The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-04-25 00:00:00

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abour in our town the ad-
gained by their circulation
t their workpeople, and to
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nd permission of the writer
rid shall be able to sell single copies
of the two letters for a halfpenny. For a quantity
for circulation, of course we should charge some-
what less.

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As a specimen of the tone and style of the writer.
we append the following extracts, showing the real
nature of that equality for which Chartists and
Levellers contend :

Fellow-countrymen, ask yourselves at what link of
the social chain does pulling down end ? Tom, and Dick,
and Harry complain of the inequalities of society, and of
the restraints imposed upon them by law, as an infringe-
of their natural liberty. Park walls, gatekeepers,
!keepers are not to be endured. Agents and
e the ensigns of tyranny, the strongholds of an
Well, let all legal restraints be
removed, and whit then ? Why, then, they are removed
from Bill, and Ned, and Jem, as well as from Tom, Dick,
and Harry. And Bill has a fancy for Tom's pig, and Ned
has a fancy for Dick's coat, and Jem has a fancy for
Harry's wife. No restraint ! No infringement of natural
liberty ! Down with the duke's park wall, says Tom : and
down it goes. Down with Tom's pig-stye, says Bill ; and
down it goes. Seize the marquis's steward, and divide his
Good. Seize upon Harry's wife, says
Why not ? No restraint ! Oh,

intolerable .monopoly

rents, says Harry
Jem,—l'll have her
alorious natural liberty !

"No, no, no, vociferates the infuriated revolutionist,
swallowing back liberty, equality, and fraternity at a
mouthful. No, no ; that is not what I mean by liberty.

" Probably not ; -but it is ell and right that yoiir
neighbours should know what you do mean. You mean
that you should be able to take the law of every man who
injures you, and no man be able to take the law of you.
You mean that you should pull down without restraint
everything above you, but that no man should be per-
mitted to pull you down. But you must remember that
"no restraint" is a game for two to play at—a knife with
two edges—and that if Tom be above the law which pro-
tects the duke or the marquis, Bill must be above the law
which protects Tom." ' _ _

Or the following sensible advice to the working
classes as to their conduct under their sufferings :
"There may be, doubtless there often are, just causes
of complaint. A rapidly-increasing population, inde-
pendent of a bad harvest or a potatoe-blight, may involve
districts or even the whole kingdom in difficulty. An
enormously-producing, and, at the same time, a non-
consuming power, such as machinery now is, may, I
believe I might say must, lead to periodical returns of
manufacturing and commercial difficulty. But difficulties
are inseparable from all human conditions. Wisdom de-
vises remedies and repairs for the injured house : it is
madness to say that because the rain begins to drop
through the roof, therefore we will destroy the whole
fabric. Such remedies and repairs have been devised and
applied, and will be now again, by the wisest and most
independent statesmen the country can supply.
" Fellow-countrymen, make known your real distresses
and privations by all lawful means ; but as you value the

inestimable blesiing of subordinated liberty, be persuaded
not to forget your duty to God, your neighbour, and your-
self, so far as to take into your own hands the punishment
of those who oppress and those who despise you.

•
" Many of you really suffer, I doubt not, and bitterly
too. I feel with you and for you, and am filled with a
mixture of indignation and grief at the personal brutality
and political stupidity of those men in your neighbourhoods
who could, but will not relieve you."

We had prepared for insertion in our last publi-
cation a notice of the proceedings of the very deco-
rous and orderly meeting of the working porters of
Liverpool, held at the Concert Hall, in Lord Nelson-
street, which, however, we were compelled by a
press of advertizing and other matter, to withdraw.
Our readers have by this time most probably pe-
rused the report of the proceedings in question in the
columns of some of our contemporaries ; and we
shall not therefore further refer to them, inasmuch
as we have already expressed our conviction of the
justice of the claims of these poor men, and the
impolitic character of the system of which they com-
plain as oppressive and injurious to their own in-
terests, whilst they show that it is equally so to the
importer and the merchant. Our object in recur-
ring to the subject is rather to impress upon the
authorities, who possess the power of providing a
remedy, the valuable effect which would be secured
if by a prompt and vigorous effort they could snatch
this industrious body of men from the temptations
by which they are surrounded, and bind them by
the ties of gratitude to the property of the town,
and the capital and enterprise which alone afford
them the means to live. We have never concealed
our impressions of the danger of permitting a feel-
ing that they are isolated from the consideration of
their superiors in station to grow up among any
class of our working population. We have shewn
that such a feeling does exist ; and that there are
grounds for its being entertained. Altogether
apart from the ravings of Chartism, a spirit of dis-
content with their position is abroad, and is spread-
ing amongst these classes ; and we would direct
the attention of our mercantile body to what would
be the probable and advantageous result of a manly
effort to allay that spirit, to act justly, as instanced
in the recent conduct of a body of men of the same
description as our working porters. We quote the
lesson from a leading article in the London Times,
of Saturday, the tone and spirit of which are con-
genial with remarks which we have previously
offered on the subject generally of the condition and
conduct of our own labourers :

" Casting," says our contemporary, " a glance over the
events in England of the last few weeks, we have one
fact which attracted attention both in and out of Parlia-
ment, and deserves not to be forgotten or overlooked.
When the Trafalgar-square mobs produced among the
idlers in the clubs and the busybodies in the shops the
plate-glass-window panic, and again, when a more real
danger threatened the nation, the coalwhippers on the
Thames offered their services voluntarily as special con-
stables, to assist in the preservation of the Queen's peace.
There is much to be learned from this. A few years
since the Thames coal-whippers. were a much-injured,
oppressed class of men, under the thrall of a set of
middlemen, who plUndered them shamelessly of a large
portion of their hard-earned wages, and so completely
enthralled them that they had not the power to extricate
themselves from the bondage to which they had by degrees
become subjected. Parliament, with great judgment,
interfered for their relief, and, without any improper dis-
turbance of the relative rights and duties of employers
and employed, afforded to those coal-whippers the means
of disposing to good advantage of their labour. It may
not have been with any very distinct consciousness of re-
paying the paternal care which Parliament had bestowed
on them that the coal-whippers offered themselves as
guardians of the public peace ; but it must be evident
to all who have paid any attention to the wants and feel-
ings of the working classes, that the offer of those ser-
vices was a consequence of that care having been taken.
The condition of the men had, through parliamentary
interference, been essentially bettered; and they felt that
the law embraced their interests within its beneficial
operation. They had daily and hourly reason, in the
improved condition of themselves and their families, to
know that they were under a better government than that
of the lawless tyranny which had previously oppressed
them, and they spontaneously came forward to prove the
existence of that feeling by an endeavour to secure the
supremacy of that law over any new form of irresponsi-

The cases, we maintain, of the coalwhippers of
the Thames, previously to legislation in their be-
half, and the working porters of the Mersey, were
almost precisely analagous. The former were
" under the thrall of a set of middlemen ;" the
latter are subject to a similar, although not so
shameless a condition of bondage. The cord is not
drawn quite so tight; the master porters, as a class,
are not of the same eharact the Trim.— ''

..er as the metropolitan
, but they are middlemen not-
fhey grasp a portion of the hard-

master coal whippers
withstanding

the same disturbance of the relative rights and du-
ties of employers and employed,—of the merchant
on the one viand and the labourer on the other.
The latter has not the disposal of his own labour.
He has to —to being paid in
public ho'

and as the result of a disinclination
to submit to these practices, he sees inexperienced
and more pliant competitors occupying his for-
feited position. He sees shoals of immigrant
Irish attrftnted to our rmrt hr the favouritism of

I Irish warehousemen, entrusted with the manage-