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

TO ADVERTISERS.

We beg respectfully to call the attention of
Merchants, Brokers, Auctioneers, and others,
to the important fact that the
LIVERPOOL STANDARD
IS NOW THE
ONLY NEWSPAPER
PUBLISHED WEEKLY ON TUESDAY,
which can be read on that day by the thousands
of Manufacturers and others attending
THE TUESDAY'S MARKET IN
MANCHESTER.
The STANDARD is taken at all the Newsrooms
and respectable Inns in that town and the
surrounding manufacturing district.
A SECOND EDMON is published at Half-past
Two, in time for the North Mails, containing the
MARKETS, and any news of importance that
may arrive in the course of the morning.

tiltaptiot &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 23, 1848.

THE intentions of Government, with respect to
the Navigation Laws, are at length before the
public ; and they are precisely such as might have
been expected from such a set of reckless and
conceited ineapables. Mr. Labouchere informs us
that he proposes to deal with the laws in question
"in a very large and comprehensive manner."
Being under the necessity of doing something,
and having no constructive skill to repair the few
dilapidations which time may have wrought in the
edifice, her Majesty's Whig Ministers, like other
bungling workmen, mean to raze it to the ground,
and to erect no other in its stead. The carrying
trade of Great Britain with her colonies, and with
foreign countries, is henceforth to be open to all
the world; the native industry which it employs,
to be sacrificed to the insolent demands of the
manufacturing free-trader ; and the trade of the
shipbuilder, the carpenter, the rigger, the sail-
maker, the roper, the blockmaker, and the various
other artisans dependent upon a prosperous com-
mercial marine, to be transferred to the shores of
the Baltic, or to the building ports of the United
States. The policy of centuries, under which this
powerful maritime country has grown to its present
greatness, is to be swept away, root and branch,
at the bidding of a set of political schoolboys and
dreaming theorists ; without inquiry, or anything
at least that deserves the name ; without any urgent
demand from any influential portion of the nation;
and without a single fact substantiated, or a state-
ment which can be depended upon, to justify a
measure which long experience, and the evidence
of nine-tenths of the thinking and well-informed
portion of the community, declare to be utterly
ruinous.
We shall briefly refer to the leading features of
the measure announced. In the first instance,
Mr. Labouchere takes credit to Ministers for spa-
ring the coasting trade, and our shore and bank
fisheries, from being handed over to the competi-
tion of the foreigner. Dutch and other foreign
luggers and smacks, with foreign crews, are not to
carry our coals, our slates, and our iron from port
to port ; to fish in our rivers and bays ; or to run
between Great Britain and Ireland. This source
of employment—this nursery for our seamen—is
kindly left to us untouched; but why? Because,
says the honourable gentleman, the coasting trade
is so peculiarly protected by its own nature, that
he does not think foreigners could to any extent
avail. themselves of it; and such being the case,
" throwing it open would produce no very great
amount of good." Mark the admission, ship-
owners of Liverpool! The "good" to flow from
-this onslaught against the Navigation Laws is the
introduction of foreign ships and crews to carry off
the trade of Englishmen. For sparing your coast-
ing trade, you have, by his own admission, to
thank her Majesty's Ministers for—nothing. With
respect to their non-interference with the coast
fisheries, you have equally little to be thankful
inotivrainah-endintifatra-I6t etwyrat ifEniz??LiArj
which it employs, as is shewn by the fact that, by
the proposed measure, the foreigner is to be placed
in precisely the same position, with respect to the
deep-sea fisheries, now exclusively secured to the
British shipowner and seaman.
With this exception of the coasting trade, the
character of the measure is sweeping. It is to be
rendered unnecessary that a vessel, to enjoy all the
privileges (!) of a British ship, should be British-
built. We are to build or buy them where we
like ; and can demand at once for them a British
register. We may have foreign vessels engaged in
our coasting trade, or in any other trade, rigged
abroad, repaired abroad, upon which not a single
hour of native industry has been employed, the
only stipulation being that they must be owned by
British capital and sailed by the required propor-
tion of British seamen. And, with respect to the
manning of British vessels, an important alteration
is to be made. In consideration of their general
faithfulness, it is pretended, but more likely in
consideration of the lower wages which they may
be induced to accept, Lascars and other Indian
seamen are in future to be rated as British seamen,
the result of which will be, that whereas by the
existing law a ship's crew may consist of three-
fourths British and one-fourth foreigners or Las-
cars, we may in future man them with three-
fourths Lascars and one-fourth foreigners, to the
total exclusion of the British-born seaman !
The remaining provisions, by which the long
voyages and the colonial trade have been hitherto
secured to our own marine, are to be abolished,
with a reservation, only, to which we shall refer
hereafter. The timber trade of North America—
the produce of our East and West Indian colonies
—the whole, in fact, of our present strictly pro-
tected trade—is to be thrown open to the shipping
of the United States and of Europe. That large
portion of partly protected trade, at present insured
to us -by the stipulation in our Navigation Laws,
that foreign produce can only be imported in Bri-
tish ships, or in ships belonging to the countries
in which such produce is grown, is also to be
handed over to the foreigner. The American ship-
owner can in future load tea and silks in China
for a British port, sugar and coffee in Cuba in the
Brazils, hides at Rio, palm oil in Africa, and wool
at the Cape and Australia, whilst British vessels
rot idly in foreign harbours, or crowd our docks
at home with the broom at their mastheads. The
cheap ships of Bremen can scour the Mediterra-
nean, and snatch their freights from our very
grasp,
_so long as British seamen retain their ab-
horrence of stinking tallow as a cheap substitute
for junk and biscuit.
Nor is the injury to be confined to the ship-
owner, the shipbuilding trades, and the merchant
seaman. Great Britain is no longer to remain the
principal depot for the produce of the world. The
capitalist will no longer need our bonding system
or our bonded warehouses. He can store his
cargoes in any port of Europe, with full liberty to
move them either to this country for consumption,
. or to any country in which they may be wanted.
So vast and sweeping are the changes upon which
we are about, blindly and madly, to adventure !
It is not concealed that one great object of these
changes is cheapness; low freights, cheap ships,
and reduced wages of the British artisan and sailor.
It is not any sudden necessity, under which we
labour, of providing increased tonnage for an in-
creasing commerce, which prompts the interference
of Government; for our existing marine is amply
sufficient for our wants, and freights are barely, if
at all, remunerative. The fact stands confessed by
Mr. Labouchere himself, that the foreigner will be
able to carry upon terms permanently lower than
the British shipowner is able to do; for, in endea-
vouring to reconcile the British shipbuilder to corn-
. petition with the foreign shipbuilder, he says—
" I will also advert to a circumstance which I think
ought not to be left out of consideration, namely, that if
we repeal the navigation laws, materials for shipbuilding
will be brought to England at a far cheaper rate than
they now cost, and in that manner the shipbuilder will
derive considerable advantage from the repeal of those
laws."
How can materials be brought cheaper unless it be
because the foreigner has a cheaper ship, a cheaper
crew, cheaper stores and provisions ; and will thus
be enabled to absorb the British timber trade ?
The reservation to which we have referred above,
and which we are to regard as affording a remnant
of protection to the shipowner, is a proviso that a