The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-05-30 00:00:00

TO ADVERTISERS.

We beg respectfully to • call the attention of
3ferfants,. Brokers, Auctioneers, and others,
to the important fact that the
LIVERPOOL STANDARD
IS NOW THE
• 'ON Ll' NEWSPAPER
PUBLISHED WEEKLY ON TUESDAY,

which can be read on that day by the thousands
of Maniffacturers and others attending
THE TUESDAY'S MARKET IN
MANCHESTER.
The STANDARD is taken at all the Newsrooms
and respectable Inns in that town and the
srurounding n2anvfacturing district.

A SECOND .EDI7ION is published at Half-past
Two, in tine for the North Mails, containing the
ivIARKETS, and any news of importance that
may arrive in the course of the morning.

Ethrrpool &,tai)bari).

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 30, 1848

IT may be premature as yet to speculate upon
the amount of influence, v.-hich the unprecedented
demonstration, made on Friday by the mercantile
body of Liverpool, will be permitted to exercise
upon the decision of the legislature, with respect
to the bill to be brought in last night for the repeal
of the Navigation Laws; hut there can be no ques-
tion as to the weight which it ought to have. For
let us see of what materials it was composed. The
wealth, the intelligence, the enterprise of the lead-
ing port in the world were there arrayed against
the rash and ruinous proposal of government;
representatives, or members of firms, trading to
every port of the known earth, East India mer-
chants and West India merchants, Canadian and
Australian, South American and African. the owners
of a commercial marine spread abroad over every
sea, and of property and produce in every clime ;
the shipbuilder and the artizan, with the evidence
drawn from life long experience, prepared to argue
the whole question with a temper, and an amount
of ability which has rarely been witnessed in any
public assembly, before whom so vital and mighty
a qUestion was placed at issue. With what chance
of success can the distorted evidence, deduced from
Board of Trade statistics and one-sided blue books,
compete in the minds of impartial men, against
direct and personal testimony like this ? What
claim have the theoretical and crotchetty notions of
the Ricardo's, the Labouchere's, and the Milner
Gibson's of the House of Commons to be regarded
as approaching to anything like the weight of the
mass of practical experience, with which they have
been here inet by the merchant princes of Liver-
pool ? None whatever; unless we are to believe
that the capacity for legislation is Heavenborn, or
that questions of great political and social import
are best decided by those least acquainted with
them.

We ask of the community to read through the
elaborated speech, with which this proposition was
introduced into the House of Commons by Mr.
Labouchere, and to compare it with the able
expose, with which it was met on Friday by Mr.
James Aikin. Has it a leg left to stand on, a
shadow of a pretence, a solitary sophism, or per-
verted fact, which that gentleman did not scatter
to the wind ? Will the mcst bigotted disciple of
the- Cobden school ever again dare to plead for
this as a free trade measure, after the crushing and
masterly repudiation of the notion that it can be
regarded as such, which it received from Mr. John
Aikin ? 'We suspect not. The question must
henceforth be argued upon a changed ground.
The ministerial speakers must come down from
their position, that this is a measure designed for
the strengthening of the mercantile marine and
the commerce of Great Britain or a legitimate exten-
sion of the free trade principle. The confession
must he made that it is a measure of confiscation,
resorted to with a view to bolster up the declining
interests of a portion of the community, at the
expense of the great interests and the security of
the nation ; a measure to plunge the shipping
interest into the same suffering which is being
endured by the manufacturing and the trading
classes.

But the meeting, we may be reminded, was not
unanimous. There was an amendment moved.
True ; but that very amendment amounted to a
condemnation of the government scheme. It
admitted the fact that the shipowner and ship-
builder were proposed to be submitted to an unfair
and unequal competition with the foreigner, inas-
much as the former is more heavily taxed in the
cost of his labour and materials. Moreover, the
arguments and the statistics produced in favour of
the amendment went only to strengthen the case of
the British shipowner. What is proved by the
statistics of Mr. Wylie, except that the maritime
power of this country has grown in prosperity under
the very system of protection which it is sought to
destroy ? We have increased our carrying trade
precisely with those nations most between whom
and ourselves the existing laws are recognized as
binding. We have extended to the foreigner privi-
leges fully equal to those which he has been willing
to give us in return. We have invited him to a
competition with us upon equal terms; and have
not been losers in the race. But it is no such
measure which we are now called upon to sanction.
We are to give all and get back nothing ; and the
evidence that we have not lost in a fair and re-
reciproca: struggle cannot with the slightest show of
reason, be urged as conclusive proof that we shall
ndt lose in an unfair and unequal struggle. Let
the public look too at the very different position in
the mercantile world occupied by the opponents
and the advocates here of this measure. The mer-
cantile experience of Mr. Wylie, Mr. Francis Boult,
Mr. Charles Rawlins, and Mr. Lawrence Heyworth
can scarcely be weighed against that of Mr. James
Aikin, and his talented son, Mr. Brocklebank, Mr.
F. Shand, Mr. George Grant, Mr. Josias Booker,
Mr. J. Bramley-Moore, Mr. Charles Turner, Mr.
William Sandbach, Mr. William Mann, Mr. Thomas
Moss, Mr. George Horsfall, and the hundreds of
influential merchants, shipowners, brokers, and
others, who afforded them the sanction of their
countenance at this meeting.
We cannot conclude our notice of the proceed-
ings of Friday, without offering our hearty thanks
to his worship the mayor, for his very proper and
spirited notice of the insult recently offered by Lord
Pahnerston to the mercantile community of Liver-
pool through their representatives in the House of
Commons. It was worthy of the chief magistrate
of this great town ; and must be felt by the flip-
pant foreign secretary, if there is such a thing as
shame in his composition.