The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-11-01 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 1, 1842.

The near approach of the period at which the chair
of the mayoralty is vacated affords us an opportunity,
which we embrace with pleasure, of recording our
thanks to the gentleman by whom it has this year
been occupied, for the services which he has on all
occasions freely rendered. It was a distinguishing
mark of the confidence reposed by his fellow-townsmen
in the sincerity with which he entertained the sound
and constitutional principles of Conservatism and, we
may add, Protestantism, which placed Mr. Leigh in
the enviable position of the first Conservative Mayor
since the passing of the Municipal Reform Bill.
During the whole of his year of office we cannot point
to one act or one vote by which that confidence has
been shaken. In all the stormy discussions over
which he has presided, we cannot point to one decision
or one expression which can have pained any member
of the Council, however opposed to him in opinions;
or left an unkindly feeling towards him in the breasts
of any section of his fellow-townsmen out Of doors.
Surely it is worthy of no light praise thus to have
acquitted himself—thus to have earned respect from
men of every party, whilst adhering, with a firmness
almost unequalled, to the maintenance of his own

convictions as to the course which he wAs bound to
pursue upon public questions. No trimming in
politics—no hesitation bt.,tween the right path and the
expedient path—no balancing between principle and
popular approbation—have marked the. mayoralty of
Mr. Leigh. Upon all the important topics which
have been agitated in the Council during the past
year, he has shewn himself the staunch and fearless
supporter of the principles for the n:inter ante of
which in the local legislature the voices of the burgesses
of our town have been so energetically lifted up; and
he will retire from his onerous station the same
consistent and unflinching Conservative whom his
fellow-townsmen esteemed worthy of receiving the first
mark of honour in their power to bestow.
We cannot conclude this brief tribute without
noticing the kindly feeling with which Mr. Leigh has
exercised the magisterial powers conferred upon him
by his office. These powers, or at least some of them
which were acquired under the recent Improvement
Act, are of a most stringent nature, and might, in the
hands of a man of tyrannical disposition, be made
productive of great oppression. In no case, however,
has the present Mayor, whilst applying them to their
legitimate intent—the preservation of public morality
and order in the borough—allowed them to trench
severely upon individual rights or convenience; and
for the performance of this portion of his duties, the
public, and individuals as well, have abundant reason
to be satisfied with his rule.

We have never concealed our impression, not a lightly
formed one, that of all men in the British House of
Commons, Doctor Polyglot Bowring, M.P. for Bolton,
is the greatest charlatan. There are weak men in
abundance in that house—men politically dishonest--
men ready to gorge and fatten upon a misled people ;
but the man in whom all these qualities are concentrated
is this very peripatetic tool of Whig Radicalism—Dr.
Bowring himself !
But what of the Doctor now ? our readers will ask.
We wish, must be our answer, to bring before you the
latest sample of the Doctor's conduct; and to found
upon his cunningly glossed inventions a few re-
marks of our own.

At a meeting, then, of that incendiary body—the
Anti-Corn-Law League, held in Manchester on -FridaY
morning last, the Doctor is reported to have indulged
in the following statement. We quote from the Lon-
don Times of Saturday :
" 1 dare say that many of those around me have read an
exceedingly interesting book which has been lately published
by Charles Dickens, whose tact is so exquisite, and whose
benevolence and whose sympathies are thrown over so wide
a field of thought and action. Have you read his account of
the factories at Lowell—(hear, hear,)—of the manner in
which they are dressed, associated even with elegance,--of
the piano on which they play--of the libraries which circu-
late among them—of the periodical in which they write
(Applause.) I wish the working people of England would
study that affecting picture, and ask themselves whether this
state of felicity is owing to any impediment put upon the im-
provement of machinery•—to any " ten hours' factory
to any interference in the question of wages. Nothing of
the sort is there required. It is perfectly clear, therefore,
that their happiness is not attributable to those delusive pro-
tections which some of our working class are desirous to
possess, but that it grows out of circumstances more inti-
mately associated with the emancipation of trade than would
appear at first sight and on the surface of things."

'We say nothing of the truth or falsehood of the
picture, as painted by Mr. Dickens, of the state of
working classes employed in the factories of Lowell--
of their dress, their piano-fortes, their circulating
libraries, or " the periodical in which they write." A
great portion of it may be true. We know that the
contrast between the condition of the factory classes
in America and in Great Britain is decidedly in favour
of the former. But we know as well that neither
Doctor Bowring nor any leading member of the league,
whom he addressed, believed any other than that Mr.
Charles Dickens had been outrageously humbugged
• by the Yankee millowners, when he was induced to
credit all this rubbish which he has so innocently given
to the world. Why, we could shew Charles Dickens
English factories—which, if seen upon a show day,
when the ill-dressed, the dwarfed, the•ragged, the pre-
maturely old, were huddled out of sight—when the
appliances of whitewash and chlorides had been used,
floors neatly swept, and everything unsightly removed
from before the eyes of the Nisitor—would he just
the kind of places over which a utilitarian philosopher
of the Bowring school would chuckle. Mr. Charles
Dickens is not the first philanthropist who has been
humbugged into a belief in the delights and comforts
of a factory life; and there was not a member preseLt
• on Friday who did not laugh in his sleeve at the
" smartness" of the Yankee whO had gulled him into
the belief that Lowell was a second Arcadia.

Admitting, however, which we are ready to do, that
the working classes in these factories are infinitely
better circumstanced than in those of Great Britain,
how does that fact advance the arguments of
the Anti-Corn-Law League ? The Doctor say►
that the British factory population " should ask them
whether this state of felicity " (!)—which consists
of piano playing and periodical writing—"is owing t°
any impediment put upon machinery—to any g ten
hours' factory bill'—to any interference in the question
of wages." Perhaps the Doctor would tell us how
the British factory girl or boy, toiling thirteen hours
per day, could find time for either of these felicitous
occupations !—how the broken-hearted and debased
adult could bend himself to the pursuits of polite
literature ! Oh, Doctor, Doctor ! what a forty-horse
power of assurance it must have required to even
touch upon such a subject in the presence of an
assembly of free-trade cotton lords !

" It is perfectly clear," proceeds this political quack,
" that their happiness"—the happiness of the Lowell
factory operatives—" is not attributable to those pro-
tections which some of our working classes are de-
sirous to possess, but that it grows out of circtun-
stances associated with the emancipation of trade."
What ! has the American manufacturer no protections?
Is it the principle of " emancipation of trade" which
protects the American cotton manufacture, by duties
of forty and fifty per cent, on British cottons ?
scarcely know whether the charlatan who gave to the
world such statements is more to be despised than the
body which listened to him without having the honesty
to kick him out of their presence !
The American factory population—no one knows
better than Dr. Bowring—is in possession of greater
comforts than the wretched slaves of our own /and'
because the domestic labour of America is protected,
whilst that of Great Britain is not. The former need
not the protection of a ten hours' bill, because in the
United States, as yet, neither capital nor machinery are
absolute lords over human labour. The American fac-
tory operative is not, like his English brother, chaine3
down, by circumstances, to the loom or the spinning
frame. The field of labour in that land is a wide and
an open one; domestic industry is remunerative, and
manufacturing capital must hold out the inducements
of high wages, comforts, and even luxuries, before the
operative will barter the free air of heaven, and the
enjoyment of health and liberty, for the slavish and
unwholesome drudgery of factory labour.
But, we ask, why has this picture been pressed
before the eyes of the manufacturing population of
Great Britain at the present moment ? The reason is
obvious. The sedition-mongers of the League are
busy in their vocation. They aim at inflaming the
passions of starving men by pointing to the condition
of the American operative ; and they will not succeed:
The factory population of Great Britain know too well,
the character of the Bowrings, the Cohdeus, and
other lights of the world of " to be ccught
by so palpable a trap. They can look back to year!'
of bloated prosperity and, say,—what did a " libels'
millocracy do then for the comforts and the health
and welfare of the overtasked workman ? and die,
answer of an observant world will be—Nov.llo:
They folded themselves in their selfishness, and
scouted the claims, to the possession of a station in the
world, of the very class whom they now affect to
patronise and to pity !

We have been much amused at the subtlety, and at
the same time utterly disgusted with the hypocrisy, °I
the Radicals setting themselves up as mentors in re-
ligious matters, and, more especially, on a subject on
which it has
.been their wont to bestow the most
unlimited abuse.
Our readers May perceive we allude to some remarks
which fell in Council from Mr. Alderman Bromley
Moore, respecting foreign missions, in the 'course of