The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-08-05 00:00:00

TIIE MYSTERIES OF LONDON.

' The mysteries of London involve many strange and
hideous evils that must not be revealed, and that cannot
even be legislated for. Tn what other part of the world
is an avowed calling made to minister so successfully to a
concealed one ? or where the most apparently dissimilar
and incompatible pursuits Pare driven together with the
utmost ease, like a team of differently coloured horses?
or where ostensible respectability of station, and a cha-
racter carefully built up of plausible externals, ate so
adroitly cultivated and employed as a mask for the most
audacious robbery and swindling ? Look at the long-
established and orderly jewellers' shops, that do not sell
five pounds' worth of jewellery in twelve months, and are
nothing more than blinds for smelting pots ;—the atter-
ries' offices, that are really no better than baits to entrap
young spendthrifts into bill transactions and suicidal post
obits ;—the fashionable establishments, which shed such
lustre on the West end—mercery, tailoring, plate—and
which, instead of rniking their profits, as they seem to do,
out of the regular channels of trade, derive their income
exclusively from an invisible and unsuspected system of
usurious discounts. A catalogue of the fraudulent mas-
querades of London would fill a volume, and a very sin-
gular volume it would make, if we had a Vidock or a
Eugene Sue to do justice to its multifarious topics."

" Chamois Hunting" is an interesting and exciting
narrative. " The Mineral Waters of Germany" is a re-
view of certain lectures by Dr. Sutro, in which a favour-
able view is taken of their effects. The continuation of
" The Revelations of a Common-place Man" sustains its
amusing tone. " Wordsworth" contains some of the
most striking characteristics of the poet's private life.
The noted " Soyer's Modern Housewife" is severely and
amusingly criticised, and the writer's remarks somewhat
agree with our own opinion of M. Soyer. The Review on
" The Bridgewater Gallery of Paintings," although
superficially. is strikingly written. The other articles—
" An Excursion to California," Rovings in the Pacific,"
&c.—also deserve commendation.

The Dalton ; or, the Three Roads in Life. By Charles
Lever. London : Chapman and Hall. August, 1851.
This interesting number begins with chapter xi.—
" The March"—and continues to increase in interest.
Space forbids a longer notice.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Edinburgh : Black,

wood and Sons. August, 1851.
The present number of this well-known periodical com-
mences with a powerful article on " The Census and Free
Trade," and seldom have we seen the fallacies of the
" free-trade" policy more admirably expressed, and in .so
practical a manner. The state of the nation, in connexion

with this policy, is vividly shewn, and we advise every
well-wisher of his country to examine the arguments for
himself. The state of the census affcrds an unanswerable
argument that " free-trade" is fast hastening England's
ruin.

The declining state of our mercantile marine, and the
prosperity of that of foreigners, is incontestably ahown.
This able article concludes with the following remarks on

THE UESULTS OF FREE 'TRADE,

We conclude with the words, rendered now more
impressive from the entire confirmation they have •re-
ceived through subsequent revelations of disaster, with
which we ended a similar essay two years ago :—'t Let
the Free-traders be of good cheer.: they have done
marvellous things. They have accomplished what no
British statesman since the days of Alfred has been able
to effect. They have stopped the .growth of our popu-
lation, and for the first time during five centuries ren-
dered it retrograde.' But the now-ascertained result
has greatly outstripped what we then predicted—so much
have the real effects of Free-traders' measures gone be-
yond what the most gloomy imagination among the:Pro-
tectionists could then anticipate. Irrespective of plague,
pestilence, and famine, they have caused a chasm in five
years in the Irish population of _1,800,003 souls, in the
whole Empire of 000,000. They have sent, for the last
three years, from 250,000 to 300,000 people yearly out of
the country in search of that food of which they were de-
prived at home. They have with one blow swamped the
Poor Law Amendment Act in England, rendered neces-
sary a crushing rate in Ireland and Scotland, and made
rates higher in England during two years of boasted
prosperity, when measured in grain, their real stantard,
than they ever were before in the worst years of deplored
misery. They have extended crime, during these two
boasted years, to an extent never before known in the
gloomiest periods of disaster. They have, on the admis-
sion of their ablest supporters, rendered agricultural in-
dustry unremunerative for two years and a half over the
whole country. They have cut.Xo,ooo.ll_o annually off
the income of trades and professions, .C 20,000,000 off the
rent of land in Great Britain. They have destroyed all
hope—as long as their system is continued—of reducing
the debt ; and have added 30 per cent to its weight by
taking as much off the incomes of those by whom it is to
be paid. They have extirpated in a few years 200,000
cultivators in Ireland. They have lowered, by their mone-
tary system, railway property at least a half over the
whole Empire, and cut a moiety off its whole commercial
wealth. They have rendered the nation dependent, in
three years, for a fourth part of the .entire food of the
people on foreign states. They have compelled the Go-
vernment, by the cheapening system, and consequent de-
clineof the revenue which it is possible to extract fron the
people., to lower the national establishmens so much that
the occurrence of disaster, on the first breaking out of
hostilities, is a matter of certainty ; and the maintenance
of the: ational independence, if the present system is con-
tinued for any length of time, has become impossible.
They have destroyed £100,000,000 worth of property in
the West Indies. They have sown the seeds of separation
by severing the bond of protection in Canada, and diffused
such discontent through the other colonies, that, in des-
pair of preserving, they are preparing to abandon them. '
They have repealed the Navigation Laws, and caused two-
thirds of the annual increment of the shipping employed
in carrying on our trade, to pass into the hands of our
enemies. The Peace Congress, headed by Mr. Cobden,
has done that which no war congress in modern times has
been able to effect. They have caused the disappearance,
in five years, of a million and a half of our people, while
the most sanguinary war recorded in our annals was
attended, in the same time, by an increase of as much.
They have stopped the increase of the remainder by de-
priving so many of them of 'dread. They have been worse
enemies to human happiness than either the rivalry of
kings, or the ambition of their ministers : they have
done that to stop the growth of mankind which neither
the guillotine of the Convention nor the sword of Napo-
leon had been able to effect. They have not only mowed
down the present generation, but prevented the possibility
of its restoration, for they have deprived the majority of
those who survive, not only of subsistence for the present,
but hope for the future.
" Voltaire in the Crystal Palace," is a very clever article,
presuming the return of the philosophical wit to this
sublunary stage, and his inspection of the Crystal Palace ;
" Pictures from St. Petersburgh," " Paris in 1851,"
" The London Diary of a German Authoress," are well
written, and highly entertaining.