The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-11-07 00:00:00

TII E LIIERPOOL STANDARD.

OUR COMMERCIAL STATE AND PROSPECTS.

In endeavouring to form a judgement of the actual
position and prospects of the Commercial Community,
the journalist must weigh well -the character of the
authority and the evidence before him. The circulars of
respectable mercantile houses are valuable as exponents
of current facts, prices, &c., and of individual or sec-
tional opinions. The tone of ppinion on 'Change and in
well informed commercial circles it is also most desirable
to know. But the experience of the past twelve months
has gone to prove that both these sorts of evidence have
been of too sanguine a character. At least fifty times we
have been assured that the worst of the crisis was past.
Yet, although every one admitted the fact, no one acted
as if he believed it. The " lowest deep" was found to
have a " lower deep" ; the dislocation of the commercial
fabric was found to be more complete than had been
anticipated ; and men hesitated to commence its recon-
struction, actuated by the same sort of feeling which
prevents us from approaching a burning warehouse in
which gunpowder has exploded—a fear lest there is still
another barrel which the flames have not reached.
During the past week we have had a slight reaction,
to which the bank has endeavoured to lend an impetus by
reducing the rate of discounts. Our leading lines of rail-
way have considerably recovered from their extreme
depression ; and during the week our Cotton Market was
firmer. Our markets for other produce remain dull and
declining ; and the increase of confidence on the part
of the public is languid in its effects. The home
demand alone for manufactures and for some arti-
cles of imported produce is moderately healthy. It
was to have been anticipated, and by some was confidently
expected, that the assurances given, publicly by some,
and privately by many of our Railway Companies, that
if the drain of money for calls should cease or be greatly
abated, it would have induced greater confidence. Beyond,
however, the rise noted in a few of the leading lines no
perceptible result has followed ; and even with respect to
these, the rise is not expected to be maintained under any
extent of pressure on the part of holders desirous of
realising. People are not satisfied as to the quarters in
which these securities are held ; and whether they' will
not be pressed upon the markets the moment they, ap-
proach the limits of the advances made upon them.
There is another dread, too, which operates upon the
minds of thinking men, connected with the disturbed
state of the Continent of Europe. It is not a fear that
we are likely at present to be drawn into any of the vari-
ous quarrels which are pending, but that our specie, in-
stead of our manufactures, will be drawn from us, in ex-
change for imports, to enable them to be carried on. In
the United States, they see vast accumulations of bread
stuffs, the destination of which, at whatever price our
market may rule, is almost certain to be Great Britain,
and the payment, in the first instance, gold. Then fol-
low in the perspective of evil, the Bank Screw, an ad-
vance in the rate of interest, another crisis, or an aggra-
vation of the present one, attended with bankruptcy and
ruin to thousands. These are gloomy anticipations, we
confess ; entertained in their full extent by but few. But
a dim fear of such a state of things in prospect, or at least
as possible, is more generally felt than acknowledged.
It is not our province, in such an article as the present,
to prescribe a remedy. for the pressing evils which we de-
scribe, and the truth of which description we think will
not be gainsayed. But a remedy there must be found ;
or a state of anarchy must ensue, more fearful than any
which we have ever had to pass through. Our 1 bearing
population, so enduring and patient thus far, will not for
ever be content to starve; nor can we, for much longer,
depend upon the forbearance of our middle classes, who
are already, as in all similar cases, directing their attention
to the intelligible portion of the pressure upon them—the
public expenditure, and even to that of the Sovereign her-
self—instead of to the less, to them, perceptible cause of the
evil which is crushing them. A much further neglect on the
part of the Legislature will induce a widely-spread distrust
of legislation itself, and sap the foundations of the national
confidence in legislation and loyalty together. For, look at
our anomalous position ! We arethe only people in Europe
over whose heads t he storm of Revolution has passed inno-
cuously. And yet we venture to say that we have sustained
a greater loss, within the last two years, in the deprecia-
tion of the realized capital of the nation, than any country
over whose face conteeding armies have swept. We have
commodities and food of every description chea) and
abundant : and yet we have a large portion of our popula-
tion threatened with starvation. And—strangest of all !
—the greatest evil which we have to dread is large impor-
tations and a further increase of that very abundance,
which we have been taught to regard as the greatest
earthly material blessing which God can confer upon us.