The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-02-03 00:00:00

BAD NEWS FOR THE FARMERS

The League have always told us that, under a perfectly
free trade, we need never anticipate any very large supply
of foreign grain. The Liverpool Mercury, however, has
just enlightened us as to the precise quantity which we
shall receive. In a leading article on Friday, in which he
finds fault with Sir Robert Peel's propositions as not go-
ing far enough, he gravely informs us that even the shil-
ling duty which is to remain after February 1849 is a
heavy tax upon the food of the people—" a tax amounting
to at least a million sterling per annum" I Now, if we
have any skill in arithmetic, a million sterling contains
twenty million shillings ; and, to produce this sum by a
duty of a shilling a quarter, we must import no less than
twenty million quarters per annum (I .9 or nearly the
amount of the present consumption of Great Britain.
What the farmers can do with their useless fields and
more useless ploughs and harrows with this immense im-
portation of foreign grain the Mercury can perhaps tell
them—we cannot. We hope, however, our wise brother
is only joking, or has put a cypher too much to his reck-

oning.

The subject of the lecture at St. Andrew's Church this I
evening is " The perils and obligations, respectively, of
prosperity and adversity.";
We understand that the Rev. Hugh M`Neile has a
work of considerable extent in the press, on the constitu-
tion and present state of the church in this country, with
particular reference to the Tractarian heresy.
SCRIPTURAL EDUCATION.—Our readers will perceive
in our advertising columns that appeals are about to be
made in Liverpool on behalf of the Sunday School So-
ciety for Ireland. We sincerely trust that the friends of
scriptural education will respond liberally to these appeals,
and that the excellent men who are to advocate the cause
will return to their native land refreshed with the Christian
sympathy and support which they anticipated on leaving
family and home. From a paper which has fallen into
our hands it appears that the time-honoured institution
has in connexion with it 2972 schools, containing 246 788
pupils and 23,408 gratuitous teachers. Surely its claims
(guaranteed by the most respectable patronage, both lay
and ecclesiastical) are not to be questioned at this event-
ful period of Irish history.
ILLEGAL DISTILLATION —At the police-court yester-
day four men—Peter M`Donald, Thomas Martin, Patrick
Traynor, and James Hughes, together with the wife of
Martin—were brought before Mr. Rushton under this
charge. It appeared that Mr. John Walker, Supervisor
of Excise, in consequence of information, had gone to a
house in Field. street (near the Collegiate Institution),
and which he believed commanded a rent of about £3O a-
year, and there found the prisoners in a fighting and drs-
orderly state, though several police-officers were present.
He there also found several gallon of what is called " low
wines" (the first distillation from the malt in making
whiskey), also a ten-gallon cask and several tubs used for
the wash. The low wines had been spilt about the cellar
floor; a ten-gallon cask and several tubs that had con-
tained that liquor were also found, and several bottles
that had contained " the cratur'r itself, but which the
parties had broken in their alarm, for the purpose of con-
cealment. The supervisor, in fine, had found everything
but the still itself, though there were appearances of such
an article having been recently fixed in one of the cellars.
The female prisoner was discharged, not being con-
sidered amenable. The rest were required to pay, under
the act 7th and Bth Geo. IV., the sum of £3O each, or to
be imprisoned three months.
DAMP CELLARS IN LIVERPOOL.—We need hardly say
that damp kitchens are frequent enough. We have even
known a heavy rain to sink into the sandstone rock. and
and force the fluid contents of the cess pool, with which it
had been previously saturated, through the kitchen floor
of a well built house, so as to cover it to the depth of
three inches with putrid fluid ; and sickness has followed
as a consequence ! The whole of the town, including the
enormous additions which have been recently made, has
been built after this manner, and the consequences in the
poorer districts are deplorable. Every cellar in the bo-
rough must be to some extent damp ; and a few years ago
nearly 40,000 of our poorer fellow-townsmen lived in '
them. The corporation survey has shown that there
were lately in Liverpool parish 2,420 cellars, with pro-
bably 10,000 inhabitants, absolutely wet or damp. Water,
and the fluid contents of cess-pools, drain into these
wretched abodes, and if not received into wells, they cover
the floor. Mr. Samuel Holme states in his report, that
be bad to walk on bricks, across the flooded floor of a
cellar, to the straw litter on which a poor woman was
laid, who had been confined only a few days. He says—
" This is by no means an extraordinary case," for it
would b e easy•" to find hordes of poor creatures living in
cellars which are almost as bad .nd as offensive as char-
nel houses." Every medical man who has been in the
habit of visiting the poor can verify this statement.—
From yesterday's Liverpool Health of Towns Advocate.
THE MANUFACTURERS AND FREE TRADE.—The
measure of Sir Robert Peel is bold in the extreme. It has,
we conceive, gone deeper and wider than the nation anti-
cipated; and its reception by the country cannot, we con-
ceive, at this moment be anticipated with any approach to
certainty. For it is not the agricultural body only that is
affected by the expansive proposal, but the manufacturing
interest at large, and this universally, and, in many cases,
in the most sensible degree. Even the cotton manufacture,
which the gentlemen cotton-spinners of the League con-
sidered to rest on a height of perfect security, may be af-
fected. The American low cottons, called Domestics,
fairly undersell those of this country in the Chinese and
other markets; and now, to be admitted with perfect free-
dom into this country, they may undersell us here too.
Indeed, were it not for the seriousness of the subject, as
affecting all classes of the community, the aristocracy and
the nation at large might well laugh at the League, and
thoroughly enjoy the ability with which the Premier has
struck them absolutely dumb by acting on their professed
but not real principles. Not one of them has dared
hitherto to open his mouth on the subject, in or out of the
House. What they wanted, with the fullest professions
of absolute love for the most enlarged free trade, was the
instant removal of the protection the landed interest of the
country enjoyed, and to allow to stand over, no one knew
how long, the consideration of the protection which the
manufacturing interest of the country possessed ; and this
happy, honest, and honourable arrangement of their mat-
ters they flattered themselves they had attained. " No,
no, Gentlemen," says the wily Premier, "it is free trade
you desire and it is free trade that you shall have. Free-
dom in one •article would be serving your idol little ; by
approaching freedom in all, I shall serve him much, and
give a delight to your heart beyond your highest antiOipae
Lions !"—.Record,