The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-05-23 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The publication of the letter of our correspondent at Rainhill
would not be so likely to accomplish his purpose as if he
forwarded to the directors of the railway a respectful state-
ment of the grievances of which he complains. If he has no
objection, we will forward to the directors the letter with
which lie has favoured us.
A correspondent .at Walton has sent us a letter, in which he
expnsses his satisfaction that the windmills on our Northern
Shore have not been worked on the Sunday for several
months. He adds, however, that on one occasion lately one
of them was again at work on the Sabbath ; . but our corre-
spondent presumes that this was accidental.
`• Investigator" wishes to know where the Rev. Mr. Tweedie,
alluded to by our correspondent "Liddesdale," last week, is
located.

Ebt ?A.iberpool gs)tanbarlJ.

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 23, 1848.

A curious specimen of flippant insolence and I
ignorance was afforded in the House of Commons
on Wednesday evening, on the occasion of a
motion by Mr. Hutt to substitute, on the Slave
Trade Committee, the names of Mr. Cardwell, Sir
Edward Buxton, and Lord Brackley, for that of
Mr. Richard Cobden, who was unable to serve.
On the first name being proposed, the venerable
dandy of the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston,
objected that neither of the hon. members for
Liverpool could be trusted upon such a Commit-
tee; that if there were any part of the United
Kingdom in which merchants entertained a sym-
pathy towardS slave trading, it was this town; and
instanced, as a crushing proof of the correctness
of his assertion, the fact that manufactured goods
suitable for the slave markets of Africa, were ship-
ped in large quantities from Liverpool to the
Brazils and Cuba. Mr. Cardwell very properly
resented the unprovoked and unparliamentary libel
upon his own character and that of his mercantile
constituents ; and was administering a spirited and
dignified rebuke to his lordship, when be was com-
pelled, by an announcement from the Speaker, that
it was six o'clock, to desist.
The gross absurdity of this insolent aspersion
will readily be perceived. In the first place, there
is no community more deeply interested in the
complete extinction of the Slave Trade than the
mercantile constituency of Liverpool, so many of
whom are connected with West Indian. property,
now ruined by the direct encouragement given to
that trade by her Majesty's Ministers. Another
large section of our merchants desire to see it
terminated, as one of the most material impedi-
ments to an extension of our legitimate trade with
.Africa. The few even now left of our community,
who remember the slave trade when it was tolerated
by the British law and carried on in British ships
and with British capital, shudder at the increased
suffering which, in its present state and as a con-
sequence of the abortiveness of our efforts to put
it down, it inflicts upon the abducted negro; and
would hail with rejoicing the success of niore effi-
cacious efforts. But the mercantile community of
Liverpool are not in high odour with the Protean
foreign secretary. On two different occasions,
when he has been offered as their representative,
they have failed to display a sufficient appreciation
of his transcendant abilities ; and hence the explo-
sion of mortified vanity; /zinc illce irce
With respect to the fact that goods suitable to
be used in the slave markets are shipped from
Liverpool to the Brazils and Cuba, no one except
a blockhead, or a dishonest man, could urge it as
a proof of our implication in the criminality of the
slave trade. Liverpool happens to be the port of
outlet for Manchester cotton goods to the Brazils.
Of. course we forward them if consigned to us, and
buy them if ordered. If the great increase of
exports to these slave growing countries, which was
promised our manufacturers as the result of open-
ing our ports to slave products, consists mainly of
the gaudy and trashy fabrics usually bartered for
slaves, that is rather more the affair of Lord Pal-
merston and his free trade confederates than that
Of the Conservative merchants of Liverpool. We
should scarcely wonder if his lordship some of these
days should accuse us of encouraging the barbarism
of Lynch Law in Kentucky, because bowie knives
of Sheffield manufacture pass through our port; or
accuse us of the high crime of treason or of murder
as having permitted the bogtrotters of Tipperary
to take home with them the muskets which they
display at Repeal gatherings, 'or use so efficiently
in bringing down an agent, or a landlord. Poor
Palmerston ! It has come to a pitiable pass with
him when such drivelling spite is all which he has
left to substitute for his former smartness.

A further conversation on the same question
took place on Thursday night; and after another
miserable exhibition of feebleness, his venerable
lordship's objection was withdrawn and Mr. Card-
well's name added to the Committee.