The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-05-02 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

THE CONTENTED AND THE COMPLAINERS.

(From the London Ttmee.)

• _••____,
How many of.. the men who paraded down Whitehall
with flags emblematical of " Death or Liberty " periodi-
cally sell that Liberty to the highest bidder'? How many
regard their vote as a thing to be sold ? Again, is it that
bugbear the oppressiveness of capital ? Talk with the
workmen—ask them separately what they think of the
scheme of Communism—the majority will, despite Mr.
Owen and M. Blanqui, reply, that the partnership scheme
is a humbug, and the division of property a robbery.
What is it, then ? The property qualification ? Consti-
tutional writers allow that the admission of some intelli-
gent working men into parliament is in harmony with the
spirit of the Constitution, and would be beneficial to the
state. This, then, is at least worth considering. But this
is only one of the many things insisted on. What is that
that prompts other complaints, so violent, and other de-
sires, so various ? _

In solving this problem we must fall back upon our
every day experience. Who are the men that complain ?
What are their social conditions ! Take two men, John
Higgins and Jem Stubbing. Higgins works with a great
contractor near town named Jones. Stubbins is tourney-
man to an upholsterer named Tibbs. Higgins came up
from the country, having lost his father and mother.
Stubbins was born in London, and never knew father or
mother. ' Huggins's employer is a man who began in the
same condition as himself, and has worked his way up.
Stubbins's has done the same ; but there the similarity
ends. Higgins's master is kind, courteous, and genial ;
Stubbins's is hard, surly, and—as his men phrase it—
" rayt her high." The former looke after his men, has
built them cottages, which he lets at a just rent, and a
school for their children ; he has also set a little savings.
bank on foot, in which they deposit their earnings. His
wife gives tea-parties to the women, and looks after the
school. The other never took a moment's interest in his
labourers, except when he wanted to canvass them for his
own Radical candidate, and Mrs. Tibs—a ci-divant lady's
maid—is very fine and grand. Higgins's fellow workmen
are devoted to their employer; Stubbins's hate theirs.
The consequences are what might be supposed. Stubbins
and Co. are a dirty, discontented set; dissolute in their
habits, violent in their language, and irrational in their
opinions ;—Huggins's, for the most part, intelligent, in-
dustrious, prudent, and saving. When there is a depres-
sion in trade, the former strike, the latter fall back upon
their earnings- When there's a row, the one class joinin
the procession, the other keep the peace. On the me-
morable 10th, the one were at Kennington Common; the
other were sworn in as special constables. When Mrs.
Tibbs's bodoir caught fire, all Tibbs' men laughed at the
fun ; when Mrs. Jones's conservatory was in the same
predicament, all Jones's men rushed to the rescue. Jones's
men are in the main content ; Tibbs's think they are per-
sonally injured, because they don't sit in parliament, and
pay themselves for the•trouble. They hate the Throne,
they hate the church, they hate the aristocracy ; but they
hate with a ten times bitterer hatred the class of employ-
ers, whom they believe to be men without hearts, with-
out sympathy ; living on their labour, and thriving on
their wretchedness. Jones's men hate no order of society,
because the only superior order they know of they find
friendly, genial, and sympathetic.
Indeed, it is by means as symple and ordinary as these
tnat the welfare of society is cemented. Half the griev-
ances of any one man, and more than half the grievances
of any one class, are sentimental ones. The Higginses
and the Stubbinses are each a numerous body. Were all
masters as indifferent and as haughty as Tibbs, all artizans
would be as dissolute and as violent as Stubbing ; but were
all masters as kind and thoughtful as Jones, all mechanics
would be orderly, peaceful, and well-disposed. It is not
merely by legislative enactments or grand projects that
poverty is conciliated and discontent appeased, but
by the gentle influence of unpretending good offices,
which permeates one rank after another, consolidating all
into harmony unity, and mutual dependence.

CHEAP DISCOUNTS.—Not long since, pending cheap
discounts, I was standing in Brunswick-street, when a
certain Mr. came up, and, addressing the party
with whom I was conversing, said, " Please. , lend
me Bs. 6d. to buy a stamp." The borrower was one who
ought not to have thought of such a thing as drawing a
bill, and my friend declined lending the Bs. 6d.; but in
less than twenty minutes, the would-be borrower came
again to me, and said, " Look here!" (taking off his hat,
the crown of which was full of bank notes, hundreds of
pounds, in fifties, twenties, tens, and fives,) " see what
the Bs. 6d. has produced me." Such was cheap discount
in Liverpool, not yet twelve months gone by ! Indeed
any man, tearing a slip off his shirt lap, and scratching it
with a pen into the shape of a bill, could, during the time
of low discount, get what sum he pleased ! Is it any
wonder, then, that cheap discounts should generate undue
expansion ? Is it any wonder that commerce should be
over expanded, and that panics should come, aye and will
come ? On my plan, such things cannot occur, as no
currency can be obtained but after full value has fir3t
been paid for it ! The placing the monetary system of
this great country in order is beneath (query, above) the
capacity of our government; they, mighty men, are over
occupied with—keeping their places—and faction. I
eould amplify, but refrain !—Pamphlet by Mr. Pickering.

EVERY STATION NECESSARY.—Let us never fcrget,
what I hope I have already impressed upon you with some
degree of success—that every station in life is necessary •
that each deserves our respect ; that not the station itself,
but the worthy fulfilment of its duties, does hhnour to a
man ' • and that we only merit esteem in so far as we ap-
proach nearest to the perfect performance of the duties
assigned to us in the order of things ; that therefore the
scholar has reason to be, of all others, the most modest,
because an aim is set before him of which he continually
falls far short—because he has a most elevated ideal to
reach, which commonly he approaches only at the greatest
distance. There are many tendencies and powers in man,
and it is. the vocation of each individual to cultivate all
his powers, so far as he is able to do so. Among others is
the social impulse; which offers him a new and peculiar
form of cultivation—that for society—and affords an un-
usual facility for culture in general. There is nothing
prescribed to man on this subject;—whether he shall
cultivate all his faculties as a whole, unaided and by nature
alone ; or mediately through society. The first is difficult,
and nowise advances society ; hence, in the social state,
each individual rightfully selects his own part of the com-
mon cultivation, leaves the rest to his fellows, and expects
that they will allow him to share the benefits of their cul-
ture, as he permits them to participate in the advantage of
his own ; and this is the origin and ground of the distinction
of classes in society.—Fichte's Vocation of the Scholar.
WHAT TEMPERANCE CAN Do.—ln Mrs. Hall's book
on Ireland, occurs the following passage, which a person
will hardly read without emotion :—We entered, one day,
a cottage in the suburbs of Cork ; a young woman was
knitting stockings at the door. It was as neat and com-
fortable as any in the most prosperous district of England.
We tell her brief story in her own words, as nearly as we
can recal them :—" My husband is wheelwright, and
always earned his guinea a week ; he was a good work-
man, but the love for the drink was strong in him, and it
wasn't often he brought me home more than five shillings
out of his one pound one on a Saturday night, and it
broke my heart to see the children too ragged to send to
school, to say nothing of the starved look they had out of the
little I could give them. Well, God be praised, he took
the pledge, and the next Saturday he laid twenty-one
shillings upon the chair you sit upon. Oh ! didn't I give
thanks upon my beaded knees that night ; still I was
fearful it wouldn't last, and I spent no more than the five-
shillings I used to, saying to myself, may be the money
will be more wanted than it is now. Well, the next week
he brought me the same, and the next, and the next,
until eight weeks had passed ; and, glory to God ! there
was no change for the bad in my husband ; and all the
while he never asked me why there was nothing better for
him out of his earnings ; so I felt there was no fear for
him, and the ninth week, when he came home to me, I
had this table bought, and these six chairs, one for my-
self, four for the children, and one for himselt ; and I was
dressed in a new gown, and the children all had new
clothes and shoes and stockings, and upon his chair I put
a bran new suit, and upon his plate I put a hill and re-
ceipt for them all just the eight sixteen shillings, the cost
that I'd saved out of his wages, not knowing what might
happen, and that always went for drink. And he cried,
good lady and good gentleman, be cried like a baby, but
'twas with thanks to God ; and now where's the healthier
man than my husband in the whole county of Cork, or a
happier wife than myself, or decenter or better fed chil-
dren than my own ?"

THE VILLAGE OF EVERTON. What havoc the last
half century has made in that once beautiful and pic-
turesque village ! Within a mile or so of the shore, the
spectator gazed on a vast expanse of water, woodland,
and mountain scenery. People who delighted in seeing
farther than their neighbours, used to point out the
distant hills of Cumberland and Yorkshire ; the
Calf of Man they asserted to be visible, even to
the spur on his heel ; and also the frowning moun-
tains of Flintshire and Denbighshire, which streak the
horison in the west, were triumphantly referred to as a proof
that the denizens of Everton were high:in the world. And
they were so, literally and figuratively. A poet of no mean
celebrity—one whom Sir R. Peel has deemed worthy of a
pension, declared to the writer, only recently, that in the
course of a long experience be had seen few sweeter places
than Everton was when he resided there thirty years ago.
Nay, a late popular novelist has gone even beyond this,
and declared, traveller as he was, that Everton was the
prettiest village in the world. The stranger will be sorely
perplexed to discover such beauty in the black, begrimed,
unsightly mass of buildings that now bears the name.
The great democracy has trenched on the aristocratic
lawn, and the stately mansion has acquired, by contiguity,
a vulgar tinge. The onward progress of society is read
in the rise and metamorphosis of Everton. Commerce
is a sore destroyer of sylvan beauty. The merchant,
from his residence on the brow of the hill, overlooking,
by its commanding elevation, the entrance of a noble
river, may still catch a glimpse of his incoming and out-
going argosies, as they are borne to and fro on the
bosom of the Mersey ; but in the valley below, the ver-
dant meadows that formerly stretched to the water's edge,
filling the air in spring with the delicious fragrance of the
hawthorn, and in, summer with the not less grateful odour
of new-mown hay, have given place to crowded streets,
smoky factories, and the tall chimneys whose chemical
exhalations have long since put to flight the poetry and
beauty, the exclusiveness and splendour in which Ever-
ton once gloried. Viewed from that grassy vale, and
more particularly towards the close of the day, the hill
itself presented a strikingly attractive appearance. The
numerous windows of the handsome houses that adorned
its side, glittering with the rays of the setting sun, and
gorgeous in their brilliancy, contrasted beautifully with
the dark clumps of trees and bright patches of greensward
that diversified the slope. Crowning the summit, and
about the spot where the church has since been built,
stood the beacon, which, though remarkable for antiquity
rather more than for beauty, formed a pleasing object in
1 the landscape.—The Slave captain,