The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-02-27 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

We received the letter of "A Poor Member of St. Jude's' too
late for insertion.
We will represent the complaint of " A Townsman" in a quarter
likely to affo d him redress.

:ijr Riberpool (4...l7tanbari).

TUESDAY MORNING, FEB. 27, 1844.

Our contemporary, the ManchEster Guardian,
affects on all occasions a propriety of manner and of
language to which plain men of the world of litera-
ture or commerce must not aspire. He never uses
bad language : oh, no! He never imputes unwor-
thy motives to a political opponent. He never de-
nounces deliberate " falsehood" on the part of such
opponent by any more violent appellative than the
words " fib" or " erroneous statement." Look
through his columns fiom January to December;
and the unthinking world, who know not the hol-
low
pretension of the man, would imagine it impos-
sible to find a sentiment which a Cowper might not
hare dictated, or a line which a Chesterfield might
not have penned.
With this refined spirit animating him, our con-
temporary on Wednesday last approached the consi-
deration of a letter, which appeared in our last week's
paper, addressed by our townsman, Joseph Sandars,

Esq., to Lord Talbot, and which, from the fact that
it has drawn upon the writer the yelping of the
whole pack of the League's scribes, must have some-
• -what galled that august body. Of course it was
impossible to deal with the letter in question with-
out a preliminary flourish of the Guardian's exceed-
ing gentility of style and language ; and accordingly
Mr. Sandars is accused of " abusing the Anti-Corn•
law League, in that choice and elegant style which
seems to have lately found so much favour with
more aristocratic advocates of monopoly," and which
is so unappropriate; when applied to a hody so gentle
of speech and irreproachable in manners as are the
League and its itinerant spouters I We ourselves
cannot discover any portion of the letter which de-
serves our contemporary's reproach. We can find
no expression throughout which is not quite good
enough for the parties to whom it is applied. His
perception of the genteel, however, is more acute
than ours ; and we are informed that Mr.
Sandars, on the ground of this same " abuse,"
would have been deprived of all the advantage and
honour of a reply in the columns of the Guardian
had his letter not contained " some statements re-
garding the average-cost of bringing foreign grain
to this country," which this great authority esteems
calculated to " mislead the publ c" from their blind
devotion to the oracles of the Anti-Corn-law League.
Let us see, then, what are these statements which

our contemporary proposes to controvert.
Mr. Sandars had remarked upon the falsehood
•f the statements made by Mr. Cobden and others,
that " the average cost of freight of foreign wheat to
this country was 10s. 6d. per quarter," and that

such charge was a sufficient protection to the native

agriculturist. We will, however, for the satisfaction

of our readers, and the more clear elacidation of the

question at issue between Mr. Sandars and the
Guardian, give the precise words of the former gen-

tleman.

" I have stated that the League have been guilty of
falsehood ; perhaps misrepresentation would be a less of-
fensive term. I will proceed to the proof. In the Times
newspaper of the 30th December last, Mr. Cobden is
reported to have said at Derby, ' that the average for
carriage, &c., of bringing foreign wheat to this country,
was 10s. Gd. per quarter. Take the cost at 40s. per qr.,
if they liked, and that was 25 per cent. carriage to be paid
before the corn could be landed here.' "