The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-05-26 00:00:00

s the response of Sir Robert Peel and his
A concession such as this, they said—

factory workers, in-

creased r

39 of eni

granted with Out di-
minishing manufacturing profits, and taking some-
thing from the remuneration of capital. The present
hours of labour may be too long, but the capitalist
and our foreign trade must be the chief considera-
tion of statesmen. A large class of our population
may be dwarft d and demoralized—may neither be
taught how to live or die as Christians—but we
thnvionnil halPct of Pnttnn rip

life, and elevati g their

social character, cani

annum, and ti

manufacturer must have his present
pfit per bale. The social and eternal
generation of our fellow beings, may be
nthropists and theorists to declaim

average I

welfare of

cts for pt

upon;

cold

Tb
and tl

e to deal only with the un•

of raising revenue, and

manufacturing interest of the

s the substance of the reply to Mr. Fielden
hours hill; and what does
et to that other great measure

,cates of a

and exercise has a►so been taken, do we believe that
enough time will remain for that amount of education
which it is desirable the people should have? I believe

hear.) This I say, that all the priucip!cs in which you in-
terfere to prohibit contracts of a nature which you believe
to be prejudicial to the public morality, justify me in en-
deavouring to prevent contracts like those which are now
the subject of consideration." . .

The.;e are the arguments of no sickly sentimenta-
list, but of a man brought up at the feet of Malthus,
and deeply read in the political economists; and
they are convincing because they are true.
In a similar light the question was viewed, and
similar opinions expressed with almost equal ability
by the Whig leader, Lord John Russell. The Con-
servative ministry clung by the side of the Cob-
dens, the Brights, the Humes, and the Wards of
the house, bolstering up the cause of capital against
humanity, setting the dogmas of abstract philoso-
phy in the scale against the dictates of feeling and
justice to our toiling fellow-beings, whilst their
wiser opponents adopted and ably maintained the
more widely popular aspect of the question at issue,
winning golden opinions and blessings, from no un-
influential section of the community.

What, it may be remarked, is the lesson which
our remarks are intended to convey? It is this :
We wish to make it palpable to the Conservative
members of the House that, by the course which
they are pursuing, they are advancing the very con-
summation of what they appear most to dread in the
establishing in power of the Whig party. They are
getting rid, with Sir Robert Peel., of the respect of
the British people. They are assisting him to plunge
their party into unpopularity, which years of re-
pentance will not wipe away. They are enabling
the Whigs to re-assume their ancient boast that they
are the party of the people. Place them once in this
position, and in power; and a long, long period of
misgovernment, of wild theorising, of desperate ex-
perimenting upon our government and our laws, is
in store for this deluded and betrayed nation. Play
on for a while longer the game of the astute and
wily premier, and Great Britain will no longer be a
land to which it will be a boast and a pride to
belong,

Our readers, such at least of them as were pre-
sent, will doubtless remember the pleasure with
which they witnessed last year the proceedings of
the Yearly Meeting of the Liverpool Auxiliary
Branch of the Foreign Aid Society, at which M.
D'Aubigne, the eminent historian of the Reforms-

ion, and other distinguished foreigners were pre-
sent. The meeting for the present year is announced
to be held in the Royal Amphitheatre, on the 9th
June, this day fortnight ; and is not expected to
be at all behind its predecessor in interest and
importance. Amongst the speakers will be, we
understand, the Rev. Canon M`Neile, with several
of the leading clergy of the town ; and we shall
again have the opportunity of hearing the operations
of the society detailed, and its importance and value
shown by a deputation of distinguished Protestant
foreigners, who will he able to bring to the meeting
the evidence of personal observation.
At the present crisis this association assumes a
peculiar interest. With Popery making prodigious
strides towards supremacy in our own land, we see
throughout Continental Europe the light breaking
in, and community after community, sickened of
the dark jugglery of Rome, throwing away their
chains, and coming to the pure fountain of truth for
support. Wherever Popery is known, it is becom-
ing odious and intolerab!e; and an infinite amount
of good is to be achieved by holding up before the
observation of the British public, the operations in
other lands of societies such as this, and proving
to misguided minions of our fellow countrymen the
p; true character of that dire apostacy which here, in

the infancy of its strength, bears itself with lamhlike
humility, although, wh n in its plenitude of power,
it can play the devouring lion. We trust that we
need not appeal to the liberality of the Protestants
of Liverpool in behalf of a society engaged, like
the Foreign Aid Society, in emancipating the minds
of our Continental brethren from the thrall of this
subtle and tyrannical power. Let our fellow-towns-

)Iv-townswomen attend the rnee

and the result we do not fear

The Manchester Guardian is silent under the
proof which we gave him that the feeling of our
Canadian population is not one of approval of the
Free Trade measures of her Majesty's Administra-
tion. He merely echoed, perhaps, another Free
Trade authority, the London Times, who paraded
the same resolutions of the Montreal meeting as
conclusive with respect to the opinions of the ag-
gregate people of the two provinces; and seeing a
document so convenient for his purpose, neglected
to search for any of an opposite character. The
following letter from the partner of an eminent
r I Canadian firm, enclosing an extract from the Mont-

real Herald, might serve to convince the Guardian of
the real value of his pet resolutions, if the arguments
drawn from them even stood uncontradicted by
other and better authority

" Montreal, 27th April, 1846.

" A Free Trade Association has been got up here by a
parcel of hot-headed theorists (chiefly young men of no
experience), who repudiate protection as an injury and
destruction to all sound principles on which commerce
should be based. The avowed object of the leaders, as
first announced, was to secure to Montreal all the western
trade. Discussion bas. however, shown even them the
absurdity of this; but being committed, they go on from
pure admiration of the principle!
" The enclosed (cut from the Montreal Herald) shows
how little prospect there is of our retaining even the trade
of Canada West, and far less of the Western States, it
'a fl Rngland to make up

Canad,
for the

ur has no protection in
great charges and long

r voyage of the St. Law-

navigation

" The Montreal Herald assumes that the freight from
Lake Ontario to Liverpool will be brought down to 4s.
It is nc w 6s. 9d. It also assumes the freight from Nev.
York to Liverpool to be Is. 9J., whereas we have just
heard of flour being conveyed from New York to Liver-
pool at Is. and ls. 3d
" So tha

, if there is a protection of less than 45., the
e must go by New York, and all this vast employ-
ment be wrenched from British subjects, by the adoption
of free trade in England, to bane. over to the Americans.
" The Montreal Herald is anxious to think well of free
trade, and to support Sir Robert Peel as of old, but you
see the halting way it does this."
We may mention another fact or two which have
come to our knowledge, and which may not be
uninteresting to the Guardian's readers. A certain
Canadian firm is in the habit of shipping annually
to those colonies British manufactures to the amount
of £250,000. During the first four and a-half
months of this year, however, it has diminished its
purchases in this country by £40,000 as compared
with those of a corresponding period last year.
This amount, however, is not a twentieth of what
the Canadas take from us ; and if the feeling of
alarm which has induced this firm thus to contract
its shipments be general, it will he a fair calculation
to make that half a million sterling will he lost this
year to the manufacturers of Great Britain as the
re ;ult of that very feeling whose existence the Guar-
dian denies. He is himself on the spot to ascertain
whether the above statement is correct or not; and

if he can confute it, on authority, we shall give
a candid confession of our error.

The opinions of parties who profess to he in the
secret, are still widely apart with respect to the
probable fate of the Corn and Customs Bill in the
House of Lords. A few days ago the organs of the
free traders were anything but sanguine. .There
were sorrowful predictions of a hitch in the future
progress of the measure, which suggested, doubtless,
to many an honourable member, the disagreeable
circumstance of having to face his insulted con-
stituents. The Times of yesterday, however, sets
all right. The measure is safe, thanks, we under-
stand, to Lord John Russell, who is reported to
have stated that, when he wrote his celebrated
letter, announcing his conversion to the League, he
considered that he had his party in his pocket, and
has just intimated to each, that he expects they will
consider themselves as committed with him. We
give the note of triumph of the Times

It is cruel to destroy the last lingering hopes of the des-
perate, and to consummate the misfortunes of the mise-
rable, but at times "one must be cruel only to he kind,"
and even to the victims themselves a certain evil is bet-
ter than " hope long deferred, which maketh the heart
sick." It is, therefore, rather in a spirit of humanity than
with a hostile exultation that we announce to the Protec-
tionist party the final doom of the Corn-laws in the Ilouse
of Lords. The whispered expectations of a division in the
Whig camp have all proved groundless. Lord Stanley,
Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and Lord George
Bentinck will not unite in discordant harmony for the sal-
vation of their country. The Whig peers have no inten-
tion to abandon their consistency, nor to surrender all
claim to the confidence of the nation by splitting them.
selves into sections for the mere purpose of mutilating the
bill. The rumours to this effect are wholly without foun-
dation, and the Whig party have taken the surest means to
prove that they are so. On Saturday there was a meeting
at Lansdowne-house, at which not less than GO Whig
peers were present, including Lord Melbourne and Lord
Fitzwilliam. The leading members of the party in the
House of Commons attended also. The result was most
satisfactory. There were not wanting some who, as we