The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-01-09 00:00:00

TUESDAY NO 1?1\ ING, JAN. 9, 1844.

From the proceedings of the law officers of the
Crown, and the traversers to the indictments for
conspiracy in Ireland, which will be found in ano-
ther column, it will be seen that the question as to
the legality of the repeal agitation is at length about
to be set at rest. The government is evidently in
earnest. The trials will commence on Monday next,
the day originally appointed; and already, amidst the
blustering threats of the conspirators that an almost
indefinite procrastination of the result is within their
power, may be perceived the (lailing of spirit with
which they look upon their position—may be heard
the initiatory howl which is to ring through the
length and breadth of Ireland when the law shall
have told their doom.

Thus far, the leading ground of complaint by the
Radical organs is, that the law officers of the Crown,
in exercising their right of striking off the twelve
names from the original panel of forty-eight, have
struck off nine or ten Roman Catholics and pre-
sumed Repealers. It would, indeed, have been a
marvel if they had not done so, remembering the
energetic efforts made by the Repeal Association to
swamp that panel with an influx of their own crea-
tures, and the open boasts indulged in that the
starving-out system was to be successfully applied
to the defeating of the ends of justice. But the
traversers themselves had the right„ as well as the
Crown, of striking out twelve names ; and what was
their selection ? Was a Liberal Protestant or a
Roman Catholic amongst the twelve ? No! The
parties objected to by them were exclusively Con-
servatives ; and, so far as the fact could be ascer-
tained, the most independent and resolute Conser-
vatives upon the list.

It may be objected, indeed, and no doubt much
will be attempted to be made of the circumstance,
that of the twenty-four names remaining on the
panel, and from which a jury must be struck, the
whole are Protestants, and, it may he, of Conserva-
tive principles. But what does this show beyond
the fact that the wealth and respectability of the city
of Dublin contains amid its ranks a proud predomi-
nance of loyalists and Protestants ? That such men
will not return "a true verdict according to the
evidence," upon these or any other trials, no candid
man can doubt for a moment.

We return again to the subject, upon which we
remarked briefly in our last; viz. the depressed
condition of the working women of England.4...and.
now, according to our promise, we propose to enter
more fully into its details, and the course to be
adopted for its alleviation. Its cure, alas, is beyond
our hopes I

We have said already that to the intense selfish-
ness of our nature, and to the love of apparent
" cheapness," which a false political philosophy has
encouraged, is to he attributed the greater portion
of the sufferings, which the female workers of the
nation are doomed to undergo. Unhappily, there
can be no refutation of the fact. The gradual ope-
ration of these causes, and the corresponding depre-
ciation of the condition of the poor throughout the
land, may be distinctly traced through the last five-
and-twenty years. Such depreciation has gone,
step by step, with the growth of that system of reck-
less competition in trade, which our mania for cheap
—as distinguished from good—commodities has
originated. It has been aided' by the influx of a
struggling population into our large towns, in which
the market for labour was already glutted ; and by
the disposition of our puffing traders to resort—and
indeed the necessity of their resorting—to those cen-
tral depots of capital and surplus labour for their
supplies of cheap goods. Beyond this, and tempted
by the same cheapness, which abundant capital and
the command of over-abundant Tabour tend to pro-
duce, those traders are brought to embark in the
retailing of goods, quite opposed in their nature to
those which it is their legitimate occupation to vend.
Who hears, now, for instance, in our country towns,
of straw bonnet making, millinery, and other exclu-
sively female avocations, occupying profitably the
wives or the daughters of our working poor or mid-
dle classes ? The flash trader has a supply of all
these articles, direct from London or Manchester,-
the production of the poor suffering Helots, who toil
in garrets or cellars for the pittance which a whole-
sale house permits them to earn; and, by pursuing
the cutting system—viz. by selling articles at less
than cost price, to draw custom for other articles—
is enabled to undersell, and finally to ruin, the poor
sempStresses who depend upon a fair profit for their
bread. To what market go the thousands of dozens
of shirts, collars, &c., weekly made by the starving
females in- the metropolis ? They deprive of the
means of life thousands of poor females throughout
the country ! We heard last week of one large con-
cern in Manchester—supported, in all probability,
by some bubble joint-stock bank—which produces
weekly a thousand dozen of ladies' caps. How
many dozen pair of hands does such a leviathan
producer render idle ? And for what ends is all this
misery created ? That a flash shop may puff its.
little hour ; a capitalist add some hundreds to his
annual earnings, and that the giddy, the thought-
less—shall we not add the unfeeling ?—of both
sexes, may save a mere trifle in articles of usefulness
or finery, and be able to boast of imaginary " bar-
gains," whilst they pay an amount, more than equal
to their fancied saving, in the shape of a poor's
rate, to support the victims of their senseless
avarice !

We would have ouz fellow-countrywomen to dis-
courage this irreguiar traffic of the retailer. Let
" ten thousand dozen of straw
them reflect that his
bonnets bought for cash," and all that sort of thing
—the clearing out of the old stock of some whole-
sale warehouse—or the hundred dozen of stays
(soiled)" to be sold at 50 percent. below cost price,"
are only baits thrown out to lure them to the pur-
chase of other articles. And yet for no profit—as a
mere pretext to enable him to boast of his cheap.

ness—the puffing trader is perhaps consigning to
idleness for a season the needles of a hundred poor
families, and at the same time permanently reducing
the remuneration of their future industry.
But there are other circumstances contributing to
produce the wretchedness which we deplore amongst
our industrious female population. Our public in-
stitutions, we fear, are not guiltless in this matter.
Three weeks or a month ago we brought before our
readers the case of a wretched woman, who had died
in St. Pancras workhouse, having, almost to the
last day of her life, employed herself within its walls
in shirt-making, for which the munificent authori-
ties allowed her the sum of—A FARTHING EACH !
Y s : in a Christian country—under a Conservative
government (!).--.-a knot of heartless parish functiona-
ries are enabled, by the stringency of a diabolical
system of poor laws, to draw around the wretched
pauper the string of famine so tight, that she sub-
mits to a paltry farthing of remuneration for a day's
labour, to earn as much as will purchase a few spent
tea-leaves ! And whilst this screw is being applied—
whilst this farthing is being doled out—what is the
working of the system, so far as the poor out of
doors are concerned ? Why, this. By the reply of
these same commissioners, to a letter addressed to
them upon the subject, by the Poor-law Commis-
sioners, we are informed that for the last twelve
years they have been in the habit of employing their
female poor in the making of slop shirts, for which
they have been in the habit of receiving, from some
wholesale slopseller, the sum of 2s. per dozen, or
twopence per shirt (!), out of which they magnani-
mously allowed the poor workers a farthing !
They saved by this course, for the benefit of the
rich rate-payers of the streets and squares of St.
Pancras—for the benefit of Peers of the realm, mem-
bers of Perliament, bankers, barristers, lawyers, and
a flourishing shopocracy, seven farthings for each
shirt made by the labour of the fingers of these
poor destitute females. Oh ! "liberal" humanity
where is thy blush?

The working, then, of this system, so far as regards
the poor beyond the doors of a workhouse, is simply
this :—lt drives them within its doors! The hard-
hearted usurer, who can get a parish to contract to
do his work for so miserable a remuneration, is not
likely to give more to the poor sempstress out of
doors. What reeks he for the fact that she cannot
live upon the pittance which he offers her ? She
can go to the workhouse, and there labour for him.
The very authorities most interested in the enabling
of their poor to live by the work of their fingers,
have themselves, in effect, fixed the maximum reward
of labour; and that too at a price which entails
misery upon the labourer ! St. Pancras, and nearly
every other metropolitan union, have thus sold their
poor to the Jewish slopseller ; and what wonder that
famine, prostitution, child-murder, and profligacy,
abound beneath the very eyes of England's aristo-
cracy, and in the very seat of its wealth, or that the

country is inundated with crime, and its industrious,

rural, and town populations are involved in misery
and poverty,—the effects of a forced competition
with the cheap productions of these masses of op-
pressed and depreciated labour !
Well, indeed—when we contemplate such ruin
and wretchedness, wrought by ou-: own selfishness
and folly—might we address to the thoughtless and
unthinking of our fellow-beings the appeal of the

inimitable Hood, in a poem which ought to be
immortal !

" Oh ! men with sisters dear !
Oh ! men with mothers and wives !
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives.
Stitch—stitch—stitch,
In poverty, hunger, and dirt ;
Sewing at once,_ with a double thread,
A SHROUD AS WELL AS A SHIRT t"
But is it only in workhouses—beneath the cold,
worldly eyes of the officials of Somerset House, and
liberal"boards of guardians and vestrymen—that
these atrocities are committed ? For the sake of
human nature, would we could say "Yes t" But
we cannot. Our very charities are tainted by such
practices. Our Magdalene institutions—our peni-
tentiaries—our orphan asylums,—these, too, are
operating to deteriorate the condition of the la-
bourer, and to favour the prevalent mania for
" cheapness." We have, perhaps, in these no con-
tracts with Jew slopsellers—no shirt-making for a
farthing or for twopence even; but we have cheap
sewing, knitting, washing, and other labour for
" lady patronesses," " committee-women," and
" yearly subscribers." Many and many a guinea
—we refer not to the charities of our own town,
of whose working we do not know sufficient; but
to charitable institutions in general, and we shall be
happy to hear that our own are amongst the excep-
tions—many a guinea, paraded before the world as
the gift of charity, is, in a truly worldly sense, well
expended! And little does the poor penitent out-
cast, or the bereaved orphan know, when they are
plying their busy needle upun the fine linen or em-
broidery of their humane female protectors, and be-
stowing upon their work the fruit of many a ma-
ternal lesson—recalling, perhaps, the memory of
many a past hour of virtue and happiness—that
they are contributing to drive others to the same
vicious paths and the same unprotected wretched-
ness, from which they have been themselves hap-
pily released ! Little do they know that the meagre
remuneration for which their lady-patronesses vend
their labour to " very dear friends," or enjoy them
themselves, is to be made the maximum remunera-
tion with which other women, otherwise unsup-
ported, are to buffet with the world, and maintain,
in the paths of virtue themselves, and perhaps fami-
lies dependant upon them. This should not be.
In charitable institutions, at least, it should not, un-
less we are bent upon making charity itself an
empty bubble, and professing humanity a bye-word.
We are quite ready to acknowledge that such in-
stitutions are not always capable of being self-sup-
ported. Besides, industrious avocations must be
carried on in these establishments, for the employ-
ment and training in industry of those contained in
them. But let these avocations, so far as the public
out of door are concerned, be fairly paid for, at least
to the institution itself, and their price not made, as
at present, the convenient pretext for the selfish to
screw down the remuneration of the independent
labour which they employ. Genuine charity should
spurn to profit by its own exercise ; and when we
reflect upon the tendency which attempts so made
must have upon the open market for labour, it is
surely a mockery to attempt the training, in indus-
try and virtue, of those whom we affect to patronize,
when the certainty is before us that, when they come
forth from beneath our protection, to struggle with
the world, they cannot live by the avocations which
we have taught them !
The subject is not exhausted ; but for the present
we must now pause.

If anything could reconcile us to the conversion
of such bodies, as the Select Vestry of this parish,
into debating societies, by the admission to their
meetings of reporters for the pubiic press, it would
undoubtedly he the fact that their proceedings are
given by some member, from time to time, to the
public, in a garbled shape, through the medium of
partisan organs. From some such pimping autho-
rity, we have now before us the proceedings of the
Vestry at its meeting on Tuesday last—the written

speeches of Messrs. Urquhart and Thorneley of
course given verbatim from the copies read upon the
occasion, and those of other gentlemen with such
interpolations and suppressions, doubtless, as suited
the purpose of the amateur reporter. From such
reports, one-sided as they are, and untrustworthy,
the public derive all the information which they can
derive, of workhouse management; and upon the
Mercury's statements, therefore, we are compelled
to base the few remarks which we shall offer upon
•
the proceedings of Tuesday's meeting.
The first subject which we shall notice, as given
in this one-sided report, is the question as to the
improvement and enlargement of the workhouse.
We are told by a gentleman, who moved the amend-
ment, to the effect that a new workhouss should be
constructed, and by that talkative, or rather speech-
reading gentleman, Mr. Urquhart, that by the sale
of the present site as building ground, so large a
sum would be realised, as to require less from the
parish funds for a new building than will be required
for the alterations proposed. Of course we have no
proof of this. We have not suflicientc onfidence in
the persons in question to give an opinion upon the
subject. We have no wish to see the authorities of
the parish dragged into bastile erecting, or to fur-
nish to the Poor-law Commissioners, aided by a
vestry of Urquharts, the pretext which would be
afforded by the possession of a building large
enough, for submitting to "the workhouse test" the
3600 destitute beings, who now receive out-door re-
lief from the funds of the rate-payers. We would
rather have the limited capabilities of our workhouse
remain a bar to the efforts of " Liberalism" to apply
the screw to our working poor, than furnish fresh
weapons of oppression—increased facilities for the
working out of the murderous principles of the
atrocious system of Somerset House. Throughout
the whole proceeding of the junta of busy radicals,
who have wriggled themselves into a share in the
management of parish affairs, we can distinctly
trace a disposition to bring the poor of Liverpool
under the merciless tyranny of the Poor-law Com-
missioners; and with all our might we shall oppose
the arrival of a consummation so pregnant with
added misery and degradation to uur suffering
fellow-townsmen.
The next subject brought before us is the pro-
posal of Mr. Urquhart to permit the delivery of
temperance lectures at the Workhouse.- What a
mockery would this be, practically, to a large por-
tion of the poor beings confined there I The tem-
perance of a parish pauper, whose most exciting
drink is gruel, must needs be sufficiently exemplary !
Such a being has no £5OO to throw away under its
excitement ! But there are some, doubtless, within
the walls of a workhouse who may, at some future
day, revisit the world as its free denizens; and to
these, habits of sobriety would be a great good,. and
lessons of sobriety might tend to foster such habits.
But from whom should those lessons flow ? The
Workhouse enjoys the services of a chaplain, quite
able to impart them- to all those to whom they can
be of service, without the impressed aid of lecturers,.
voluntary or hired.
We are told, indeedras- something quite conclusive
as to the propriety of teetotal lectures, that the gen-
tleman by whom they are proposed to be-given is a
churchman. We believe he is. He may have his pe-
culiar crotchets, however, upon the subject;; and it is
scarcely concealed that he has. Whether this be the
case or not, however, is, in our opinion, little-to the
purpose. The object of Mr. Urquhart, we are con-
vinced, is not that these particular lectures should

be delivered, but that they should be delivered by
any one rather than the- chaplain. It is against that
gentleman's authority,, as the spiritual guide of the
inmates of the Workhouse, that the factious efforts
of Mr. Urquhart are directed. And this particular
lecturing permitted, where, pray, is the limit at
which our very enlightened parish dignitary, will
stop in his progreSs? Will the next exhibition be
a lecture by Fathei Matthew, or an Anti-corn-law,
or Chartist harangue, by some other equally cele-
brated authority ?

The concluding piece in these select vestry per-
formances was the very high-minded a opposition
offered by the Radical clique to the re-election of
Mr. Nightingall as house surjeon. The very au-
thorities of Somerset-house had acknowledged the
extenuating circumstances in the case of this gentle-•
man—had virtually admitted that the memory of
twenty years' active services should not be taken as
grounds of a harsh and vindictive sentence. The

entire medical profession had recognised his great
experience and talent in the treatment of such dis-
eases as are most prevalent within the walls of a
workhouse. But what can appease, the malignity of
Whig-Radicalism when once aroused ? What hope
of peace, or decency of temper and deportment, or
of charity, can there be in an assembly to seats in
which vain men, with brazen faces and empty heads,
have unhappily been elevated ?- The parishioners
must get rid of this rabid clique; and we trust they
will do so at no distant period,

We have given in another column a report of the
proceedings of two League meetings, reeently held
in Toxteth-park, at both of which the "Liberal "
party were signally defeated. The latter of these we
have given at some length, as both parties—and
especially the League hireling—were allowed a fair
hearing; and on account, moreover, of the Radical
press having burked the proceedings, owing, no
doubt, to their having entirely failed in their antici-
pated result—the alienation from the cause of Con
servatism of the Protestant operatives of the Park.
We shall not content ourselves, however, with merely
recording these proceedings. We feel bound, in
addition, to draw attention to the disgraceful tone
in which one of our Radical contemporaries has
thought proper to allude to the conduct, and to
asperse the character, of some of the gentlemen who
have moved in opposition to these insidious attempts
to intrude League principles and League doctrines
in quarters where they were not welcome, and, in-
deed, most unwished-for.

We need scarcely say that the paper to which we
allude as having given vent to its usual and odious
Personality against a political opponent, is the
Liverpool Mercury. A gentleman—Dr. Harbord—
whose services to the Conservative cause in the
Park are beyond all praise, had, at the first meeting
referred to, exercised the influence which he pos-
sesses in that district, for the very justifiable purpose
of protecting his operative brethren from the insidi-
ous approaches of the League and their lying hire-

lings. For so doing, this gentleman has been at-
tacked, in their peculiarly gross and offensive style,
by the gentlemen who conduct the Mercury; and in
their publication of Friday week last the gentlemen
in question very kindly suggested that his friends
should take care of "the poor doctor," as a person
incapable of taking care of himself—as a kind of
political lunatic We need scarcely say here, to
Conservative readers, that Dr. Harbord is, in cha-
rade and standing with his fellow-tov►nsmen, very
far above the scribblers of the Mercury ; and that
their paltry attempts to injure him are but the
wretchedly abortive attempts of animals "sans eyes
- sans teeth—sans every thing"—save length of
ears—to annoy those to whom in every respect they
are ridiculously and consciously inferior.
We scarcely know that we should have referred