The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-02-17 00:00:00

or both. Ane, how does friend Henry Ashworth pay
the income and property tax which, thanks to Whig
profligacy, we have already ? We give the reply in
his own words, and with the benefit of our largest
type. Our virtuous and patriotic Quaker declares that
he and his brother have paid this tax "BY DIS-
CHARGING OVERLOOKERS, MECHANICS,
AND OTHER WORKPEOPLE ; and that OTHER
MANUFACTURERS HAD DONE THE SAME" ! !
These are Mr. Ashworth's own words, quoted from
the Manchester Guardian of Saturday last. Mr. Ash-
worth says, distinctly, that he and his brother had

adopted this course o' dismissal "to save their income

and property tax

Perhaps it may become a question whether Govern-
ment, in any financial legislation which it may have to
offer on a future occasion, will provide for the case of
such slippery subjects as our Bolton friend. May we
suggest al course ? We are not to tax the working

classes. Agreed. We are not to tax their masters—
for they forthwith levy the amount on their workpeople.
If we were to tax collarless coats or drab unmention-
ables, such moralists as friend Ashworth would find no
difficulty in sporting a turn-over and sky-blue for the
continuations. As our friends on the other side of the
Atlantic would say, " you can't fix them." Well, then,
we must be driven to the very questionable policy of
taxing the engine ! That is fixed already; and they
can't either reduce his wages or shorten his provisions.
The monster would grumble ; and a strike from him
would be a rather serious affair

The more we reflect upon the whole case, as between
the stipendiary magistrate and the parish authorities,
the more deeply are we convinced that the course of
the former gentleman has been hasty and ill-judged ;

and that the outcry which he has succeeded in raising
against the latter gentleman is, in a great degree, un-
deserved and, certainly, overstrained. 'We will pro-
ceed to give our reasons for forming, and for our being
confirmed in this conviction.

We say that the course taken by Mr. Rushton has
been " hasty and ill-judged ;" that, in fact, he has, as
it appears to us, snatched at rather than been reluc-
tantly driven to become the " public accuser" of his

fellow-townsmen. Mr. Rushton, be it observed, is not

himself so totally clear from the imputations which he
so flippantly casts upon other men, who have had the
onus and difficulties of parochial management upon
their shoulders, as he would have the world imagine.
Mr. Rushton was, we are informed, some time since a

member of the Board of Guardians, and by virtue of

his office was, we believe, a visitor of the workhouse
since the administration of the affairs of the poor by
the select vestry. If those affairs were ilhadministered,
he had his course clearly before him ; and that course
was an honest, bona-fide endeavour to correct the evils
of such administration. That course Mr. Rushton

appears to have had an indistinct notion of—viz. an
appeal, as the last resource, to the Poor-law Commis-
sioners. We submit that the time for that appeal had
scarcely arrived, when Mr. Rushton made his public
display. Admitting, however, that it had, the mode
in which that appeal was made is, we say confidently,
not dictated by the best possible taste. Mr. R. says
that " he sent for the governor of the workhouse, and
the parochial authorities," to the Sessions House,—to
do what ? to deliberate upon the best steps to be taken

to place the workhouse in a state of efficiency ? To

receive his suggestions as an ex-qificio visitor or as

police magistrate ? Not at all ; but to hear them-
selves publicly arraigned, and the evidence of a re-
fractory pauper or two laid before the mixed audience
which frequents the police court ! And why was it to
be thus laid before the prisoners, policemen, witnesses,
plaintiffs, and defendants, in cases of tavern broils, and
other similar characters who frequent his tribunal
Was that the place from which it could most advan-
tageously go to the ears of the watchful Somerset-
House trio ? We submit, not. And yet, evidently—

by his own admission indeed—that was the consum-

mation desired

" He was glad," he says, " that the
statement" there made " found its way into the Times,

and" thence " came under the notice of the Poor-

law Commissioners." Now, we say that it was per-
fectly competent for Mr. Rushton to have brought his
complaint directly " under the notice of the Poor-
law Commissioners." And we say, moreover, that,
as an old member of the body complained of, and of
whose difficulties, and proceedings even, hp ought to
have been cognisant, the course which he did pursue
was precisely that which good taste and good 'sense
would not have dictated.
The course adopted by Mr. Rushton was, we admit,
calculated to elevate him in the opinion of the thought-
less and unreflecting, at the expense of parties scarcely
more blameable—in the strict sense of the word—than
himself. Mr. Rushton, we repeat, had seen the state
of affairs at the workhouse ; must have known the
moral and physical impossibility of its amelioration—
to any great extent—from any course less than an ex-
tensive increase of the capabilities of the workhouse it-
self. But was his indignation directed against the
physical difficulties and hindrances now admitted ?
Not at all ! We heard of " want of classification"—
" intermixture of the sexes ;" lint nothing of the im-
possibility of effecting these desiderata without exten-
sive enlargement Of the building. We heard of petty
and paltry complaints of his protogee, Clarke, the
ground of which only—upon his own shewing—existed
for three days. But we heard nothing to lead to the
supposition—a charitable one—that the authorities
were doing all within their power, with the means at
their disposal. We heard of " divided authority," and
other similar faults of the system ; but these surely
were not facts which it was necessary-to proclaim
through the. length and breadth of the land—for the
same divided authority we have seen existing in other
departments of the public service; and Mr. Rushton
will scarcely maintain that such unseemly brawls, as
that which recently took place between himself and
Mr. Dowling in public court, reflected credit on either
party, or added dignity to the court in which it oc-
curred. We heard all these charges levelled distinctly
against the authorities almost directly attributing
the occurrence of the evils out of which they arose to
the criminal conduct of the select vestry; and viewing
such a course of action with the known fact that the
political party to which Mr. Rushton belongs, and of
whom he is the well-rewarded member, aspires to the
absolute management of the affairs of the parish, or
the return of the direction of the affairs of the poor to
the absolute control of 'the Poor-law Commissioners,
we are not surprised to find `lr. Rushton's indiscreet
ally—the Journal—expressing a hope that he trusts to
see the management of parochial affairs taken for ever
out of the hands of the party at present in office !
April is not far distant ; and, without question, the
present agitation is directed by many quite as much to
the achievement of such a consummation, as to the
professed object which it has in view—the ameliora-
tion of the condition of the poor in the workhouse.
Don't however, for one moment, let us be presumed
to sanction, in the slightest, the state of the things ad-
mitted to exist in that Workhouse. It is one—if one-
tenth part of what is alleged be true—which we trusted
never to have witnessed in Liverpool. If it be neces-
sary, we say, expend ten times the fifty thousand
pounds which—notwithstanding the Journal's clever-
ness—we believe will be required to enable us to carry
out the New Poor-Law system, and give indoor relief
to the able bodied poor of the town, rather than permit
such immoralities to exist within its walls But Mr.
Rushton knows that such an extension of the capabili-
ties of the existing building cannot be attained in a
day. That gentleman knows, or ought to know, that
the Select Vestry, at the very time which he chose for
making his display, were actively engaged in preparing
plans for the remedy of the evil complained of! He
might have known, moreover, that those plans were, as
soon as they could be got ready, to be laid before the
Poor-Law Commissioners ; and he must know, too,—

no man better—that the proposal to lay out one-half
the sum required to make those plans efficient would
have drawn down a perfect storm of scurrility upon the
authorities from the very party which is now backing
his unseemly efforts. Yes, every person must be aware
that from no portion of the community would the
Select Vestry have been visited with a greater amount
of clamour and odium, in their attempt to procure for
themselves the power to administer the Workhouse
with proper attention to the requirements of morality
and decency, than from the pure and patriotic Whig
faction of the borough of Liverpool !
And now one word as to the meeting of magistrates
by whom. Mr. Rushton has had his conduct white-
washed. May we ask how it is that some of these: