The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-12-24 00:00:00

LOCAL AND PROVINCIAL NEWS•

The Manchester testimonial to Sir Henry Pottinger
amounts to £3OOO.
Miss Bryers and Mr. Wooley have sold up their public
house in Frederick-street, and left Liverpool.
Mr. Booth, keeper of !the lock-ups at Birkenhead for
the last thirteen years, has sent in his resignation.
The Liverpool Observatory is now, as regards it most
popular use, the determination of time, in full operation.
On Thursday a fire, which did but trifling damage, took
place on the premises of Mr. Manning, cabinet-maker,
Stanley-street.
_ .

MANUFACTURING PROSPERITY.—The sum deposited
in the savings bank at Bolton amounts to £100,000., and
in the two last consecutive weeks the deposits paid into
the bank have exceeded the sum drawn out by £lOOO.
On Sunday week, at the parish church, Oldham, after
a sermon from the Rev. W. Falloon, of Liverpool, the
handsome sum of £l2B was collected in aid of the schools
attached to the church.

On Sunday week the Demerara packet, which sailed
from this port on Friday week, with a general cargo, and
amongst other things, a quantity of lime, was destroyed by
fire off Dublin. The crew were saved.
The Lancashire Epiphany! Quarter Sessions will be
held at Lancaster on Monday, December 30 ; at Preston,
on Wednesday, January 1 ; at Salford, on Monday, Jan.
6; and at Kirkdale, on Wednesday, Jan. 15.
SELLING OBSCENE WORICS.—On Friday, Bailey,
bookseller, of Manchester-street, was found guilty, before
the Recorder, of having exposed obscene books for sale,
and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment.
FATAL ACCIDENT.—On Saturday morning, a painter,
of Birkenhead, named Henry Norman, accidentally fell
from the front of one of the new houses in Hamilton-
square, where he was in the act of graining, and died
almost immediately after.
Several merchants in the various out-ports of Britain,
who have benefitted so much by the importation of guano,
have been intimating a wish to join in a public testimo-
nial to Norman M`Leod, Esq. of Liverpool, who was the
first individual that sent out a ship, at his own risk, for
guano, from the west coast of Africa.—Fife Journal.
SHIP ON SHORE.—The ship Captain Henderson, from
this port to Calcutta, struck on the Blackwater Bank, on
Friday morning, and afterwards went on shore in the
North Bay, about three miles to the northward of the
spot where the James Mathieson was lately wrecked.
The crew were all saved, and the discharge of the cargo
was proceeding.
THE DUTY ON COTTON WOOL.—On Tuesday last, a
meeting of the inhabitants of Manchester was held at the
Town Hall, in that place, in compliance with a requisi-
tion to the mayor, for the purpose of promoting the re-
peal
of the tax on cotton wool. The mayor presided, and
after resolutions against the duty had been adopted, a de-
putation was appointed to wait upon the lords of the I
treasury to urge the removal of the.duty.

DEATHS FROM BURNING.—On Saturday week, a child
(aged 7) of Mr. iThomas Sayle, of Scotland-road, was
burned to death in consequence of its clothes catching
fire, while at play, in a bed-room, with its sisters.--
On Tuesday last a child (aged 31) the son of a man
named Peter Bradley, living in Stewart-street, died from
injuries received, the previous day, from its clothes hav-
ing caught fire whilst playing in the nest cellar with two
other children.

THE LATE CoutstoN.—On Monday week, as the
crew of one of the Steam-tug company's packets were
hauling up the anchor off the Toxteth Dock, the body of
Mr. John Harrison, one of the persons who were in the
boat which swamped in the river on the night of the 21st
ult., by swinging of the Birkenhead steamer James, at the
time of the collision with the Royalist, was brought to
the surface and conveyed to the dead house. On Tues-
day an inquest was held on the body, and a verdict of
found drowned was recorded.

SERIOUS AFFRAY WITH POACHERS.-011 Wednesday
night last, as George Bury, head keeper to W. Garnett,
Esq., of Quernmore-park, and two of his assistants, were
going the round of the preserves, they heard some shots
fired from the direction of the wood, where pheasants are
usually found. The three, having no guns but stout
sticks, and accompanied by a large muzzled dog, made
towards the spot. Supposing there were three poachers,
each agreed to seize his man. One of the poachers was
thrown down and secured ; but between the head keeper
and another named Bury a desperate struggle took place.
The poacher struck his interrupter a terrible blow on the
head with the muzzle of his gun, inflicting a dangerous
wound. The dog, finding his master abused, became fu-
rious, and desperately attacked the poacher, tearing off
part of his coat before he got away. The keeper was
unable to pursue him from loss of blood, and he has hi-
therto escape d. A less serious stru took lace be-
tween two of the others who have been p taken and com-
mitted for trial.
A great deal of noise has been made about a few bags
of Venezuelan sugar imported at Liverpool. This noise
has been made on the ground that the sugar is slave-
grown.—The territory of Venezuela—a territory as large
as France—has a population under 90,000, of whom, not-
withstaeding that slavery has been long abolished by law,
about 30,000 (one in thirty) are in a state of qualified
slavery, for this sole reason, that the Republic has been
hitherto too poor to buy out the liberty of all its slaves,
though having made the best provision it was able to do
so. No slave, however, can be born in Venezuela, for all
are born free. No slave can be imported ; and even the
remnant of the slave population that lingers, notwith-
standing large annual redemptions ; and manumissions
cannot be transferred from master to master—the thirty
thousand slaves—one in thirty of the panula'ion, are thus
almost necessarily employed as house servants, or in the
cultivation of gardens and small farms, and, from the na-
ture of things, cannot be employed in sugar grounds.
The Venezuelan sugar, therefore, is neither slave-grown,
nor the produce of a country attached to slavery. All the
world is not as rich as Great Britain, and able, like her,
to buy the freedom of the negro ; but the Venezuelans are
doing the best they can to imitate our example, and there-
fore deserve all the encouragement that we can give them.
Unfort
unately, however, we have little opportunity to en-
courage the sugar trade, for the country produces little
sugar, and it costs a dollar the hundred weight to carry it
to the coast. To compare Venezuela in any respect with
slave trading countries, like Cuba and the Brazils, would
be the grossest folly as well as injustice. _Standard.