The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-01-31 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JANUARY 31, 1843

It is really a rich sight to witness the utter con-
fusion which reigns just now in the camp of the free-
trade opposition. On the one hand, we have Mr.
Richard Cobden and his congregated noodles, " tear-
ing passion to tatters," and shouting " repeal" at the
top of their 'lungs. Then we have a repealer of ano-
ther sort, sitting sore and sulky in his den in Dublin—
watching, with fishy eyes, the gold as it drops into the
begging-box of the League, whilst he hands round his
own empty wallet, and whines his " date obolum," in
the ears of the shirtless and shoeless, who compose hts
morning levees. Next comes the Pahnerstonian sec-
tion, represented by the Morning Chronicle, building .
their hopes upon foreign embroilments, and clinging
to their fixed-duty proposition and their sugar budget.
Then the enlightened aristocratic whig party, pro-
claiming, through the columns of the Globe, that their
free trade consists in reciprocity treaties. Added to
these—mingled with them—we have the complete-
suffrage men; and last, the Chartists, led on by that
profound aristocratic leveller, Mr. Thomas Duncombe.
A pretty lot, truly ! An agreeable confraternity ! A
crew about as well calculated to man a first-rater in a
gale of wind, and bring her to a safe anchorage, as
any similar number of land-lubbers and sea-lubbers,
land-sharks and sea-sharks, half pirates and whole
horse-marines, you could pick up in Ratcliffe-highway,
Rotherhithe, St. Giles's, or the Mint.
Anti yet our amiable contemporaries talk of the
dissensions of Conservatives ! picture the premier
worried on one side by the farmer's friends, snapped
at on another by the mighty men of the League, and
pressed, from behind, by free traders within his own
cabinet ! That cabinet, they would persuade us, is a
chaos of conflicting opinions. The Conservative pha-
lanx by whom it is supported in power is a rope of
sand;—worse, a discordant band of hostile elements.
Gentlemen, we ask you to wait one week to have
proved to you the fallacy and the folly of your asser-
tions and prognostications; and in the mean time we
should be happy if you would point out to us one
dozen members of your party in the House of Com-
mons who could hang together for as many days,
upon any other question, but some such merely fac-
tious and speculative question as that which may pos-
sibly be concocted by Lord John Russell as the
groundwork for a division on the address to the
throne, or a debate, of a week or so in length, about
every thing and every body under the sun !
What a government would that be, which could be
made up out of such choice materials ! Why its very
first attempt to grapple practically with any of those
great questions which agitate the community would be
a farce as ludicrous as an attempt to stop a 64 H. ball
with a china punch-bowl, or cog the wheels of a loco-
motive, steaming it at the rate of thirty miles an hour,
with an eye-glass or a lady's fan ! The ricketty thing
would drop to pieces with its own weight, or be blown
to pieces by the first opponent who sneezed or coughed
in its puny face !

We have succeeded, at some expenditure of pa-
tience, in wading through the mass of blockheadism
perpetrated on Wednesday last by the members of
that distinguished body, the Liverpool Anti-Monopoly
Association ; and slightly indeed have we been re-
warded. A discovery of that venerable patriot and
scold—Colonel Williams—that Mr. Cobden is "worthy
of a diadem ;" an assertion of Mr. Charles Holland,
that the tariff of Sir Robert Peel has effected nothing
for the commerce of the country or the promotion of
the comforts of the people; and a complaint of a very
chivalrous young gentleman—Mr. F. Boult, jun.—
that he and his fellow anti-monopolists can " find
nobody to fight with ;" are the only novelties we can.
discover. We must endeavour to quiet the minds of
these three most talented personages ; and first, turn
we to the gallant soldier.

We regret much that we can discover little chance
of a diadem for his distinguished friend, the great
o'Cobden ; but the next best thing to that ornamental
head-gear is quite within his reach, and, if the worthy
colonel is sincere in his professions, will not be denied
to such deserving. Let our venerable acquaintance
resign to his use his beloved white ducks, and his pro-
togee would be from thenceforth irresistible in the
House of Commons, or an any platform within these
realms. The unsullied purity—the shadow even—of
those venerable garments, encasing the lower extre-
mities of the member for Stockport, as he trod the
floor of St. Stephens', would

" Strike more terror to the heart of Peel,
Than could the substance of ten thousand leaguers."

What can we say of the unadulterated folly displayed
in the assertion of Mr. Charles Holland ? " The
tariff of Sir Robert Peel has done nothing for the
commerce of the country or the comforts of the con-
suming classes." Assume for a moment that it has
done nothing for the commerce or the consumers of
the country. It has at least done this. It has shewn
to his fellow-townsmen what a charlatan was a certain
Charles Holland, who, some eighteen months ago,
was wont to expatiate, at Whig gatherings in Liver-
pool, upon the wonderful results which would flow
from the adoption, by whig statesmen, of measures not
one-tenth part so comprehensive as the tariff in ques-
tion! But this tariff has done " nothing for corn-
merce"—nothing for the consuming classes : has it not,
most veracious philosopher ? Oh, Charles, Charles—.
what strange absurdities men commit—what staange
assertions they hazard—when their eyes are blinded
by partizan spite, and their weak intellects addled by
overweening self-conceit !

In mercy, we pass over the sillinesses of Mr. Francis
Boult, jun., and proceed to remark upon the universal
genius displayed on the occasion before us, by Mr.
Thomas Blackburn. Let it not from henceforth be
imagined that, to a great man, there is any incom-
patibility between a perfect knowledge of the particu-
lar art which he professes—be it surgery, midwifery,
chemistry, astronomy, or the science of thimble-rig or
pricking the garter—and the trade or craft exercised
by other men, however apparently irreconcileable in
,character. The worthy doctor is no doubt profoundly
skilled in surgery and the materia medica ; has
Gregory and Celsus at his finger ends, and the phar-
macopoeia by heart. He is learned as a pundit upon
the subject of education. He has just assured the
world that he knows all the ins and outs of the science
of commercial and financial legislation; and we have
not a doubt, should ever such questions be agitated,
that he could discourse learnedly upon the subject of
the orthodox mode of patching a pair of unmention-
ables, cobbling a shoe, tinkering a kettle, or making
Scotch brose. Should our worthy mayor ever be
pushed for aid in the culinary department of the
Town-hall, he may depend upon it the doctor's the
man whose aid he may safely put in requisition.
Should it ever be found desirable to drive a tunnel
under the Mersey, Blackburn, not Brunel, is the man
to drive it. Nothing is too great, nothing too humble
and insignificant, to escape the comprehension of his
mighty mind.
Well, then, we have before us the doctor's views
upon the subject of free trade. He would have unre-
stricted, universal freedom of commerce between Great
Britain and other nations. He would wait for no re-
ciprocity on the part of foreign countries; but at once
invite that reciprocity by opening the markets of Great
Britain to all countries alike, AT EQUAL DUTIES.
It will be said, this is free trade—the true free trade.
There is at least nothing one-sided here. Not so fast,
good reader ! at least examine the proposition awhile
before you decide. The doctor tells you that he will
open your markets to all countries alike—allowing no
preference to your colonies—on payment of equal
duties. But those colonies now favour the importation
of British goods by discriminating duties. Are you
willing to throw open the markets, which they afford,
to your foreign rivals ? You must do so, or your
boasted free trade is one-sided ! Again the agricul-
turist is to have no protection. There are to be no
duties upon the commodities which he produces; and

you cannot, therefore, tax any article which the agri-
culturist consumes—you cannot tax his clothing, his
cottons, silks, hat, shoes, boots, stockings, glovet:,

lace, &c.—for there your free trade would be one-._
He must be permitted to go to the cheapest market for
these necessaries, as you do for your food. A--
prepared for such a free trade ? Again the doctor cries,
"No monopoiy !" Yet he is a monopolist ; for the
world maintain to-morrow that no man who is not a
licentiate of the Apothecaries Company and a member
of the Royal College of Surgeons has a right to bleed
and blister, mangle or set a leg, give a pill or a draught,
purge or poison any luckless being in these realms.
You may import your singers, your artists, your-actors,
your dancers and fiddlers, from the cheapest or the
dearest market, at pleasure ; but doctors are prohibited,
and, if caught exercising their art in Great Britain, are
declared contraband!

Are you

There is really, when you come to examine it, vast
absurdity and infinite injustice in this perfect (!) theory
of universal free trade, as prated about by such smat-
terers as our learned doctor and his anti-monopoly
friends. For only concede what they demand ; sweep
away our entire fiscal code ; let the right to exchange
freely with foreign countries every commodity be
recognised; let us have no customs duties, which are
all taxes upOn food or articles of necessity or comfort ;
let us have nothing in the shape of a duty to restrict
our dealings with the cheap markets of other countries:
—how, let us ask the philosophers of the League, is
the revenue of Great Britain to be raised ? - Are we to
have direct taxation—a poll tax—a more stringent
income and property tax—increased window taxes—an
inhabited house duty, or what ? Will they oblige us
at their grand display to-night with a reply ? Will
they tell us how they mean to patch up the dilapidated
revenue, which the success of their mad schemes would
create ? Is the debt to be sponged out ? Or what is
to be done ? We submit to these gentlemen—" all
honourable men"—all talented men—that these ques-
tions it is their duty to solve; and we cannot conceive
an opportunity more favourable than is offered by the
Amphitheatrical conglomeration of all the wisdom of
the nation, which is to be exhibited this day.
In conclusion, we hasten to correct an error into
which we have fallen in the course of these remarks.
We have said, in effect, that there was no undertaking
so mighty as to be beyond the reach of the eminent
abilities or conceit of Doctor Blackburn. There is one
such undertaking—one such office. It is the office of
Chancellor of the Exchequer ; the duty of providing for
the wants of the State, and the claims of the national
creditor, after the adoption of universal free trade.
But perhaps those gentlemen who exhibit such violent
longings for increased commercial intercourse with
America, accompanied with no peculiar distaste to her
republican institutions, would not have any inordinate
dislike to imitate her mode of settling with her public
creditors !

There is one department,—and that a
.most import-
ant one, of the business of the Dock Committee of Li-
verpool, which is conducted in a manner to us per-
fectly inexplicable. We have had repeated occasion to
refer to it, and we need scarcely explain that we allude
to the Engineering Department of that Committee.
With the knowledge which we possess of the duties
of the Dock Committee, we must confess that we have
viewed with some dislike and surprise a portion of their
proceedings on Thursday last, with respect to the exca-
vation of Albert Dock. By a reference to our Friday's
publication it will be seen that " the Sub-committee of
Works reported that Messrs. John Orrelll and Co. had
relinquished their contract for excavating Albert Dock,
and recommended that an offer to make the excavation
from Mr. John Waring be accepted." Where, pray,
is such a system as we have described to be recognized
in the course of proceeding here revealed ? Messrs.
John Orrell and Co. relinquish their contract. Why ?
They had discovered, we are informed by the Chair-
man, " a mistake in their calculations, in consequence
of which they stated that they could not afford to do
the work." We are told, moreover, by the same gen-
tleman, that " if they took the work they would sustain
a loss of £4OOO or £5000." But where, we ask, are
their sureties ? What, asks Mr. Tobin, becomes of
the penalty for the non-fulfilment of their contract ?
To both these questions the reply is perfectly conclu
sive : no contract has been signed !

Really 3 really, this is a very loose way of doing
things ; a very haphazard way.orletting the execution
of any important work ; for such the excavation in
question must be considered, when an oversight to cal-
culation could make the difference of four to five thou-
sand pounds in its cost.