The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-10-06 00:00:00

propriated to our side of the account many items
which have swelled the surplus very considerably.
We suppose, for instance, that something over
£600,000 hr.s been expended upon the Albert Dock
and works, in addition to the cost of land for the
new North works, and the expenditure upon them.
These amounts are included in the present bonded
debt; and the interest upon them, amounting to
between £30,000 and £40,000, has a perfect right
to he deducted from the £98,000, with which the
Albion debits the Trustees as for the current expendi-
ture of the existing estate. We have, therefore,
understated rather than overstated our case.

The concluding portion of the Albion's remarks
we need not notice.

From the first proposition of the Free Trade
measures of Sir Robert Peel and his late colleagues,
we contended that thtir effect would be, at first, to
impel the population of the colonies of Great Britain
to ask the question, " Of what value to us is our
connection with the parent country ?"—and to pave
the way gradually to ultimate separation. Our
anticipations have been realised even more rapidly
than we dreamt of. A document is before us con-
taining the views of the Chamber of Commerce of
Toronto, Upper Canada, which shows that public
opinion, in that colony at least, is setting in precisely
the direction which we pointed to, and enforcing
those views by reasoning, the justice of which it will
take far more than ordinary ingenuity to impeach.
The colonists of Upper Canada say, by this docu-
ment, to the imperial legislature, "You have thrown
us upon our own resources to compete with the
industry of the rest of the world ; you have stript
our agriculture of every rag of protection hitherto
afforded to it in your markets: you must now, in
common fairness, release us from those restrictions
to which we have submitted as the price of your
favours and from our sympathy with the industrious
population of the country of our birth." In the
first place, they point to the duty of 3s. per quarter
imposed, in connection with the Canada Corn Bill,
upon American wheat crossing the frontier, and
demand its repeal, as operating, under the present
relations of that colony with the mother country, to
prevent the grain of the western states of America
finding its way through Canada for shipment. It
is not easy to see what plea we can advance against
this reasonable demand.

The Canadians say again that the discriminating
duties, imposed upon foreign produce and manufac-
tures imported into Canada, should be abolished,
and the population of that colony be permitted to
resort to the cheapest markets for their supplies;
that the cottops, the linens, the woollens, the hard-
ware, and other productions of Great Britain, and
the sugar, coffee, &c., of her colonies, should no
longer be protected by duties against the foreign
article ranging from 5 to 25 per cent. They are
themselves called upon to submit to the operation
of the Free Trade dogmas, as applied to their supply
of produce for the British markets : they ask for
its application to their own commercial relations
with foreign countries. There is assuredly reason
in their demand, as every consistent Free Trader
will acknowledge. The existing imperial tariff of
Canada cannot he maintained without a sacrifice of
principle by a Free Trade legislature.
The most important demand of the colonists,
however, is the removal of the restrictions imposed
upon their foreign commerce by our navigation
laws. If they have to send a cargo of staves or
lumber to the West Indies, it is not just, they say,
to compel them to employ British shipping exclu-
sively for its transport. If they wish to import a
cargo of sugar from the West Indies, they ask why
they should be compelled to seek out a British
vessel to bring it, whilst, perhaps, a dozen foreign
bottoms are on the spot ready to accept much lower
freight. They say—Do not compel us to send the
entire traffic of the St. Lawrence in British ship-
ping, whilst the farmers and merchants of the
United States can get their business to England, or
elsewhere, done for half rates. Are the shipowners
of this conntry prepared for the relaxation, or entire
removal, of the protection which these laws have
afforded them ? We suspect not ; and yet it is
difficult to defend their retention under a system of
Free Trade.

It is, indeed, almost matter of certainty that we
cannot much longer refuse concession to any of
these demands of our Canadian brethren. The
colonies themselves, embarked by the act of the
British legislature in the race of competition with
other countries, must have their hands unbound, to
enable them to pass through the ordeal. Let us
see, then, what will become our mutual position
when our policy shall have been fully carried out.
Commercially they then cease to be the children of
Great Britain. They no longer favor British in-
dustry. We no longer favor theirs. Where, then,
is the bond of connexion ? The tie of blood re-
mains, indeed ; and that is all. We may continue
for awhile to protect them against foreign aggression,
or they may continue to take part in our conflicts
with neighbouring powers. But will not those co-
lonies, when embroiled by their sympathy with us
for other countries, begin to ask—why submit to
have our commerce interrupted, our frontiers
attacked, and the means and the industry of our
own population wasted in a quarrel in which we
have neither reasonable part or interest ? Un-
doubtedly they will ; and Great Britain herself,
should she even he precipitated into a war in de-
fence of Canada, for instance, or e-. en called upon to
vote supplies for her local government, will be justi-
fied in asking—where is her interest in such a quarrel
that she should derange for it her commercial re-
lations with the rest of the world ? We expect to
hear these questions asked; and, whenever they
are pressed, the integrity of our colonial empire may
be regarded as doomed to destruction.
The subject is a serious one, and well worthy of
the earnest consideration of the statesman. We
have had for years past in these noble colonies the
most valuable markets for the productions of native
industry. In proportion to their population, they
consume more than any other countries. 'We see
year by year the surplus labour of Great Britain
betaking itself to till their fertile vallies and rich
prairies—to hew down their vast forests, and to
carry the arts of civilised life, and its busy industry,
to their solitudes. Yet these seedlings of tributary
nations we are sacrificing to an insane dream—a
bubble, which is already bursting in our grasp.

The beauty of our common law consists in its
clear, though, perhaps, somewhat oblique, applica-
tion to our social necessities. When we first hear
the law propounded on any particular point, we are
often inclined to laugh at it, as absurd. But, some-
how, it happens that, after trying how it applies to
other similar cases, after arriving at the principle on
which it is based, we find that it contains more com-
mon sense and justice than we, in our hasty wisdom
had imagined. We find that it best meets the ma-
jority of cases : that however it looks, at all events,
it works well.

And why is this ? Simply, because it is founded
.on experience. Such a law was found to be neces-
sary, before it was enacted.
The case is similar with regard to many old
church principles and customs. Our individual
experience, of twenty, forty, or three score years,
does not show us all their utility. But the some-
what longer experience of the church's life has
taught her their necessity and value.
These views make us rejoice at the attempt which
is now being made to restore a principle of public
worship, that churches should be free—as open to
the poor as to the rich—that all money-changing
and " respect of persons" should be kept as far as
possible out of the sacred precincts.
And this rule, we submit, is not more a result of
the church's experience than the very principle on
which Christian worship first set out. We are fond
of drawing our church models from scripture.
What, then, must have been the practice, the inno-
vation upon which St. James so strongly condemns ?
" If there come into your assembly a man with a
gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also
a poor man with vile raiment, and ye have respect
to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto
him, sit thou here in a good place, and say to the
poor, stand thou there, or sit thou here under my
footstool, are ye not then partial in yourselves, and
become judges of evil thoughts ?"
What was this but the beginning of that exclusive
system which we have now so deeply to deplore,—
the first breaking out of that human pride in religi-
ous worship which broke out again so strongly
some three centuries ago ?

We can happily go one step further in this argu-
ment, and say that the experiment has been tried.
Churches have recently been built upon this revived
principle, and have been found to answer beyond
the most sanguine expectations. The poor have
been found willing to come to churches when no
sense of their own inferiority is thrust upon them.
And if a prejudice on either side has to be given up,