The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-04-05 00:00:00

Übe Zitnrpool &balm:b.

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 5, 1842

Our contemporary the Journal has some remarks
upon a manifesto which has just been issued to the elec-
tors of the united kingdom by the council of the Anti-
Corn Law League, in one portion of which, at least, we
cordially coincide. Amongst other insolencies, this
patriotic body, which " claims to he heard us the ac-
credited representative of all the great trading and ma-
nufacturing interests of the kingdom," (?) maintains
that " a small minority of earnest men in the House
of Commons can prevent the imposition of new taxes,
however powerless they may be, in the face of a mo-
nopolist majority, to remove existing abuses;" and
urges upon the various constituencies throughout the
country to instruct their representatives to discharge
this " patriotic duty," (!) or, in other words, to ob-
struct, by every factious manoeuvre which the forms of
the House of Commons allow, and in defiance of the
majority of the representatives of the national will, the
progress of public business, unless their own particu-
lar nostrums be adopted by government. With.re-
speet to this advice, put forward by the league, we per-
fectlyagree with our contemporary, that it is " irra-
tional and contemptible ;" and we would even go a
little further, and designate it as disgustingly factious
and incorrigibly wicked."

With respect to the policy of the income tax, how-

ever, our contemporary expresses an opinion of perfect
accordance with that of the league; and it is to this
portion of his remarks that we wish to direct the atten-
tion of our readers :

• observgs'the' Journal; ivitlz the league
in thinking everything bad of the. income tax. It •is impos-
sible to speak worse of it than it deserves. It is the very
wickedest and most vexatious of taxes which the ingenuity
of mar; ever conceived. Yet in its very badness lies our
consolation. We are only astonished at the folly which pro-
poses it. It is the very thing that was wanted to bring all
the inhabitants of the towns, and 'especially those of the
metropolis, to a full sense of the nature of Toryism, of its
eternal alliance with oppression, and of their duty to them-
selves and their country, which so many of them so shame-
fUlly forgot at the last election." •
We are afraid that our contemporary is a little out
in his calculations, with respect to the tendency of the
proposed tax upon income to effect the restoration of
the defeated and despised Whig 'faction to the confi-
dence of the people of Great Britain. The Journal
urges that such a tax is " the very thing which is
wanted to bring all the inhabitants of the towns to a
full sense of the nature of Toryism," and, at the same
time, of course, to a proper appreciation of the ex-
ceeding wisdom and purity of Whig-Radicalism ; but
we look around us in vain for any manifestation of
such a feeling. We hear of no great convtidsions in
society, no overpowering demonstrations of hostility
towards the government measures, and of returning
affection towards Whig rule. " All the inhabitants of
the towns" have maintained, thus far, a most provok-
ing quiescence ; and, although a few small people have
exhibited a little restiveness upon the subject of the
proposed tariff—although the boot and shoemakers
have waxed hot upon the subject of their own particu-
lar trade, the building-club people worked themselves
into an awful perspiration, the timber trade exhibited
symptoms of hating played a • wrong card, and several
other branches of industry prophesied their own speedy
extinction,—the country exhibits, upon the whole, a
surprising and gratifying desire to submit to any tem-
porary inconveniences rendered' necessary for the car-
rying out entire of the policy of the government.