The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-07-01 00:00:00

ONE CAUSE OF THE EXISTING DISTRESS,

There is one feature in the depression which so unhappily
prevails in all classes of trade, which is the more lamentable,
inasmuch as it arises out of the dispositions and practices of
the people themselves ; and might therefore be at once re-
moved if the people chose to abandon it. We allude to that
passion for cheapness, without regard to moral, or even to
truly economical considerations, which is so increasingly ap-
parent in all classes, in their dealings with each other.
As a general rule, we may be sure that " buy where you
can buy cheapest" will obtain, whether we like it or not, a
prevalent influence. Yet we must contend that this rule
ought to be admitted with caution, and with a recollection
of certain other principles which can never be abandoned
without certain injury to all parties.
Were a lot of articles to be ticketed in a shop-window,
" Stolen goods—to be sold cheap," we may trust that a great
many persons would pause before they entered the shop, and
would recoil from the least contact with the crime.

But what if it becomes known, by bankrupts' examina-
tions, &c., that a certain dealer has become possessed of a
large stock without paying for it, and has then forced his
creditors, by the fear of entire loss presented to their minds,
to accept, perhaps a fourth, or a third, of their just demand,
When such a man afterwards boasts of the " bargains" he
can offer, do not too many persons of character—persons
affecting a conscience—throng to his shop, deserting their
regular tradesmen, to share in what is nothing else than a
scheme of legalised murder ?
So again, though with less criminality, when a shop-
keeper is found advertising articles of fixed value—Post-
office envelopes, and the like—at less than the known
cost, do not multitudes of " respectable people " throng
to buy. Yet they must know that if the general business
of the shop be carried on upon such principles, bankruptcy
must be the result. They probably surmise that the adver-
tised cheapness of one article is a mere lure to draw them
to the shop ; yet with that lure they are taken, deserting
their accustomed tradesmen to deal with one who either
trades under false colours, or else must end in defrauding
his creditors. _

-- ---
Some recollection of the dictates of conscience ought to
interpose a check in such cases. But besides these mo-
tives, it seems a kind of infatuation in a trading commu-
nity, to be making war, as it were, upon all profits ; and
reducing everything, as far as may be, to the condition of
business carried on at a loss.

On this point we must give a short extract from a re-
cent work :

" There is another kind of folly into which the English
people have been recently led, and which seems to be be-
coming more and more rife daily from the absence of op-
position ; we allude to the passion for cheapness; the en-
couragement given to competition; and the perpetual as-
sumption that a lowering of prices must be a public good.
‘• Now even such a political economist as Smith had sense
enough to see and declare, that ' high prices and plenty are
prosperity ; low prices and want are misery.' And nothing
can be more certain than the fact, that if we seek out those
spots of the earth where prices are the lowest, there we shall
always find, as a never-absent concomitant, a great degree of
misery and want among the people,
`• But surely if ever there was a people who were bound in
a peculiar manner to eschew low prices, the English are that
people.
" Imagine, for a moment, a village containing twelve heads
of families and employers (besides servants and labourers),
ten of whom are producers, growers, or artificers ; while the
other two live upon fixed rents or interest of money, paid to
them by the former ten. Suppose then, that a mania for
cheapness seizes upon these people, encouraged, of course, by
competition, and the fear of competition, all their produce
and the fruits of their industry are equally and simultaneous-
ly reduced one-half; or at least, so reduced, as to bring
down their profits, and also their expenses, by a clear fifty
per cent. ; is it not abundantly obvious that the only real
gainers by the change would be to the two who lived on their
fixed incomes, and whose incomes would now be, by the
change, practically doubled ; while all that the producing
class would realize would be the privilege of doing more
business for the same incomes ?
" And where is the difference between this fancied case
and what we now see passing around us ? Could we single
out the case of a holder of consols, who drew a dividend of
£lOOO a-year in 1818, and who draws the same dividend
now ; and could we call for the particulars of this expendi-
ture; we should assuredly find that the very same house,*
food, clothing, &c., which he obtained in 1818 for £lOOO
a-year, he could have now for £6OO, probably for £5OO. He
is therefore either saving £4OO a-year by the change, or else
living in a much more luxurious manner. But what do the
producers of his luxuries gain by the change ? Just the plea-
sure of doing much more business than before for the same
aggregate profit. We have lately heard, through the public
press, that the manufacturers in Manchester are now giving
thrice as many goods as they did in 1818, for the same mo-
ney.emtaon
ysa,ya,ntdhsistiilnl fgarteuaatteerd
cheapnesscourse i s g
dl oe
_-
r d and'A nedx uy let te, d strange
abnyg
siderated! Not content with having doubled the national
debt once, they would gladly quadruple it, and still fancy
that they were doing the people of England good service.
How many degrees of lunacy do these people require to com-
plete their qualification for Bedlam ?"—Life of 111. T. Sad-
ler, Esq., p. 499-502.

* " House-rent has suffered less reduction than many
other items ; but dwellings which let for £l3O to £l5O in
1818, are now generally to be obtained at from £BO to £100."

MONEY-MARKET.—Gold was in r.tfeverish state, owing to
the process of sweating, and parties who expected to find
money extremely heavy were surprised at its uncommon
lightness, which they only. perceived when bringing it into
the market. Sovereigns with the coupons (or little pieces)
cut out were freely offered for 205., and as freely declined,
and many persons made fruitless endeavours to turn the scale
by filling in the crevices.—Punch.
AN IRISH LETTER.—An Irishman wrote to his son, in
Dublin, the following letter :—" Dear Jem,—lf you are well
when this letter reaches you, we are well. By the bearer, I
send you my old brown Coat ; get a new one made out of it.
Your mother sends you, unbeknowing to me, five pounds; I
hope you will not spend them foolishly; if you do, I can
just tell you that you are a silly goose, and I remain your
affectionate father. P.S.—Your sister Sally wanted me to
tell you to send her a shell comb, but as I forgot it this time,
and the letter was already sealed, I will mention it in my
neat."

HYPERCRITICISM.—In one of the poems of Calidasa, is
a couplet which has been thus rendered :—" The intoxicated
bee shines and murmurs in the fresh-blown Milica, like him
who gives breath to the white conch in the procession of the
god with five arrows."—A critic, to whom the poet repeated
this verse, observed that the comparison was not exact;
" since the bee sits on the blossom itself, and does not mur-
mur at the end of the tube, like him who blows a conch."—
" I was aware of that," replied Calidasa, " and therefore
described the bee as intoxicated; a drunken musician would
blow the shell at the wrong end."—lt is said of Milton that
he made a similar apology for some inconsistencies which
the critics were pleased to discover in the speeches of Satan
to his peers, in Paradise Lost. "It would have been im-
proper," said the bard, " that the Father of Lies should not,
in the course of several long speeches, make some deviation
from truth and consistency.

AMERICAN TIMBER TRADE:—It is not, perhaps, gene-
rally known, that by act of parliament, no part of the cargo
of any ship, wholly or in part laden with timber or wood
goods, and clearing from any British port in North America,
or the settlement of Honduras, for any port in the United
Kingdom, between Ist September and Ist May, in each year,
is to be stowed or placed, during any part of the voyage,
upon or above the deck of such ship ; and the master of
every such ship so clearing, shall not be permitted to sail
without first obtaining a certificate from the clearing officer,
that all the cargo is below deck. A captain, owner, or other
person, having the command of a ship, placing, or permit-
ting to be placed, upon or above the deck, any part of the
cargo, shall forfeit for every offence £lOO. The penalty not
to extend to the necessary store spars, for the vessel's use,
or the removal of any portion of the cargo in cases of spring-
ing a leak, or other damage, during the voyage. The Act 5
Vic., s. 2. c. 17, to continue in force to the Ist May, 1845.
WHAT IS SOLITUDE ?—The'songs are over, and the small
singer gone to her heather bed. There is a Highland moon !
The shield of an unfallen archangel. There are not many
stars, but those two—ay, that one—is sufficient to sustain
the glory of the night. Be not alarmed at that low, wide,
solemn, and melancholy sound. Runlets, torrents, rivers,
lochs, and seas—reeds, heather, forests, caves, and cliffs—
all are sound, sounding together a choral anthem. Gracious
heavens ! what mistakes people have fallen into when writing
about solitude ! A. man leaves a town for a few months,
and goes with his wife and family and a travelling library
into some solitary glen. Friends are perpetually visiting
him from afar, or the neighbouring gentry leaving their cards.
while his servant boy rides daily to the post-village for his
letters and newspapers. And call you that solitude? The
whole world is with you morning, noon, and night. But
go by yourself, without book or friend, and live a month in
this hut at the head of Glenevis. Go at dawn among the
cliffs of yonder pine forest, and wait there till night hangs
her moon-lamp in heaven. Commune with your own soul
and be still. Let the images of departed years rise, phantom-
like, of their owu awful accord, from the darkness of your
memory, and ilass away into the wood gloom or the moun-
tain mist. Will conscience dread such spectres ? Will you
quake before them, and bow down your head on the mossy
root of some old oak, and sob in the stern silence of the
haunted place ? Thoughts, feelings, passions, spectral deeds,
will come rushing around your lair, as with the sound of the
wings of innumerous birds—ay, many of them like birds of
prey, to gnaw your very heart. How many duties undis-
charged ! How many pleasurers devoured ! How many sins
hugged! How many wickednesses perpetrated ! The desert
looks more grim, the heaven lowers, and the sun, like God's
own eye, stares in upon your conscience !—Recollections of
Christopher North.
To PRESERVE CUT FLOWERS.—It is now, alas ! a long
eighteen years ago since we first saw, in the drawing-room
of a gentleman now no more, in the hot dry weather of the
dog-days, flowers preserved day after day in all their fresh-
ness, by the following simple contrivance .—A flat dish of
porcelain had water poured into it. In the water a vase of
flowers was set ; over the whole a bell glass was placed with
its rim in the water. The air that surrounded the flowers
being confined within the bell glass, was constantly moist
with water that rose into it in the form of vapour. As fast
as the water was condensed, it ran down the sides of the glass
back into the dish ; and if means had been taken to enclose
the water on the outside of the bell glass, so as to prevent its
evaporating into the air of the sitting-room, the atmosphere
around the flowers would have remained continually damp.
What is the explanation of this ? Do the flowers feed on the
viewless vapour that surrounds them ? Perhaps they do ; but
the great cause of their preserving their freshness is to be
sought in another fact. When flowers are brought into a
sitting-room, they fade, because of the dryness of the
air. The air of a sitting-room is usually something
drier than that of the garden, and always much
more so than that of a good greenhouse or stove. Flowers,
when gathered, are cut off from the supply of moisture col-
lected for them by their roots. and their mutilated stems are
far from having so great a Power of sucking up fluids as the
roots have. If, then with diminished powers of feeding,
they are exposed to augmented perspiration, as is the case in
a dry sitting-room, it is evident that the balance of gain on
one hand by the roots, add of loss on the other hand by the
whole surface, cannot be maintained. The result can only
be their destruction. Now to place them in. a damp atmos-
phere is to restore their balance ; because, .if their power of
sucking by their wounded ends is diminished, so is their
power of perspiring ; for a dampatmosphere will rob them
of no water. Hence they . maintain. their freshness. The
experiment can be tried by inserting a tumbler over a rosebud
in a saucer of water.—Gardeners' Chronicle.
MAXIMS IRONICAL.—You will observe, when you make a
bed for your dog in the exact spot where you wish him to lie,
that the animal is always. of a. different opinion as to the
choice of a lodging ; if you. let him alone, be will find a bed
of his own accord, but no inducement will make him enter
the one you have arbitrarily provided for him. This stroke
of natural history yOu will apply to your children, if you have
any ; force them into your way of thinking on all subjects,
especially when the affections and passions are engaged ; with
the unbleared eyes of youth, compel them to squint at life
through the blue and yellow spectacles of age ; and when they
jump, as they will, out of the bed you have made for them,
tear your hair, and cry to heaven against filial ingratitude.—
Entertain a profound contempt for dress, deportment, and the
opinion of society. When you are voted, by the common
consent of civilised society, to the backwoods of America, you
will be surprised to find how completely you are at home.—
Never take the trouble to consider, of your own head, what
is proper for you to avoid or pursue. Keep on your hands
two or three good advisers, so that when your affairs go
wrong, you may have somebody to swear at.—lf you are an
author, and quarrel with your publisher, resolve magnani-
mously to annihilate him, by not writing any more. Writers
on proverbial philosophy call this line of conduct " biting a
man's nose to vex his face."—Never be civil for nothing.
When you see you can get anything by it, be as obliging as
you please. If civility costs you nothing, that is no reason
why you should sell it at the same price.—Practical jokes
show great talent and ingenuity ; and young men should take
every opportunity of practising such on all occasions. The
latest I know of, was of young rats dropped into an empty
decanter, and left on the sideboard. The butler, coming to
decant the wine, was so overcome with terror at the sight of
the decanted vermin, and being of an apoplectic habit, that
he burst a blood-vessel and died on the spot—the practical
joker pronouncing it capital fun.—Bentley's Miscellany.
THE DISG4ACED ELDER.—Look at that grey-headed man
of three-score and upwards, sitting by the wayside. He was
once an elder of the kirk, and a pious man he was if ever
piety adorned the temples—" the byart haffets, wearing thin
and bare," of a Scottish peasant. What eye beheld the
many hundred steps that, one by one, with imperceptible
gradation led him down—down—down to the lowest depths
of shame, suffering, and ruin ? For years before it was
bruited about that Gabriel Mason was addicted to drink ;
his wife used to sit weeping in the spence when her sons
and daughters were out at their work in the fields ; and
the infatuated man, fierce in the excitement of raw ardent
spirits, kept causelessly raging and storming through every
nook of that once so peaceful tenement, which for many
happy years had never been disturbed by the loud voice of
anger or reproach. His eyes were seldom turned on his un-
happy wife except with a sullen scowl or fiery wrath ; but
when they did look on her with kindness, there was also a
rueful self-upbraiding in their expression, on account of his
cruelty; and at sight of such transitory tenderness her heart
would overflow with forgiving affection, and her sunk eyes
with unendurable tears. But neither domestic sin nor do-
mestic sorrow will conceal from the eyes and ears of men ;
and at last Gabriel Mason's name was a by-word in the
mouth of the scoffer. One Sabbath he entered the kirk in
a state of miserable abandonment, and from that day he was
no longer an elder. To regain his character seemed to him,
in his desperation, beyond the power of man and against the
decree of God. So he delivered himself up, like a slave, to
that one appetite, and in a few years his whole household
had gone to destruction. His wife was a matron, almost
in the prime of life, when she died ; but as she kept wearing
away to the other world, her face told that she felt her years
had been too many in this. Her eldest son, unable, in pride
and shame, to lift up his eyes at kirk or market, went away
to the city, and enlisted into a regiment about to embark on
foreign service. His two sisters went to take farewell of him,
but never returned : one, it is said, having died of a fever in
the infirmary, just as if she had been a pauper; and the
other—for the sight of sin, and sorrow, and shame, and suf-
fering, is ruinous to the soul—gave herself up, in her beauty,
an easy prey to a destroyer, and doubtless has run her course
of agonies, and is now at peace. The rest of the family dropt
down, one by one, out of sight into inferior situations in far-
off places ; but there was a curse, it was thought, hanging over
the family, and of none of them did a favourable report ever
come to their native parish ; while he the infatuated sinner,
whose vice seemed to have worked all the woe, remained in
the chains of his tyrannical passion, nor seemed ever, for
more than the short term of a day, .to ceaseihugging them to
his heart. Semblance of all that la most venerable in the
image of a perfect patri-
character of Scotland's peasantry ;
arch, walking out to meditate at eventide! What a noble
forehead ! Features how high, dignified,. and composed !
There, sitting in the shade of that old wayside tree, he seems
some religious missionary, travelling to and fro over the face
of the earth, seeking out sin and sorrow, that he may tame
them under the word of God, and change their very being
into piety and peace. Call him not a hoary hypocrite, for
he cannot help tHat noble, that venerable, that apostolic
aspect, that dignified figure, as if bent gently by time, loath
to touch it with too heavy a hand—that holy sprinkling over
his furrowed temples of the silver-soft and the snow-white
hair—these are the gifts of gracious nature all, and nature
will not reclaim them but in the tomb. That is Gabriel
Mason, the drunkard ! And in an hour you may, if your
eyes can bear the sight, see and hear him staggering up and
down the village, cursing, swearing, Preaching, praying—
stoned by blackguard boys and girls, who hound all the dogs
and curs at his heels, till, taking refuge in the smithy or the
pot-house, he becomes the sport of grown clowns, and after
much idiot laughter, ruefully mingled with sighs, and groans,
and tears, he is suffered to mount upon a table, and urged
perhaps by reckless folly to give out a text from the Bible,
which is nearly engraven on his memory—so much and so
many other things effaced for ever—and there, like a wild
itinerant, he stammers forth unintentional blasphemy, till
the instigated . liquor he has been allowed or to swallow,
smites him suddenly senseless, and, falling down, he is hud-
dled off into a corner of some lumber room, and left to sleep •
better far for such a wretch were it to death."—.Recreation;
of Christopher North.

OFFICIAL RETURNS RELATIVE TO TEA.-By the follow-
ing account of the import and export of tea, made up to the
sth of May last, it appears that there was duty paid on
8,244,326 lbs. of tea, in the year ending the sth May, 1842,
against 8,211,446 lbs. in 1841, for the port of London ;
L 156,956 lbs. in 1842, against 1,143,528 lbs. in 1841, for the
port of Liverpool; 225,639 lbs. in 1842, against 258,373 lbs.
in 1841, for the port of Bristol ; 30,897 lbs. in 1842, against
43,444 lbs. in 1841, for the port of Hull ; 343,942 lbs. in
1842 against 295,192 lbs. for Leith; 417,533 lbs. in 1842,
against 410,846 lbs. in 1841, for Glasgow ; 157,306 lbs. in
1842, against 146,449 lbs. in 1841, for all other Scotch ports ;
917,012 lbs. in 1842, against 799,985 lbs. in 1841, for Dublin ;
282,960 lbs. in 1842, against 274,791 tbs. in 1841, for Belfast ;
123,669 lbs. in 1842, against 121,997 lbs. in 1841, for Cork ;
and 259,572 lbs. in 1842, against 230,375 lbs. in 1841, for all
other Irish ports; making a total consumption of 12,159,792
lbs. of tea on which duty was paid for the United Kingdom
in 1842, against a total of 11,936,396 lbs. for the year 1841,
' giving an increase in 1842 over 1841 of 223,396 lbs. In the
year ending May 5, 1842, there was exported from London
1,417,688 lbs. against 1,873,791 lbs. in 1841. Exported
from London for stores 132,044 lbs. against 82,328 lbs. in
1941 ; and exported from Liverpool, 574,583 lbs. in 1842,
against 273,944 lbs. in 1841 ; making a grand total of
14,284,105 lbs. consumed and exported in 1842, against
14,166,159 lbs. in 1841. In 1842 there was sent coastwise in
bond, from London to English ports, 888,382 lbs., and in
1841, 922,807 lbs.; to Ireland, 916,316 lbs. in 1842, and
967,036 lbs. in 1841; to Scotland, 363,315 lbs. in 1842, and
318,622 lbs. in 1841; making a total from London, in 1842,
of 2,168,013 lbs. against 2,208,465 lbs. in 1841; from Liver-
pool, 702,475 lbs. in 1842 against 443,100 lbs. in 1841; and
from Bristol, 860,570 lbs. in 1842 against 32,645 lbs. in 1841.
In 1842 there was received coastwise into London, 767,690
lbs. against 26,761 lbs. in 1841 ; into Liverpool, 361,653 lbs.
against 592,583 lbs. in 1841 ; and into Bristol, 75,367 lbs. in
1842 against 38,827 lbs. in 1841. There were imported into
London in 1842, 131,694 chests, 11,807 boxes, and 5,379
packages, against 48,461 chests, 15,123 boxes, and 3,315
packets, in 18.41; into Liverpool, in 1842, 28,670 chests,
2,890 boxes, and 6,653 packets against 7,527 chests, 316
boxes, and 14 packets, in 1841 ; and into Bristol, in 1842,
8,596 packets.