The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-04-16 00:00:00

twist, and the little lights of our own Anti-Monopoly
Association. We ought to beg pardon, by the bye,
for an unintentional slight which we might be
imagined to convey here to a distinguished fellow-
townsman. William Ewart, the present M.P. for
the enlightened borough of Dumfries,—our own
William Ewart,—the rejected of Liverpool, Wigan,
Marylebone, and EVERY other constituency which
has twice had the task of pronouncing judgment
upon his merits, was present ; and made one of
those wishy-washy orations which only such a man
can make, and an assembly of Liverpool Radicals
can listen to.

We shall not trouble our readers with any re-
marks upon the sayings of these sages. They will,
of course, take the wings of the Radical press, and,
as quickly as their crippled condition will allow them,
go forth to the east and the west, the north and the
south, wherever soporifics are in demand. Tea-in-
spired dowagers will doze over them : mothers will
use them to still their restless offspring, fretful from
the pains of teething or the cholic. The only curi-
osity which we ourselves feel is with respect to the
amount of the moneys which the exhibition has
brought in to our anti-monopoly " young men."
Our worthy townsman, Mr. Lynn, we imagine,
would furnish the half-guinea feed so as to leave
the projectors a fair margin of profit, as we learn was
fully calculated upon and provided for ; and the five
shilling tickets- for the ladies,—ungallant "young
men," to charge ladies a farthing for such patient
endurance of the infliction of their speeches !—must
have left at least 4s. 9d. per head, reckoning the
cost of the edibles provided at the rates in the latest
price current from St. John's market.
On Saturday evening the same performers held
what they facetiously termed, an " Operative Free
Trade Party," at the same place—theAmphitheat re—
to which the working classes were invited to eat up
the scraps which had been left from the " Banquet,"
or the cold feed, which, upon the principle of Incas
a non lucendo, was styled by that magnificent name.
To the credit'of the working men of Liverpool, how-
ever, and as a proof that they possess discernment
enough to know that little that was worth picking
up, at the low price of Is. 6d, would be left, after
Radical appetites had been satisfied and pockets filled,
the attendance at this tea party was scarcely one man
to each teapot and plate of bunloaf, the number pre-
sent being about seventy, including the "young
men" of the Anti-Monopoly Association on the
platform, and fourteen ladies in the boxes This
little lot, accordingly, huddled themselves together,
and listened, mosvatiently, to an oration from John
Bright, Esq.,—aniuther example of the lucus..a non
lueendo style of nomenclature,—which lasted, - •
rather, was endured, for two mortal hours, in wh*
the honourable representative of the beer barrels O
the city of Durham discovered that he had said so
little that he could scarcely be persuaded that he had
held forth for more than half an hour

The sapient quaker was followed by Mr. R. R. R.,
—we forget how many more Rs,—Moore, who in-
formed the meeting that it was through the work-
ing classes that the league expected to carry the
representation of Liverpool ;—the slender attendance
of those classes must have shewn him how hopeful
an expectation this was ;—and entreated the opera-
tive anti-monopolists not to be cast down by the
many defeats they had sustained, as he had attended
many meetings where tables and chairs had been
thrown at the speakers upon the platform, whose
hard heads had stood the encounter. Mr. Black-
burne followed Mr. Moore ; and the speakers hav-
ing failed to produce much light, the farce concluded
with,—what does the reader imagine ? Why, a
discharge of fireworks ! Ex Arno dare lucem !

THE FUNDS, SATURDAY NIGHT.—The market for
English stocks to-day was steady, without particular
feature, and prices left off tolerably well supported, not-
withstanding the house closed early. Bank Stock was
last quoted 200 to 201 ; Consols for money and the ac-
count, 1001 to ; Three per Cents. Reduced, 99a to ex
div. ; Three-and-a-Half per Cents. Reduced, lon to +;
New Three-and-a-Half per Cents, 104 to k ; Long An-
nuities, 12, 7-16; and India Stock, 294 to 295.
A MALAPROPOS CRITIQUE.—OUT contemporary, the
Albion, gave yesterday a notice of a musical entertain-
ment given by H. Phillips, the celebrated vocalist, in the
large room of the Adelphi Hotel, on Saturday last, and
which the writer of course must be supposed to have at-
tended. Unfortunately, however, for his correctness,
although he might be present, the entertainment did not
take place, having been postponed until last evening.
People who are so amazingly clever as to write critiques
by anticipation, should take care that the performances
eulogised have not dropped through.
AMAZING INFLUENCE OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY.
—Our contemporary of Friday, in an article upon the
subject of the Easter Elections, which, as being, in' his
opinion, very wise, he headed " IMPORTANT," remarked
that if " two hundred of his readers " would come up to
the poll at once, they would be sufficient to neutralise the
majority which the conservatives had gained up to Thurs-
day afternoon. But alas for the influence of the " tiny
Mercury" ! Notwithstanding the fact that the polling
in question had been mainly caused by " John Smith,
Esq., of the Liverpool Mercury," as he pompously styles
himself in his own paper, how many of the" two hundred
of our readers " obeyed the summons of our magnificent
contemporary before the closing of the poll on the follow-
ing day ? Just ONE!! Yes—and -it is creditable to the
intellect of his fellow-townsmen—one individual only was
found within the borough of Liverpool stupid enough to
follow the blind leading of this pothouse oracle, whose
ravings upon any subject are as far beneath contempt as
any modern impersonation of a Roman senator is inferior
to the genuine ancient character, or the dressed-up goose
of a pantomime is beneath the meanest of the geese of the
Capitoline Hill, whose fortuitous_ cackling saved Rome
from the invader.

CHRIST CHURCH, LIVERPOOL.—On Friday evening
last, the members of this congregation met together at a
tea-party in the - school-rooms, Christian-street. Not-
withstanding the unfavourable state of the weather, there
was a numerous and highly-respectable attenance, and
the arrangements made t)y the managing committee of
ladies, assisted by the master of the boys' school, were
the theme of general admiration. The fine upper school-
room glittered with flags, and garlands of rich evergreens,
and baskets of fruits and flowers ; appropriate mottoes
adorned the walls, and two small tables of fancy-work,
contributed by ladies for the benefit of the schools, drew
around them a throng of willing purchasers. The Rev.
Fielding Ould being unavoidably absent from Liverpool,
a large portrait of him (recently presented by the congre-
gation) was placed over the fire-place; while en one of
the-side tables stood a beautiful time-piece, a memorial
from the teachers of the girls' school to their valued minis-
ter. Soon after six o'clock grace was sung by the whole
party, and the social meal went on, enlivened by the sound
of music, and the busy hum of animated voices. After
singing a concluding grace, the Rev. E. Wolfenden read
a report upon the large adult school under his care, and-
drew attention to the wants of the fund connected with it,
for the relief of sick members. Reports were also made
by the Rev. T. C. Cowan on the state of the Christ
Church tract society, district visiting, daily and Sunday
schools, clothing society, district and school libraries,
and branch associations for the church missionary, Jews,
Protestant orphans,and Sunday school society for Ireland.
On these various subjects suitable and effective addresses
were delivered in the course of the evening by the Revds. I
W. Butler, A. Hume, and G. Gibbon. At half-past nine
the doxology was sung, and the meeting separated highly
gratified with all that had passed, with increased cordiality
of feeling among themselves, and renewed interest in all
the efforts to do good connected with their church and
minister. The tea-tables were supplied by Mrs. Harris,
confectioner, Clarence-street, to the entire satisfaction of
the whole party.
THE. WORKING OF WOMEN IN FACTORIES VINDI-
CATED ON SCRIPTURAL GROUNDS !—Tbe public may
remember the perversions of Scripture, amounting almost
to blasphemies, with which the " ministers of all deno-
minations," at their celebrated gathering in Manchester,
attempted to overwhelm the advoc_tes of protection, and
to prove that free trade in corn was expressly ordained for
every country ; but they would scarcely have expected to
find the slavish toil of English females in factories vindi-
cated from the sacred writings. Yet such is the case. A
memorial, bearing., the signature of 200 manufacturing
firms, was preseirltd to the House of Commons during the
debate upon the Factory Bill, by a Conservative minis-
ter (.1) Sir James Graham, deprecating all interference
with infant and female labour in factories, and endea-
vouring to show, with respect to females, that the drud-
gery of the spindle and the power-loom—the unwholesome
atmosphere and the vicious contact of the cotton mill—
were ordained for theM from the beginning! Here is the
precious morsel, which contains a perversion
and
odetestable
of Scripture, and an aspersion so daring impious
against the beneficence of its author, that we cannot but
wonder that respectable men could sign it, or a minister of
the British Sovereign present it to Parliament We can-
not see why there should be a greater objection to the employ-
ment of women in spinningand weaving than in knitting and
sewing. The Scriptures Worm us, and their authority is
confirmed by the Homeric Poems (I) that spinning and
weaving have been female employments from the earliest
ages. Female organization gives a delicacy of touch which
enables women to piece a broken yarn, to tie a weaver's
knot, or thread a kneedle, with much greater facility than
men :" ergo, women should be compelled to endure twelve
hours of dreary toil per day in the factory—for that is the
only intelligible conclusion of the argument. Can any-
thing be more disgusting than this ? Are they christian
men who thus read the sacred volume, to cull from its
pages apologies for their own cold-blooded avarice, whilst
they close their eyes to the teaching therein, that woman
was made "as a helpmate for man"—for the duties of
companion, wife, nurse, mid mother? She has" a delicacy of
touch" forsooth ! She spun and wove by her own fireside
in the patriarchal times. And because of this " delicacy"
and the domestic pursuits practised of old, she is to cease
to be what God created her for, and to become the slave
of any grasping miser who has gold to lure her, or power
to coerce her, within the walls of his unwholesome and
contaminating factories or loom shops ! These be your
philosophers ! These your reformers of the human
race !