The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-12-24 00:00:00

TO CORN ESPOND

A correspondent, who signs himself A RatqAyer of Toxteth-
park," but for whose leVer we cannot fi. id room, suggests that.
instead of en argieg the present St James's Market, it would
be preferable, and. at the suite time more colik•mical, to erect
another nia7ket further tot the south of the park. Ile says.
if the Corporation would purchase the field shove St. Jobe
the Baptist's Church. say about five acres, from ti!e Earl of
Se too, at a cat of about .e:2,91;0, and erect a market on the
portion anj ining Park-road, extendi,g to Essex-street.
Church-street. and a new str et on the • on h side, occupying
altogether an area of about 8:/a or i,OO yards. the remainder of.
. the land, from its increased value for building purposes.
%vault realise the full cost of tho whole. About £5900, he
thinks, would build a market sufficient for the wants of the
district; whereas, .4'25,11 to -e3 alt. would be required for the
proposed 'enlargement of St. James's Mar% et Such new
market, he states, would he near the intended new landing
slips at the south end of the town, and would accommodate
the increasing population at the Po: teries, the intended new
yarns at the south of the town, the Prince's Park, and the
inhabitants of the neighbodrhood. He adds that since the
site f.,r St. J.,rnes's Market was fixed Ivan. the population of
Toxteth•pa k has increased by about as. 0 inhabitants, and
that another marke is required in the district where the in-
crease is principally located.
We are not much in the habit of complaining, after the fashion of
some of our contemporaries, of plagi•lrism from our columns
without acknowledgment, although we have frequently sufficient
occasion. But when a whole column_ of oiiginal description,
which had cost us both expense, time, and troehle, is adopted
without a word to intimate our claim to authorship, we cannot
submit to the liberty with our usual philosophy. Last week the
Macclesfield Courier copied verbatim our description of the
course, evels, &c , of the Birkenhead and Manchester Railway,
and passed it off as his own. which was shabby, if intended.
The worst of this prauice is, that your extensive pilferers have
seldom any thing in their columns with which we can make free
in return.

We have not been able to obtain the information sought for by
" A Constant Reader."

0 1)t iLtberp.ool tanbarl3.

TUESDAY MORAING, DEC. 24, 1844.

Our publication of this day will be laid upon the
breakfast tables of hundreds of our readers, whose
hearts and thoughts are full of anticipations of the
coming festivities of this festive season. The eve of
Christmas I How many hear:lls this night will
shed their warmth and light upon happy faces, as-
sembled round them in joyous converse ! How many
tongues will this night dilate upon happy events of
the year now speedieg to its close, anti happy pros-
pects of the year which is to come ! How many
fond parents will be gazing upon the matured fea-
tures of beloved children, brought once more for a
brief period of holiday into the family circle !
How many will be listening with rapture whilst
they tell over their schoolday triumphs, or touch
mayhap upon subjects more delicate and more em-
barrassing to the ingenuous mind of the young and
the pure of soul ! The Eve of Christmas ! How
many a loving heart will he this night sadly dwelling
upon the tokens of decay in some endeared form—
how many an eye watching the dimmed expression,
the furrowed cheek, the stooping form, of- those
whose mature strength and anxious care have shel-
tered them in their passage through this weary
world, and looking back the while, through the dim
vista of bygone years, to a period when life's pro-
spects were brighter—when the loved ones, now
hovering on the verge of the grave, were in their
young beauty, or in their prime, and their firm hold
upon the world and its joys and possessions seemed
to defy the envious hand of Time to launch his dart
against them! How many may be marking the
seat, now vacant, at the Christmas hoard, which last
year was occupied by some dear one, full of lusty
youth or mature health !—hut pause we here. "It
is good for us to go down into the house of mourn-
ing ;" but ours shall not be now the task to start
afresh the tear which the hand of Time has dried,
or to bring a fresh pang to hearts whose beatings
resignation has stilled.
We have, however, a few words to offer to our
readers, which may possibly excite thoughts not
pleasurable and regrets which may mar the other-
wise unclouded joy of a tholightless hour. We
have to remind the light hearted, the prosperous,
and the happy, who are now looking torward to a
succession of mirthful days in prosp ct, that there
are those, in this world of ours, to whose dreary lot
the Eve of Christmas brings no alleviation—to
whose heavy hearts it brings not even a hope of
better things—to whose tear-dimmed eyes the em-
blems of our Christmas festivities, thqiully and the
mistletoe, bring only added and bitter floods—in
whose ears the mirthful music, heard through many
a well-barred window, are hut a mockery of their
misery. Before we meet, then, around our cheerful
hearths—before we shut ourselves up in the selfish-
ness of our enjoyments—before we raise the Christ-
mas hymn, and resign ourselves to the deluding
thought that we are performing all that is expected
from us; •as Christians, when to-morrow we wel-
come, with prayer and thanksgiving, the coming of
the Star of Bethlehem—let us ask ourselves, " What
have we done, each in our several spheres, to dry
the tears or to lighten the hearts of these outcasts
from joy and rest? What widow blesses us?—what
aged man's eyes overflow at the thought of our
bounty?—what orphan tongue thanks us for a shok
tering roof and a plentiful meal ?"
Alas! these are questions to which too many of
us, we fear, will receive replies from conscience
little calculated to satisfy the heart. We may point
to our vast commerce, to our warehouses loaded
with merchandise, to our mills and to our work-
shops, and exclaim, " How many thousands have
these maintained in competence through the past
year 1" But if this is all of which we can boast, it
will scarcely suffice to still the whisperings of the
accusing spirit. We may point to our munificent
charities—to our names emblazoned within the
walls of hospitals and colleges; but even these will
not avail op much. We may boast that we expend
freely our means, thus giving employment to in-
dustry ; but, alas 1 the motive—the motive of such
liberality I The very extravagancies which we call
charity are-too often made up of selfishness and an
avaricious spirit, and seldom extend their benefits
to those who most stand in need of our sympathies.
View the rich dress which adorns the fair form of
some youthful beauty. "There," the worldling may
exclaim, " is at least no evidence of a grudging,
griping spirit !" But, turn your eyes, reader, upon
another scene. Follow the feeble footsteps of that
pale young girl, as, half-clad and half-fed, she pro-
ceeds, shivering, to her home, in the bitter cold of
this joyous Christmas Eve. Her hands fashioned
the gorgeous dress of that proud beauty; her at-
tenuated 'frame was bent over it for sixteen or
eighteen hours in the day: and yet, what a wretched
remuneration for her young bloom wasted does site
bring home to the miserable room which shelters
her, although it cannot warm her, during the few
hours of worn-out nature which she is permitted to
spend out of the crowded and heated work-room !
What a " merry Christmas" is this to her ! And
yet such is the poor result of the bulk of that charity
which consists in the liberal indulgence of our per-
sonal vanity and love of ostentation. We have
made foi ourselves a different world and a different
atmosphere from those in which the humble worker
toils and suffers; we have set up a griping minister
of our charities, a sordid " putter out" of the em-
ployment which we offer; and we resolutely shut
our eyes to a knowledge of the miserable amount of
the pittance which finds its way from the brilliantly-
' lighted and splendidly-adorned shop—in which we
delight to feast our eyes upon the magnificent pro-
ductions of pa ient industry and ingenuity—to the
humble hands by which they are wrought. " The
poor ye have always with you," said one who was
himself poor and humble for our sakes; and yet
Christian men and women strive unceasingly to
forget that there are such beings at their very
doors, made of the same clay of which God made
us all.

. Oh, what a different world would this he if wealth
and even competence would know and perform their
duties to humble poverty ! How many a cold
hearth would this night be warm how many a
sunken eye beaming with light ! how many a heavy
heart throbbing with happiness ! Readers, we ask
you to think over these things before you sit down,
on this eve of Christmas, to its cheer and its joyous-
ness. Ask yourselves, strangers though you have
made yourselves to their wants, their sufferings,
their natures, if even yet there is no deserving fa-
mily near you whom your bounty might make happy
to-marrow around their own hearths, and your
constant kindness and protection, during the year
to come, might raise to permanent comfort, and the
indulgence of a better disposition, towards their su-
periors in worldly station, than we fear now animates
them.
We have said our brief say; and now conclude
by wishing to our indulgent readers " A Merry
Christmas." They may yet earn happier reflections
blessing of some fellow-
for to-morrow, and the
worm, if they have neglected to earn them already.

It is a lamentable infirmity, attending the oratory
of gentlemen possessed of a certain quantity of
brains and a negative quantity of discretion, that,
when they enter upon the advocacy of any particular
came, they invariably prove too much. Such

infirmity we have often noticed as characterising the
proceedings of the oratorical amongst our neigh-
bours of Manchester. Wind them up for any pub-
lic occasion; and, like ill-regulated specimens of
clock-work, they run themselves down, after having
proved, not only what they set about proving, but
just as much beyond the question, or to the con-
trary of their chosen position, as the durance of their
wind or the length of their ch:tin will permit. •
A striking instance of this infirmity is before us,
in the proceedings of a " borough meeting," held in
Manchester on Tuesday last, for the purpose of pro-
moting the repeal of the tax on cotton wool. We
have again and again expressed our own sense of
the impolicy of that lax. We have urged it at a
time when the manufacturers and spinners of Man-
chester were not only indifferent with respect to the
advantages which its repeal was to confer upon
themselves and the pohlic, but when they obstinately
set their faces against any measures directly calcu-
lated to alleviate the distress and depression, under
which the commerce of the country laboured ; and
when, in the hope of coercing thelegislature to grant
their favourite specific—a repeal of the Corn-laws—
they welcomed, with absolute rapture, every fresh
development of that distress. We raised our voice
at a time when the town of Manchester was for 24
hours in the possession of an excited mob, and
when, nevertheless, not a merchant nor a manufac-
turer in Manchester even mooted this very ques-
tion, which we now find is one of the most vital
questions for the legislature to deal with in their be-
half. We claim; therefore, for ourselves the merit
of consistency and forethought, as well as of a sin-
cere desire to procure the boon, now agitated for, of
a repeal of the cotton duty; and we cannot, there-
fore, be accused of a desire to impede the success of
such a movement when we state our thorough con-
viction that nothing is more calculated to produce
such a result, and to injure in the public estimation
the standing of the cotton manufacturers of Great
Britain in the eyes of Parliament and of the country,
than spouting such as that which formed the staple
of the proceedings of the meeting under notice.
Undoubtedly a strong case would have been mak
out by the speakers in favour of the repeal of the
tax in question, had the speakers chosen to limit
themselves to that object. Mr. R. H. Greg shewed
that it presented a serious hindrance to the attempts
of the British manufacturer to compete with the fo-
reigner, in •his own or in neutral markets. The
American manufacturer, he shewed, possessed, by
the saving enjoyed by him in freight, insurance, and
duty, an advantage over the British manufacturer in
the production of coarse fabrics, of " from 25 to 30
per cent ;" and has already dispossessed us of the
greater portion of our trade in these articles with
the Indian, the South American, the Chinese, and
even the Canadian markets. Unfortunately the
statement is true in the main, although a little ex-
aggerated. American domestics and heavy cottons
do occupy largely the space in foreign markets once
filled up by British goods, but we cannot admit that
such circumstance is altogether attributable to their
superior cheapness, and are rather more inclined to
impute it to the superior reputation of the American
manufacturer for producing an honest article. The
cost of the raw material is certainly less in the Uni-
ted States than in this country; but when we bear in
mind the greater cheapness of production in Great
Britain, the alleged advantage of the American ma-
nufacturer appears to us a little over-estimated at
"25t0 30 per cent." Nor is it easy to reconcile
this and the rest of Mr. Greg's statements and
authorities with the following extract from a letter
produced by him, dated "New England, 15th Nov.
1844.

" Upon this basis, it is clear that we can undersell you
in yarn. You will ask, if such is the case, why have we
not gone into that branch ? We answer, first, that while
cloth pays 15, 20, and 25 per cent., it has not been
thought expedient to make yarn."

M-anutacturers who realise extravagant profits
like the above ought not to be such very dangerous
competitors with our own. The attempt made here
to prove too much rather inclines us to doubt the
correctness of the remaining positions of the
Eyeaker.
. _ _

Admitting, however, the views of Mr. Greg and
others to be correct, what is the conclusion to which
they bring us ? Why that no mere repeal of the
cotton duties c n restore to us this particular branch
of manufactures, of whose loss we complain. Take
away the impost of ten per cent., which the cotton
duty forms, the American manufacturer will still,
according to Mr. Greg's own sheaving, have an ad-
vantage over us, in the manufacture of heavy fabrics,
of 15 to 20 per cent., a circumstance which might
induce a statesman to go the length of refusing al-
together the boon •required, when the beneficial
result must be so inconsiderable compared with the
sacrifice of revenue to be made, and when there are
so many claimants of similar favours, each of whom
can make out quite as good a case.
Another speaker, however, Mr. Robert Gardner,
throws far more light than Mr. Greg has done upon
the nature and motives of the present movement for
a repeal of this tax, so far as the manufacturing
interest is concerned. The demand for a repeal of
the cotton duties is only a portion of an attempt to
-get rid of every tax which, however remotely, stands
between that interest and its ambition to absorb the
trade of the whole world. Repeal this duty, then,
and what next ? It will be, by the admission of
these gentlemen themselves, insufficient to enable
them to undersell the American manufacturers ; and
the further steps, to insure such a consummation,
cannot be better described than in the words of Mr.
Gardner himself. " lf," said the speaker, "English
manufacturers were not able to compete with their
rivals in foreign markets, they put their wits to a
stretch to ascertain how they could reduce the cost
of production,"—(mark the admission reader and
its bearing upon the League's outcry for a repeal of
the Corn-laws !)—" and as the spinner and the
weaver were perhaps the least capable of protecting
themselves, the reduction would probably first come
upon them."—(Candid, indeed, most philanthropic
free-trader !) "If the reduction in wages did not
enable the manufacturers to meet their competitors
in foreign markets, the nest reduction must come
upon manufacturers' profits,"—(aye, there's the sore
point !) " and then the next upon the wear and tear
and the interest of machinery." But to avoid the
dire necessity of a reduction in " manufacturers'
profits" or. " interest of machinery," we must be
asked to repeal the Corn-laws, take the duty off tea,
coffee, sugar, every thing which can be imported in
exchange for cotton goods, and the reduced cost of
which will aid in the attainment of that great object
for which Mr. Gardner tells is that manufacturers
" put their wits to stretch," viz., " cheapness of
production!" _ _

We are not at all inclined to under-estimate the
value to this .country of the cotton manufacture.
We have already expressed ourselves in favour of a
repeal of the duty on the raw material. But we
cannot, whilst contending for this concession, admit
the validity of the claim put forward by the manu-
facturer, that whenever, and by whatever circum-
stances, he ceases to be able to meet competition in
foreign markets, he is entitled to the aid of the
legislature, and the whole system of our revenue
laws is to be broken in upon for his benefit. What
is such a demand but a demand for protection—in
a modified shape, it is true, but still, substantially;
protection P And under what circumstances is this
demand now made ? It is admitted, on all hands,
that the cotton trade was never more prosperous
than at the present moment—that never was money
being more rapidly amassed by the manufacturers
than it has been during the past, twelve months. A
new world has just been opened to their enterprise ;
and, to enable them to supply it, new mills and new
machinery are springing up in every manufpcturing
town, village, and hamlet. And yet, because these
men, who are absolutely gorging themselves with
wealth, cannot grasp the wealth of the whole earth
at once—because other nations are able to enjoy a
pitiful fraction of its commerce—we are to pander
to their avarice, although it may lead us to peril the
national honour itself. We cannot recognise the

propriety of such a claim. We cannot believe that
it is consistent with the justice of the Almighty
Disposer of all things, that this nation should be
the workshop of the whole world, and monopolise
its supply with manufactured fabrics, any more
than it is in accordance with that benign wisdom
which has given to every land the climate and fer-
tility, the soil and the minerals, the herbs and fruits,
most suited for the necessities of its inhabitants,

that one portion of the earth should he a productive
garden and the remainder left a wilderness. This
may he unfashionable and unphilosophical doctrine,
but it is not the less likely to be true on that ac-
count.

Pudsey Dawson, Esq. of Hornby Castle, is to be the
high sheriff for this county for the year ensuing.

The Rev. Wray R. Hunt, A. 8., has been licensed by
the Bishop of Chester to the ministry of St. Saviour's in
ihis town with the sanction of the rectors, on the unani-
mous call of the congregation.