The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-04-23 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

A portion of the objection of " Nict!!lis Nic`ollis" (what a sig-
nature !) to requiring th attendance of the police at church
or some other place of worship is p;:.,sitle enough. A man.
for instance, who has been on do;t•. iih!lit could scarcely
be expected, with any reason, to att€:l,l :corning service; but
even if required to go on duty again in the evening, it is
sorely not necessary that he shoold he all the day in bed. or
preparing for such dut;-,—and there is afternoon or evening
service which he might attend. Besides, it is not always the
case that he has to take night duty two days together. We
see plenty of the force who can spare time when off duty. in
the week days, to take recreation ; and they have the same
opportunities of commanding their time on Sunday. We
should be sorry to think our correspondent correct in his argu-
ments; for they go the length of proving that, once a t once-
man, attendance upon a place of worship becomes impossible.
Our correspondent's letter is left at our office.
A correspondent complains of a print of a very improper nature
exhibited in one of the shop windows in Castle-street. We
are quite unaware of the shop to which our correspondent
alludes.
We will attend to the suggestion of " A Ten Years Subscriber."

rlic Eibtrpool &tanriarb.

TUESDAY NORNING, APRIL 23, 1844.

Surely, surely, the events of the past fortnight—
the multitudinous meetings, in Leeds, Halifax, Brad-
ford, Manchester, Stockport, Oldham, and other
manufacturing towns,—these calif], but hopeful and
confident assemblages of working men, led on and
marshalled by their clergy, of all denominations,
united in one noble effort to enfranchise the
factory slave,—ought to convince Sir James Graham
and Sir Robert Peel that a restriction of the hours
of labour, for infants and women, can no longer be
refused by a constitutional legislature. Where are
now the pleas put forward by cold-hearted political
economists, and, we regret to say, adopted too
readily as conclusive, by Conservative and humane
men, that such a measure is not desired by the
manufacturing operatives themselves, and is re-
pudiated by the majority of the employers of manu-
facturing labour ? Are they substantiated by the
result of the appeals made to either of these classes i
Have the operatives put their veto upon the effort
making for the amelioration of their condition ?
Have the mothers of little factory children protested
against the boon offered them of being permitted
to make comfortable their homes and their fire-
sides ? Have the fathers of little factory children
protested against a measure which promises an ex-
change of their present compulsory idleness for
permission to toil for the support of those whom
God and nature ordained to be dependent upon
them for subsistence ? Have any of these refused
to submit to possible reduction of wages as the
result of the change which they seek ? None of
these evidences of repugnance to such change have
been made apparent. The employers of labour
have protested—where they have protested at all—
feebly indeed ; and from the labourers themselves
has arisen a voice of deep resolve to do all—to dare
all—to sacrifice all—for a relief from their present
oppressive toil, and for restoration to their allotted
place in the ranks of the great human family.
A noble—an honourable—a proud resolve it is !
Say then that these poor children—say that their
fathers, their mothers, their brothers and sisters—
are content to barter the paltry good of a few shil-
lings more or less of wages, for permission to see
them breathe freely the breath of God's air and
grow up in his image, instead of the stunted and
distorted things which avarice would have them be:
—say that the loss of a few hundred thousands of
consumers of the blood-stained products of white
slavery may be the result of a measure called for by
the voice of humanity and the dictates of religion :
can a Conservative government stand in the way of
a movement having such objects in view, and whose
success is ready to be cheerfully bought at such a
price ? Forbid it, Heaven ! Stiff-necked must be
that government which can stand in the way of
such a movement—which can forfeit voluntarily the
blessings of thousands—which can forfeit the bless-
ings of enfranchised infancy, of enfranchised woman-
hood, of unsexed and degraded manhood,—to earn
for itself only the paltry, the degrading, the hollow
friendship of cold-blooded philosophers and heart-
less worshippers of Gold ! Such a Government—
we say not what is its fitting and condemnatory ap-
pellation—such a Government, so deaf to the
voice of Reason, of Truth, of Justice and humanity,
we trust is not the Government of Sir Robert Peel.

How we have toiled for that government ! What
sacrifices of past and just dislikes we have made for
the sake of the head of that government ! What
memories we have been willing to lay down, in
order to be able to afford it and to entreat for it
confidence and support ! Let not its members bid
us sacrifice more—forget more—for we cannot.
Upon this question Sir Robert Peel cannot betray
his Conservative supporters. His favourite "ex-
pediency" ought to be an insuperable bar to such
betrayal. The huinanity, the virtue, the sense of
justice of the nation is embarked in this cause of
the factory people, in opposition to which Sir James
Graham has lured him to hazard his popularity and
his very existence as a Minister of the Crown of the
Christian Sovereign of a Christion people ; and we
tell Sir Robert Peel, he cannot, he dare not disap-
point the hopes and the trust which a vast majority
of the British people have rested upon his rule.
From him we look for no blind obstinacy, when
public opinion has once pointed out the path which
it would have him follow. From him, who has
already sacrificed principle to the will of the masses,
we cannot tolerate obstinate refusal to concede,
where a mere theoretical dogma, of doubtful truth, is
opposed to the will of those masses. And we ask him,
therefore, only to examine his position upon this
question—to contemplate the evidence of public
opinion—to listen with the ear of a Christian minis-
ter to the pleading of hundreds of thousands of his
over-toiled and suffering fellow-countrymen—and
to say then whether he is content to sacrifice the
love and the respect of an almost united people, by
clinging to the teachings and fables of a false phi-
losophy, in opposition to the dictates of humanity
and, we trust, the spontaneous promptings of his
own heart.

Let him look abroad throughout society, and tell
us what is the prevailing direction of opinion, what
the characteristic feeling, of the present day. It
requires no deep searching to discover this. It lies
upon the surface and beneath the surface. The
feeling uppermost in the minds of the present gene-
ration is a deep resolve, at all hazards, to do some-
thing for the amelioration of the social condition of
the people. Englishmen are throwing from them
the dazzling lures of the political economy of the past
generation ; and returning to the opinion of their
fathers, that a moral, a contented, and a happy la-
bouring population is a surer guarantee of a country's
strength than hoarded wealth in the hands of the
few, whilst wretchedness is the lot of the many.
They have discovered the price which is paid for
" the wealth of nations ;" the sacrifices of virtue,
integrity, manhood's strength, and woman's purity,
which must be made at the shrine of the idol set up
by political economists : and they are resolved to
proceed no further in satisfying its exactions. Al-
ready they have raised the crippled infant and the
unsexed and degraded female from the slavery of
the mine; and the spirit has been raised, and the
voice gone forth, which will drag the factory child
and the factory woman from the clutch of the
avarice that feeds and fattens upon their sweat-
drops,—which will drag the wretched sempstress
from the endless toil which consumes her,—and