The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-09-26 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, SEPT. 26, 1848.

ly has frequently been urged that, whilst the
manufacturing interest were condescending enough
to -stoop from their lofty position, and to leave their
philosophical studies, to teach the benighted far-
mers of England how the:: land should be tilled—
whilst they were exhibiting their profound know-
ledge of draining and subsoiling, the four crop sys-
tem anti manuring—there was no part of the em-
pire in which their lessons might be more advan-
tageously bestowed than in their own immediate
neighbourhoods. The land around the majority of
our large towns has been all along wretchedly cul-
tivated. With manure in abundance to be had al-
most for carrying ; with a ready market for what-
ever could be grown upon it; the soil for miles
round some of our large towns has been utterly
neglected, not because it is not of a productive
quality if properly used—as fertile gardens planted
here and there upon it abundantly spew—but for
some other inexplicable reason ; because, perhaps,
at some very distant day, it might he wanted for
building upon, or because the idle and disorderly
would trespass upon it, and destroy or pilfer the
crops.
'We are glad to see that attention has at length
been drawn, in influential quarters, to this state of
things. At the dinner of the Manchester and Li-
verpool Agricultural Society, held in Manchester
on Tuesday last—and a neighbourhood in which
the evil exists in a greater degree than around
Manchester we do not know—it was thus referred
to by Lord Stanley, the noble chairman of the
society :

" Gentlemen, I must be permitted to express some
doubt whether, in this respect, the agricultural interest
was sufficiently alive to the great importance of the vicinity
of these large towns or sufficiently aware of the important
benefits which they might derive from them (hear) ; I
doubt whether, in the neighbourhood of great commercial
towns, like Manchester and others of a similar character,
there are the same advantages taken by the neighbouring
farmers of the facilities afforded to them of a due exnen-
diture of capital, and an expensive, perhaps, but not an
extravagant cultiv.tion of the land. (Hear, hear.) I see
in this neighbourhood occupiers of small plots of land;
they can scarcely be called farmers at all ; they are not de-
pendent mainly on the cultivation of the soil, on making
the most of the produce of the soil for their livelihood and
support ; they trust far too much to the casual employment
of horses and carts in carting coal for their neighbours, in
operations connected with the labour of the towns, and in
supplying the towns of this kingdom with milk, the pro-
duce of cows fed on undrained, rushy, ill-cultivated farms.
(Cheers.) Gentlemen, I have no hesitation in saying, that
the agriculturists in the neighbourhood of these great ma-
zufacturing and commercial towns, if they desire to thrive,
must change their system—they must apply themselves to
make the most of their land, they must adopt the legiti-
mate means of farming it, of cultivating it. and of manur-
ing it, as it ought to be drained, cultivated, and manured.
And for this, perhaps, they in the immtdiate vicinity of a
great town like Manchester enjoy advantages which no
other portion of the community has."
It is incalculable the benefit which might be
made to accrue, if the advice here given were fol-
lowed up, not to the small tenant farmers only,
but to the population of our large towns them-
selves. Take our own neighbourhood for instance.
We have, on his lordship's own estates, and upon
those of others, of the landowners around, hun-

dreds of small, ill uncultivated fa ms, the occupiers
of which make a scanty income from a sort! of
laissez faire farming, combined with carting coals,
washing &c. What would be the result if these
people had the capital, or could be persuaded to
employ it in developing the full resources of the
soil? Why, we should see precisely the same result
that is realised in some portions of the outskirts of
London. We should see the country rapidly as-
sume the aspect of a garden. We should see far-
mers, instead of being able to bring to market
yearly a few stunted apples and pears, the growth
of neglected orchards and worn-out trees, or a few
tough cabbages, or diminutive lettuces, competing
with the distant growers, by whom our market is
at present supplied with all except the very com-
monest of vegetable produce and fruit. 'We should
see their cattle, instead of eating grass of other.
people's growing, upon their own rusty swampy
pastures, cropping the rich grass grown beneath
their feet. And, what is all important, our own
population would be supplied with the necessaries
of life in greater abundance, and of infinitely im-
proved quality, at more reasonable rates than at
present.

Tim untimely decease of Lord George Bentinck
is an event which we cannot treat as unimportant
to the nation. We do not,—and we say it em-
phatically—coincide in all the opinions of that
section of politicians, of which his lordship was the
recognised leader. To many of his own known
opinions, probably peculiar to himself, we have
strong objections. In his views, with respect to our
policy towards Ireland, we believe him to have been
mistaken ; and upon some other questions, we
doubt the soundness of his views. As the presid-
ing genius of a cabinet, we should have had fears
of him; but as an able and indefatigable opponent
of dishonesty, in whatever form it may present
itself; as a high-minded and honourable statesman,
and as an unflinching and persevering exponent of
the opinions of those who, like ourselves, conscien-
tiously believe that our present free trade system
is based upon error in principle, Lord George will be
sorely missed from his place in the world's affairs.
We observe that it is said by an organ, which
assumes, a little too much, the delegated authority
of representing the opinions of the Conservatives
of England—the London Times—that Lord George,
in his short, but his brilliant and surprising career,
has effected little. He has done much. His expose
of the condition of our West Indian colonies,
through the medium of the eommittee, over which
he so ably presided, is sufficient to entitle him to
the gratitude of his fellow-countrymen. His shat-
tering assaults against the too prevalent forgeries
and falsifications—or, call them in milder terms
" suppressions" of evidence—in the highly extolled
returns of the Board of Trade and the Colonial
office, have afforded invaluable evidence of the
trickery with which these tests of the nation's con-
dition are held up to our view. He has, by these
efforts, and by his acute and searching scrutiny of
facts and figures, bearing upon commercial and
other questions, unsettled the public mind, or at
least so much of it as was blindly infatuated with
the dogmas of the Cobdens and others of the free
trade clique in parliament. He has placed them
on their defence against the doubts of a startled
public. We no longer take for granted the truth
of their large predictions. We are getting into the
wholesome habit of placing facts and figures, and
well tested too, against the mere bombast of philo-
sophers and theorists.
No characteristic of his lordship were so eminently
developed as the unwearied patience, marked with
infinite acuteness of mind, with which he devoted
himself to this branch of a statesman's business. Of
this fact we have personal knowledge. And no
man, occupying his lordship's eminent position,
could possibly so have conducted his enquiries as
to.elicit information of the most undoubted charac-
ter; and at the same time win the respect and love
of those who aided him in his arduous labours. The
public, however, have, we doubt not, set down the
far greater portion of these labours as the mere
gatherings from parliamentary reports. But they
are wrong. Resembling in this particular the
illustrious Pitt, Lord George Bentinck sought his
information from every available source; and in
the course of that search, and by comparison of its
results with the reports of careless officials, or
interested witnesses, he frequently met with those
truths, which put his opponents to the blush. The
extent of his corresnondence of this kind would,
we believe, astonish some of those sapient people
who have all along been in the habit of treating his
pretentions to knowledge with a sneer.
Take his lordship for all in all, the world could,
perhaps, have spared many an abler man.

EXPORTATION OF SPECIE FROM NEW YORK.

The following table, which we extract from the Ame-
rican Sun, received yesterday, shows the rate at which
specie has been returning to Europe from that port 2

Steamer Cambria, Livirpcol, Sods.
Mexican dollars 6,925
Ship St. Denis, Havre—Five-franc pieces 84,690
French gold 440
Mexican dollars 57,770
American gold 2,000

Total, August 2G to Sept. 9
Shipments Jan. 1 to Aug. 21.

$161,825
3,380,118

Total for 1845..

. 83,541,443

We are happy to notice some symptoms of improve-
ment among the Berkeleys. Mr. Craven Berkeley has
taken the judicious advice of his friend Lord Palmerston,
and tendered his " sincere apologies" to Sir Win. Clay
and Mr. Bounden Palmer, for his scurrilous observations,
whicbghe begs " completely to withdraw."