The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-02-01 00:00:00

TO ADVERTISERS.

ire beg respectfully to call the attention of
Merchants, Brokers, Auctioneers, and others,

to the important fact that the

LIVERPOOL STANDARD

IS NOW THE
ONLY NEWSPAPER

PUBLISHED WEEKLY ON TUESDAY,

which can be read on that day by the thousands

Manufacturers and others attending

THE TUESDAY'S MARKET IN
MANCHESTER.

The STANDARD is taken at all the Newsrooms

and respect

zble Inns in that town and the

surrounding manufacturing district

SECOND EDITION is published at Half-past
Two, in time for the North Mails, containing the
MARKETS, and any news of importance that

may arrive in the course of the morning

DR. HAMPDEN'S CASE

The Court of Queen's Bench is to deliver judgment in

this important case this morning, and we hope to
receive the decision of the Court by Electric

Telegraph the momen

it is pronounced, when it

hall be immediately

made known to our readers

Ebt Etbrupoo.l &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, FEB. 1, 1848

We have given, in another place, a carefully com-
piled condensation of the exports of cotton manu-
factured goods during the past year, to which we
invite the particular attention of our readers. We
have been importing largely of breadstuffs from the
various markets of Europe, and from the continent
of America. We have expended with these coun-
tries, in food, between October, 1846 t and October,
1847, an amount variously estimated at £25,000,000

.to £30,000,000 sterling; and our political econo-
mists have always assured us that our increased
purchases of corn and other commodities would be
paid for by increased exports of manufactured
goods. What, however, has been the result will be
seen by the statement in question. Our exilorts to
the countries from which we have drawn our food,
with the exception of those to the United States,
have fallen off very largely; and although for the
bulk of them payment has long been made, and,
by this time the wealth which we so lavishly poured
into their laps must have reached the consumers of
every class, we have not had presented to us, as
yet, the slightest prospect of an approaching de-
mand for the products of our industry, upon a
scale commensurate with our increased imports, or
even of the average demand of ordinary years. The
foreign grower of the bread which we are eating has
got our hard money ; and he seems strongly in-
clined to retain possession.
We are well aware of the apology which will be
offered for this absence of foreign demand. It will
be said that we have raised the price of food in the
markets of the world ; and thus diminished that
margin between the income of the foreigner and
the cost of his living, which he has ordinarily to
expend with us in articles of clothing. But we must
remind such apologists that, if we have so raised the
price of food in foreign countries, we have done so
to our own cost, and for the advantage of the foreign
grower, the foreign merchant, the foreign shipowner,
and general trader, who have become suddenly rich
by means of our purchases ; and, moreover, that in
the countries from which we have bought, the
classes thus benefitted comprise the bulk of the
population. If wheat and other grain has been
dear throughout Europe, in proportion has been the
amount which has gone from us to pay for it.
Moreover, this very raising of the price of food to
the foreigner, and the equalization of the cost of
subsistence throughout the world, were paraded as
some of the boasted advantages of the free-trade
system. The price of foreign labour was to be en-
hanced ; and thus, competition with us was to be
rendered a losing game : and, at the same time, the
increased price which the foreign grower was to re-
ceive for his food was to enable him to expend more
in our manufactures instead of diminishing his
means. We were, moreover, to annihilate foreign
industry, by the same agency with which we stimu-
lated the prosperity of foreigners. Neither of these
.contradictory results has followed ; and the reason
is very evident, viz., that the foreigner prefers lay-
ing out the increased price which he receives for
his grain in stimulating the growth of his own

manufactures.
But, how does this singular argument, that our
purchases of food from the foreigner incapacitates
him from buying from us 0) his ordinary quantity
of manufactured goods, apply to the case of the
United States ? Our demand, and that of Europe,
has, during the past year, raised the price of food
of every description in America fully fifty per cent.
Flour has ranged at the principal ports from 5 dol.
50 cents to 6 dol. 50 cents per barrel, which, in
ordinary years, has not been worth more than 3 dol.
50 cents to 4 dol. 50 cents. Yet America has been
able to take from us, as will be seen from the state-
ment elsewhere, three times her ordinary consump-
tion of cotton manufactures, and no doubt a largely
increased quantity of other British products. It
is certainly not for us to attempt to reconcile this
discrepancy in the application of the free traders'
argument. We leave the task to them; and it will
require some little ingenuity to perform it satis-

factorily.
The cause of the falling off in our exports to the
British 'West Indies is more easily explained. The
unequal competition with the slave cultivator, to
which we have driven them, has rendered those
once fertile and valuable possessions, one vast scene
of desolation, distress, and insolvency. We ask of
our readers to mark their decreased imports of our
two leading cotton fabrics during the past year, as
compared with the two preceding ones :-
1845. 1846. 1847.
Plain calicoes, yards 16,987,142 17,765,800 11,457,080
Printed and dyed do. 20,729,641 17,758,418 11,127,260

These colonies were gradually recovering from
the effects of former heavy blows inflicted on them
by the British Legislature. Their planters had
applied increased energy and skill, with more effi-
cient machinery, to the work of cultivation ; and

by the timely aid of the government to enable
them to procure an increased supply of labour, they
might at this moment have been in a position to
consume largely of the products of the mother
country. This very prospect, however, of being
enabled ultimately to rise triumphant over their
difficulties sealed the fate of the West Indian body.
The planter was a proscribed man. His approach-
ing prosperity was gall and wormwood to the
mawkish sentimentalists, who had for years been
denouncing him and impelling him to his ruin.
The pseudo philanthropists of the day found that
they could get over their aversion to consume slave
grown sugar and molasses, if they could save a
half-penny a week in the sweetening of their tea
and their puddings ; that the lash and the brand-
ing iron were not such very cruel things, when
.aid on by the hands of the Cuban and Brazilian
planter; that—but we need trace the disgusting
apostacy of feeling no further. The West Indies
were forthwith consigned to utter ruin.
Our decreased exports to British North America

are not quite so easily to be accounted for. We
have imported from our Canadian possessions con-
siderable supplies of breadstuffs and provisions,
giving, however, an advantage to the neighbour-
ing states of America. But we have decreased by
nearly one half our imports of the most important
article, which Canada has to supply us with—her
timber—in favour of the growers of the North of
Europe. And the result of our suicidal policy, we
fear, will not be confined to the loss of Canadian

lemand for our manufactures: Already disaffection

is spreading widely amongst the French popula-
tion of the lower provinces, who sigh for Republi-
can Institutions ; and there are many loyal subjects
in either province, who complain justly that they
are bound to an unkind mother, whose connexion
with them is only felt in the imposts which she
levies upon their industry.
The most disastrous quarter, to which our atten-
tion is forcibly directed by the statistics referred to,
is our Indian empire. We have in that splendid
possession an aggregate population little short, if at
sit of 200 millions of souls ;' and capable, when

its resources and the habits of its people shall have
been developed, by the exercise towards them of a
just and wise policy, of compensating to the British
manufacturer the loss of every market of Europe,
should so improbable an occurrence ever take place.
When we see, therefore, as in the present year, our
exports to the Indian market diminished by nearly
one-half; when we hear from that country of large
amounts of British capital embarked in encouraging
the enterprise of its people, and developing the vast
resources of its fertile soils, now all but sacri-
ficed ; when we look amongst the long list of once
wealthy firms in this country, who have been com-
pelled to suspend their operations and submit to
ruinous loss, if not to be reduced to utter beggary,
and that the most extensive of them have been en-
gaged in East Indian commerce, we feel bound to
enquire what can be the inducing causes of such
grievous calamities? The apology of the free-trader
for the nonfulfillment of his large promises does not
apply here. India has had no potato rot, no famine.
to check her onward progress. She has indeed had,
like our West Indian colonies, to enter into a dis-
advantageous competition with the foreign slave
producers of sugar; and thus far her sufferings
may be laid at the feet of the free-trade party. But
the source of an evil which has prostrated the whole
fabric of our commercial system, in the eastern
world, has a deeper seat than this ; and the subject
is of far too much importance to be discussed at the
close of an article already sufficiently extended.

We shall, therefore, return to it on an early occa-
sion ; and conclude now with asking of those phi-
losophers, under the operation of whose theoretic
policy Great Britain was to assume at once an atti-
tude of preeminence amongst the nations of the
world greater than she bad ever hitherto attained
—to what part of that vast empire, upon which the
sun never sets, and which owns the British sway,
can they point in which industry is not prostrate,
enterprise suspended, and suffering and disaster rife
amongst all classes of its population ?

COUNTY

RATE BURTHEN

The sum required to be paid by the several townships
in the West Derby Union for the county rate for the pre-
sent quarter only, amounts to the enormous sum of
£2612 Bs. 10d. This is exclusive of the borough rate
payable by those townships, which are wholly, or in part,
within the borough of Liverpool. The above sum is di-
rected by the precept of the Clerk of the Peace to be paid
to the County Treasurer on or before the first of March ;
but it is not expected that the overseers of the poor, who
have already very heavy charges upon them in the relief
of the poor, will be able to pay one-half of the same. It
is really high time that this oppressive county tax should
be reduced ; the burthen increases, and is becoming a very
serious matter. The Guardians of the West Derby and
other Unions have on more than one occasion memorialised
the county magistrates on the subjeet ; but the evil has
been growing greater and greater ever since the establish-
ment of the county constabulary force, and there appears
no prospect of its amelioration.