The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-10-13 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, OCT. 13, 1846.

An important document appears in another por-
tion of our paper, containing the views of the
planters of Jamaica, with respect to the probable
effect upon their interests of the recent alteration of
the sugar duties, to which we beg to direct the
attention of our readers. Of course, we expect to
receive the sneers of our free trade philosophers for
our advocacy of the ge eral reasonableness of these,
our colonists. We may be fold, as they are by the
Manchester Guardian, that " long as free trade prin-
ciples have been discussed," we " should have
learned something of the true bearings of free trade
—something of the right which whole communities
hove to refuse to be sacrificed to the interests of a
few—something of the benefits of competition, and
a great deal of the mischiefs of protection." \Ve
are content, however, to be behind hand i-' any
march in which the philosophers of the Anti Corn-
Law League and their journalists occupy the front
ranks, inasmuch as we have less faith in their su-
preme wisdom than in the teachings of experience
and the dictates of common sense.
What, let us ask, has been the spirit of all our
recent dealings with the colonists of our British
West Indies but a determination to " sacrifice them
to the interests of a few ?" For years they were
loaded with every slander which puritanical hypo-
crisy could invent. They were bawled at from plat-
forms and dissenting pulpits, through the length
and breadth of the land. They were painted by a
servile press as Ogres in human shape; held up in
nurseries, to frighten little children, as
.monsters of
cruelty. The very name of a planter was associated
with the images of a nine-tailed whip and the flayed
back of a negro. That mendacious agitation was at
length successful ; and what is there in the result
to convey to the colonist any great amount of con-
fidence in the wisdom of those,who now assure him
that free tradelis the sure path to wealth; or to give
him any great relish for the " benefits of competi-
tion ?" The substitution of free labour for slave
labour was to extend and to cheapen cultivation in
the West Indies. It was to do far more than this.
It was t o overthrow the whole fabric of slavery
throughout the world. Directly the contrary has
been the result. The colonies have, year by year
declined in productiveness, until the planters, as a
body, are almost on the verge of ruin; whilst a vast
stimulus has been given to sugar cultivation by slave
labour in other countries. This result has taken
place whilst the planters have been protected by high
discriminating duties—whilst, in fact, the supply of
this country with their produce has been secured to
them. How open competition with the foreigner
can improve their position, they may ct ell doubt.
But did we give them fair play, when we sub-
mitted their interests to the experiment of free
labour ? No : we tied their hands behind their
backs. Our mawkish sentimentalism stept in to
interdict every effort to procure that supply of free
labour, to the use of which we had driven them. We
were stricken with pious horror at the thought, that
the system of immigration might be the slave-trade
in disguise. We impeded therefore, by every source
of harassing and insulting restrictions,their attempts
to procure labourers from India or from Africa ; and
rendered the expense of procuring it three-fold.
\Ve were not, however, satisfied with this. Under
the insulting pretext that tyranny might be practised
by the planters towards their free labourers, we
foisted upon them a well-paid army of officials—
stipendiary magistrates, &c.—whose meddling has
embarrassed them at every turn. We have more
than trebled the costliness of their institutions, thus
placing a most disproportionate weight upon backs
most unable to carry it, in such a race as that in
which we had embarked them. We kept them also
subject to all the restrictions arising from their con-
nexion, as a colony, with the mother country. They
must employ only British shipping, and favour,
though at a sacrifice to themselves, British produc-
tions. We forbid, for the protection of the British
agriculturist, the use of sugar and molasses in our
distilleries, &c. We tax their rum to favour the
home grower of oats and barley, and the distiller.
In a word, we treat them with 'the harsh jealousy
shown towards a slave, whilst we demani from them
more than the affection and deference of a child.
The colonists of the West Indies ask to be
placed in a more just position—to start on fairer
terms upon the race which they have to run. Is
there anything in this unreasonable—anything so
very contrary to " the true bearings of free trade ?'
We think not.
The Guardian, we observe, sneers at the notion,
as " hacknied" and " antiquated," that the colonies
have contributed materially to the growth of our
commerce, and to our naval greatness ; and inti-
mates that " there is something so peculiarly untrue
in its application to our West Indian colonies, that
he may be tempted to return to the subject." We
trust he will do so ; and shall look for his views
upon the matter with great interest.

The present economical position of the country is
full of problems, the solution of which puzzles our
philosophy. We have withdrawn protection from
native agriculture ; and our food markets are rising
daily. We have given the required " free scope" to
manufacturing industry and to commerce, and both
are languishing. The capital of the country never
was more abundant; yet, to use common parlance,
money never was scarcer. The shop-keeper stands
idle behind his counter ; the tradesman knocks at
his creditor's door in vain ; the merchant is ware-
housing the bulk of his imports ; the manufacturer
is working half time, as the step in advance'towards
the reduction of the wages of the labourer; the
bank has no market for its gold. How, every one
is asking, are these results, contradictory alike of
past experience and prophecies, to be accounted
for ?
"The loss of the potato crop" is the stereotyped
reply of the unreflecting, and of the baffled prophets
of every phase of political opinion. We shall have,
it is said, to import three or four millions of
foreign grain for this year's consumption of our
population. But how is it that the manufacturer,
who was to have given his cottons or his woollens
for this grain, and to be rolling in prosperity, is
suffering ? Do the countries from which we are
drawing our supplies of food refuse to take our
goods in payment ? It would seem not, for they
are not abstracting
.our gold. The exchanges are
nearly everywhere in our favour. Yet, again we

ask, whence the stagnation in our manufacturing
districts ? The farming classes perhaps are con-
tracting their expenditure. Cur colonists are
startled into prudent husbanding of their money:
Yet both are in the enjoyment of high prices for
their produce.
We may very probably be reminded that high
prices of 'food are preventing our population ex-
pending their usual amount of money in clothing.
No doubt to some extent this is the case. The in-
creased expenditure of a shilling per week in the
family of the working and middle classes, in the
article of potatoes alone, pro tanto diminishes the
capacity of those classes to employ the weaver, the
printer, and the artizan. But is this rule only ap-
plicable at home ? If the demand from Great
Britain has raised the price of grain in the markets.
of the world from 40s. to 50s. or 605., it has added,
by so much, to the cost of living and diminished,
by so much, the capacity of purchasing our clothing,
our hardware, and other manufactures. It has also
added to the price which the competing foreign
manufacturer must pay for his labour, diminishing,
at the same time, his own home demand, and driving
a larger surplus to meet us in neutral markets. It
was prophecied to us that when we raised the price
of grain abroad, the grower of that grain would
have increased means of taking our goods. We
omitted, however, the palpable truth, that he would
have less means of selling those goods. Calicoes
and woollens are of relative value to the demand for
them ; and will only he taken in exchange by the
foreigner in proportion to his means of profitably
disposing of them.
Let us give an example of the operation, at present
going on in those countries, from which we look
for an extended demand for our productions, from
the increased price which we give the foreign grower
for his grain. Suppose a country, with a popula-
tion of ten millions, which has been in the habit of
consuming our goods, to the amount of half a mil-
lion sterling annually, whilst its grain was only
worth 40s per quarter. This year we take from it
500,000 quarters—its surplus growth—at 60s. per
quarter. It ought therefore to be able to pay for
goods to the amount of another half million sterl-
ing. But we have raised the price of the food of
its entire people one-third, and proportionately
diminished their power to consume our fabrics. The
merchant or the grower of that country may take
an increased supply; but he finds that he cannot sell
even his ordinary quantity. We therefore run the
risk of losing, by the glut which we create in a good
market, as much as or more than we gain by the
comparative cheapness of its grain.
The fact is—and by nothing less than its admis-
sion can we account for the complication of appa-
rently irreconcileable results, by which we are
surrounded—that we have just succeeded in unset-

tling the industrial relations, not only of our own
country, but of every country in the world; and it
may be years before the just level is found; years,
too, of embarrassment and difficulty they must in-
evitably be. It is easy to say—" Oh ! our merchants
will soon ascertain how much they may safely export
in return for our foreign supply of food; manufac-
turers will speedily adapt their production to the
demand, and farmers will settle the question of rent
with their landlords ;" but there are more questions,
and far more intricate ones, than these to settle.
There is the balance to adjust throughout the world
between the cost of subsistence and remuneration of
industry and of capital. The foreign labourer and
artizan, whose food is permanently raised one-fourth
in cost, must have their present balance, expended
in other necessaries, secu:ed to them, or they must
cease to consume. If their weekly five or six shil-
lings of wages are swallowed up in the purchase of
food, the scale will have to be re-adjusted—a process
which will not be completed in a day or a season.
We are perfectly well aware what the manufac-
turer looks forward to, as the result of the process.
He entered upon the agitation for Free Trade as
upon a wages question. If he studiously blinked the
fact that reduction at home to the level of the cost
of subsistence was in view, he never concealed the
fact that increase of the cost of production to his
manufacturing rival abroad was contemplated. All
his laboured statistics, to prove that the price of food
at home has never had any intimate relation with
the price of labour, go for nothing in the face of the
facts that, unless such relation do exist, and the rate
of wages abroad be raised to the level of the in-
creased cost of food, he must lose the consumption of
all those classes upon whose surplus, over the mere
cost of subsistence, such increased cost of food is
made to trench. It is inevitable that a man who has
been spending, out of his earnings of five shillings,
four shillings per week upon food, and one shilling
on clothing, will have nothing to expend upon the
latter when the cost or Ills week StibbiStellCE: is
raised to five shillings, unless his earnings are raised
in proportion. Again, if the price o` labour has no
connexion with the price of food, what becomes of
the advantage which lie is to gain over his foreign
rival ?

We feel assured that the crisis before us, of which
the present anomalous state of the country is a pro-
minent feature, is one full of difficulty, and which
must be met with great prudence and caution. The
mere loss of a crop is not the worst of our evils. A
year or two of good harvests, and the expenditure
of a few millions in foreign corn, would correct that
evil. A completely new adjustment, however, of the
industrial arrangements of nearly every country in
the world, is a widely different affair to deal with—
one, too, which we are only called upon to regard
as spectators, and which will take far more time for
its accomplishment, and involve far more interme-
diate embarrassment and commercial suffering, than
we at present imagine.

The evidences are crowding upon us that 'the
great final settlement of the corn laws is not to he a
settlement after all. The Government, bewildered
as Whig Governments generally are when called
upon to act, instead of to talk are, it is said, about
to sweep away the small remnant of protection left
to the British agriculturist, and to transfer the duty
now payable upon foreign imported corn into the
hands of the jobbers and capitalists at home, and
the foreign holders. The Morning Chronicle, speak-
ing a few days ago upon the subject of our present
position, remarks, significantly enough :
" We can hardly be so far out in our estimation of the
impression which the existing circumstances and pros-
pects of the United Kingdom, with regard to the supply
and price of food, must have made on the minds of Lord
John Russell and his colleagues, as to incur the risk of
error in assuming that one subject of cabinet discussion
has been the question of immediately opening the porta
to the untaxed admission of foreign corn."

The Daily News of Saturday is equally decided
upon the subject. " Every excuse," he says, " for a
temporary sliding scale is annihilated ;" and pro-
ceeds :
" Monopoly is a state prisoner, under sentence of death
in February 1849. How is such a prisoner treated, whe❑
a movement is made for his liberation and perpetual en-
thronement? His trusty keepers have a decisive duty to
perform when the danger becomes imminent. Let the
official guardians of doomed monopoly perform their duty.
There is present mischief and misery to abate, as well as
prospective peril to avert. The fitting reply to those who
declare there shall be bread-tax perpetual, is that it shall
exist no longer; but cease at once, in any form to aggra-
vate the difficulties and distresses of a struggling people."

We may perhaps with great safety receive these
intimations as feelers. Lord John knows that he
must do something to unravel the •perplexities of
the nation ; and cutting the knot is a far more
simple process,' and more suited to his capacity.
We are not without the same hinting kind of in-
timation from another, and a far more influential
quarter, the London Times. Our astute contempo-
rary, however, is not the party to commit himself,
either in approbation or reprobation of the steps
pointed at. On the contrary, he seems to sneer at
the advantages (!) to be gained by it. Speaking of
the total repeal as a matter which nature has now
decided, he says :
" If that measure is not now adopted, it is because the
advantage seems hardly equal to the bad precedent of
disturbing so recent a compromise. The advantage, in-
deed, would be trifling. In a few weeks the duty on fo-
reign corn will sink to the lowest point in the scale. The
difference of price, therefore, between British and foreign
corn has already in anticipation sunk to that point, if not
to a lower still. So trifling, however, such mere hand-
fulls, are the foreign stocks available for our markets,
that the suspension of the duty would probably have no
other effect than to raise the foreign up to the British
prices, without retarding, except possibly for a few days,
the upward tendency the latter. ' The look of the
thing' is nearly all that we should gain by an immediate
suspension of the new Corn Bill.'
There are not a few measures adopted nowadays
for "the look of the thing."

The statements made at a meeting of power-loom
weavers, held in Stockport on Tuesday last, are
calculated not a little to startle those dreamers, who
have pictured the state of society in the manufac-
turing districts, under the stimulus of free trade,
as a kind of earthly elysium. A large portion of
the public have been given to believe that the eta-

ployment of females in factories was the exception
rather than the rule ; and that their manufacturing
avocations were exclusively of the lightest descrip-
tion—such as piecing, winding, &c. We learn,
however, from the speakers at this meeting, that
not only are females employed in power-loom
weaving, but that, by some philanthropic and
" liberal" masters they are exclusively employed.
One bpeaker observed that " six years ago the
masters did not refuse men weavers ; now there
were five or six masters in the borough who would
not shop them under any consideration whatever.
The consequence was that the natural order of
things was reversed." Another speaker thus, even
more graphically, remarks upon the practice and
its results :

" That meeting had been called is a regular and legal
manner, to consider a great and all-important question,
respecting the conduct of certain master manufacturers,
who, it seemed, would not allow the men the privilege of
working, but would rather employ females at their weav-
ing, thus throwing a great number of the former out of
employ. They had been called together to see whether it
was right and reasonable that such should be the case.
The men wished to earn a livelihood in an honest and
creditable manner; and they did not wish their wives and
children to be dragged out of bed at half-past five o'clack
of a morning, to attend the factories. In consequence of
this practice young children bad to be put out to nurse,
and from the little pittance afforded to the nurses, they
were not properly taken care of. Thus, when the child
cried, the nurse administered some kind of quietness or
cordial, compound of spirit of wine, opium, and other
obnoxious drugs."
With such a disclosure before us, we have reason
to ask the manufacturer—if this is the direction
which your increase of production is to take, with
what security can we increase our dependence upon
manufactures for the employment of the people ?
Naturally, the increased efficiency of machinery
tends to enable us to dispense with manual or
physical strength. The woman, or the child, with
her improved iron fellow-labourer, is tenfold more
productive than the adult with a less efficient ma-
chine. In a few years we shall probably see the
majority of our manufacturing processes performed
by women and children, torn from their natural
position by human selfishness and the love of cheap-
ness. What, then, is to become of the male popu-
lation of the manufacturing districts ? What other
lot is left for them than to sink down into mere
household drudges, despising themselves, and
despised, as mere lumber, by those whom God
ordained to look up to them for support ?
But a still graver consideration offers itself when
we reflect that these women, withdrawn from their
household avocations, and their Position in life in-
verted, are to be the mothers of another generation
of Englishmen and Englishwomen ; that their
children, thus drugged and " quieted" with poison,
dwarfed with neglect, half idiotic and half savage,
are, in a few years, to compose England's working
population. We have before us a statement, giving
the number of females employed in factory labour
in the town of Bradford, from which we learn that
there were employed in 98 factories 1000 females
under 13 years of age ; 4500 from 13 to 18 ; and
6500 above 18: making a total of 12,0'0. Of
these, 2000 were married women ; and 1000 to
1200 resided in lodgings or lodging-houses—of
course, deprived of all parental supervision. Need
we wonder if vice abounds in such a state of so-
ciety as is here exhibited ? Dearly, indeed, are we
purchasing our manufacturing supremacy, at the
expense of the health and the morals of our female
population.