The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-02-17 00:00:00

nearly interested in securing such protection have
shewn little inclination to do their own duty to,
wards the community, and even towards their own
dependents. They point to the lamentable instances
of defection from the straightforward path of con-
sistency and principle on the part of the lords of the
soil—to votes on Factory hills and Nlaynooth bills
—to their Poor Law legislation and practice—and
then ask the question, " Why should we hurry now
to the rescue of those who failed to answer our call,
when objects dear to us were assailed."
Alas, there is but too much reason and justice in
such a mode of arguing. But it must not be in-
dulged in. It is dangerous. The question at issue
now with the League is not one of Free Trade only.
They have never built up their vast fabric of un-
constitutional influence for that object alone. The
fullest realization of the principle of Free Trade will
not cause the withdrawal from the registries of the
thousands of votes which they have foisted upon
them, and with which they would control the repre-
sentation. Having found out their power, and per-
fected their organization and their machinery, they
are not likely to be cajoled into the folly of laying
them down or of stopping half-way upon the road
to the achievement of their ulterior objects. We
have therefore seriously to inquire what are those
objects.

The answer will at once present itself to us when
we consider who and what are the bulk of the men
of whom the League is composed. We know that
in religion they are sectarian ; in politics they are
scarcely a remove from republicanism. In this
crusade against the Corn Laws they have exhibited
the bitterest hatred of aristocratical institutions, and
no great love for the monarchy itself. What, then,
must be the position of this empire, if we permit
such a body of men to go on increasing their orga-
nization and strength, and absorbing more and more

of the representation ? In a League parliament—
and how rapidly we are approaching to the return
of such a parliament the community does not at
present suspect—we would not give many years'
purchase fora Church establishment, in its integrity,
or for the security of any of the institutions of the
country, which have offended ultra-liberalism by
standing in the way of its progress towards supre-
macy. With such a parliament, running riot with
the excitement of the novelty of power, we would
not give much for the prerogative of Royalty itself.
We would entreat of the friends of the Constitu-
tion to give this subject their earnest consideration,
—to be wise in time, and take some vigorous steps
in self defence. It cannot surely be that the Con-
servative gentry of England will tamely sit by, and
submit to the domination of any combined and
irresponsible body, composed of materials so dan-
gerous to the security of liberty and property as is
this Anti-Corn Law League. If such a body is to
be permitted thus to manufacture qualifications in
every borough and county, the Conservatives must
see if they cannot better their instructions, and foil
them at their own weapons.

Mr. Sydney Herbert, who was placed in the
ministerial van in the debate upon Mr. Miles's
amendment, on Monday night, is evidently destined
to be a trump card in Sir Robert h'eel's hand. We
do not argue this from the selection itself, or from
the intuitive perception which the Premier has
ever shewn in detecting the existence of talent, and
we may add pliability, in those around him. We
form our conclusion from the speech itself, which
is certainly an able one, and calculated to raise the
speaker at once to a very prominent position in the
ranks of his party, al:d in the estimation of the
house. The most consummate talent, however,
may err at times. Many an excellent advocate and
shrewd witness ha've lost the cause entrusted to
them by " proving too much " ; and in somewhat
of this position Mr. Sydney Herbert may some day
find that he has placed himself, when, after addu-
cing, as one of the strongest of his reasons for
advocating the repeal of the corn-laws, the wretched
condition to which the agricultural labourers, for
whose protection those laws had been devised, were
at present reduced, he clenched the statement, as to
their condition, by the following reference to a recent
meeting in 'Wiltshire :
" In his own county, a meeting was lately held at night,
at a place called Goatacre, which had since been the sub•
ject of much comment. It was very possible, and he
thought that it was obvious from the force of the reason-
ing, that they were not drawn up by working men. This
meeting, he believed, was pre-arranged and concerted by
orders ; but he was, in truth, bound to say that the state-
ments of the working men as to the difficulty with which
they lived were true. (Hear, hear.)"

We shall not ask 'who were the parties to whom
Mr. Sydney Herbert refers as having ordered and
preconcerted the meeting in question, and drawn
up the resolutions adopted. Probably it was the
same party which preconcerted two or three similar
meetings in this town. But we may ask the Ho-
nourable Gentleman, who appears willing enough
to bring forward the statements of the agricultural
labourers of Goatacre, " as to the difficulty with
which they lived," as an argument in favour of free
trade, if he is willing to carry out that argument to
its full extent, and especially to its bearing upon
another great question connected with the supply of
food. Is he willing to tell us how much of the
destitution of these miserable agricultural labourers
is attributable to that inhuman law, which delivers
them tip as bound and fettered slaves into the hands
of the farmer and the landowner, by holding up
before their eyes, as the alternative of refusal to
submit to hard toil and insufficient remuneration,
the "coarser kind of food" and the equally hard
toil of the Union workhouse ? " They could not
be worse off under any system of corn-laws," was
the burthen of the song of dole, uttered to the moon
and the wintry midnight air, by these half-fed and
half-clothed mockeries of men—these wretched
caricatures of " a hold peasantry, their country's
pride." Will Mr. Sydney Herbert, or any one for
him, inform us how much better off they will be
made by the measures, which he hints at as afford-
ing all that is requisite to place them in that posi-
tion of social comfort, which every accountable
being, willing to work, ought to occupy in a civi-
lised and a Christian country ?
We suspect much that the operation of the New
Poor Laws has infinitely more to do with the present
degraded and suffering condition of the agricul-
tural labourer than any question of protection or
non-protection. The whole of the despotic ma-
chinery of Somerset House, with its Bastiles and
its dietaries, its cruel and unholy severing of the
most sacred ties of life, as the punishment of po-
verty, disease, or old age—its workhouse tests and
its heart tests—were set up, ostensibly, to raise the
standard of character in the labourer, but, in reality,
to reduce the cost of labour. And admirably it
has served such real object, as the meeting at
Goatacre proved ; and ruthlessly it is worked, as
the disgusting revelations of the Andover inquiry
have placed beyond the possibility of dispute. Re-
duce the price of the food of the labourer and his
family you may—give him a bushel of wheat, or a
bushel and a half of oats or rye, in exchange for his
six shillings weekly dole, you may ; but you reduce,
at the same time, the cost of keeping him and them
immured in your pauper prisons. It is the cost of
the " coarser kind of food," to which you submit
him as the punishment of compulsory or wilful
idleness, which is the real test of the price of his
labour out of doors. The new Poor Law is the
screw, whose energetic and heartless application has
brought the poor labourers at Goatacre and else-
where to that desperate condition, in which they
are willing to try any experiment of legislation, or
even of violence,—" for they cannot be worse off
than they are!"

We shall be told, no doubt, that employment will
be rendered more abundant by the measure in pro-
gress. The farmer is to drein more, to pursue an
improved system of husbandry, in order to enable
him to compete with the foreign grower ; to do
this, he must employ more labour on his land,
and hence will arise demand for such labour, and
advanced wages. We believe, firmly, that no such
result can arise, in the agricultural districts at least,
whatever may be the case in the manufacturing dis-
tricts. In the first place, we cannot see how the
farmer is to afford the required outlay of capital ; or
how his landlord, with a reduced rental, is to help
him. And, in the next place, we are reminded by
the speeches and writings of the agricultural advo-
cates of the measure—the model-farm people—that
the secret of improved cultivation is improved ma-
chinery and implements, which are to save human
labour. There will be no increased demand suffi-
cient to advance the rate of wages, or to counteract
the operation of the new Poor Law,—that pet in-
strument of the landowner, which enables him to
regulate the weekly dole of the labourer by the cost
of that coarser kind of food upon which he can be
supported within the walls of the Union Work-
house.
Another anticipation is doubtless indulged in,
that the surplus labour of the agricultural districts