The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-07-23 00:00:00

ing trades, we believe it will be found quite prac-
ticable to accommodate them on the land which
is being made north of the Sandon Graving Docks,
and which comprises an area of somewhere about
200,000 yards, much of it situated inland, but
affording water frontage amply sufficient for the ne-
cessary conveniences being provided for putting in
boilers and machinery for vessels brought there to
receive them, either from our own building yards
or those of other ports. We have already stated it
as the opinion of the trade that it is immaterial
whether the builder's yard and that of the engineer
are precisely in the same spot. All that is required
is, that they should be both on this side of the
Mersey, and that the engineer and the builder
should be able to work together for the good of
their joint clients. This desideratum would be
fully effected by the arrangements which we have
proposed.
We shall not dwell upon this branch of the sub-
ject further than to impress the important
hearing of the whole upon the interests of Liver-
pool, and of its industrious and trading classes
especially. An outlay of half a million to a mil-
lion sterling in wages may he saved, or lost, to us
by the course which we pursue upon this question.
Let us, therefore, act in the matter as sensible men,
for once, having purely Liverpool interests at heart.
And here we feel impelled to offer a word or two
with respect to our own advocacy of recent dock
proceedings, in relation to this and other matters,
and in reply to the remarks of two of our contem-
poraries, put forth during the past week. The
Liverpool Courier has given us the credit of having
properly called the attention of the public to the
ease of the shipbuilders of the port; but he inti-
mates that, in so doing, we impugn altogether the
past policy of the Dock Committee in extending
the dock area of the port, and, at the same time,
takes credit to himself for having some years ago
given expression to the same views as ourselves.
`We cannot, however, remember our contemporary
having ever been very decided on dock affairs,
except in opposition to the north dock scheme,
and in support of the timber trade remaining at
the south end. Another contemporary, the Journal,
talks in a similar strain as to the south end being
sufficient for all purposes—shipbuilders' yards,
engineers' yards, and increased dock works as well
—and, moreover, quotes Mr. Eyre Evans as an
authority upon the subject If we remember rightly,
however, it was Mr. Evans who first drove the
shipwrights from the neighbourhood of Trentbam-
street, to secure the site of his pet Albert Dock
and warehouses—most paying properties! In reply
to both, we think it is now tolerably certain that,
without using some of the timber space at the
south, we should be puzzled to find accommoda-
tion for the shipbuilders ; and that the extension
to the north is the only event which is likely to
enable us to afford accommodation to the timber
trade and the engineering business, the importance
of which to the port we have humbly endeavoured
to show.

We beg to direct the attention of our readers to
tbe•following commercial document, which, it will
be admitted, affords a striking example of the un-
certainty of business adventures, and especially
those undertaken to the new El Dorado. Crockery
must he in great abundance in the diggings, when
we find it thus selling at less than half the expenses
upon its shipment :
Ae-ount of sales of nett proceeds of sixteen crates
earthenware received per " Treaty," from Rio de Janeiro,
for account of the concerned, as under :-
16 crates earthenware for
Oct. 16,1849. CHARGES.

Entry at Custom-house, &c.
Certificate of landing
Duties on the same
Freight and primage . 319.50

Lighterage on same
Cartage and wharfage . . 15.00
Incidental expenses, Boathire, &c.
Premium on coin, =8617.85 at 6v cent.
Interest on 5118.52-31 ms., at s't, cent 113.57
...

Storage, 3 months..
Commission to the house 5 ct.
Delcredere ditto sv.' c.. 20 -4? ct. 90.00
Supercargo's commiss, 10 Ix ct. 953.39

Per 31st Jan. 1850, to debit of the concerned .. =8'503.39

We of course omit the names of the parties con-
nected with this worse than profitless speculation,
and merely add that the " account sales" are dated
" San Francisco, 31st January, 1850," and the result
of the sale may " point a moral " to many an in-
tending adventurer to California.

AMIDST the wreck of fortunes, and the sufferings
of millions, caused by ouriniquitous currency syste
the man of money, the possessor of ingots of gold and
ingots of silver, or, what is equivalent, of a heavy
balance on the right side of the Bank of England's
ledger, has thus far looked on with complacency,
hugging himself upon the contemplation of his
increasing gains, and perhaps debating within
himself the question—what fine ancestral estate,
what mill, or what mine, the " pressure," and the
" crisis," which he loves, will sweep into the
meshes of his cunningly-fashioned net. But, if we
mistake not the signs of the times, the public, long
wilfully blind upon this subject, is beginning to
open its eyes to the nature of the process by which
the industry of the country is periodically robbed
to swell the coffers of the usurer and the monied
drone. Men are beginning to see what they pay
for the fanciful luxury of "hard money," " the
real stuff," or by whatever other name they choose
to call their golden idol, which deserts them when
they most want it; and inquiring minds by thou-
sands throughout the country have already fami-
liarised themselves with the whole subject, and
are preparing themselves for the task of securing
justice for a wronged and abused people.
Amongst those prepared to take a part in the
coming struggle of industry against usury we arc
glad to observe Mr. Hamer Stansfield, of Leeds,
an ardent free trader, an export merchant of thirty
years' standing, and a thoroughly honest man.
Mr. Stansfield has already done good service by
the publication of a pamphlet, which we noticed in
our columns; and he has now entered the field
again, by addressing a letter to his colleague in
free-trade agitation, Mr. Richard Cobden, in
which he endeavours to bring that gentleman into
his way of thinking, and asks him, now that they
!iave succeeded in doing away with protection to
agriculture, for his " aid in obtaining from the
legislature relief from another species of protection
almost as unjust and mischievous—the protection
derived by the monied interest at the expense of
all other classes from the operation of our currency
laws." We rather like Mr. Stansfield's broad
assumption that our present system is one for the
exclusive protection of the monied interest—of
usurers, bill discounters, loan jobbers, and mort-
gagees. If it had been framed for the express
purpose of putting other people's money into these
men's pockets, the most astute statesman would
have found a difficulty in suggesting an altera-
tion. True, some of the class for whose benefit it
was enacted might have desired a less cycle—for
example, a pressure, followed by crisis, every two
or three years. But the wily heads that planned
it knew better ; that the goose once plucked should
be left time for his feathers to grow again before
he would be ready for a second plucking, and that
a good haul every five years is about the utmost
that men not utterly idiotic will allow to be wrested
from their earnings by the " monied power."
Mr. Stansfield's description of the system is admi-
rably terse :

"The very principle upon which our system of currency is
based, and by which our currency is sought to be regulated
and maintained, involves the sacrifice of the commercial and
agricultural, and all other classes to the moneyed class ; this
is openly admitted and avowed by its authors ; they assert that
the only way of maintaining the convertibility of the bank note
into gold, and thereby preventing its depreciation, is to make
money dear when gold is leaving the country, and everything
else cheap, in order to bring it back again. A pressure on
prices is salutary, they say; a fall in prices absolutely neces-
sary ; and they seek to produce this pressure by diminishing
the legal tender of the country—cancelling the bank notes
issued against gold as soon as they are sent into the Bank for
gold."

His explanation in proof is equally clear.

"The natural and anticipated and hoped for consequence of
this process, when carried to any considerable extent, as in the
memorable year of 1847, is to throw down the prices of the
Funds, and of goods and produce of every kind, affording to
the foreigner the opportunity at every recurrence, and they
are periodical, of carrying away the wealth of the country to
the extent of millions, (the loss on interest-bearing securities
purchased for foreign account in 1847 being computed at two
millions,) obliging the home merchant to indemnify himself for
the depreciation of his stock by falling back upon the manu-
facturer, and claiming lower prices. The manufacturer again
endeavours to meet the emergency by lowering the wages of
his workpeople, and the power of the latter to purchase being
reduced, the farmer cannot get the same price for his produce ;
and thus all classes are sacrificed for the maintenance of the
system but the moneyed class, who, on the contrary, are bene-
fitted—the holders of money on such occasions being able to
exchange, or, in other words, buy, on more advantageous
terms, by ten, or twenty, or perhaps forty or fifty per cent., as
the pressure may be. There is no denying the fact that a fall
in price is intended; it is, indeed, the end sought to be at-
tained, and depression, and not steadiness of price, is the means
resorted to for support►ngour currency system.,,

Mr. Stansfieid might. have gone much further
than this in his description of the calamities caused