The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-05-14 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We have anticipa`ed in a great measure the urgent appeal of
" A Non-elector."
Can " J. L. J." infcrm us to what length the fiction will extend?
and i., the meantime wa will peruse the MS. he has forwarded
to us.

W.tberpool 4'tanbarb.

TUESDAY DORKING, MAY 14, 1814.

We are now fairly embarked in a contest, for one
of the most important counties in the kingdom,—a
contest which, whatever may be its result, is certain
to be fought, on one (the Liberal) side, with a des-
peration unparalleled in electioneering annals, and
which, on the side of Conservatism, must be carried
on with this conviction pressing on the mind of
every elector, that the interests of this great empire,
the interests of humanity, the security of its esta-
blished institutions, the church of his fathers, and
the monarchy itself, are in his sole keeping. It is
with no common enemy that the Conservatives of
South Lancashire have now to deal. It is not an
ordinary party quarrel which they have now to
decide. Conservatism has here to do with a banded
faction, powerful in numbers, armed with unlimited
money-power, and with practised talent ready to be
brought to bear upon the issue. They have to do
with a faction not local, but organised throughout
the kingdom ; and which is prepared to devote all
its energies—all its unscrupulous dishonesty—all
that dictation, intimidation, trick, and bribery can
do—to win this county, and to ring out, from over
the trampltd body of South Lancashite Conserva-
tism, the knell of England's greatness—the triumph
of Mammon over the happiness and the liberties of
the British people.
Yes, the Conservative electors of this division
have now to fight the Anti-corn-law League in its
own stronghold—upon the s ene of its restless and
persevering machinations. The whole empire looks
with anxiety to the issue of the battle. The noble
in their ancestral halls—the yeoman in his native
fields—the peasant in his humble cot—the toil-worn
factory slave from his hovel—the pauper in his
basti e, or in his rags ;—all these look to the result
of this contest as one which is, more or less, to de-
termine whether they are to rest upon the security
of existing laws and look forward to their ameliora-
tion, or are to be handed over to the ruin and degra-
dation which a false and inhuman philosophy is
preparing for them. It is emphatically the question
now to be answered, whether England is to be once
more "happy England," or is to be converted, by
the harsh hand of Utilitarianism, into a mighty lazar-
house ; whether her people are to stand up unmana-
cled before the nations, or are to be chained by
poverty to the wheel and the loom, with the worse
than felon's lot of the union workhouse as their doom
if they fail, or exhausted nature refuses to aid them,
in their hard probation. This is not an overstrained
statement of the issue now to be tried. Whatever
may be its specious promises of temporary ameliora-
tion of their lot—of temporary prosperity to be
brought about by the realization of its boasted plans
—the ultimate aim of the Anti-corn-law League is
to throw the poor and the middle classes of Great
Britain into helpless dependence for support upon
the tender mercies of manufacturing capital; and
the sure result of such a dependence must be the
bringing about of a state of society which Christian
men must dread to contemplate as existing in this
or any other land.

We have one consolation to gladden and give us
hope at the outset of this contest, whatever may be
its issue. In the Candidate chosen by the League
we do not recognise that eminent talent and exten-
sive influence, which might have centred in some
men, upon whom their selection migh have fallen.
As a merchant, Mr. Brown occupies, we admit, a
high position. In private character, he is unex-
ceptionable. But, we ask, what, beyond his stand-
ing as a merchant, is there in Mr. Brown to entitle
his opinion, upon matters of such high moment as
now occupy the public mind, to any value ? Mr.
Brown is a free trader—a member of the League,
or, at least, of the Anti• Monopoly Association of
Liverpool. The repeal of the Corn-laws, and of all
protective laws, will, in his opinion, advance the
interests of British commerce, and give to manu-
facturing industry a stimulus which it can derive
from no other measure. But, then, the authority
of Mr. Brown is a somewhat tainted authority upon
such a question. Where are the sympathies of
such a gentleman ? Why with his American
commerce—his capital embarked in that commerce
exclusively. Ask him what operation repeal of the
Corn-laws will have upon agriculture, and he will
reply that it will benefit—American agriculture !
It will enable American farmers to purchase more
largely of British manufacturers, and give additional
employment to the shipping and capital of American
traders ! Such a gentleman is not the kind of
candidate whom we should choose, as likely to
carry to a successful result a contest like the
present.
Mr. Entwisle, the Conservative candidate, is a
young man—an untried man. He comes, how-
ever, from a good Conservative stock ; has troops

. :
of personal friends to rally round him; possesses

eminent business talents ; and, beyond the mere
question of corn-laws or no corn-laws, entertains
opinions upon other vital questions which are con-
genial not only to his own party, but to the great
majority of his fellow-countrymen. We possess in
him, therefore, a candidate in every way worthy of
our choice, and worthy of being energetically fought
for ; and we trust that Conservatives throughout
the division will not delay putting forth their best
strength in his behalf. Remember—mere victory
in a contest like the present is not the only thing to
be desired. Our opponents must not only be beat,
but crushed so decisively that they will not easily
rise to trouble us more.

The debate of Friday night, upon the third read-
ing of Sir James Graham's Factory Bill, has afforded
us the saddening assurance that Lord Ashley's pro-
position to shorten the hours of labour, and to ele-
vate the condition and increase the comforts of the
overtoiled factory women and children, is doomed
for this session to be defeated; and that, too, at the
sole dictation of government itself. Two gentlemen,
we regret to say on the Conservative side of the
house, who had previously voted with Lord Ashley,
have already been induced to announce their
changed views; and doubtless a sufficient number
of these faint-spirited friends of humanity will be
found, to enable the House of Commons to snatch
from the lips of the labouring poor the boon which
it has thrice, during the present session, deliberately
offered to them. But the cause, nevertheless, is
not lost, although its triumph may be for awhile
deferred. Day by day the conviction of the justice
and necessity of the principle involved in it becomes
more deeply impressed in the mind of the natior ;
and perhaps, ultimately, those who have weakly and
unwisely consented to stand in the way of its recog-
nition by the legislature, may find it presented for
their consideration in a new and more startling
form, and with accompanying demands which do
not exist at present. _ .

It is plainly to be discerned, from the debate, so
far as it has gone, what are the nature of the argu-

ments which have been used by Sir James Graham
to gain over to himself a majority upon this ques-
tion. It has not been altogether the fear of Sir
James Graham's threatened "retirement into pri-
vate life," which has led Mr. Liddell to announce
his determination to vote contrary to his convic-
tions, or Mr. Gaily Knight to declare that, " having
had time to reflect and sober," he is determined to
vote as he is bidden upon this question, and to
conduct himself in future as a well behaved Go-
vernment hack. No, no—the astute Home Secre-
tary has gone on a very different tack ; and will be
found to have created a far greater amount of that
kind of sobriety, which leads men to stultify them-
selves, than the world at present imagines. Sir
James has told country gentlemen that a Ten
Hours' Bill will destroy the foreign trade of the
country, unless the increase in the cost of manu-
factured goods, which it will occasion, be balanced
by a concession to the manufacturer somewhere ;
and has hinted that the likeliest direction, for such a
concession to he made is in that of the corn-laws.
" The question"—he has urged—" is not one of
straightforward operation merely—not one which
will only bring about the object it professedly seeks.
On the contrary it is one which must produce a
convulsion of our entire commercial fabric, which
can only be restored to its equilibrium by a repeal
of all protective duties, and the resort to an entirely
new systetn of raising revenue." Such a represen-
tation of the result of a measure of justice to the
labourer is well calculated to startle unreflecting and
selfish men; and will be found to have done so, by
the result of the division upon Lord, Ashley's
amendment.

Of course, we deny utterly the conclusion to which
Sir James Graham would fain lead—nay has already
led—the agricultural supporters of the rights of
humanity. We have no fear of any material injury
to our foreign trade, to arise from moderately re-
stricting the hours of labour. But were it even the
case, that some injury might arise—that in some
markets we might be met by a competition which,
without unlimited power over human labour and
human life, we could not successfully overcome, we
should say that it were better—far better, to resign
those markets to others, than to purchase them at
the cost of the moral and physical health of our en-
tire labouring community—at the cost of the com-
forts which ought to belong to the working man's
home, and by the perpetuation of a state of society
degrading to our human nature, and dangerous to
the national safety.
But let us ask of those gentlemen, who draw back

their hands from the good work of emancipating the
slaves of toil, because they imagine they see, as the
result of such emancipation, some little danger to
their order, whether there is not infinitely more dan-
ger in withdrawal, upon such grounds. The existing
protection of agricultural productions is endangered
they say—or Sir James Graham leads them to infer

—by any measure which interferes with the power
of the capitalist over human labour. Surely this is an
impolitic admission; for what is it but to tell the work-
ing man that he must submit to his present long hours
of toil, not for his own benefit—not his employer's
benefit, but for the benefit of the owners of the soil ?
Let such an admission once go abroad amongst the
working population of the manufacturing districts, I
accompanied with the news of the contemptuous
rejection of their prayers by the House of Com-
mons ; let that population be told that the British
landowner, alarmed for the permanence of his own
protection, has withdrawn all protection from the
labourer, and selfishly consigned suffering women
and children to a toil beyond their strength; and it
will not be necessary for the demagogue to inflame,
or a seditious press to infuriate them to attempt
their emancipation, by the sacrifice of that very class

which now imagines that it is insuring its own safety
by the blind course which it is pursuing. Hitherto
the labouring classes of Lancashire and Yorkshire
have spurned the approaches of the-Anti-corn-law
League and of Liberalism. They have stood a firm
barrier between the constitution and that faction
which would fain overbear its voice by outrage and
violence. They have hitherto remained wrapped up
in their comparatively harmless crotchet of Chart-
ism, and refused to give the impetus of their vast
physical force to:anti-corn-law agitation. But by the
rejection of this bill we are about to throw them—
excited, passionate, and despairing of relief from
other and legitimate sources—into the hands of a
body of men who have the power, and will not
scruple to use it, to wield them for the gratification
of any selfish object, however injurious to the com-
munity, and however ruinous to their duped allies.
Give up the factary workers to the League ; and, one
fortnight of interruption of labour—one fortnight of
the screw of hunger—and the corn law—aye any
other law or institution, however sacred and how-
-1 ever valued—is swept away I-or ever !
This is no chimera—no impossible or improbable
1

alliance. Already we have it announced in the
House of Commons that the factory population,
following up the heartless taunt of the millocrat
organs, are, if defeated in their hopes by Parliament,
resolved upon an attempt to work out the realization
of those hopes by a general strike; and surely, with
the occurrences of 1842 in our remembrance, such
a movement is not one to be contemplated without
serious apprehension, or one of which the seditious
plotters of the League will hesitate to convert to the
realization of their own (7anaerous objects.

There are a few features in the contest upon
which we are about to enter, and in the principles
and position of the two candidates, to which we feel
it imperative upon us to call the especial attention
of our readers.

We are told by the organs of the Radical party
that this is to be a struggle exclusively between the
principles of free trade and of protection that the
old terms " Whig" and " Tory" are to be laid aside,
and the question to be only—" Are you an advocate
of the abolition of all restrictions upon commerce,
or are you in favour of monopoly ?" Now we must,
along with Mr. Entwisle the Conservative candi-
date, protest against the right of our opponents to
place the question at issue upon this footing. Ra-
dicalism may choose its own war-cry, and prescribe
its own battle-ground; but it shall not dictate ours.
It may hoist its one idea, " free trade" ; but it shall
neither compel us to fight for anything less than
the broad principles of Conservatism, nor to forget
that under its novel cloak still lurk the vicious
principles inherent in its nature ; that though
flaunting in borrowed garments, it is Radicalism—
un-English and nauseous Radicalism—still. It is
preposterous to ask us to lay aside, upon an occasion
so important as the selection of a member to represent
in the great council of the nation all the varied
interests of a locality like this, the consideration of
questions quite as important as is comprised within
the term dictated to us—of questions affecting the
interests of religion, of morality, and of humanity,
and the secnrity of the established institutions of
our country ; and it is just as preposterous to de-
mand that we should permit our opponents to gild
over every thing which is unpalatable in their
principles, with an attractive term, which they
choose very modestly to appropriate exclusively to
themselves. No, no; gentlemen of the League :
we meet you on this question as Conservatives, as
loyalists, and as advocates of the best interests of