The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-01-21 00:00:00

POLITICAL MISCELLANY.

A Cabinet Council was held on Thursday afternoon
The Council sat three hours.

Another Cabinet Council has been summoned for to-
day. The ministers assembled at Cabinet Councils on
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday last.

The Bishop of London and the Earl of Harrowby had
an interview onMOnday with Lord John Russell.

Mr. Baird, of Gartslierrie, (Conservative,) and Mr. G.
Loch, (Whig,) have come forward to contest the Falkirk

boroughs.
The elections for the counties of Bedford and South
Nottingham will take place on or about the 12th of

Februa.ry

The inauguration of the Hull Parliamentary and Finan-
cial Reform Association took place on Wednesday, the
mayor in the chair. Among the speakers were J. Clay,
Esq., M.P., Sir J. Walmsley, M.P., H. T. Atkinson, &c.
Samuel Gurney, George Stacey, and John Hodgkin, a
deputation from the Society of Friends on the receipt
stamp duty, had an interview with the Chancellor of the
Exchequer on Friday, at his official residence in Downing-
street.

The 3rd of next month is destined to be a great field
day. Lord Stanley will entertain the Duke of Richmond
and a large number of Protectionists at a sumptuous ban-
quet at his mansion in St. James's-square, On the same
day, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell will give
their official entertainments to their supporters in the two
houses.

THE " TIMES " AGAIN AT FAULT.—For a length of
time the London Thnes has been representing the state
of commercial matters here and everywhere else as in a
state of unexampled prosperity, and yet on Wednesday
our contemporary commences a leader in the following
dismal strain. There must be a screw loose somewhere,
or the Times would not write thus :—" At this moment,
it must be confessed, an Englishman of cheerful tempera-
ment and constitutional opinions will be rather at a loss
whero.to find matter for political congratulation. Every-
where men are hugging their chains, or sinking under
their lashes, exhausted by the struggles of revolt, or still
whirling in the eddy of revolution. We see vast armies
that have yet to be paid, floating debts that have yet to
be funded, and bonds that are no better than waste paper.
The full pressure of an almost continental insolvency has
yet to fall upon the industrial interests, and no one can
say how many years the agriculture and commerce of
Damp"! have been thrown back by the madness of an
hour."

THE WINDOW-TAX ABOLISHED.—We rejoice to learn
that this obnoxious and grievously-oppressive tax is to be
immediately abolished. The following gratifying an-
nouncement appeared in the Times of Friday :—" The
numerous difficulties in the way of a mere commutation
will lead, we believe, to the surrender of the window-tax,
and the substitution of a very moderate house-tax. There
is reason to hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer
will have so considerable a surplus at the end of the finan-
cial year that he can easily afford a million or twelve hun-
dred thousand for this long-desired object. By the sub-
stitution of a house-tax calculated to raise about£6oo,ooo
for the window-tax raising about £1,800,000, the sacrifice
of revenue will not exceed £1,200,000. Such a tax will in
the first instance fall much lighter than the present win-
dow-tax, and will not interfere with the construction of
our dwellings. We beg to congratulate all our reacers on
this great measure of relief, particularly those excellent
persons who have laooured so long to improve the dwell-
ings of the poor, and have hitherto found the legislature
itself their greatest antagonist."
DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH INDUSTRY DURING THE
PAST HALF CENTURY.—Measured, then, by the test of
" ships, colonies, and commerce," the condition of Eng-
land at the present moment, when compared with its con-
dition at the beginning of the present century, may be
pronounced as highly satisfactory. Our commercial acti-
vity has, at least, kept pace with the rapid growth of our
population, and, bearing in mind the depreciation in the
value of commodities which has been brought about by
competition, has even outgrown it. But a still better il-
lustration of the activity and progressive increase of that
commerce which we all feel to lie at the very foundation
of our national greatness, may be drawn from a compari-
son of the exports of our own native produce and some of
our staple articles of manufacture. We will take coal as
our first illustration. In the year 1801 there were exported
coastwise from the two ports of Newcastle and Sunderland
less than 2,000,000 tons of that valuable fuel; in the year
1847 the quantity fell very little short of 4,500,000 tons ;
so that in less than half a century the home consumption
of coal from these two sources has greatly outstripped the
growth of population. But the increase in our exports to
foreign parts from the same ports has been still more re-
markable ; for while in 1801 the quantity exported was
less than 150,000 tons, in 1847 it amounted to very nearly
1,500,000 tons, being more than a tenfold increase. Nor
is the force of the comparison much impaired if we sub-
stitute for the year 1801, which was a year of war. the
year 1816, the first year of peace. The chief increase in
our foreign coal trade has taken place since the peace.
The money value of our exports in coal and culm in each
of the years 1848 and 1349 exceeded X 1,000,000 sterling.
We will take another article of prime necessity, and one
requiring for its production comparatively little skill, as a
test of the relative activity of our commerce now and at
the beginning of the present century, namely salt. The
export of this valustble condiment in the year Mel slightly
exceeded 7,500,000 bushels; in 1827 it fell even below
that amount : but in the year 1848 we exported very nearly
19,000,000 bushels. In this article, then, we have more
than a twofold export to set against our standard of com-
parison—a less than twofold increase of population. If
frotn,eoal and salt we pass to iron, we shall obtain results
still mote remarkable. It appears from estimates of the
total ,quantity of iron produced in England and
Wales .at tliffetent periods, that while in 1350, by the

use of charcoal, about 27;000 tons of iron ,weremnade,
in 1788, after coke had been partially substituted
for charcoal, about 68,000 tons, and 'in 4806 about
250,000 tons, in 1849 the ,quantity amounted to about
2,000,000 tons. In 1848 the export of iron and steel,
wrought and unwrought, exceeded 626,000 tons, valued
at nearly £5,000,000, exclusive of machinery and mill-
work to the value of upwards of £BOO,OOO. Hence it ap-
pears that the present export of iron alone more than
doubles the total luantity produced in the early part of
the present century, and that the total production of iron
has been at least quadrupled. it is in the rapid growth of
our textile manufactures, however,—whether measured by
the quantity exported or the total quantity; of the raw ma-
terial consumed,—that we have the most extraordinary in-
dication of the great and growing prosperity of the country.
Mr. Porter, in a paper published in the last number of
the Statistical Society's Journal, tells us that the quan-
tity of cotton consumed in the year 1800 was somewhat
above 56,000,000 lbs., but that in 1849 it had reached the
almost incredible amount of 775,500,000 lbs. We have
thus an increase in the short period of half a century of
1284 per cent. ! Nor has this astonishing increase in the
consumption of cotton taken place at the expense of other
textile manufactures; for we :find the same authority
stating that, in the comparatively short interval from
1831 to 1849, the import of foreign flax has advanced
from 936,000 cwt. to 1,800,4100 e*t.—a nearly twofold
increase; while the value of linen exported has risen
from little more than 1,700,000 in 1832, to upwards of
3,000,000 in 1849 ; and of linen yarn from about £9,000
to about £738,000; a nearly twofold increase of the
finished manufacture, a more than eightyfold increase of
the half-finished means of foreign production. Even
though the use of cotton has very largely superseded that
of woollen, the export of woollen goods has suffered no
diminution, if we omit from comparison the few years
which immediately succeeded the restoration of peace
with America ; for whereas in 1819 the export of woollen
goods fell short of £6,000,000 sterling, the export in 1847
had nearly reached £7,000,000. Nor has the vast increase
of the cotton manufacture taken place at the expense of
that of silk; for the importation of silk, which at the
beginning of the present century amounted to about
1,000,000 lbs., now exceeds 5,51_0,000 ; while the de-
clared value of silk eoods exported has risen from
£371,000 in 1820 to £978,000 in 1847.—Fraser.