The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-02-18 00:00:00

It was our intention to have entered at length
• tinn, and to have adduced some
3n advanced by the reverend

into an exam

proofs of
speaker.

e find the subject so ably treated
in zir:.:les from the columns of the Dublin
Lreiii,..q Mail and the Record, which will he found
in another part of our paper, that we are readily in-
duced to retrain from the task, and to rely upon the
able case made out for us by our talented contem-
poraries.

In our remarks last week upon the mad specula-
tions which have been going on in Railway Shares,
we expressed strong doubts whether the fact of a• y
particular scheme having been approved by the
Board of Trade rendered its stock one in which
prudecit men would invest at such premiums as we
have lately seen paid. Our reason for arriving at
this conclusion was a suspicion that that board
would be influe ced in their decisions by other con-
siderations than those of profitable traffic, cheapness
of construction, or other circumstances which confer
value upon railway property. We conceived that a
government board would naturally look favourably
upon those schemes which offer the greatest facili-
ties to the public service, and by which the commu-
nity would be most benefitted ; and we thought it
quite possible that projectors might purchase the
good will of the board by concessions which may be
found hereafter to be anything but conducive to the
profitable working of their schemes.
The speech of Lord Dalhousie, on presenting the
first report of the board, on Thursday night, fully
bears out the view which we have taken, with re-
spect to the considerations by which, in a great mea-
sure, these decisions have been influenced. Take
this instance adduced by him, the South Eastern

The Chamber of Commerce of Manchester is a
body of no very enviable notoriety. From the date
of the noodleism displayed by its then chairman, G.
W. Wood, to the memorable escapade of Mr. Henry
Ashworth, on both of which occasions its doings
afforded the subject of merriment and triumphant
ridicule to Sir Robert Peel, it has ranked in the esti-
mation of the world as a body whose opinions are
beneath contempt—crotchetty, selfish, and ridicu-
lous. But the Chamber of Commerce of Manches-
ter has never until within the last week arrived at
the climax of absurdity. It has at length come to
the conclusion, and acted upon that conclusion, that
no individual member of its body shall for the future
have an opinion of his own ; that a chamber, pur-
porting to express the collective wisdom of the ma-
nufacturing people of Manchester and the district
around, shall hold no opinions, and take no steps,
which are not in accordance with those which are
palatable to the Anti-Corn-law League.
If there was any thing which could give influence
to the opinions of this body, upon purely commer-
cial matters, it was the fact that it included amongst
its members, and of course expressed the sentiments
upon commercial matters of, men otherwise of
all shades of politics. Amongst the directors last
year was Mr. Richard Birley, one of the most ex-
tensive cotton manufacturers of Manchester--a gen-
tleman of undoubted ability and honesty, and whose
opinions and influence would perhaps have greater
weight with government and the country, upon any
matter connected with the cotton trade, than that of
any other man in the district. Mr. Birley, however,
is a tory in politics; a free-trader, but one who
wished to see free trade carried out without the in-
fliction of certain ruin to the agricultural interest.
Mr. Birley, moreover, was chairman to the com-
mittee of Mr. Entwisle—an admirer of the progres-
sive free-trade policy of Sir Robert Peel's govern-
ment; and for this sin—because Mr. Birley has
pinned his faith upon the sleeve of Sir Robert Peel,
to a certain extent, and prefers a fixed duty to total
and immediate repeal of the Corn-laws,—that gentle-
man has been excluded from his seat as a member
of the board of directors. A step more totally sub-
versive of the influence which such a body as the
Chamber of Commerce of Manchester ought to ex-
ercise, cannot be imagined. In fact, the disgust
with which it has been viewed by the people of that
town and Liverpool, and the opinion, which it has
confirmed, that the Chamber of Commerce is from
this time forth to be viewed as merely a reflector of
the League, has irretrievably lost for it the weight
which it ought to have had with the public.

COURSE OF GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT TO THE
FINANCIAL STATEMENT OF SIR ROBERT PEEL —We
have learnt, on the authority of letters received from
London on last night, from a well-informed quarter, that
the following is likely to be the course pursued by the
Premier, in carrying out the measures announced on
Friday night. Last night he would confine himself to the
question of the renewal of the income-tax, which would
probably occupy the House until its rising. Tuesday is
expected to be a vacant day; and on Wednesday Lord
John Russell is expected to open his budget of objections,
..titen will plutlut,c, Ili all p , a ictigiueueu uenteet,
which may occupy several nights.
ANXIETY TO BE TAXED !—The announcement of the
intention of government to abolish the auction duty, and
fix the license of auctioneers at a uniform sum of £l5, has
given general satisfaction to the members of that body in
Liverpool. An opinion, however, has been expressed by
some of them, that it would have been more beneficial in
every respect had the sum been fixed at £5O per annum,
instead of £l5. It may not be generally known that the
various licenses taken out by the more respectable auc-
tioneers have cost, up to this change, about £33, viz.,
for furniture, &c., £B, for plate, £5, wine, £lO, &c. It
is thought that, however advantageous the plan to include
all these branches under one license, it would have con-
duced more to the respectability of the trade if the total
cost had been increased rather than diminished.
THE FUNDS : SATURDAY NIGHT.—The funds have
not varied much to-day, and prices continue flat and de-
pressed, Consols for money leaving off 991 to -a; and for
the account, 99k to a ; Exchequer-bills, 545. to sfis. pm. ;
Bank Stock, 214 to 2121; India Stock, 282 to 284 ;
Three per Cents. Reduced, 100 to A ; Three-and-a-Quar-
ter per Cents.. 1034 to A ; Long Annuities, 12A; and
South Sea Stock, 117. The foreign securities were also
flat, and some of the quotations show a trifling decline.
There was very little done in any of the markets, which,
as usual on a Saturday, closed early. Spanish Five per
Cents. left off 28 to ; the Three per Cents., 41 to *;
Peruvian, 30 to 31 ; Portuguese, 581 to 591 ; Mexican,
35k to A; the Deferred, 164' to-.' ; Dutch Two-and-a-Half
per Cents., 63 to *; the Five per Cents., 99 to-'t; Co-
lombian, 14 to ; Chilian, 100 to 102; Buenos Ayres, 43
to 44 ; Brazilian, 891 to 901; and Belgian, 101. to 102.
Railway shares were fairly steady, without any great deal
doing. The account only having just passed, the specu-
lators are scarcely yet prepared for renewed action.

WATER.—We understand that the reply of Mr. Samuel
Ho'me to Mr. Harmood Banner, on the important subject
of giving to this town and locality a good and cheap sup-
ply of water, is now in the press, and will be published in
a few days. The dieussion of this subject between two
gentlemen, one cf whom must be so well acquainted with
the management of the Water Companies, and the other
with the local affairs of the town, will be attended with
great public benefit. Mr. Danner has undoubtedly an
advantage over his antagonist in being able to obtain offi-
cial information ; but that advantage will probably be
counterbalanced by the extensive knowledge of Mr.
Holy e or. all matters connected with the local govern-
ment of the town.

DURATION OF THE INCOME-TAX.—The profession
that the income-tax is only to continue so many and so
many years reminds us forcibly of the following little
anecdote. A person who kept an asylum for the better
class of lunatics had invited a friend or two to dine with
him, some of his patients being admitted, sub rosci, to the
same table. The host being called out on some occasion,
one of the patients says to one of the guests, " What's
the state of your malady, sir? How long have you been
suffering ?" " Suffering !" replied the guest, "I am not
suffering at all. I was invited to dine with Mr. So•and-So,
(the host,) and I am going home again this evening."
" Ah, sir," said the patient, " so they told me, in order
to get me here : I thought that I should go home again
the same evening, hut now I fancy lam in for life. My
only escape hence will be to the grave." And just so it
wll be with the income-tax. We were tempted into it at
first for on'y three years ; now we are to have it for other
three; and when those are ended, and we are expecting a
r lease, like the man in the madhouse, we shall find our
burden commensurate with the lives of all of us. It will
be a perpetual tax. If the people suffer it, let them ; but
let them not be deceived ; let them, like the patient in the
asylum, enter in freely, and know that they are to be de-
tained there for ever. The unfairness of the tax we have
argued and proved again and again till argument and
proof are needless.—limes.
FEELING IN LONDON AS TO TILE RECENT FINANCI,?.I.
MEASURES.—Tbc reception in the city of the financial
statement of Sir Robert Peel has been of a mixed charac-
ter. He obtains great credit for his sweeping abolition of
the duties on exports, and for the general tendency of his
proposed reduction of the duties on imported articles, to
give new life and activity to the commercial enterprise of
the country at a time when it is entering on a race of
competition with the rest of the civilized world. Looking
to China, however, as the greatest new market upon
which that competition is to act, and to the desired solu-
tion of the commercial problem of what returns are to be
made for the exports to that country, there is some regret
that the article of tea has been so entirely passed over
without notice--that it is neither mentioned now, nor
any hope held out for it in future. His interference
with the excise is for the most part highly approved,
particularly as regards the remission of the duty on
glass. The continuance of the income-tax, as distinguished
from the property-tax, is the most unpopular part of the
financial exposition, especially as it is now intimated that
it will be imposed for one year longer than the term of
five years, which was fixed for its utmost duration when
it was first laid on. Many persons had previously been
sanguine in the expectation that some modification of the
income-tax would have been proposed on this occasion :
that some distinction would in the first instance be made
between income and property, by assessing property at a
higher rate, preparatory, perhaps, to the exemption of
income, of the mere produce of labour, wholly from its
operation. Whether or not this feeling will produce any
direct manifestation on the subject remains to be seen.