mail are rather of a discouraging
character. At Bombay, although money was easier,
business was more dull than ever, the season being on the
point of closing, while large arrivals had added to the
weight of previously existing stocks. At Calcutta, also,
there had been increased dulness, with some decline in
prices, although in that city stocks were by no means
heavy. From China the accounts are less unfavourable,
the Canton market exhibiting a better tone, but the
demand was still limited, and at Shanghae, notwithstand-
ing the firmness of holders, prices had in many instances
receded."
-While this was being penned not a yard of the
large shipments of the present year could have
reached India ; and of the further largely increased
shipments of the past two months not even an ad-
vice could have been received, even through the
overland mail. It is greatly to be feared that a
ruinous revulsion must shortly occur in this quarter,
which will tend to prove that large additions to our
unaccompanied by a exports, when prosperous