The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-10-31 00:00:00

Oct. 31, 1848.

•LtttratUVt.

VARIETIES

ith
of A WHOLESALE JACK KETCH.—A London cheesemon-
Leh ger thus concludes his circular :—" Families waited on
for orders, and punctually executed."
ley " UNDER THE Rosc. —The ancients consecrated the
in rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, and, therefore,
in- frequently placed it on the ceilings of rooms destined for
wn the receiving of the guests, and implying that whatever
la- Was transacted there should not be made public.
Lily Crime is the moral cholera of the social body. It is a
[ch disease far more deadly than mere physical pestilence can
or be, however virulent. it kills both, the body and the
he soul. It affects the future as well as the present. The
taint which it leaves is in the mind. Plague is only a
rt,
ced temporary visitant ; but crime is a disease permanently
endemic, a canker always eating into the heart of our
n- civilisation. ... . -

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ier

LITERATURE IN THE LAST CENTURY.—The most fas-
tidious and extravagant of authors was the accomplished,
the moral Lord Lyttleton. How striking the contrast
between this peer and the plebeian authors of the time !
Whilst they, trembling with cold, hungry, and despair-
ing, hurried off their manuscripts to the printer's hands,
and scattered their productions as it sere to the winds,
careless of fame, and solicitous only to live, Lyttleton
printed and reprinted his " Life of Henry II.," correcting
and recorrecting with an anxiety which could not defend
him from the blast of Dr. Johnson's criticism. The whole
work was printed twice before it was deemed fit for pub-
lication, a part of it three times, and the corrections cost
the noble owner a thousand pounds.—Johnson's Dic-
tionary, which was calculated to take three years in its
-compilation and printing, required eight for its comple-
tion, the sum given for it being £1575, scarcely £2OO a-
-year. Out of this Johnson had to pay six assistants, to
whom he entrusted the mechanical parts ; and of these,
-great as was his prejudice against their country, five were
bcotchmen. Poor Johnson had spent the whole sum re-
ceived for the copyright, and one hundred pounds more,
before this great national work was concluded.
APPEAL TO SOLICITORS.—But, gentlemen, let me not
be misunderstood. You will frequently see poor human
lizture in some of its worst aspects : it cannot but be so ;
and it will call forth the exercise of all the virtue, all the
Christian feeling, that is in you. To you will come pant-
ing
revenge, merciless cupidity, hard hearted avarice,
hatred,
malice, and all uncharitableness. Into your ear
wilt be poured, from time to time, their fierce whisperings
against their unfortunate fellow creatures. To gain their
ends, to wound the feelings of an opponent, and secure
Often some petty advantage, persons employing you will
not scruple to violate the sacred confidence of social inter-
course ; and it will be sought to make you a sure, a wil-
ling, and sharp instrument in their unholy hands, to

gratify their evil passions : to oppress and crush the un-
happy and helpless ; to pursue, for instance, the hasty
utterer of slander—the unthinking wrong-doer—with
deadly pertinacity, and consequent cruelty to both parties ;
when a timely, kind, judicious interposition would have
healed the skin-deep wound, and restored peace and
amity. Will you do these things, my friends ? Will you
consent thus to demean yourselves, and degrade your
office ? Nay, but God forbid ! You shall, on the con-
trary, throughout life, remember from whose awful lips
fell the words, " Blessed are the peacemakers !" You
shall say, on such occasions, with noble firmness, " I will

not do what you demand. I disdain to be the instrument
of your vindictiveness, of your over-reaching avarice ; I
will not be the conduit-pipe of your sweltering venom and
malignity. I will not, at your bidding, plunge your
debtor into prison, and his family into the poor house. I
will not hurry into the Gazette one struggling manfully
but desperately with misfortune, and whom you would
. . • •v. 1r

prostrate with short-sighted fury, 1 will not do all this,
when I am satisfied that they are unfortunate only, and
you cruel and exacting. If you want to crush and de-
stroy, go elsewhere, I will not abuse the law ; I will not

plutige-its sharp weapons into their hearts, nor prostitute
law, in my person, by giving effect to your unjust and ty-
rannical wishes ?"—Warren's Duties of Attorneys.
OBITUARY ELOQUENCE.—A correspondent of the
Burlington. Free Press has furnished to that journal the
following verbatim report of a funeral discourse which he
says he heird delivered in the Florida House of Repre-
sentatives. The duty of making it was voluntarily as-

sumed, and even insisted on by-the speaker, to the no
small wonder of the house, his utter incompetency being
notorious :—" Mr. Speaker : Sir,—Our fellow-citizen,
Mr. Silas Higgins, who was lately a member of this
branch of the Legislature, is dead, and he died yesterday
in the forenoon. He had the brown creaters (bronchitis
be meant, I suppose), and was an uncommon individual.
His character was good up to the time of his death, and
he never lost his voice. He was 56 years old, and was
taken sick before he died at his boarding-house, where
board can be had at a dollar and 75 cents a week, washing
and bolts included. He was an ingenious creatur, and

in the early part of his life had a father and mother. He
was an officer in our state militia since the last war, and
was brave and polite; and his uncle, Timothy Higgins,
belonged to the revolutionary war, and was commissioned
as lieutenant by Gen. Washington, first president and
_ r _ -,1

COMMalltler-111- L. Iva va
States, who died at Mount Vernon, deeply lamented by
a large circle of friends, December 14, 1799, or there-
about, and was buried soon after his death with military
honours, and several guns were burst in firing salutes.
Sir, Mr. Speaker,—General Washington presided over
the great continental sanhedrim and political meeting
that formed our constitution ; and he was indeed a great
and good man. He was first in war, first in peace, and
first in the hearts of his, countrymen ; and though he was
in favour of the United States Bank, he was a friend of
education ; and from what he said in his farewell address,
I have no doubt he would have voted for the tariff of 1846
if he had been alive, and hadn't a'died sometime before-
hand. His death was considered at the time as rather
premature, on account of its being brought on by an ordi-
nary cold. Now, Mr. Speaker, such being the character
.of General Washington, I motion that we wear crape
around the left arm of this Legislature, and adjourn till
to-morrow morning as an emblem of our respects for the
memory of S. Higgins, who is dead, and died of the
brown creaters' yesterday in the forenoon."

EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT DRY LAND.—In the upper
new red sandstone of Weston Bank, near Runcorn, in
Cheshire, we have the first positive evidence hitherto
discovered of dry land in England. At Weston, in the
rock above-named, about thirty-two feet from the sur-
face, and in the higher part of the deposit, there is a thin
bed of red clay, from about a half to three quarters of an
inch in thickness. This clay affords impressions of the
feet marks of the cheirotherium, rhvnchosaurus, several
other reptiles, numerous worm marks, and beautiful lines
of desiccation, similar to what a bed of moist clay would
undergo, under a hot sun at the present day. The red
clay was evidently deposited by water, which afterwards
receded from it and left it uncovered. When this deposit
was in a plastic state, the animals walked across it and
left their tracts, subsequently the sun or air, by desiccat-
ing the clay, produced wide cracks, and the water, at
length returning, again filled both the feet marks and the
cracks, and made a beautiful cast of them in the sand.
Thus do these most interesting specimens, not only show
us the tracts, left countless ages ago, of some of the most
extraordinary animals that ever existed on our globe; but
they afford us proofs of a quiet flow of water that de-
posited the red clay—the recession of such water—the
drying and cracking of the clay by a hot sun or air, and
the return of a short current of water, bearing along with
it the sand that formed the casts of the moulds,—circum-
stances of great interest to those who speculate on the
physical condition of the globe at that remote period.
Numerous such thin beds of, clay are to be met with in
the coal measures, alternating with beds of sandstone,
formed of grains of different sizes, still no trace of de-
siccation is to be found like those in the new red sand-
stone last described. Such may have existed, yet all
evidence of them in England has been lost ; but Mr.
Lyell, in vol. ii., no. 4, p. 25, of the second series of
" American Journal of Science," states that he has dis-
covered footmarks of an animal resembling the cheiro-
therium, in the middle of the coal field in Unity town-
ship, five miles from Greensburg, in Westmoreland
county, Pennsylvania. The markings occur on slabs of
stone, a few inches thick, between which are thin partings
of fine unctuous clay, where casts of the animal's feet in
sand are loft. Thin cracks filled with sand also appear in
the clay. These seem as if made after the animal had
walked. Thus, these American flags present very similar
appearances to Weston ones, before described.—Mr. E.
W. Binney, in Vol 8 of the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society's Memoirs. . .

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A LOG-HOUSE IN THE BACKWOODS.—The log-house
consisted of two rooms separated from each other with
huards so badly joined, that crevices were in many places
observable. t ach room, from thirty to forty square
yards ; beneath one of the rooms was a cellar ; the walls
of the house consisted of layers of strong blocks of tim-
ber, roughly squared and notched into each other at the
corners ; the joints filled with clay. The house had two
doors, one of which was always closed in winter, and
open in summer to cause a draught. The fire was on the
floor at the end of the building, where a grotesque chim-
ney had been constructed of stones gathered out of the
land, and walled together with clay mud instead of ce-
inent. The house was roofed with thin oak boards nailed
upon each other, so as just to overreach. The floors of
the house were covered with the same material, except a
large piece near the fire, which was paved with small
atones also gathered from the land. There was no win-
dow to the house. My hostess observed, " Upon the
whole it was as well without, for in winter the house
was warmer, and in summer they had always the door
open, which was warmer than any window." It is quite
common to see at least one bed in the same room as that
in which the fire is kept. These was no chamber, only a
sort of loft, constructed rather to make the house warmer
.than for an additional room. Adjoining one side were a
few boards nailed together in the form of a table, and
supported principally by the timber in the wall. This was
dignified by the name of the sideboard. In the centre of
the room stood another small table, covered with a piece
of coarse brown calico ; this was the dining-table. The
chairs, four in number, were the most respectable furni-
ture in the house, having bark of hickory plaited for bot..
toms. Besides these there were two stools and a bench
for common use ; a candlestick made of an ear of Indian
corn, two or three trenchers, and a few tin drinking ves-
sels. One corner of the house was occupied with agri-
cultural implements, consisting of large hoes, axes, &c.
for stubbing, flails, and wooden forks, all exhibiting spe-
cimens of workmanship rather homely. Various herbs
'Were suspended from the roof, also two guns, one of them
it rifle, several hams and sides of bacon smoked almost
entirely black, two or three pieces of beef, &c. Under
one of the beds were three or four large pots of honey, of
Which Mrs. P. was not a little lavish, as she used it to
`every meal along with coffee. The furniture in the other
'room consisted of two beds and a hand-loom, with which
the family wove the greater part of their own clothes. In
the cellar I observed two or three large hewn tubs, full of
lard, and a lump of tobacco, the produce of their own
land, in appearance sufficient to serve an ordinary smoker
for his life.—The Yorkshire Farmer in Illinois.

THE ECONOMIST AND THE FOREIGN

EXCHANGES

(From the Daily News.)

Ihe editor of the Economist has at length produced the
first of his promised series of articles on this branch of the
currency question. We regret our inability to augur
therefrom the addition of any material light cn the sub-
ject; but are compelled to anticipate an increase of that
misapprehension and perplexity which are, unfortunately,
so prevalent, perhaps through the dissemination of opi-
nions by writers more theoretically than practically qua-
lified for the discussion of such topics.

That, by the last observation, we do no injustice to the
writer of the article under notice, the following extracts
from his last week's paper will, we hope, render suffi-
ciently apparent ; the first of which is as follows :
" What we are so anxious to establish as the foundation of
the discussions we have in view is, that rises and falls of prices
rest upon a principle altogether independent of any system
which has been or may be adopted for regulating the exchanges
of a country, either foreign or domestic ; and that the same
changes would take place in the relative values of different com-
modities in the rudest state of barter and in the most perfect
and advanced modern system of exchanges." .

Such, then, is the position contended for as the foun-
dation of the forthcoming discussion on the foreign ex-
changes in the pages of the Economist.
Our first inquiry now must be, what is that " system
which has been adopted for regulating the exchanges of
this country, foreign and domestic," contemporary with
" the fall of prices," which has recently annihilated per-
haps one-third of the entire capital, fixed and
floating, of the country ? To this question, we presume,
the reply of Sir-Robert Peel will be conclusive, at least to
the editor of the Economist, namely, that the system now
in operation is an immediate and mechanical contraction
of the available domestic currency in proportion to the
abstraction of the bank's stock of bullion under an adverse
state of the foreign exchanges.
The assertion of the writer before us, then, will amount,
to this—that the fall of prices, coincident and propor-
tioned to the rise in the value of money under contraction
of its available quantity, is analogous to what would occur
under a system in which " the rudest state of barter "
prevailed.
The point of this allegation is, that it goes in the teeth
of the prevailing public complaint that the present ruinous
depreciation of property (apart from its ordinary partial
incidental depreciation through the common variations of
supply and demand) has arisen mainly from a simple but

---r:
violent contraction of the previous available quantity of
the circulating medium, and consequent arbitrary and op-
pressive enhancement of its value. And the absurdity of
the allegation lies in the assumption that it is possible,
under a fluctuating standard of value like our present one,
that the prices of property should be liable to no other
fluctuations than those to which, without any standard or
measure of value at all, they would be liable under the