The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-02-28 00:00:00

RVATIVE SUPINENESS

by the

community, th

_ imitation in holes and corners. But that, we
submit, is no reason why we should resign ourselves
to sleep and fancied security. The kicked and beaten
thing is up again ; insults us from Anti-Corn-law
platforms ; dares to lift its head in public places ; pre-
sumes to utter its disgusting falsehoods as the voice of
the people of Liverpool; and we ?—tamely submit to
the degradation ! This must not be. The Conserva-
tive merchants of Liverpool, we trust, will never permit
themselves to descend so very—very low ! But sup-
pose even that they do; still we venture to tell them
that it shall not be! There are amongst us those who

indignity with which for years we

To CONSERVATIVE SUPINENESS !" We

the usurping facti

t is tru

a have flung

m to grovel in the mire of in-

cendia

can lead us in the endeavour to wipe away the disgrace
which must otherwise cling to us in the eyes of the
world ; and if those to whom we now appeal hang
back from the performance of their duty, we must
turn our eyes elsewhere, and appeal to a quarter in
which we know that appeal will not be made in vain !
'That such a course is imperative upon us needs little
to demonstrate. Look around us—see the giant
efforts being made to undermine those institutions

which we profess to revere—compare the indefatigable
energy, with which our enemies carry on their efforts
at destruction, with our own deep lethargy. Surely
the prospect is sufficiently startling ! Already the
League, unabashed by the scorn directed towards it
by the press of the country, has sown the whole em-
pire with its seditious tracts. Incendiary appeals are
ringing from town to town, from hamlet to hamlet.
Its council sits in the metropolis of Great Britain, and
fulminates thence its anathemas against all that is
great and good in the land; and what, we ask, must
be—we repeat emphatically, MUST BE—the result of
unopposed, except by the
journalism, unaided by
those
merely
aw chdooeu s
could
uos
ltory
y speaka
eg ffi toa
rt i t
nos n,a
voice of authority ? This
must be the result :—the government of this country

however stronz apparently no to resist,' and to stand

andmal

ks of property

tution of the land, mus

distant period, be driven, 1

r6rinT.is

the voice of

excited to frenzy, to remove those landmarks, and to
embark in a course of mad and violent legislation,

whose issue must inevitably be anarchy and universal
robbery ! Let us be wise in time, and put forth our

strength whilst it is available.

The declarations of the Duke of Wellington and Sir
Robert Peel, that it is not the intention of ministers to
propose any measure of relief from the injurious work-
ing of our existing banking system during the present
session of Parliament, we cannot but view with ex-
treme sorrow. That the system in question is at the
root of much of the evils which afflict the commerce of
the empire we firmly believe, and such is the opinion
of a large and.influential portion of the mercantile com-

munity

We observe, however, from the City Article
of the London Times of Saturday, that " an opinion
prevails amongst monied men that Sir Robert Peel's
declaration is to be looked upon in reality as a pledge
that, early in the next session, a general law, compre-
hending the Bank of England" (the renewal of whose

bargain with the country will then have to he reconsi-
dered) " and all banking, will be brought forward."
Such a course, by which the whole subject may be

gone into, may perhaps he more convenient than dis-
tinct legislation, upon the two questions of joint-stock
banking and the management of , that great company;
and we must, therefore, perforce, submit to another
year's continuance of the evil now existing, in the hope
of a better-digested and more radical cure.
Our attention has been drawn to this subject by the
report which is before us, of a case, heard before the
Birmingham District Bankruptcy Court, on Wednes-
day last, in which the Birmingham Borough Bank
and a bankrupt named Chapman figure very conspi-
cuously. The facts of the case are briefly these.
Some months ago the man Chapman was a bankrupt

in Liverpool, and subsequently became an accountant
in Birmingham. In the year 1537 a concern called

Rank was es

the Borow._z

shed in that town, and,

on application, 100 shares were allotted to Chapman

upon which he paid one or two pounds per share

Here then was, at once, a foundation upon which to
This Mr. Chapman had formerly had an

speculate

account with that pretty Manchester affair, The
Northern and Central Bank, of which a Mr. Goode
was manager ; and the fact of the same Goode having
transferred his services to the phoenix which was

rising in Birmingham, was no doubt sufficient assur-

ance to Mr. Chapman that the same prudent system of
management would be adopted by the " Borough
Bank." Let the reader trace the speculative career

which the latter forthwith commenced. In 1837 he
formed a concern calling itself " Kening and Com-
pany," and carrying on the trade of " fire-iron and
fender makers, mill mannfacturers, &c."—(how many
mill manufacturers have joint-stock banks created, their
annals i❑ Manchester could tell !) The capital of this
concern, with the exception of the bank shares of
Chapman, appears to have been NIL. In 1838—a
year afterwards—this speculative Mr. Chapman formed
another concern, under the title of " Ryland, Smith,
and Co., patent mill and press makers ;" capital of
Ryland, NlL—and Smith, NIL, the said Smith being a
clerk merely in Chapman's office ! Another firm was
established under the name of " G. M. Smith and Co.,
sharebrokers and accountants, of Coventry and Lea-
mington," capital, NIL, of course, for Mr. G. M.
Smith was the identical "Monsieur Tonson" of the
firm of " Ryland, Smith, and Co." and clerk in Mr.
Chapman's office !

Well, now for the mode of business, which is thus
described by Chapman himself. Keniny and Co. drew
on Ryland and Co. and Smith and Co. ; Ryland and
Co. on Kenin9 and Co. and Smith and Co., to large
amounts. These bills were taken to the Borough
Bank, of which Chapman was a shareholder, and dis-
counted there. In process of time Chapman became
(of course) a director !—who more fit to be a director
of a joint-stock bank than a man so proficient in the
science of blowing bubbles ? and during the six months
of his directorship, the bills of these firms were dis-
counted to the tune of no less than twenty-five thou-
sand pounds ! At the time of the stoppage of the
bank, which of course was also the stoppage of its
paper makers, they owed a balance of £l2,ooo—a fair
amount fors men to owe. What the bank paid we
have no means of knowing ; but Chapman's estate
paid 21d. in the pound, Bening and Co. 61d., and the
joint estates of Ryland and Chapman 23d. in the
pound.

Well, but the bank, it will be said, was swindled by

these adventurers. Was it ? We shall see. Chap-
man, in his evidence, says—" I entered into these
various partnerships under the advice of "—Who ?
Why, of " Mr. Goode, the manager of the bank" !
And let it be duly considered that this was not a
course resorted to by the manager in question in order
to prop a falling concern, but resorted to upon its first
establishment, to make a business for the bank. The
case is, in fact, an episode in the history of bank-
making ! By the advice of Mr. Goode, the bankrupt
Chapman had blank acceptances of the various firms
always ready by him, " for the purpose of renewing
the bills as they became due;" and occasionally,
" when it suited the purpose of the bank itself to have
one filled up for its own acconzmodation," Mr. Goode,
the manager, " sent for Mr. Chapman," and the affair
was arranged. The Mr. G. M. Smith, the promoted
clerk of Chapman and member of two firms, we ought
to add, was a brother-in-law of Mr. Goode, of the
Northern and Central and the Birmingham Borough
Bank !

Now here, we submit, is as pretty a specimen of the
working of a system which is even yet rife throughout
the manufacturing districts, as the recent explosion of
the Bank of Manchester—

(" Tinieo Da►iaus, et dons termites,"

ought, by the bye, to be our reply to all Manchester
joint-stock bank projectors)—serves sufficiently to
shew. Here is a specimen of the prevailing mode of
getting up manufacturing firms—of mill-making, to
use the happy phrase upon Messrs. Bening and Com-

and yet, when the- natural distrust

created by exposure after exposure is depressing the
commerce of the country—when capitalists are hoard-
ing their money, afraid to venture it in the ordinary

channels of trade,—we are told only of the corn laws !
Of such a system of banking may we not well say, in
the emphatic words of Hamlet,

" 'tis villanous !"

" Oh, reform it altogether ! " Sir Robert ; and the

I sooner the better ?

The Manchester Guardian on Saturday returns to
his disgusting task, with a hankering after the good
things which the League has at its disposal, which
might be excused in a hungry dog, but is odious to
contemplate in an influential journalist. The minister
of this country, argues the Guardian, is " responsible"
by the principles of the constitution itself. He is
liable to impeachment for his acts. Admitted, most
worthy and sagacious of philosophers ! But impeach-
ment before the bar of parliament is one thing, and
the constant iteration of the name of the offender in
the ear of hungry mobs, as that of the cause of their
hunger and wretchedness, is another thing. Respon-
sibility to parliament is one thing, and responsibility
to the assassin and the maniac is another thing. Bri-
tish law is one thing, and Lynch law is another :
which is best we leave our disinterested contemporary

to decide.
Sir Robert Peel, says the Guardian, is liable to im-
peachment. Admitted; but did the Rev. Mr. Bayley
point to impeachment as his punishment ? No : that
gentleman pointed to something very different ! Has
Mr. Cobden placed a notice of motion on the books
of the House of Commons, for the impeachment of
the Premier ? No : he only reiterated the senseless
truism—by the Guardian's own admission a truism,
and its constant iteration is just as senseless as if we
were eternally told that two and two make four—that
Sir Robei t is responsible for his acts as minister; and,
more than that, he has taken for granted the very fact
which the party impeaching would have to prove : viz.,
that Sir Robert's policy has produced the distress of
the country ! Why, then, this same iteration of per•
sonal and individual responsibility, unless it is used as

a personal and individual threat ?
But, presuming that the abstract right to insist
upon this responsibility is established, and that no
wore is meant than liability to impeachment—(how
silly, by the bye, would a man look who should stand
up in the House of Commons, and, gravely and with

ettiptia

flamrnat

w to tbd minister

t RAH, I hold

y, and even wicked ? We will "endeavour to

)ut a case, out of

which the Guardian, with all his

well-known eel-like capabilities, will scarcely contrive
to wriggle. We, like Lord Francis Egerton, attribute
much of the present condition of our manufacturing
classes, directly or indirectly, to the expansion of the
powers of machinery, and the application of steam to
manufacturing purposes, beyond the power which we
possess, or can legitimately acquire, to consume. We
presume there is no reason why we should be barred
from entering upon a discussion of this feature of the

case—from pointing to machinery as a fertile cause of
distress, and, if we chose to be unwise enough, calling
for parliamentary interference between its powers and
the'labour which it displaces. Yet how often has the
mere mention of the offensive word " machinery," as
one amongst the causes of manufacturing distress,

drawn upOn Conservative journalists, from this very
sensitive person the Manchester Guardian, the terms
" Luddite," "Tory-Luddite," and other similar polite
appellations ! This, however, by the bye. We con-
tend for the perfect right to point to machinery, as the
Guardian contends for his right to point to Sir Robert
Peel, as the author of the distress around us. We
look towards a parliamentary and constitutional re-
medy for the case which we put, with quite as san-
guine expectation as he looks towards his parliamen-
tary remedy in the impeachment of the Premie-.

Thus far, then, the wildest denouncer of machinery
is on a par with the man who points out Sir Robert
Peel as the author of his country's sufferings,—with
the exception, by the bye, that we do not remember
many " Luddite" or "Tory-Luddite" placards headed
" MURDER," and garnished by Scriptural quotations
to warrant the term. But suppose that the passions
of an excited people had been actively turned to the
deitruction of machinery as the cause of their suffer-
ing—that the mill of A or B had just been sacked, its
power-looms or spindles broken up, and the life of A
or B placed in peril,—would the Guardian say that
the spouter, reverend or parliamentan

who chose
such a moment of excitement to indulge in philippics
against self-acting mules, and other instruments by
which human hands are displaced, was a wise man,
or one whose purpose, or the tendency of whose con-
duct, was defensible ? He would not. We know
sufficient of the Guardian to convince us that his
fiercest invectives would he directed against such a
man ; and yet such is precisely the case against Mr.
Richard Cobden and the League ! Can the Guardian
deny that the cases are precisely similar? Sir Robert
Peel has already been attempted to be made personally
and individually responsible to the assassin's pistol ;
and these gentlemen chuse such a moment to expatiate
upon the fact of his being individuaily responsible !

Sir Robert Peel is viewed as the creator of the pow -
erful Conservative phalanx now in parliament, and as
its head,—as he undoubtedly is both. The impression
is abroad that, with his life,,its influence—its entire-
uess—would terminate. There are men, we beliee,
in the council itself of the league who think this; and
although we do not for a moment impute to these men
a design so to overthrow conservatism as an influential
power in the legislature by the commission of crime,
the tendency of every attack levelled at the premier is
to turn the minds of bad men—such as exist in every
political body—to so summary a means of achieving a
political end as would be his untimely death by the
hands of an assassin. Surely, then, when such a feel-
ing is abroad—and that it is the Rev. Mr. Bayley is a
witness which the League ought not to gainsay !—ho-
nest men, however they may differ from Sir Robert
Peel, ought to pause before they give to it additional
imputus !

Without presuming to dictate to the Select Vestry
who or what class of persons is most likely to fill the
situation of Governor to the Workhouse (now vacant
by the resignation of Mr. Dowdall) with credit and
advantage, we yet take the liberty of naming a circum-
stance which may be deserving of consideration. In
such an institution as the Workhouse, where charac-
ters of every description are congregated, and where
insubordination must naturally be expected, it strikes
us that a selection might judiciously be made from
many of the officers of the army or navy, who are now
unemployed. This class has been selected for the
management of most of the railroads, where discipline
and obedience are so necessary ; and in the police
establishments, and in many of the gaols and other
public edifices, involving the management of the many
and the refractory, naval and military officers have
been appointed with eminent success. These men,
having learnt obedience themselves, are admirably
suited to enforce it in others. They are generally
gentlemen in manners ; and their education and asso-
ciations, in most instances, give them a certain stamp
which the generality of civilians have not so many
opportunities of acquiring. Whatever choice may be
made, it will doubtless be of a man who can correct
irregularity, enforce obedience, and preserve order;
while, at the same time, the feelings of the aged and
afflicted must be respected, who have been compelled
by misfortune to seek the asylum of the workhouse.