The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-03-05 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

We have little to say to the rigmarole with which the ,'W 7il has
favoured us in his I,t pricleatiori We reo,,, h„,,, . er, se,
him rich with respL.et to one assert 'en which he :ea-r; , ee...„-,
ar•rl now :ceeat t't• s ys that in the article. which lees
disturbed hi= seventy so ereatly, we repres wed r.ar - or
dinary average" circulation at .^,m'o per week. We never
sak; any such thing. We sta•ed that thc`riu,ber of our im-
pressions had been steadily increasiog, was still increasing
and tot on the precedirg w-el• it was close upon Some ; and
such was the str et truth. Our average eircula, ,-,n (which we
never stated at mime pill be shewn by the return ~ • and perhaps
will be greater than our generals contemporary would wish
to see us enjoying. The Mail tn!ast% profusely of his ow••
flourishing' condition. Why can't he he satisfied with it. a, d
keep his temper? Ills bitterness of tvec TQW:I,,iS US is not the
best evidence in the world that he deseises us.as a competitor
for the favoiir of nservative public. In the coriclusioe
of his remarks, t if asks us why we do not declare the
numher of papers we are in the habit of printing weekly.
ilk
We may perhaps do so when he tells us how many he sells,
and how many more he gi,es away.
Since writing the above the following paragraph, in the
notices to correspondents of en able provincial contemporary,
has met our eye Need we say that we are most grateful for
such unsolicited testimonials of our influence and irseeiines,o
" K W.—The Liverpool Standard has. we believe. the lar4 est
circulation of any paper printed in Liverpool It is patronized
by all the leading men of the town, without regard to politics,
for the talented manner in which it is conducted, arid the im-
mense mass of well-digested information which crowds its
columns. K. W. it ay not find it in Popish beer-ilouses, but
it may be seen at every respectable hotel."
We differ from " A Conservative " Doubtless, state prosecu-
tions may be instituted before the existence of any treasona-
ble conspiracy ; but, on the other hand—
" To save a state,
Legal restraints may be employer' too late.
And men may scruple tyrants to restrain
Till all resistance will be found in vain."
We have received from Robert Frank, Esq., .£2 for the Dispensa-
ries, which ,e have handed to the secretary ; and for-the " Case
of Distress," mentioned in our last,from
The pupils of the Rev. Mr. Fleming, 800t1e..."-,,,C1 1 5
Mr. Litter ~,,,VNIIIWNWWW.N.WV. NSW, •••,,,,,,V% ...W.... /I" W. 0 2 6
Mr. -•- WV, MM., ••••,, VW W V.I. WWW•AIMMIN WI MAW,/ ..., Y• 0 5 0
J. El ...----,.----w.;..,--...-----.10 0 0

A correspondent urges the propriety of some means being taken to
protect property in the neighbourhood of Edge-hill. He says,
"There have been, to my knowledge, not less than seven houses
broken open, within the last few nights, about the neighbourhood
of Edge-hill and Mount Vernon. Many more hove been at-
tacked, and the yards suffer considerably In some instances the
thieves have managed to carry away property of great value, and
committed damage which will not be easily replaced. In one or
two cases the villains ascended the staircase, almost to the bed-
room doors, which, awakening the family, Leased. them en-eat
alarm. The excitement, I can assure you, about here, is worthy
of regard, as they must be a desperate set of fellows, they seem
so impudent and experienced."
We have received a letter from Deborah Jones, of Birkenhead
complaining of the eery filthy and neglected state of certain
roads in the neighbourhood of the new church Deborah will
observe that we have devoted a very large space (considering the
crowded state of our advertising columns) to Birkenhead affairs,
and especially to a communication from Zephaniah Smith, Esq.,
laying before the public the eel'eme of the proposed " Anglo Hi-
bernic Company." For the present we would recommend De-
borah and ner friends to provide themselves with stilts, until the
present proposed great schemes are completed, and the packets
have made sufficient cinders to mend the ways of the parties
complained of and the roads for Deborah.
The inconvenience alluded to by " A Poor Member of St. Jude's
Church," is occasioned, according to his own confession, by
the crowded state of the congregation. He must he aware
that before the moveable seats were placed in the side aisles,
the latter were filled with people who were content to stand
during the whole service, and our correspondent now finds
fault because the trustees have extended down these eisles
the seats alluded to, which he states are not ' convenient"
enough, an "evil" which, he asserts, "can be remedied at
a very slight inconvenience and expense." Will he tell us
how? If he has been long a tr: ember of St. Jude's, he will
know that before the seats were placed in the side aisles the
people were as much "in the way" as before ; and we know
not what the trus ees could have done beyond preventing so
many people crowding into the church, an alternative which
our correspondent even, we presume, would be slow to adopt.
He ought to have sufficient charity to believe that it is not " a
matter of indiffe,ence with the trustees whether the poor man
can kneel during his prayers or not" ; and he ought to have
sufficient common sense to know that wherever the gospel is
preached the poor attend in such numbers as to preclude
kneeling accommodation, let the managers of the church
make what arrangements they may.

ebt Etherponi attanDarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 5, .1844.

The council of the Anti-monopoly Association
have just issued their " Free Trade Circular" for
March, in which they have attempted, by a series
•of laboured and most erroneous calculations, to get
rid of the charge of dishonesty, fastened upon them
by the letter of Mr. Sandars. We have already
noticed, certainly at greater length than was called
for, the effusiOns of some of the League journals
upon the question at issue in this controversy, viz.,
the amount of charges on foreign wheat imported
into this country; and we shall therefore only corn-
went here upon one or two paragraps of this " cir-
cular."

In reply to the argument of Mr. Sanders that,
when the position of the League party is that the
charges of importation of foreign wheat are a suffi-
cient protection to the British corn-grower, such
charges ought to be confined strictly to those which
are peculiar to foreign, the Council of the Associa-
tion remark thus : '

" But Mr. Sandars affirms that foreign wheat is subject
to no charge, to which English. ' anovccl from one port
to another,' is not also subject. Even were the argument
correct; it is nothing to the purpose, fora very small pro-
portion of English wheat is moved coastwise, whereas the
greater portion of foreign wheat, after its receipt in this
country, and before it finds its way to the consumers, has
to incur expenses as heavy or heavier than its cost of im-
portation, to transport it to the various markets in the
kingdom. By far the greater portion of English wheat is
consumed at or near the place of its growth. There are
certainly not more than five counties in England, not
more than two in Scotland, which grow more wheat than
they coniurne ; and Ireland, which in 1833 exported
83t),000 quarters, in 1842 only exported 200,000, and now
grows little more than is required for her own consumption.
" In estimating, then, the effect of a free importation
u'on the British farmer, we are bound to add to the
average cost tree on hoard at the various ports of ship-
want, the average expenses, including freight and all other
charges incurred before the produce can be consumed."

A greater amount of ignorance of the subject than
is here exhibited could scarcely have been conceived.
A very small portion of English wheat moved
coastwise !" Why, the fact is known to every prac-
tical man that the English grain and dour moved
coastwise very far Exceeds not only the average
yearly importation of foreign, but the largest im-
portation ; and so far from its being true that the
internal charges upon foreign wheat to the places of
consumption arc greater than those upon home-
grown, precisely the contrary is the case. The car-
riage, for instance, of foreign wheat, from Hull or
Liverpool, to the m ,nufacturing districts of Lanca-
shire, is far less than that of the home-grown wheat
of Nottingham, &c., which forms the chief supply of
those districts. And then we are told that " by far the
greater portion of English wheat is consnmed at or
near the place of its growth ;" and that there are
not more than five counties in England which grow
more wheat than they can consume." Yet nearly
one-third of the population of England, viz.,
4,397,791 soulz, are concentrated within the limits of
two covnties (Middlesex and Lancaster), and a por-
tion of a county (the West Riding of Yorkshire).
These counties certainly do not grow their own con-
sumption, which is drafted—moved coastwise or by
internal river or canal conveyance from the other
counties of England. A more consummate piece of
hal.dillood than this annihilation of the greater part
of the coasting trade of England we never remember
to have met with. Such flagrant puerilities or
falsehoods indeed we know not which to call
them—are scarcely worthy of serious refutation.
And now a word with respect to the mode adopted
in calculating the average freight of foreign grain,
which we last week sheaved to be grossly inaccurate.
We have the same calculation given us in the Cir-
tular of the Association, and are informed that it
was drawn up for the League by Sir Joshua Walms-
ley and Mr. Joseph Sturge—eminent authorities
and most disinterested witnesses no doubt. But
we are furnished, in the same circular, with another
document most apropos to our present purpose, in- ,
asmuch as it furnishes us with a clue to an average
something like the true one. The document in ques-
tion contains the replies of her Majesty's consuls for
the various continental corn markets, to queries as
to the quantity of wheat and other grain which
could be shipped to England if the trade in corn was
open. We give the quantities of wheat

Quarters.
From St. Petersburgh .
„ Riga, not stated.
„ Liebau
„ Odessa
Warsaw (via Hamhurgh) , 300,000
Stockholm. . „ „ ~, , 1,000
Dauzig, . , ~ ,

From Konigsberg-

Stettin

Memel

65,000
250,000

5.964
175,000
„ Hamborzh
„ Rotterdam, not stated.

„ A ntwerp, not stated.

Palermo.

. 200,000

2,222,464
Now we ask of our readers to examine these
qua nties accurately,
and to say in what way they
would proceed to estimate the average freight of such
wheat, imported here. Obviously the correct mode
would he to carry out the calculations at the various
foreign ports, and for the average to divide the gross
amount by the total number of quarters. We may
arrive near enough, however, by a mere glance over
the figures. Of this two million and odd quarters,
only 150,000 quarters from Odessa pay the high
rate of 10s., and 200.000 from Palermo that of Bs. 3d.
838,000 from Hamburgh, including 300,000 qrs. from
Warsaw, which is borne via Hamburg, pay 2s. to
2s. 6d. ; and the remainder the freights of the Baltic
ports, which the Association circular puts down at
3s. to 4s. We have, therefore,
150,000 qrs. from Odessa, at 10s. £ 75,000
200,000 „ from Palermo, at Bs. 3d 82,500
838,000 „. from Hamburgh, at 2s. 3d 97,766
1,034,464 „ from other Ports, at 3s. 6d 181,064

Total freight
Or, average on the whole 3s. 11d. per quarter. The
average of Sir Joshua and his confrere for these
same ports is 4s. 61d. to ss. 5d ; and we
have given credit in this statement for even
higher freights than they have. For instance, the
statement of Sir Joshua and Air. Sturge gives the
freight from Italy at 441 6d. to 65., which is nearly
one-third more than present rates, and that from
Odessa at Bs. to gs., whereas we have gone upon the
exorbitant rates of Bs. 3d. from Italy, and 10s. from
Odessa, as given in the consular returns. The jug-
gle, therefore, is palpably in the mode of calculation,
adopted for the purpose of sheaving a higher average
than-the real one.

We feel that we ought to apologise to our readers
for pestering them with questions of arithmetic,
which any boy at the Blue School or the Mechanics'
Institution could solve correctly. We are compel-
led, however, as a public duty, to perform the unin-
teresting task, when we find false conclusions sedu-
lously put forth, with the sanction of names, whose
owners ought to be above such transparent disho-
nesty. If Messrs. Walmsley and Sturge, as mer-
chants, give to the world statements which it is to
receive upon the strength of their mercantile cha-
racter, or the " young men," who compose the
Anti-Monopoly Association, copy those statements
approvingly, both parties are at least bound, in mak-
ing them, to use the same accuracy and fairness
which the world knows they would use in the draw-
ing up of a mercantile circular or an acconnt cur-
rent. And this, we submit with confidence, they
have not done !

Mr. Alderman Evans gets a little cantankerous on
our hands. Dissatisfied with his position in the
Dock Committee and in the Council—defeated too
in his latest public appearance as a journalist—he
has last week run a-tilt at the whole corps of re-
perters for the press, Radical as well as Conservative,
charging them with the atrocious crime of com-
pressing their reports of the doings and sayings of
the Dock Committee—of which, in imagination, he
is still the foremost member—and more than insi-
nuating that in so compressing them unfairness is
shown towards his own little section of the Com-
mittee. He overlooks unfortunately the fact that the
paper 'which reports most frequently the meetings
of the Committee, inasmuch as it appears on the day
after their being held, is of the same politics with
himself, and advocates the same dock crotchets ;
and he has, therefore, by his random accusation,
given serious offence to the whole body of the local
press, and his own friends in particular.
Now this conduct, we submit, is very unwise in
Mr. Evans. The press is a very awkward body for
any public man to r uarrel with ; and especially for
a public man in his position. The worthy alderman
no longer " bestrides this narrow world like a Co-
lossus." People are no longer agape to learn what
are his peculiar opinions on any question, or what the
particular hobby which he chooses to ride. His
facts and statements, too, are not now in the best
odour. There are actually, indeed, some people who
think that the public could get on very without an
Alderman Evans, either in the Council or the Dock
Committee; and not a few of his own party who
would he heartily glad to be rid of his domination in
both places. Under these circumstances, it is a
tempting of Providence--a risk of anticipating his
probable future fate—to fly in the face of a body of
men who might he provoked to give to him even
less than that prominence before the public which
he has hitherto been favoured with, as some ima-
gine, undeservedly. We say this in all kindness.
We should be sorry to lose Mr. Evans; but we are
much afraid that the reporters for the press may
some of these days be tempted by the alderman's in-
judicious attacks to " stand by their order," and
extinguish his eloquence altogether.
Seriously, however, we must state, in self-vindi-
cation, and for our contemporaries as well, that the
last of our public bodies who ought to complain of
the reporters is the Dock Committee. In the first
place the accommodation afforded them is very
meagre ; and the conversational tone in which many
of its proceedings are carried on, throws infinite dif-
ficulties in the way of their giving anything like
complete reports. A fair one, however, we do be-
lieve, they endeavour to give.

IA local contemporary, in one of those astound-
ingly wise articles which lie sometimes achieves, pro-
pounded to the world the discovery that the present
ministry should resign office, in order that her Ma-
jesty, without danger to her person, might visit her
Irish people. The existence of a Conservative ad-
ministration, he asserted, was the only bar to the
realization of that hope, so beautifully expressed by
Sir Robert Peel, that the auspicious day might come
when our gracious Sovereign " could alight, like
some benignant spirit, on the shores of Ireland, and
there lay the foundations of a temple of peace—when
she could, in accents which, proceeding from the
heart, speak to the heart rather than the ear, call
upon her Irish subjects, of all classes and denomina-
tions, Protestant and Catholic, Saxon and Celt, to
forget the differences of kind and of race, and to hal-
low that holy temple of peace, of which she laid the
foundations—to hallow it with sacrifices still holier
than the sacrifices by which the temples of old were
hallowed—to hallow it WITH THE SACRIFICS OP
THOSE EVIL PASSIONS, WHICH DISHONOUR OUR

COMMON FAITH, AND PREVENT THE UNION OF