The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-10-21 00:00:00

Blackwood's Magazine.

great experiment, or problem, falsely entitled
" free trade," receives another heavy blow from the
-stalworth arm of old " Christopher." That fatal experi-
ment on the largest interest in the kingdom, and which
formed the basis of national prosperity,is once more proved
to have signally' failed in producing the effects anticipated
by its promoters, and to have as signally operated in pro-
ducing results the reverse of what they so confidently
predicted. The more respectable of those statesmen who
supported this rash and fatal policy admittedthat they re-
garded it simply as an experiment, and that should it
ultimately fail, they would be disposed to reverse it.
'What will these men say to the facts now established be-
yond contradiction ? During the four years immediately
preceding free-trade, the annual average number of emi-
grants was 87,000, whereas the annual average of the last
four years has been 2i1,000. The Industrial Exhibition
was declared to be the inauguration of the new system,
yet, strange inconsistency ! almost every article in it en-
joyed the benefit of protection. Sir James Graham and
others boast of the thriving condition of agriculture, and
their tenants respond by complaining of their insupport-
able sufferings and by asking for a reduction of rent. Such
are a few of the facts. How many more are the con-
scientious supporters of the " experiment" waiting for,
before they redeem their pledge and do justice to the
victims of their temerity, by retracing their false steps ?
The light reading in Blackwood is this month varied and
good, Sir Bulger Lytton's romance, "My Novel ; or
Varieties in English Life;" of course being that which
will attract most attention. We have here seven chapters,
all sparkling and full of character, and a fine perception of
men and things. We shall quote a short one, descriptive
of two persons of widely different natures, the ideal and
the real, the poet and the man of action, the dreamer and
the statesman.

Harley spent his day in his usual desultory, lounging man-
ner—dined in his quiet corner at his favourite club—Nero, not
admitted into the club, patiently waited for him outside the
door. The dinner over, dog and man, equally indifferent to
the crowd, sauntered down that thoroughfare which, to the
few who can comprehend the Poetry of London, has associa-
tions of glory and of woe sublime as any that the ruins of the
dead elder world can furnish—thoroughfare that traverses
what was once the courtyard of Whitehall, having to its left
site of the palace that I,' the royalty of Scotland—T-'

through a narrow strait that old isle of Thorney, in which
Edward the Confessor received the ominous visit of the Con-
queror—and, widening once more by the Abbey and the
Hall of Westminster, then loses itself, like all memories of
earthly grandeur, amidst humble passages and mean defiles.
Thus thought Harley L'Estrange—ever less amidst the actual
world around him, than the images invoked by his own soli-
tary soul—as he gained the Bridge, rnd saw the dull lifeless
craft sleeping on the " Silent Way," once loud and glittering
with the gilded barks of the antique Seignorie of England,.
It was on that bridge that Audley Egerton had appointed to
meet L'Estrange, at an hour when he calculated he could best
steal a respite from debate. For Harley, with his fastidious
'",e to all the resorts of his equals, had declined to seek his

friend in the crowded regions of Bellamy's_
Harley's eye, as be passed along the bridge, was attracted
by a still form, seated on the stones in one of the nooks, with
its face covered by its bands. "If I were a sculptor," said lie
to himself, "I should remember that image whenever I wished
to convey the idea of Despondency 1" He lifted his looks and
saw, a little before him in the midst of the causeway, the
firm, erect figure of Audley Egerton. The moonlight was full
on the bronzed countenance of the strong public man,—with
its lines of thought and care, and its vigorous but cold expres-
sion of intense self-control.
"And looking yonder," continued Harley's soliloquy, "I
should remember that form, when I wished to hew out from
the granite the idea of Endurance."
" So you are come, and punctually," said I
his arm in Harley's.
HARLEY.—" Punctually, of course, for 1 respect your time,
and I will not detain you long. I presume you will speak to-
night "

Tton, linking

EGERTON.—" I have spoken."
HARLEY (with interest)—" And well, I hope."
EGERTON.— " 'With effect, I suppose, for I have been loudly
cheered, which does not always happen to me."
HARLEY.—" And that gave you pleasure?"
EGERTON, (after a moment's thought)—" No, not the least."
HARLEY.—" What, then, attaches you so much to this life—
constant drudgery, constant warfare—thr -- •
scull 'tormant, a"

a, ine narsher ones aroused;if even its
rewards (and I take the best of those to be app!ause) do not
'Anse you ?"

—" What ?—custom."
." Martyr !"

HARLEY

EGERTON.—" You' say it, but turn to yourself; you have
decided, then, to leave England next week."

HA RI:EY (Moodily).—" Yes, This life in a capital, where all
are so active, myself so objectless, preys on me like a low
fever. Nothing here amuses me, nothing interests, nothing
comforts and consoles. But I am resolved, before it be too
late, to make one great struggle out of the Past, and into the
9tural world of men. In a word, I have resolved to marry."

EGERTON.—" Whom ?
HARLEY (seriously).—

•" Upon my life, my dear fellow, you
You have hit the exact question.

LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER-
PAST AND :PRESENT.

The annals of Royal progresses make little or no men-
tion of Liverpool and Manchester. Nearly tare cen-
turies ago, William of Orange passed through a small
fishing village on the shores of the Mersey, whose,ceanty
industry was eked out by a trifling commerce with Ireland.
In 1745, the " Young Pretender" slept a night in Man-
chester, in the course of his disastrous expedition to
Derby, and the house which - sheltered him bores until
lately, the commemorative appellation of the" Palactlnn."
The small fishing village is nova, in point of population,
wealth, and importance, the second city in the tinted
Kingdom, the third in Europe. It and its suburbs con-
tain near upon five hundred thousand souls, an amount
surpassed in Europe only by London and Parrs. The,po-
pulation of Manchester proper does not come up to this,
but if the various towns and villages comprehended within
a very limited radius be taken into account, another half
million of population may be easily counted. The marshes
frequented by the bird which gives its name to Liverpool
are now covered by miles of docks and acres of stately
warehouses. All traces of the bird itself have now va-
nished so completely. that its existence has been consi-
dered a fable. Liverpool and Manchester alike speak not
of the past, but of the present and future. With the ex-
ception that Manchester was a Roman station, and that
Roman remains are still occasionally. turned up, and that
the fine old church, now the Cathedral and Cheetham
College, boasts of a respectable antiquity, both towns pos-
sess but little to interest the architect and archaeologist.
But though the banks of the Mersey, aVisiverpool, be not
. bordered with the palatial structures which grace the ca-
nals at Venice, and though Manchester can boast no such
miracles of mediaeval art as are to be found in the ancient
commercial emporia of Flanders and Germany, still our
own capitals of commerce and manufacture are not with-
out a peculiar interest of their own.
The sail up the Mersey is, in its way, a spectacle unri-
valled in the world. The Thames offers nothing to be
compared with it. By the side of this estuary, which is
the pride of Liverpool, the Thames is almost a rivulet.
Nor has'London aught to offer which will compare with
the four miles of granite quays, with the long line of
masts stretching along in the docks behind, which pass
under the eye of the spectator on the deck of a esteamboat
in the Mersey, while, on the Cheshire side, are to be seen
the town of Birkenhead, which has sprung into existence
with a rapidity unequalled even in the United States, and
the magnificent works by which it is hoped that Wallasey
Pool may one day enclose a forest of masts like the parent
town on the Lancashire shore.
The first view of Manchester offers nothing so striking
as this. It is, in truth, little but a town of mills and
warehouses. Every one who can afford it flies from its
smoke and gloom to the purer air of the suburbs. Por-
tions of Manchester, at night, are as entirely deserted as
the city of London. Like London, too, Manchester is a
place which impresses the more, the more it is known,
The never-ending ranges of mills and warehouses, dingy
though they be, and the ceaseless current and busy acti-
vity of the population, end by fixing on the mind of the
stranger a deep conviction of their importance. In truth,
it is hardly going too far to say that it is to Manchester
and Liverpool that this country owes its present weight
among the nations, nay, perhaps its very existence. How
would the expense of the last war have been borne, had
not the cotton manufacture developed itself in Manches-
ter ? Gas was first brought into use in Manchester. The
Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the fruitful parent of
iron roads throughout the world, was a speculation of a
knot of merchants of Liverpool. But the greatest com-
mercial revolution of modern times was the work of the
Manchester men ; and they are now attempting to solve
the most interesting question of the day, the problem of
how a general system of education can be reconciled with
the religious liberty of the Church and the various dis-
senting bodies. A population like this, destined in all
human probability to exert, day by day, a more promi-
nent influence in the country, cannot safely be neglected
by any Government, and her Majesty has done well in
showing herself among them. Such an attention on the
part of the highest personage in the realm will not bo
forgotten by the workpeople of Lancashire; and her Ma-
jesty must have been pleased to remark that the sailors
and porters of Liverpool, and the spinners and weavers of
Manchester, are as warm in their loyalty and as orderly
in their conduct as her own good citizens of London. In
so hurried a visit it was, of course, impossible to obtain
any deep insight into the condition and habits of the
people ; but the enlightened liberality of the Earl of
Ellesmere towards the workpeople employed in his col-
lieries, as well as what was witnessed by Prince Albert at
the Dean Mills, near Bolton, and the spectacle of seventy
thousand Sunday scholars assembled to greet their Sove-
reign in Salford, shows one thing plainly, that the mine
and mill owners are not all exclusively occupied by money-
getting. As among other classes, so also among the
owners of mines and factories, there will be found those
who neglect the duties of their position ; but there will
also be found a numerous, and we believe an increasing
body, who are becoming daily more impressed with a
sense of the responsibility of their position.
A certain hardness and roughness may perhaps, indeed,
be discernible in the manners and style of some of the
men of Lancashire, the best cure for which will be found
in a more extended intercourse with their fellow-subjects
of the south and the metropolis. Railroads have already
done much in this direction. It is not so many years
ago since the distant provinces of England were almost
like different countries. Manchester ladies were formerly
remarkable for being a year behind the prevailing fashion
in London ; not a very important matter, it may be, ex-
cept as a symptom. The more different classes, the more
the inhabitants of different parts of the country are
brought into contact with each other, the better for all of
Ter Majesty has this year set an example worthy
extensively followed. The time for sneering at
merchants and cotton lords is past.—London Guardian.

of bein

COURT OF BANKRUPTCY, YESTERDAY.

(Before Mr. Commissioner PERRY.)

IN RE ISAAC WAKEFIELD

In the case of this bankrupt, formerly a grocer and tea
dealer in Mill-street, Liverpool, Mr. Evans. solicitor,
again opposed, and Mr. Bremner appeared for Wakefield.
It was the third adjournment of the examination of the
bankrupt, and he had been ordered by the court to present
an amended balance sheet to-day.

Mr. BREMNER, now said he applied, on behalf of his
client, for a further adjournment, Since the last meet-
in;, Mr. Badham, accountant, had been instructed by
Mr. Wakefield with respect to the state of his affairs, and
had had placed in his hands such papers as would enable
him to prepare a balance sheet forthwith. It was quite
true the bankrupt had not done anything beyond that,
but lie was not only now provided with an accountant
but a professional adviser, and he trusted, therefore, his
Honour would not take the extreme step of adjourning
the examination sine die.

Mr. Evans, for the assignee, did not wish to be un-
necessarily hard on the bankrupt, and left the matter
entirely in his Honour's hands. At the same time he
would offer one observation, and that was, that the man
had been trifling with them all, having had the books in
his possession, which he could have given up long ago
without the assistance of an accountant or professional
adviser.

Mr. BREMNER had only been consulted on Saturday;
and reminded his Honour that the only effect of an ad-
journment sine die would be to entail additional expense
on the bankrupt, without benefit to the creditors.
Mr. EVANS replied that such a judgment would be a
punishment on the man for his conduct ; but he was
entirely in the hands of the court, and as the bankrupt
had been perhaps sufficiently punished already he should
offer no further opposition to the adjournment.
The Learned COMMISSIONER, after some further dis-
cussion, then fixed that day three weeks for the adjourned
re-hearing of the case.