The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-27 00:00:00

manufacturer, when they receive the aid of a cheaper
loaf and cheaper labour; but, now, let us ask what
most be the position of the remaining branches of
native industry ? We remember the outcry with which
the recent modification of the tariff was assailed by
many of our local tradesmen. We believe that some
of those tradesmen have suffered, in consequence of
that modification—we trust temporarily suffered ; but
earl they contemplate with equanimity the withdrawal
of all protection, even though accompanied with a re-
duced price of food. ?hey, or some of them at least,
are never likely—as in the case of the manufacturer of
cotton goods—to become exporters. The delusive
vision of an opening of the markets of the world to the
Products of British industry is not before their eyes.
How can they sustain the ruinous competition with
the labour of Europe—which supports itself upon an
average per head of four or five shillings per week—
unless they are prepared to exist upon garbage which
would be spurned by them, as food unfit for the brute
,sesl I creation ?

The League orators and their lady-canvassers may,
Ne have no doubt, attempt to persuade our operative
friends, that no such step as the withdrawal of protec-
tion from any other than agricultural industry is in

contemplation. Again we say to them, " exercise your
own judgment and common sense." If the principle
be conceded, which is sought to be established by
free traders, that protection to the native agriculturist
is unjust towards the remaining portion of the com-
munity. And more than that ; the abolition of the
Protecting duties in all cases must follow, and ought to
follow, such abolition in any one case ! It will follow
as surely as the night follows the day; and it is the
bounden duty of every working man to contemplate
and prepare for its consequences !

We return to the subject of legislation, having for
ite object an improvement in the condition of the
labourer, at which we briefly glanced in our last publi-
cation. We are told by the free traders that this is
not a direction in which a government ought to legis-
late. The labourer should have the free power to sell,
and the capitalist to buy, labour in the best market,
unrestricted by any conditions. We think, however,
We can show that such a doctrine is neither consonant
With justice to our working population, or with the
real interests of the manufacturing employer; and we
know that it cannot, with consistency, be maintained
by the gentry of the Anti-Corn-Law League, for the
fact is notorious that they have recognized the princi-
Pie that a government can and ought to interfere to
regulate the price of labour.
What, let us ask, would be the result of the absence
of all regulations respecting the contracts between em-
Ployers and employed ;—if the former was permitted
to buy their labour and the latter to sell it, where and
how they chose ? It would be, in effect, the reduction
of vast masses of the population of Great Britain to a
state of virtual slavery. The factories, the workshops,
the mines of the country would be filled with infant la-
bour, sold to the capitalist—as effectually sold, as the
African was ever sold to the West India planter. They
Would contain, instead of healthy adults, bodies of
Itindless, soulless human beings, worn down almost to
idiocy, by an indefinite extension of the hours of la-
bour. Need we point to the horrors which, during the
last session of parliament, were shewn to exist in the
thin-seam coal mines of England ? Need we remind
Then conversant with the factory system, as it existed
before laws for its regulation were enacted, of the atro-

Cities with which it was rife ? We need not; for we
are certain that by all candid men the principle that
such interference is wise and salutary is already