The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-05-14 00:00:00

tion of this country, limited only by our means
to consume and to pay for it ?
We are far from certain that such a state of
things as we have predicted as menacing the British
farmer is not approaching more rapidly than is
generally anticipated. On Saturday last, the fol-
lowing paragraph appeared in the columns of the
London Times :

" A vessel arrived from Alexandria has brought the
large quantity of 5,000 quarters of grain, comprising the
entire cargo, and consigned to order. The vessel in
which this importation took place belonged to Austria,
but the cargo was now admissible under the repealed laws
of last year."

What may have been the cost of this particular
cargo we shall not pretend to say. From a Para
graph, however, which has been sent by a corn
merchant of Milford to the Pembrokeshire- Herald,
containing a price current received from his corres-
pondent at Alexandria, we should think that the
speculation mentioned by our contemporary will
prove a most profitable one. The following is the
information contained in the circular in question:—
"On the 6th inst., Egyptian wheat could be bought,
free on board, at the exceedingly low price of fifteen
shillings and five pence per Imperial quarter ; and
vessels. could be chartered to convey it to a direct port in
England for four shillings per quarter : so that, allowing
two shillings a quarter more for other expenses. it could
be landed here at twenty-one shillings and five pence,
or about two shillings and eight pence per Winchester
bushel. This, be it remembered, is for wheat of the
FIRST quality of that country; the Behira, or wheat of
the SECOND quality, is sold at about four pence per
Winchester less."

" Twenty-one shillings and fiVepence per quarter
for wheat of the first quality !" Can our agricultu-
ral friends furnish us with anything at this price?
Can high farming, Mr. Huxtable's pigs and ammo-
nia, enable our new school of farming Solons to live
and pay rents with such cargoes meeting them in
the market ? Assuredly not ; and we venture to tell
them that this will shortly he by nn means an ex-
ceptional case. In a couple of months we shall have
the produce of the early harvests of the south of
Europe pouring into our markets, to take advantage
of their present temporary firmness ; and the quota-
tions of Dantzic and other markets of the north
must inevitably approach a little nearer than at pre-
sent to the wretched prices allowed to the poor serfs
in the interior, whose toil raises the produce from
the earth. Nothing less than a blight, we are satis-
fied, can prevent prices of grain, during the coming
summer and autumn, falling lower than in any year
during the present century. What will be the
result ? We fear to contemplate its disaster and
danger.

IT is a fact just now, which few will dispute,
that in this land of ours There is scarcely an inte-
rest or a class which is not complaining of severe
depression or suffering. On Tuesday last we had
disclosed to us, at a meeting held in the Amphi-
theatre, the appalling condition of the journeymen
tailors. We learned from that meeting, upon unim-
peachable authority, that in a Christian country
there are men, with souls to be saved, who cannot
earn the means of supporting life without trampling
upon one of their Creator's most holy ordinances.
A journeyman tailor, under the sweating and slop-
shop system, must starve a day if he presumes to
enjoy that day of rest which has been set apart for
God's worship. Since Tuesday, the attention of
the legislature has been occupied with the condi-
tion of the journeymen bakers ; and a powerful
protest has still more recently been made against
the policy which is prostrating the agricultural
classes. The merchant and tradesman interest
share the general suffering. On the 4th of this
month we learn that three thousand dishonoured
acceptances were lying under protest in London.
The manufacturing interest, for whose exclusive
benefit we have been of late legislating, is no better
off. Every advice, and every trade circular, which
we have from the manufacturing districts proclaims
a tale of profitless enterprise and unemployed in•
dustry.
It is significant of the truth of a deteriorated
condition of the nation that the especial organ of
the party, which assumes for itself the reputation
of being the best informed upon political matters,
is sending its " commissioners" into our large
towns to- inspe.ct personally the deplorable condi-
tion of our labouring masses. The Morning Chro-
nicle gives from timeto timesuch pictures and details
of suffering, vice, and squalid immorality amongst
our poor as might make the angels weep. No
Christian land ought to have upon its face such
plague spots. No statesman ought to lay his head
upon his pillow and sleep until he has at least
attempted to remove the stigma which such a state
of things casts upon the policy of the legislature.
No minister possessed of a conscience, ought to
receive a farthing of his salary so long as the evi-
dence exists of his incompetence to secure a reason-
able amount of prosperity to the people over whom
he is set to govern. The most wealthy nation of
the earth has a large portion of its population con-
tinuously upon the verge of starvation and despair !
Can this last ? Is it reconcileable with the main-
tenance of our institutions, or the security of pro-
perty ? It is not. A country so circumstanced
may be said to be situated over the mouth of a
smouldering volcano. Happily for us, at present
the demagogue is idle. The men of the O'Connell
and O'Connor stamp have disgusted and betrayed
their dupes. But a whole people will before long
take their own cause in hand and speak for them-
selves, in tones and with an energy which will
ensure. their being heard.

We would most emphatically warn that party—
the so-called Conservatives—whose leading organ
is holding up to the world's ga e the deplorable
condition of large masses of the people—of the
necessity of being prepared in time with an ameli-
orative policy. You acknowledge the existence of
widely spread and accumulating distress and crime.
What is the cause of the disease, and what is the
remedy you propose for its removal ? Do not
leave it to be improvised by an excited and infu-
riated people. They would inevitably be impelled
towards some measure of revolution or confiscation.
A mob is not a reasoning body. Hungry men,
driven to measures of appropriation, take generally
more than they absolutely require.
The minds of the public, of all classes and par-
ties, require to be drawn at once to a calm and
searching examination of the actual condition of
the country ; and as exposing a few of the darkest
phases of existing society, we thank the " Com-
missioners" of the metropolitan press for their
labours. They show most assuredly a state of
things which not one of the specifics advocated by
the great contending parties in the legislature is
sufficiently searching in its operation to reach.
What measure of financial reform, for example,
would affect the destitution and misery to be found
amongst the semi-pauper class in our large towns ?
Such reform would leave them still grovelling in
vice, squalor and filth, continually hanging a bur-
then upon the middle classes, and gradually lower-
ing the condition of the industrious working classes.
Parliamentary reform, extension of the suffrage and
the ballot—the crotchets of the Walmsleys and
Heyworths—wbat man is mad enough to anticipate
any direct benefit from such organic changes ? A
system of Government emigration would only
remove from the country the skilled workman, the
small farmer, and the honest and hardy agricul-
tural labourer—the very classes most valuable to
us—with, perhaps, a portion of the able-bodied of
our pauper classes. Mr. Sydney Herbert's pro-
posed export of London sempatresses would only
serve to make room for a fresh supply, who would
rush to occupy even so wretched a position.
_

The most efficient measure of relief, under the
existing circumstances of the country, would be a
measure of fair protection to British industry,
which would restore to the manufacturer, the mer-
chant, the shopkeeper and the artisan, a borne
consumption for the products of their enterprise
and industry. But even such a measure, per se,
would fail in restoring us to a healthy condition.
It must be borne in mind that a large portion of
the evils under which the country labours have
been gradually accumulating whilst a protective
system was in operation. The condition of our
working classes has been deteriorating year after
year ; our middle classes have been descending in
the social scale ; and the power of capital over
industry has been doubled, and even trebled. The
distance betwecm the two ends of the social column
has gradually extended itself ; and we have been
approaching to a state of things in which there
will be only two classes—the very wealthy and the
very poor. The former have been adding field to
field, and house to house, whilst the latter have
only been adding hour to hour of the toil required
to enable them to subsist. This is the true danger
of our position as a nation. This is the giant evil
for which a remedy must be found. And whatever
statesman and whatever party will boldly and
honestly grapple with it will earn an immortality of