The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-23 00:00:00

been done which may be effected,

in this held of legislative exertion

; and that, if our

commerce, still languishes—if industry is still pros-

trated—there is nothing left, for the statesman, but to

enter upon the carrying out of those sweeping changes
towards which the voice of agitation would impel him

The fact
be done.

s not so

AU has notheen done which may

On the contrary,

there i i a wide field, oom-

paratively untouched, which invites the supervision of
the.legislature; and by the exercise of a wise and

gorou-3 remea

action here, it is within the power of

community, without periling the stability or sacrificing

the interests of any portion
We sh

ldeavour to direct the attention of our

readers to a few subjects, upon which we trust to see
the cabinet of Sir Robert Peel occupied during the
session of Parliament which is at hand; and, first, let

to the existinr,

g duty upon the importation of

have, again and again, remarked
upon the impolicy of this duty upon the raw material
of a staple manufacture; and we are convinced that

cotton wool. IV

nothing, save the

necessities of their position, could

have induced its maintenance, by the present govern-
ment, whilst remodelling our tariff. It is a tax clearly
opposed to the principles upon which that tariff was
framed—one of the most important of them being to
free from impost every article of produce which enters
into the composition of a manufactured article ; and
nothing can have stood in the way of its abolition but
the fact that it produced a revenue—upwards of six
hundred thousand pounds—which could not, in the
then state of our financial affairs, be spared by the
Exchequer.

We trust that the time 1.

las come when no such im-
pediment exists. We may not, as yet, have realised
the full advantages which may be expeCted for the
revenue of the country from the financial measures of

last session of Parliament. The revival of commerce,
however, which is gradually taking place, and the
termination of two expensive wars, for which we had
last year to provide, will, we trust, place the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer in that easy position which

will enable him to conce,,le the abolition of this tax
to the suffering manufacturing community.
We could point to many other parts of our financial
system, in which important improvements might be
made; but we wish more particularly to draw atten-
tion to the course of legislation to be pursued to
benefit the industrious classes in the manufac-
turing and mining districts of the country. We feel
whilst so doing the great difficulty of treading upon
this delicate ground. We appreciate the responsibility
incurred by the statesman who attempts, by legisla-
tion, to regulate the wages of the labourer; but we
feel, also, that the time has come when that subject
must he approached, and the attempt in question

entered upon in earn

There are few men, even of the Malthus and
M'Culloch school of philosophy, who can contemplate
the past and present condition of the labourers and
artisans of this country, and say that the prospect is
a satisfactory one. Contemporary with the vastly-
stimulated manufacturing and commercial activity of
the past twenty-five years; concurrent with the vast
accumulations of manufacturing and commercial
wealth ; the remuneration and the social condition of
the labouring classes—the producers of that wealth,
the hands by which the mighty machine of commerce
is moved—have kept steadily deteriorating. Of the
extent to which this backward progress in the scale of
comfort and independence has proceeded, there is
abundant evidence before the world, as well as of the
danger with which its further backward progress
The statistical details of misery,

menaces some

which were accumulated, ad nauseant, in the speeches
of the Bowrings and Cobdens, during the past session
of Parliament, furnish ample proof of the former ;*the
recent outrages of the misguided turnouts, in the

manufacturing and mining districts, are startling
warnings of the latter. And the same progress
towards the lowest depth of misery which human

frenzied war against the constituted order of society, is

till going on, and will continue to go on, even though

ye concede to the bo

ed philosophy of the day all

for the

benefit of the suffering classes ; because the same in-
ducing causes are still at work, and those nostrums do
not strike at their continued operation ! The conees-

to which we are urged are concessions to
CAPITAL—are concessions to a power which is already
too great ; which has ground down the labourer to
the dust, and is day by day grinding him still lower
than the dust !

The working class—if the purpose for which all