The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-02-03 00:00:00

first, and with many I fear, panic the first. But thena
will be no settlement. You will not be able to foretel
whether the duty during the years 1847 and 1848 will be
4s. or 10s. It is quite probable that in February 1849,
the duty will be 10s. ; if so, on the first of that month it
will drop again suddenly, from 10s. to Is. Here will be
change the second, fright the second, and possibly panic
the second. The fat! of duty in these two changes would
have amounted to, first, from 15s. to 4s. ; next, from 10s.
to is., making, together, 20s. ; but mark, if the duty were
immediately reduced, from 158. to is., the fall would be
only 14s. So that by this clumsy contrivance you are not
only to be kept for three years in a state of suspense and
embarrassment. and exposed to double panics, but are lia-
ble to a drop of 20s. instead of 14s. duty ; you are actu-
ally subjected to the shock of the withdrawal of 6s. more
of protection 1"
What a notion the man must have of the intellect
of those to whom he addresses this balderdash !
Drop the first, from 15i. to 4s.—and drop the
second, from los. to ls. make up, it is true enough,
20s. as the amount of the two drops. But then,
most ingenious disciple of Loyola !—most jesuitical
of leaguers!—neither one "drop" nor the other
regulates the price or the amount of protection de-
rived during the intermediate three years. If Mr.
Cobden's prints "drop" 10s. a piece in this Febru-
ary 1846, and 10s. more in February 1849, is it
thence to be inferred that Mr. Cobden will have
been losing 10s. a piece upon his goods for the three
years, or that he will lose 20s. afterwards ? The price
of printed calicoes may rally after the glut or any
other cause which has led to their suddt.n drop ; and
the operation of Sir Robert Peel's new scale, we
fancy, is likely to effect the same rise for wheat. If
the duty under that scale is now likely, owing to •
high prices, to be 4s. instead of 155., the low prices,
induced by a low duty and extensive importations,
is tolerably certain to bring into operation the other
end of the scale before many months are over.
A still more precious argument, however, Mr.
Cobden advances to hambug the farmers.
" From the moment that the new corn-law is passed"
he says, " foreigners and col n importers will begin to make
preparations for the day of its extinction ; they dread a
sliding scale in any shape, owing to former losses, and
will keep their :eyes steadily fixed upon the Ist of Feb-
ruary, 1849."
Whereas the following, he contends, would be the
operation of an immediate repeal
There would then be no stock of foreign corn waiting
for the opening of our ports. Nobody expected last year
in Poland or America that the English corn-law would be
repealed—nobody prepared for it ; not a bushel of grain
was raised upon the chance of such an unlooked for con-
tingency. Is there an intelligent farmer in the kingdom
that will not at once exclaim, If we are to have a repeal
of the corn-law, give us it this spring, when the foreigner
is unprepared for it, and when not a single quarter of corn
sown after the news reaches him can be brought to this
market in less than eighteen months.'"
Of all the absurdity that ever we read, this is the
most eminently absurd. With an immediate repeal
we should have, in 1849, no stock of foreign corn
"waiting for the opening of our ports," for the very
palpable reason that we should ha, e had as much of
it as our markets would sustain some two years
previously; and presuming it to be correct that,
"not a single quarter of corn sown after the news
reaches the foreigner can be brought to this market
in less than eighteen months," what is that to the
purpose so far as the farmer is concerned ? His pro-
tection, meanwhile, will be much more efficacious,
and the duty will go into his pocket, instead of that
of the league speculators in grain.
We should most strongly advise Mr. Cobden to
lay aside such pitiful efforts as the present to impose
upon the British farmer. Let him stick to declam-
ation and frantic abuse of the aristocracy. That is
his forte. If he has anything in the shape of argu-
ment to advance, let him express it in the house of
commons, where he may have a chance of being
answered.