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

ng port in the work

were there arrayec

agains'

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 met by the merchant princes of
.Liver-

w_
pool ? None whatever; unless e 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

ask of the community to read through the

uced into th

House of Co.mm-ons by Mr
it with the able
t on Friday by Mr

Labouchere, and to compar

with whic
H

s it a leg left to stand on, a

anaaow or a pretence, a solitary soplualu, or F.-
verted fact, which that gentleman did not scatter
to the wind ? Will the most bigotted disciple of
the Cobden school ever again dare to plead for
this as a free trade measure, after the crushing and

sterly repudiation of the notion that it can be
arded 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

be made that

it is a. measure of confiscation,

iesorted 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

meeting, we may be reminded, was not

.
There was an amendment moved

but that very amendment amounted to a
emnation of the government scheme. It
admitted the fact that the shipowner and ship-
builder were nroposed to be submitted to an unfair

.
and unequal competition with the foreigner, inas-
much as the former is more heavily taxed in the

tics produced in favour of
,y to strengthen the case of
What is proved by the
tistics of Mr. Wylie, except that the maritime
of this country has grown in prosperity under
y system of protection which it is sought to
r? We have increased our carrying trade
ly with those nations most between whom

the amendment went et
the British

lestroy.

precise

id ourselves the existing laws are recognized as
nding. We have extended to the foreigner privi-
fully equal to those which he has been willing
We have invited him to a
equal terms; and have
But it is no such

give us

n losers in th

now called upon to sanction.
ggt back nothing ; and the
it we have not lost in a fair and re-
uggle cannot with the slightest show of
urged as conclusive proof that we shall
nan unfair and unequal struggle. Let
)ok too at the very different position in
pied by the opponents
his measure. The mer-
Wylie, Mr. Francis Boult,

sure which we ar
11 an

We are to
evidence 1

Ile world occu
ocates here of 4-
rience o

cantile e
Mr. (

arles Rawlins, and Mr. Lawrence Heyworth
can scarcely be weighed against that of Mr. James
Aikin, and his talented son, Mr. Brocklehank, Mr.
F. Shand, Mr. George Grant, Mr. Josias Booker,
J. Bramley-Moore, Mr. Charles Turner, Mr.
r. William Mann, Mr. Thomas
fall, and the hundreds of

, Mr. Geor,
ntial merc

shipowners, brokers, and
who afforded them the sanction of their

pants

en ancE

le our notice of the proceed-
,ut offering our hearty thanks

his worship the r

,ed notice of the

to the merc

'ery proper and

cently offered by Lord

tile com rr

)ol through their representatives

Common

It was Worthy of ti

zits of Liver-

and must be felt by

n secretary, if there is such

name in his composition