The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-06-06 00:00:00

June 6, 1848,

THE RESULT OF FREE TRADE AS REGARDS

OUR COLONIES.

England sent (F
out certain Fraser
of heragazine
people to take posses-
alOik of outlying territories in the West. These people re-
tained the character of English subjects, and their pro-
ceedings were governed by the English parliament, and
regulated, checked, and circumscribed with the intent of
promoting English interests. They were not permitted to
trade with other nations, and were made peculiarly ame-
nable to the provisions of our navigation code. The West
Indies feel these restrictions severely. They are close to
the continent of America. The natural trade of these
islands would be with the United States ; but this trade
has been prevented flowing into this, which we term its
natural channel, and has been forcibly brought to Eng-
land. In return, however, England said, We will make
You our exclusive suppliers of sugar. All other nations
who can produce it shall be subject to a duty on its itnpor-
ttion, which will amount to a protective duty. We shall
thus forward our own interests as respects our marine,
and make a sacrifice for that benefit, by paying higher for
the
sugar we use than we should do were the trade open.
,while the restrictions and advantages were thus recipro-
cal, the system at least was just. But the moment that
one-half of the old system is changed, the remainder he-
comes a gross injustice. For example, if we determine
to have a free trade in sugar (to say nothing of the
element of injustice resulting from our legislation on
slavery),, all the restrictions which then remain upon
west Indian trade are violations of every principle
of fairness and honesty. We hope, therefore, that
every man who seeks for free trade in suaar is prepared at
the same time to throw open the ports of the West Indies
:
"° the world at large, and to allow the West Indian the
whole benefit of the rule of " buying in the cheapest,
selling in the dearest market.' Our colonial dominion
will then be a thing wholly different in its nature from
that which it is at present. That which is just and neces-
sarY as regards the West Indies, is just and necessary also
118 regards the East, and Canada and the whole of British
North America, Australasia, and the Cape of Good Hope;
in fact, of all our colonies and outlying possessions. They
cease, in fact, to be colonies in the old acceptation of the
by retainingngl heran dominionder overo them. Shen will be ableem to
prevent any adoption by them of a restrictive commercial
Policy. She will have free access to her colonial ports,
and her manufactures will not be subject to any exclusive
tax, or in fact to any tax not sanctioned by herself. But
She will have to meet the most complete competition in
every branch of commerce. Her fabrics, her ships, her
capital in every shape, will have to meet foreign fabrics,
Ships, and capital on terms of perfect equality ; and if the
doctrine of free trade be fair and true as regards corn in
England, this large consequence from it is also true. Our
colonial empire goes to the ground—for who can say that
Canada, trading with the United States as she pleases for
all her cotton, woollen, iron ; with France direct for her
wines; with the Brazils for her sugar and her rum ; who
will say that Canada is English ? True, she may be just
as profitable to us as at present. But if! there be any use
in the possession of colonies, such as we have hitherto
held, we shall have them no longer; and again and again
we must warn all who are the advocates of a free trade,
that this is the fair and necessary deduction from the new
theory which has found supporters in the leaders of both
the great parties of the State. There are persons, indeed,
who will accept the consequence we have here set forth
without shrinking—who, so far from lamenting over this
result, will openly avow that such is the very end of all
their present endeavours; that the description we have
given of the condition of our present colonies under this
~_new
. legislation, is precisely that which they desire to see.
With these hardy, unflinching reasoners, we have no quar-
tet—we understand them—differ, indeed, from their opi-
nions, but admire their honest, open speaking. But we
are curious to know whether such a result is contemplated
by Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell ; and if not,
now do they draw the line ? and how can they deny the
consequences we have described as that which is the fair
deduction from the celebrated rule laid down by Sir Ro-
bert Peel himself, of " buying in the cheapest, selling in
the dearest market." He at least must have seen that
this axiom destroyed with one blow our whole ancient co-
lonial system, and brought as a necessary result the utter
annihilation of our old and dearly-maintained Navigation-
law. But the die is cast, and we must stand the hazard
of the throw ; and all that remains for truly Conservative
statesmen is at once to accept the new doctrine as a
triumphant, though erroneous, creed •, and by insisting
upon its being consistently applied, to lessen its mischie-
vous effects. This statement may at first appear a para-
dox,). but upon reflection, we think, will be found accurate.
uncertainty is the greatest evil which can visit the com-
merce of any country. A long-protracted period of tran-
sition is but a prolongation of misery. Half free trade, if
such a thing can be, is worse than the complete application
of the principle.

A PLEA FOR THE MOLES.—The Essex Herald pub-
lishes the following letter from the Rev. G. Wilkins to a
farmer, who wrote to him inquiring how the wireworm
had been exterminated in the rev. gentleman's land. It
contains much sound, though, we dare say, unpalatable
doctrine, to the owners of smooth lawns and trim-bedded
gardens :—" Some 10 years since, when I came to my
living, and commenced cultivating the little land I hold,
it was, I may say, full of wireworms. Nothing could have
been worse, for my crops were in some places ruined by
them entirely. What, then, did Ido ? I adopted a plan
Which I recommended and published in periodicals many
Years since, viz., encouragine moles and partridges on my
lands. Instead of permitting a mole to be caught, I
bought all I could and turned them down alive-rand soon
tnY fields, one after another, were full of molehills. to the
amusement of all my neighbours, who at first set me
down for half a lunatic ; but now several adopt ray plan,
and are strenuous advocates of it. My fields became
exactly like a honeycomb ; and this continued even among
my standing and growing and ripening crops ; not a mole
Was molested, but I still bought more. This summer I
aad 14 brought, which I turned down, but they were not
,wanted ; I have nothing for them to eat—all that moles
'lye upon is destroyed, and so, poor things, they must
starve, or emigrate to some distant land, and thus get
bowstringed by savage men whom they aim to serve.
Adopt my plan, and it will be sure to answer. If you
have a nest of partridges, also encourage them; all the
summer they live upon insects, wireworms, &c., and con-
sider how many millions a covey will destroy in a single
insects
! Again, always remember that moles feed upon
L,asects, and of which the wireworm is the chief ; if you
aoubt this, open a mole and peep into his stomach.
Again, do not fear that moles injure your crops, either in
a field or in a garden ; it is a low and vulgar error to sup-
Pose that they root up young corn,—they never go any-
Where untill the wireworms have first destroyed the plants,
and then, innocent things, they are punished for others'
faults. If you do not like to see their hills, knock them
about with a hoe, as I did ; in is a healthful amusement,
and they will do your lands good. Do not despise any
plan because the farmers will not adopt it in your neigh-
bourhood ; farmers will adopt nothing till driven to it,
and nothing that is new and good."
WHAT AUSTRIA HAS DONE FOR HER ITALIAN PRO-
VINCES.—Burke, in one of his prophetic anticipations,
Pronounced that the first ruin of Europe would be in its
finance, and that every kingdom was, even in his day,
Wading into a boundless ocean of debt. Austria, of
course, had felt its share ; and after the desperate wars of
1805 and 1809, nothing is more wonderful in the history
of finance, or more honourable to the great statesman
Who for forty years presided over her fate, than that she
her Italian provinces never failed. Some of the details,
Which have already reached the public, give an extraor-
ary conception of the almost prodigality with which
Austria has lavished her means upon the bridges, roads,
and d general public communications of Lombardy. We
give those items in francs. Five millions spent in repair-
Fourd constrting dikes in t h e Mantuan province.
millions in completing the canal of the Naviglio.
tmillion and a half for roads in the mountains of the
ergamesque. A million and a half for the great corn-
Percial road of the Splugen. Two millions and a half
or the road over the Hiffer Jock. Three millions for
eAr'ntinuing it along the shore of the lake Como. Three
Valens and a quarter for completing the cathedral of
4lilan. A million for improvements in the city. Half
OMillion for the fine bridge over the Ticino. Twenty-
le millions for cross-roads, between 1814 and 1831,
less
miscellaneous expenditure ;—the whole being not
leGss than sixty-six millions in the fifteen years preceding
i°34, in the mere matter of keeping up the means ot
atercourse in a country where, half a century ago, the
°ss-roads were little more than goat tracks ; besides the
:alma' 'expense of about a million and a quarter on the
Pair of the roads since. And this munificent liberality
vas expended in Lombardy alone. The expenditure in
"ice in the latter period of its possession has been
the name
equal. The first French conquest had given it
e name of constitution, and nothing else. The famous
sePlibli car plundeed to the last coin. On its second
4,zue its treasury was again emptied by its French
Igia,nciPators ; and when it was restored to Austria in
tho', its population presented a pauper list of fifty-four
suitand individuals. Its commerce was in a state of
de_ , its palaces and public buildings were in a state of
aur its charitable establishments were without funds ;
Nvr„ few years more must have filled its can with the
se -°Ks of its houses. Within the next twenty years the
terarations cost the Austrian treasury not less than fifty-
(litre millions of francs ! Thus Venice rose from a win-
k:4 which all our travellers, immediately after the
now of 1815, pronounced to be irreparable ruin, and is
Aust°Pe of the first commercial cities in Italy. But the
iraorLati government bad not been contented with a mere
il'nment of the soil or the modes of communication
eatio,,gli employed extraordinary efforts in giving edu-
vdiid; to the people. We are to remember the difficulties
`Mier impede all such efforts in Romish countries.
jealoues the priest regulates the faith, he must always be
toyer, of the education. But the German habits of the
and :raent predominated over the superstition of Rome,
coup'elsPecies of military discipline was introduced, to
lent uojile young Italians to learn the use of their indo-
-18, erstandings. Within a few years after the peace
!icauhaa national school system was put in action in
the whole
Within a few more years it had spread over
ireeiv".,'° country, with such effect, that there was
..ahe jommune without its public place of education.
thuror‘ Is for boys amounted to upwards of two thou-
t uodrad:e hundred, and for girls to upwards of twelve
Thaht Nearly a hundred of the schools for boys
hi,ahevrerY extensive course of practical knowledge.
Aguraphys,
draclasses learned architecture, mechanics, geo-
Still lii ful for which
natural history, in the vigorous,
(or which German education is distinguished.
placeties schools, orportions of the former, were
z,tll"e
kinnotl_ie, chief to' wns,pfor the practical acquirement
,s,vele:ge most important for servants of public
Iltcihemat'itles
chthe.chief studies were history, commerce,
,chemistry, and French, German, and Italian.
4uhleer this s;stern, it is evident that very solid and valu-
e aectuiseme
might be made : and those were solely
Work of
thentAs ustrian sovereignty.—Blackwood.

MY UNCLE,,ROLAND'S DISCOURSE UPON

HONOUR.

(From " The" Caxton," in Blackwood's Magazine.)
" Gentlemen," began the Captain, at this distinct ap-
peal thus made to him—" Gentlemen, God made the
earth, but man made the garden. God made man, but
man recreates himself." •

" True, by knowledge," said my father.
" By industry," said Uncle Jack.
" By the physical condition of his body," said Mr.
Squills. " He could not have made himself other than he
was at first in the woods and wilds if he had had fins like
a fish, or could only chatter gibberish like a monkey.
Hands and a tongue, sir; these are the instruments of
progress."
" Mr. Squills," said my father, nodding, " Anaxagoras
said very much the same thing before you, touching the
hands."

" I can't help that," answered Mr. Squills ; " one
could not open one's lips if one were bound to say what
nobody else had said. But, after all, our superiority is
less in our hands than in the greatness of our thumbs."
" Albinus, De Sceleto, and our own learned William
Lawrence, have made a similar remark," again put in my
father.

" Hang it, sir !" exclaimed Squills, " what business
have you to know everything ?'
" ! No; but thumbs furnish subjects for in-
vestigation to the simplest understanding," said my fa-
ther, modestly.
" eatlemen," recommended my Uncle Roland,
" thumbs and hands are given to the Esquimaux, as well
as to scholars and surgeons—and what the deuce are they
the wiser for them ? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus
into mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, recreates
himself. How ? BY THE PRINCIPLE OF HONOUR. His
first desire is to excel some one else—his first impulse is
distinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his soul,
as if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one
end,—viz., to honour in that which those around him
consider honourable. Therefore, as man at first is ex-
posed to all dangers from wild beasts, and from men as
savage 2s himself, COURAGE becomes the first quality
mankind must honour ; therefore the savage is coura-
geous; therefore he covets praise for courage; therefore
he decorates himself with the skins of the beasts he has
subdued, or the scalps of the foes he has slain. Sirs,
don't tell me that the skins and the scalps are only hide
and leather: they are trophies of honour. Don't tell me
they are ridiculous and disgusting ; they become glorious
as proofs that the savage has emerged out of the first
brute-like egotism, and attached price to the praise which
men never give except for works that secure or advance
their welfare. By-and-by, sirs, our savages discover that
they cannot live in safety among themselves unless they
agree to speak the truth to each other ; therefore TRUTH
becomes valued, and grows into a principle of honour; so
brother Augustine will tell us that, in the primitive times,
truth was always the attribute of a hero."
" Right," said my father : " Homer emphatically gives
it to Achilles."

" Out of truth comes the necessity for some kind of
rude justice and law. Therefore men, after courage in
the warrior, and truth in all, begin to attach honour to
the elder, whom they intrust with preserving justice
amongst them. So, sirs, LAW is born—"
" But the first lawgivers were priests," quoth my
father.

" Sirs, lam coming to that. Whence arises the desire
of honour, but from man's necessity of excelling—ia
other words, of improving his faculties for the benefit of
others,—though, unconscious of that consequence, man
only strives for their praise? But that desire for honour
is unextinguishahle, and man is naturally anxious to
carry its rewards beyond the grave. Therefore, he who
has slain most lions or enemies, is naturally prone to
believe that he shall have the best hunting fields in the
country beyond, and take the best place at the banquet.
Nature, in all its operations. impresses him with the idea
of an invisible Power; and the principle of honour,—
that is, the desire of praise and reward,—makes him
anxious for the approval which that Power can bestow.
Thence comes the first rude idea of RELIGION ; and in
the death-hymn at the stake, the savage chants songs
prophetic of the distinctions he is about to receive.
Society goes on ; hamlets are built; property is estab-
lished. He who has more than another has more power
than another. Power is honoured. Man covets the
honour attached to the power which is attached to pos-
session. Thus the soil is cultivated ; thus the rafts are
constructed ; thus tribe trades with tribe ; thus Com-
mEucE is founded and CIVILIZATION commenced. Sirs,
all that seems least connected with honour, as we ap-
proach the vulgar days of the present, has its origin in
honour, and is but an abuse of its principles. If men
now-a-days are hucksters and traders—if even military
honours are purchased. and a rogue buys his way to a
peerage—still all arise from the desire for honour, which
society, as it grows old, gives to the outward signs of
titles and gold, instead of as once, to its inward essentials,
—courage, truth, justice, enterprise. Therefore, I say,
sirs, that honour is the foundation of all improvement in
mankind."

" You have argued like a schoolman, brother," said
Mr. Caxton admiringly ; " but still, as to this round
piece of silver,—don't we go back to the most barbarous
ages in estimating so highly such things as have no real
value in themselves—as could not give us one opportunity
for instructing our minds."
" Could not pay tbr a pair of boots," added Uncle
Jack.

" Or," said Mr. Squills, " save you one twinge of the
cursed rheumatism you havo got for life from that night's
bivougo"in the Portuguese marshes—to say nothing of
the bullet in your cranium, and that cork leg, which must
much diminish the salutary effects of your constitutional
walk."

" Gentlemen," resumed the Captain, nothing abashed,
" in going back to these barbarous ages, I go back to the
true principles of honour. It is precisely because this
round piece of er has no value in the market that it is
priceless, for thus it is only a proof of desert. Where
would be the sense of service if it could buy back my leg,
or if I could bargain it away for forty thousand a-year ?
No, sirs, its value is this—that when I wear it on my
breast men shall say, that formal old fellow is not so
useless as he seems. He was one of those wl'o saved
England and freed Europe.' And even wh'n I conceal
it here," (and devoutly kissing the medal, Uncle Roland
restored it to its ribbon and its resting-place,) "and no
eye sees it, its value is yet greater in the thought that my
country has not degraded the old and true principles of
honour by paying the soldier who fought for her in the
same coin as that in which you Mr. Jack, sir, pay your
bootmaker's bill. No, no, gentlemen. As courage was
the first virtue that honour called forth—the first virtue
from which all safety and civilization proceed, so we do
right to keep that one virtue at least clear and unsullied
from all the money-snaking, mercenary, pay-me-in-cash
abominations which are the vices, not the virtues, of the
civilisation it has produced."
My Uncle Roland here came to a full stop ; and, filling
his glass, rose and said solemnly—" A last bump,..2,
gentlemen.—' To the dead who died for England ! ' "

ANECDOTE OF THE FAR-FAMED MR. ROBT

BAKEWELL.

The celebrated Mr. Robert Bakewell, of Dishlcy, in
Leicestershire, and the founder of the New Leicester
Sheep, used to tell an anecdote with exceedingly high
glee, of a farmer not only of the olden school, but of the
golden times. This farmer, who owned and occupied
1,000 acres of land, had three daughters. When his
eldest daughter married, he gave her one quarter of his
land for her portion, but no money ; and he found, by a
little more speed and little better management, the pro-
duce of his farm did not decrease. When his second
daughter married, he gave her one-third of the remaining
land for her portion, but no money. He then set to work
and began to grub up his furze and fern, and ploughed
up what he called his poor dry furze land ; nay, and when
the furze covered in some closes nearly half the land.
After giving half his land away to two of his daughters,
to his great surprise he found that the produce increased ;
he made more money because his new broken up furze
land brought excessive crops, and at the same time he
farmed the whole of his land better, for he employed three
times more labourers upon it; he rose two hours sooner
in the morning, had no more dead fallows once in three
years, instead of which he got two green crops in one
year, and ate them upon the land. A garden never re-
quires a dead fallow. But the great advantage was, that
he bad got the same money to manage 500 acres as he
had to manage 1000 acres ; therefore he laid out double
the money upon the land. When his third and last
daughter married, he gave her 250 acres, or the half
which remained, for her portion, and no money. He
then found that he had the same money to farm one
quarter of the land as he had first to farm the whole. He
began to ask himself a few questions, and set his wits to
work how he was to make as much of 250 as he had done
of 1,000 acres. He then paid off his bailiff, who weighed
twenty stone ; rose with the lark in the long days, and
went to bed with the lamb : he got as much more work
done for his money : he made his servants, labourers, and
horses move faster; broke them from their snail's pace, and
found the eye of the master quickened the pace of the ser-
vant. He saw the beginning and the ending of everything;
and to his servants and labourers, instead of saying—"Go
and do it," he said to them—" Let us go, my boys, and
do it." Between ewe and go, he soon found out a great
difference. He grubbed up the whole of his furze and
ferns, and ploughed the whole of his poor grass land up,
and converted a great deal of corn into meat for the sake
of the manure, and he preserved his blackwater (the
essence of manure) ; cut his hedges down, which had not
been plashed for forty or fifty years; straightened his zig-
zag fences ; cut his watercourses straight, and gained a
deal of land by doing so ; made dams and sluices, and ir-
rigated all the land he could ; he grubbed up many of his
hedges and borders covered with bushes, in some places
from ten to fourteen yards in width, some more in his
small closes, some not wider than streets ; and threw
three, four, five, and six closes into one. He found out,
instead of growing whitethorn hedges and haws to feed
foreign birds in the winter, he could grow food for man,
instead of migratory birds. After all this improvement,
he grew more, and made more of 250 acres than he did
from 1,000; at the same time, he found out that half
England at that time was not cultivated from the want of
the means to cultivate it with. I let him rams, and sold
him long-horned bulls (said Mr. Bakewell), arid told him
the value of labour, both in-doors and out, and what
ought to be done with a certain number of men, oxen, and
horses within a given time. I taught him to sow less and
plough better ; that there were limits and measures to all
things ; and that the husbandman ought to be stronger
than the farm. I told him how to make hot land colder,
and cold land hotter; light land stiffer, and stiff land
lighter. I soon caused him to shake off his old deep-
rooted prejudices, and I grafted new ones in their places.
I told him not to breed inferior cattle, sheep, or horses,
but the best of each kind, for the best consumed no more
than the worst. My friend became a new man in his old
age, and died rich : whilst I bred cattle, sheep, and black