The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-07-11 00:00:00

POLITICAL MISCELLANY.

THE NAVIGATION-LAWS.---sOme doubt is entertained
respecting the passing this session of the bill proposed by
the government, for the purpose of virtually repealing the
Navigation-laws. A committee of the House of Lords
has been sitting, during the greater part of the session, to
investigate the question ; and there appears, as we are in-
formed, an obvious desire on the part of the Protectionists
to protract this inquiry, in order that its non-completion
may serve as a legitimate excuse for laying the government
bill on the shelf, when it reaches the upper house.— Whig
paper.
MR. HUME'S MOTION FOR PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.
—The Lancashire members 'among the ayes, are Dr.
Bowring, Mr. Bright, Mr. Brotherton, Mr. Sharman
Crawford, Mr. Fox, Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. Henry,
Mr. Hindley, Mr. Pilkington, Sir G. Strickland, and
Mr. M. Wilson—total, eleven. The following Lancashire
members voted with the noes :—Sir Thomas Birch, Mr.
Bolling, Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Duncuft, Mr. Greene, Mr.
Hornby, Colonel Lindsay, and Mr. Wilson Patten, thus
giving the ayes a majority of three as far as concerns this
county. The absent members were Mr. Armstrong, Mr.
James Heywood, Mr. William Brown, Mr. Walker, Mr.
Greenall, Mr. Thicknesse, and Mr. Greenfell, making
seven. Of the Cheshire members the following voted
with the ayes :—Mr. Kershaw, Mr. John Williams, whilst
the following voted among the noes, Sir P. Egerton, Mr.
W. T. Egerton, Mr. Heald, Sir J. Jervis, Mr. G. C.
Legh, and Mr. Tollemache. Earl Grosvenor and Mr. J.
Bocklehurst were absent.
RUINOUS LOSSES IN THE WEST INDIES.—It is to be
deplored.that there are many worthy persons to be found
in England who, from the enjoyment of incomes of £lO,OOO
and £20,000 per annum, have been reduced to actual
penury by ar. nets of the Government,—that Govern-
ment:by thooo act., Jopm-ani, fie., its former professions,
and so, in some sort, breaking faith with its own subjects.
We met, only the other day, with a gentleman who for-
merly derived £17,000 a-year from his West India pos-
sessions, and whose whole income now, is not a hundredth
part of that sum. We heard of a mortgage of £200,000
on such a property, actually offered for sale for £1,500,
and the safety of giving so much as £1,500 greatly doubted.
The grand absurdity and crime of the present system. is,
that after giving £20,000,000 to abolish slavery ; and
while we now spend half a million per annum in striving
to put down the slave trade, we do, at the same moment,
by our commercial code, give a prodigious encouragement
to the increase of slavery, and the over-working of slaves,
in Cuba. It if a fact, we believe, that the passing of the
Sudar Bill of 1846, was hailed in the Havana, by a general
illumination. It is a fact not denied by any, that while
our own sugar plantations in Jamaica are becoming rapidly
stripped of plant and machinery, from sheer poverty and
bankruptcy,—the Cuba planters are eagerly buying up
this machinery, to supply the increasing demand of the
English markets. Yet these same planters were described
in the House of Commons, the other night, as never
venturing abroad without the guard of a brace of mastiffs
and a pair of bouble-barrelled pistols ! Such is the state of
things which we are now countenancing and encouraging !
A FEW PLAIN FACTS.—MONARCHY v. ECONOMY-
MONGERS.—George 3rd gave up to the public all his
hereditary revenues; and the parliament granted him first
£BOO,OOO, and subsequently £960,000 per annum, for the
support of his civil list ; and according to Sir William
Blackstone, the public was then gainer of £lOO,OOO
per annum. From a report made in December 1837, by
a select committee of the House of Commons, it oppears
that the total amount of the hereditary and temporary
revenues of the crown, from the accession of George 3rd,
to the accession of her present Majesty, arising from the
net produce of the customs, excise, post office, and small
branches of the hereditary and temporary revenues, and
also from the sums settled on the sovereign in lieu of
duties on various articles repealed by George 11., is,
X 101,338,877 10s. 7., while the total sums received during
the same period by the reigning sovereigns in lieu of those
revenues, including the sums granted for the civil list
debt and the fees from suppressed offices, amount to
£69,385,931 15s. 101 d., being a gain to the nation during
that period of a sum of nearly thirty-two millions of
pounds, (X 32,000,000.) As to the annual loss or gain by,
or to, crown or nation. For the first year-and-a-
quarter after the accession of George 111. the hereditary
and temporary revenues of the sovereign amounted to
£886,381, 10s. Ord. ; and the annuity received by the
king in lieu of those revenues amounted to £965,317 4s.
91d. The proportion between these revenues, and the
annuity settled on the sovereign in lieu of them, every
year afterwards changed in favour of the nation, and in
the last year of the reign of his late majesty William IV.,
the amount of the crown revenues was only £3,248,208
ls. lid., while the annuity granted to his majesty for the
civil list, in lieu of these revenues, was only £510,000 !
Her present most gracious majesty, Queen Victoria, has
also placed, without reserve, her interest in the revenues
of the crown, at the disposal of the nation ; and the par-
liament have =anted her majesty in lieu of those revenues
an annuity, amounting in the whole, to the sum of
£385,000. The revenue of Queen Elizabeth was £600,000,
that of King Charles I. was £BOO,OOO, and £1,200,000
was granted to Charles 2nd, while that of Cromwell was
£1,500,000; a further convincing proof, if any were
wanted, that the people are not gainers by violent revolu-
tions.

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

NEW COURT.
(Before Baron Parke.)

IN THE CASE OF THE ABDUCTION OF THE REV. MR.

HARVEY OF THAXTED'S DAUGHTER.
M. Clarkson, who appeared to prosecute Thomas Bux-
ton Barnes for the abduction of Miss Harvey, applied to
the court for leave to withdraw the charge. He said :
My lord, you are aware that this is a prosecution for the
abduction of the daughter of a rev.
. gentleman of the
highest respectability. The abduction in question was
followed by a marriage, and there is every reason to believe
that this marriage is a legal and legitimate one, and that
it cannot be put aside under any circumstances. I there-
fore respectfully ask leave, my lord,. to withdraw from
.
offering any evidence against prisoner, seeing that
the effect would be that the punishment inflicted upon
him would fall unhappily on the unfortunate girl who had
been abducted. Under these circumstances I respectfully
ask permission to withdraw the prosecution, and I am
sure that the court will kindly grant me this permission.
After a few words from Mr. Ballatine the court assented,
and the jury, by the direction of the presiding judge, re-
turned a verdict of Not Guilty. The prisoner was in
consequence discharged.

IMPORTANT TO CREDITORS AND INSOLVENTS.—A
most important case was argued before the Court of
Exchequer last week, in which the much-debated judg-
ment of the Common Pleas in Toomer v. Gingall has
been overruled. The decision of the Common Pleas in
the case referred to decided that a final order in insol-
vency, under statute 7th and Bth Vic., cap. 96, protected
the person but not the, property of the insolvent. In the
case just decided in the Exchequer, the court has ruled
that the case in the Comm= Pleas had been misunder-
stood, and that the statutein qwtion operated to protect
both pioperty and person.