The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-01-25 00:00:00

POLITICAL VARIETIES

THE BANK Acrs.—A motion has been carried by an
overwhelming majority in the Town-cofincil of Glasgow
against the restrictive acts of 1844-45.

The contemplated dinner to Lord Morpeth and Mr.
Cobden. members for the West Riding, has been post-
poned until the Easter recess.

The Liverpool Courier mentions- a report that the duty
on rum is likely to he reduced. at the meeting of parlia-
ment, to the same rate as the they on British spirits.
The elevation of Lord Clive to the peerage causes a va-
cancy for North Shropshire, and Mr. Dodd of Cloverly,
an excellent Protestant, has consented to come forward

as a eandidat E

A newspaper published in the county represented by
Mr. Disraeli in parliament, in manly and unmistakeable
terms, informs the hon. gentleman that his new alliance
with Baron Rothschild annuls the old alliance formed on
well-understood principles with the simple-minded electors
of Buck..

The illness of the Earl of Carlisle has caused an elee-
tio,seering movement in West Yorkshire. In the event
of Lord Morpeth's elevation to the peerage, it is said that
Mr. Beckett Denison will be again invited to come for-
ward, hut the free-traders intend to put forward Mr.
George Wilton, the chairman of the League.

Alas ! " Conservatism" is dead, and tin rival power to
Liberalism has yet taken its place. Where is that nume-
rous and well-orrmised body which gave Sir R. Peel his
triumph in 1841 He himself inflicted upon it .two
stunning blows, in 1844 and 1845, and now such " Con-
servatives" as Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Gladstone, Lord George
Bentinek, and 'l4lrd John Manners, are completing its
demolition.— Record.

Pt.--04-ac ~e'--tirc-rrtention of me
as " extremely de.irable, if not inevitable," as " it fills
the large gap created by Sir Robert Peel's tariff reforms.

sad barely brings the national income to a level with the
ordinary rate of expenditure." This tax is now plainly
confessed to be intenued "to fill the large pap created by
the tariff reforms." The question, then, stares us in the
face—" Are these 'reforms' worth the price ?"

Some ominous articles have appeared in the daily papers
this week about that most odious of imposts, the Income
and Property Tax. We infer that a perpetuation and
large increase of this tax will form the grand feature of
the Whig budget. Its pressure is already almost unen-
durable. and if an augmentation should be proposed, the
people must remember that they owe it to free trade, and
Whig incapacity.
JEWS IN PARLIAMENT.—It is very generally under-
stood, that with the exception of the Whig Bishops, those
of York, Durham, orwich, Manchester, and others
which it is unnecessary to name, the remainder, at least to
the number of 16, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at
their head, are prepared to discharge their obvious duty to
the religion of their country, and to vote against the bill
with that large party of Conservative Peers, which collec-
tively must certainly constitute a majority of the Upper
House.

THE COLONIES.—It seems now to be generally admit•
ted that, between free trade and the Whig policy of en-
couraging slave-grown sugars, these noble dependencies
on the British Crown are ruined. The Times says that we
must go back to the old differential duties; the Globe that
we must go on, and that the colonies must he es,entially
free of the mother country, to deal with other States as
they like. Then all will be right, the Globe says ; or
otherwise "free trade is a fallacy." Unfortunately," Im-
peachments " are becoming fallacies too, or these evils
would soon be remedied. What right had any minister
to make an experiment on a hundred millions of property,
in British colonies ?
THE LATE MR. COBBKTT ON FREE TRADE.—Of all
the stupid things that ever were engendered in the minds
of callow and purblind politicians, the free trade project
is the most stupid.—Register, Jan. 13, 1827. Of the
free trade project I have always been an enemy ; it is an
absurdity in itself. Other nations have taken advantage
of our folly, and are all gaining by our loss.—Register,
Aug. 8, 1832. A free trade in corn, if it had been adopted,
would at this hour, have made the land desolate.—Reegis-
ter, Sept. 12, 1829. If there were no corn laws, the land-
owners and farmers of England would be totally ruined,
and the arable land would be covered with docks, and
thistles instead of corn.—Register, Aug. 8, 1800.
Tax NAVIGATION LAws,—Mr. G. F. Young, the
great owner of shipping, has published a letter, in which
he expresses his conviction that if the present navigation
laws be repealed, it will be impossible in a case of emer-
gency to man the fleet :—" If legislating (says Mr. Young)
on the crude universally condemned opinion of Sir James
Stirling you repeal the navigation laws, and the decay of
the British mercantile marine should follow (as follow it
will as assuredly as night succeeds the day)—then, when
it is found impossible to procure hardy seamen to man our
ships of war, while hostile fleets scour the very oceans that
wash our shores—then, when millions have been expended
in guarding the coasts of Kent and Sussex, and London
is deemed secure, and Portsmouth and Chatham pro-
tected from insult—what, Task, is to prevent a force from
being landed at Liverpool or in the Clyde, and spreading
desolation in the hives of industry that swarm in Man-
chester and Rochdale, and Blackburn, and Glasgow, and
Paisley, and re-embarking before opposition would be pos-
sible or retreat be intercepted ? Here would be no ques-
tion of keeping open communications with France—none
of draught of water for vessels—none of any of the diffi-
culties on which reliance is placed for averting the dan-
gers pointed out by the duke. England, harrassed, in.
stilted, plundered, devastated, would then seem to have
retrograded to the time of the Danes."
THE WEST INDIA INTEREST.—On the re-assembling
of Parliament, the distressing case of the West India in-
terest will be urged upon the consideration of the Legis-
lature. We are glad to find our fellow-citizens, the pro-
ducers of our invaluable colonies, are not to walk the plank
without a struggle, even though pushed forward to ruin
by Cobden and his band. Parliament will now have a
km* peniteatise afforded it. It may make something like
compensation to the injured, as a proof of repentance all
but too late. The " great soul" of the nation has a res-
ponsibility as well as a single individual; it is bound to
the same measures of justice—bound to make the same
reparation, when justice has been violated. We would
ask any candid reasoner, if ever men were treated like the
parties under notice by any high-minded and honourable
community. It was no ordinary case of wrong which led
such papers as the Times and Spectator to express the
language of commiseration and sympathy in this case. Of
Cobden we despair—he would be acting out of character
in uttering a sentence in favour of any claims which
seemed to run counter to the triumph of his own heartless
theory ; but we trust that there are others of his school
who will not look unmoved on the spoliation and injury
inflicted upon a valuable body of British citizens, :rho
helplessly implore bat justice at the hands of the country.
The man of humanity, be his political party what it may,
ought to remember that, with the prosperity ( alas ! how
unsuitable the word here ) or rather, we ought to say, the
industrial existence of the West India interest, is involved
the anti-slavery cause, so far as we are concerned. De-
press the West India planters, who carry on their business
byfree labour, and the inevitable consequence is to sti-
mulate the detestable trade in slaves, and to enrich the
employers of the savages by whom it is carried on. 'The
question now is between the Brazilian slave trapper and
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