The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-10-17 00:00:00

)me tax and miscellaneous revenue, we have

, amounting in the aggre-
gate to no less than £1,868,443, of which more than
a million was under the head of customs, thus con-
clusively sheaving the impossibility which existed of
effecting those large reductions in the tariff to which

exhibited to us a decrease

such decrease is attributable, without having recourse
to some measure of direct taxation. Without the
income tax, which has produced for the year
£5,052,057, we must have had a deficiency, to add
to the large accumulation of debt during the period
of 'Whig misrule, amounting to little short of three
millions sterling !

For the quarter, although the increase is still
mainly composed of the produce of the income tax,
it is not attended with the same decrease in the pro-

,iveness of those items, which are generally re-

as forming an index of the internal condition

customs, it is true, exhibit a

of the countr,

400,000; hut this we attribute still,
of course, to the operation of the tariff. It was

falling off of

anticipated to aris

from that me

asure, during

the first year of its operation, and until the increased
amount of our itrAports should have compensated for
the decreased rates of duty. In the excise, however,
to principal index of the prosperity and consuming
)wer of the community, we find, for the quarter,
and this has been pro-
for in the first quarter of the year there

an increase of £240,515 ;

gressive

deficiency under this head of £700,000, in the
second a very trifling deficiency, in the third an in-
crease of £140,060, and now of £240,000. Under
the head of stamps and taxes we have likewise an
increase on the quarter ; and thus the only decrease
appears under the head 3f customs, the amount of
which we have already stated, post-office and mis-

cellaneous

That this statement, of itself, affords gratifying
evidence of the advancing prosperity of the country,
there are few men will be prepared to deny. Nay,
sanguine men may even hope for the rapid arrival
of the period when, commerce and industry having
regained their wonted activity, it will be no longer
necessary to sustain the revenue and the public
credit by the imposition of a tax, which we admit to
have been very generally unpalateable. But it is
not to the state of the revenue alone that we look for
of Sir Robert Peel's govern-

proof that the polic

on of ameliorations of our com-

ment--its cons

)de, and its firm resistance to the sweeping
hanges clamoured for by the ultra free-traders—
principles of justice and a
_..v estigation of the real position of
external and internal, at the time of his
entry upon the functions of office. That proof is
before us and around us on every side. It is to be
found in our revived and increasing manufacturing
- commerce with all the

mercial (

save been bas

I upon a

perity—in our extending
world—in the restored energies of our merchants
and our traders—in the universal confidt,nce with
which an entire people (with the exception only of
here and there a knot of disaffected grumblers)

if acknowledged suffering,

t

when a brighter day has come,
stgtesrnan and his colleagues as

to men in whose hands the destinies of this Brea
country will not, on the one hand, be perilled by
rash and sweeping innovations, or, on the other, it
growth in power retarded by an over-timid of

ance of exploded theories, and an over-anxious
clinging to opinions which, however sound they
may have been in other days, and under different
circumstances, are no longer those which should
guide the government of ENGLAND AS SHE IS.
It may be for good or it may be for evil, that we
are now placed in the positi(

as a nation, we

must progress. As a nation, we are now irretriev-
ably embarked upon a course the end of which is
discernible by few—is, in fact, an indistinct vision
of mingled greatness and danger; of vast power,
and its sudden prostration, from the very weight
and vastness of the elements of which it is com-
posed ;--but this we know : there is no receding
now. We must fulfil our destiny. We must go
on in that race for commercial supremacy over the
nations of the world, in which we have already pe-
rilled so large an amount of our social happiness
and security ; we must go on extending those mag-
nificent possessions, which already compose an em-
pire greater than the world has yet known; we
must go on, alas ! devoting our industrious millions
at home to the wear and tear, the toil and privation,
which, we fear, are inseparable from such a struggle;
and to guide us safely through such a course—to
ward off a premature explosion—it is not the rash
r.nd reckless theorist—it is not either the old-world
advocate of obstructive and backward policy—to
whom must be committed the charge of interests so
mighty, involving, in effect, the destinies of the
world ; but to the prudent statesman, who, knowing
and feeling his position, and the dangers which me-
nace his country on every side, from without and
from within, will not be turned from that position
by insidious temptations or open menace. Such a
man, we fondly hope, experience, to which we have
pointed, has shown that we possess in Sir Robert
Peel. He may disappoint our wishes upon some
points—points, too, which we think material—but
" take him for all in all" there is no man in the pre-
sent day by whom we would willingly see him re-
placed in his present station at the head of England's
government.

A fortnight ago, we told the government of Sir
Robert Peel that, to win the hearts of the sound
portion of the British people, to strengthen the con-
servative part/ throughout the empire, and, indeed,
to preserve it from utter and almost irremodiable
prostration, their poliay must be based upon strictly
conservative an.l protestant principles. Conserva-
tism, not only in the government but throughout
the land, must be true to itself ; it must cease to
court the treacherous applause of opponents, and
grieve the hearts and trifle with the hopes of friends;
it must desert the crooked paths of expediency, and
adopt and pursue the straightforward and manly
course by which alone the truth can be safely
reached, and the respect and affection of right-
hearted Englishmen can be secured. Were we
wrong in saying this We were not. The events
of the past week have proved that we were not. Ten
days ago there were thousands of loyal conserva-
tives throughout Great Britain, who distrusted the
government of their choice—who feared for their
country and her institutions, cummitted to such
keeping. One step in the right direetion—one de-
cided manifestation of a determination to maintain,
untouched and unsullied, the protestant faith and
the integrity of the empire—one overt act, as the
evidence of the resolve of England's government to
put down the treasonable agitation, by which these
were insultingly menaced—have gained, for Sir
Robert Peel and his colleagues, the confidence of
thousands—aye of millions—who, then fainting and
alienated, are now ready to rally to their aid, and to
bear them safely through even rebellion itself.
Can Sir Robert Peel, or any, portion of his admi-
nistration, entertain a doubt that such has been the
result of their recent Irish policy ? If they do so
doubt, we only ask them to present themselves, at
this moment, before any assembly of their conser-
vative fellow countrymen, and to mark the warmth
of feeling with which they will be greeted, even in
quarters and from men who, a week ago, would
have received their very names with coldness and
ill-concealed dislike. We ask them even to mingle
with the world, and to see the looks of confidence
and satisfaction with which conservative now meets
conservative, as they discourse together on the oc-
currences which are agitating the minds of the en-
tire community. Would that they could have felt
the beat of the heart of universal England, as, for
the first time for years past, she knew that she was
no longer dishonoured amongst nations—that for
the first time she was no longer the mark against
which republicanism and popery could direct theii
poison unrepelled—that for the first time for years
she had ceased to be held up to the ridicule of the
world, as a nation powerless to crush A REPTILE-
the meanest that ever crawled from the mud of a
bog or a ditch, and was nursed and bloated by the
warm sun to exhale its noxious odours upon the
air, and to insult the pure eye of heaven with its
obscenity. Such experiences—such objects—would
convince the coldest of the followers of expediency
that Englishmen have feelings, to be won and to be
offended, and that the path to the securing of those
feelings in their favour is the straightforward path
of consistent and bold honesty.

We could point to abundance of written and oral
evidence of the truth of the position which we have

taken, if such were wanted. It is not so however,
and yet we cannot refrain from giving the following
remarks, uttered at a meeting of what some conser-
vatives have treated as an impracticable body of
men—the Operative Protestant Conservatives of
Dublin. The same opinion, we may state, has been
given of the same body in our own town.

" Sir Robert Peel, indeed," observed the s!)
hiseak long
speaker at
the meeting in question, " had well atoned for
inaction by the well-timed step which he had now
adopted—a step no less unexpected than it was com-
pletely successful. The Protestants of Ireland—their
patience almost exhausted, and their forbearance iu-
suited by the parade of the repealers—had, perhaps,
been in the habit of speaking too harshly of Sir Robert,
but he had now regained their confidence (hear, hear)—
he had shown that his moderation was not cowardice,
and that his delay was not hesitation.. (Hear, hear.)
He resembled a great minister in another age—one of
eloquence unrivalled and sagacity the most penetrating
—one who had all the difficulties and all the dangers to
meet that Sir Robert Peel had now to encounter. His
policy was the very same. At a time when a dangerous
demagogue gathered around him the profligate, the
abandoned, the desperate, and the knave, and the safety
of the Roman empire itself was perilled by the conspi-
racy—at that time at the helm of affairs sat the cautious
and prudent Cicero—he suffered the conspiracy to gather
strength, the leader to vaunt himself, and the blister of
sedition to come to a head. Many blamed him, but the
issue proved his wisdom. May Sir Robert Peel, as he
has imitated Cicero's caution, imitate his firmness.
(Hear.)"
Such sentiments, we can inform Sir Robert Peel,
and his colleagues, are not confined to the operative
conservatives of Dublin or of the empire, although
to that body we give the credit of, most firmly, and
tenaciously, and consistently, keeping them alive in
the hearts of the protestant community. They are
the opinions of Me conservative public of these realms;
they have even manifested themselves upon that
touchstone of public opinion, the Stock Exchange
of our metropolis; they are the opinions of the best
statesmen and politicians of Europe ; and most fer-
vently do we pray that the lesson which they teach