The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-02-08 00:00:00

THE CORN LAWS

Sir ROBERT PEEL will to-morrow evening detail the
intentions of Government with reference to this im-
portant question ; and, as most intense anxiety is
evinced to ascertain the fullest particulars of the
measure which the right honourable baronet will bring
forward, we purpose giving, in the STANDARD of
Friday next, a full report of the speeches in the
debate.

"Ebt Eibtrpool Atanbart.

TUESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 8, 1842

On this day, for the first time within our memory,
a Conservative member will be elected for the Borough
of Liverpool—without opposition Can there, we ask,
be any more triumphant proof of the ascendancy
amongst us of constitutional and loyal principles, and
the hopeless prostration of Whig-Radicalism than this
one fact presents ? Surely there cannot.

Parliament has at length assembled ; the Royal
Speech has been spoken ; and the Conservative Go-
vernment of Sir Robert Peel has addressed itself in
earnest to the task of providing a remedy for the so-
cial, commercial, and financial disorganization into
which ten years of Whig legislation have plunged this
great community. By this time the nature of the po-
licy of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues, as deve-
loped in the speech which they have placed in the
mouth of her Majesty and in the debate upon the ad-
dress, is before the country; and meagre with respect
to detail as is the information which is thus conveyed,
devoid of all flattering promise, backed by no rhetori-
cal flourish, and without those specious generalities
upon which enthusiasm and unstable hopes are too of-
ten founded, we venture to say that this mere indica-
tion has created in the public mind a greater degree of
sober confidence than was ever felt by any people in
the honesty and ability of any administration. The
suffering of every class—and how numerous are they ?
feel now the gratifying assurance that, for the first time
since the passing of the reform bill, the country is
about to be governed !
We shall not attempt to speculate upon the details
of the measures which have been, thus far, announced
by Sir Robert Peel as ready to be brought before Par-
liament. We take the opportunity, however, of ,stat-
ing, briefly, what are their subjects. On Friday even-
ing Lord Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colo-
nial Department, moved for leave to bring in a bill "to
regulate the carriage of passengers by merchant ves-
sels ;" on the same night the same noble lord moved
for leave to bring in a bill "regulating the survey and
sale of land belonging to the Crown in the Australian
colonies and New Zealand." The object of both these
measures is to protect emigrants from Great Britain
from the frauds and cruelty which are perpetrated upon
them under the present ill-regulated , system; and the
views laid before "the house by the noble lord with re-
spect to their principle were received with very general
satisfaction. TO-night Lord Stanley will move for
leave to introduce a bill to make provision for the sa-
laries of bishops in Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the Lee-
ward Isles, and to define more strictly their several
dioceses. On the same evening the Vice-President of
the Board of Trade will move for leave to bring in a
bill " to amend and consolidate the laws relating to
the trade of the British possessions in the colonies, and
also to make certain alterations in the duties at present
chargeable on imports from thence." He will move
also for leave to introduce a measure for the better re-
gulation of railways. To-morrow Sir Robert Peel will
open the momentous question of the CORN LAWS,
with a view to its settlement. On the 15th instant the
Chancellor of the Exchequer will call the attention of
the house to the subject of the late frauds connected
with the issue of Exchequer bills; and on the 17th
Lord Granville Somerset will move for leave to bring
in a bill for the better regulation of lunatic asylums.
Upon all these subjects—and how important many
of them are we need not say—Sir Robert and his col-

leagues are prepared with well-digested, and detailed
measures, which have received the sanction of a una-
nimous cabinet. The country has now the satisfaction
of knowing that the period which has elapsed since the
close of the last session, and which the Whig Radical
party would have had spent in useless and exciting de-
clamation—in wailing over misery instead of devising
measures for its relief—has been employed by the pre-
sent administration in a careful and searching investi-
gation of the sources and nature of the evils which
afflict the country, and in the preparation of safe, de-
tailed, and, we trust, efficacious remedies.

In addition, however, to these practical measures,
we have the assurance given us in the speech from the
Throne and, in the course of the debate upon the ad-
dress, by Sir Robert Peel himself, that ministers are
prepared with a financial measure to equalize the in-
come and the expenditure of the country; that our
present commercial tariff is about to undergo a tho-
rough revision; that extensive measures of legal re-
form have been matured, and will be brought forward
at an early date ;—in fine, that the age of quackery in
legislation has gone by; that the Parliament of the
united kingdom is assembled to do, and not merely to
talk; and that we have now at length, what for ten
years we hate not had—A GOVERNMENT !

The pressing necessity which has long existed for the
adoption of vigorous and stringent measures, to regu-
late the system upon which emigration from Great Bri-
tain to her distant colonies has been of late conducted,
will readily be acknowledged ; and by none more readily
than by those who have been accustomed to watch its
operation in our own port. We believe that, upon the
average, fully one-half, or even more, of the 100,000

)tea who yearly emigrate (rum their fatherland to

seek, in the wildw of Canada, in the United Stat

in Australia, that peace and comfort which Great Bri•
Lain has ceased to afford them, are shipped from Liver-
pool; and it has often shocked us to witness the state
of wretchedness and unprotected destitution in which
they leave our shores,, and to contemplate the disap-
pointment and misery which await them upon their ar-
rival, if they ever reach it, in the land of their destina-
tion, which hope or interested villany have painted in
such flattering colours.
From the very hour that these poor creatures leave
their cherished home,—amongst the bogs or the moun-
tains of Ireland, in the green vallies of England, or
amid the densely thronged population of our manu-
facturing towns and villages—the feet of the spoiler
pursue them to the hour of their embarkation, to
snatch from them, shilling by shilling, the wretched
pittance, the produce of the sale of their little farm-
stead or fireside, upon which they rely to bear them to
the unknown land which they seek. Fraud surrounds
them on every side. The wily " crimp" dogs them
at every step. The specious " agent " pours his flat-
tering tale into ears ignorant of his practices—holds up
a glittering picture to eyes which cannot see the empti-
ness which is beyond it—and, in nine cases out of ten,
the wretched victim never learns that he has been
duped and plundered until he is thrown penniless and
helpless upon a foreign shore ;—unless, indeed, which
. is no rare occurrence, he is awakened from his delu-
sion by the discomforts which he experiences, or by
the exhaustion of his slender stock of provisions du,
ring his long and tedious passage.
To provide a remedy for this state of things, which
we need not more particularly describe, and to afford
an effectual protection to the poor emigrant from the
villany of the land-sharks by whom he is surrounded,
is the object of the measures which the Colonial Se-
cretary brought before the House of Commons on
Friday. Upon the score of humanity, alone, those
measures are urgently called for; and we trust that no
fear of making them too stringent will interfere to pre-
vent the legislature from making them effectual to re-
pres the evil against which they are directed. The
appointment of a government inspector of emigration
in the various ports, by the act of 1833, of which Lord
Stanley himself was the author, has to some extent
checked the malpractices previously existing. Fraud
and dishonesty, however, though cloaked more sedu-
lously, are still rife throughout the system; and his
lordship, we are satisfied, will not stop short until it is
thoroughly reformed.
Of a similar nature, and with the same object in
view, is the measure introduced by his lordship for the
survey and sale of lands belonging to the Crown, in
Australia and New Zealand. If it is desirable that
persons about to emigrate should be placed out of the
power of deceit and imposition, before embarking from
this country, it is equally desirable that they should not
be misled with respect to the qualities, the location,
and the cost of the land which they set out to colo-
nise. Under a just and wise system of management,
Great Britain holds in her colonial possessions the
means of settling annually, in comfort and prosperity,
countless thousands of her surplus population, of em-
ploying to advantage her surplus industry and capi-
tal, and of founding vast markets for the employment
of her suffering people at home. In those particular
colonies to which the present measure of Lord Stanley
is directed, we possess already the nucleus of a vast
amount of future benefit to the commerce and industry
of Great Britain. From New South Wales alone—we
quote his lordship's figures—the exports in 1835
amounted to £682,000; in 1840 they had increased to
£1,251,000. The imports of the same colony, two-
thirds of which were of British ?manufacture, were, in
1835, £727,000; in 1840 they had increased to
£2,606,000! In 1830 New South Wales exported to
this country, of wool alone, 900,000 lbs ; in 1836 the
export of the same article had risen to 3,611,000 lbs.;
and in 1840 it amounted to 7,660,960 lbs. ! The im-
portance to Great Britain of possessions thus growing
in productive and consuming power, even under the
disadvantages of a vicious administration of their re-
sources, which has deterred rather than encouraged
the transport of additional capital and industry from
this country for their developement, must he suffici-
ently obvious ; and it is therefore with pleasure that
we see a statesman, such as Lord Stanley, directing the
energies of his powerful mind to the task of removing
the obstacles which intervene to shut us Out from the
full benefits which possessions so valuable are calcu-
lated, in due time, to confer upon our country,
Such measures, effectual and practical in their cha-
racter we look for at the hands of Lord Stanley. We
look for the developement of the colonial resources of
the empire, than which, we have ever maintained in
the columns of this journal, no more efficacious and
permanent remedy exists for the state of disorganiza-
tion and suffering in which Great Britain is unhappily
plunged. In her colonies, greater in extent and in popu-
lation—greater in their fertility too—than those of all
the world besides, this country surely possesses " ample
verge and scope enough" for the employment of her
redundant population—for the exercise of all her in-
dustry and energy, vast though they are ; and we ask
only that the efforts of our government should be di-
rected to promote the growth, in prosperity and
strength, of those noble possessions ; that the foster-
ing hand and the watchful eye of the legislature should
be extended over them; that the fertilizing stream of
industry and capital should be permitted to flow to-
wards them, and be protected and guarded in its flow;
and, if such things be, we fear not for the prosperity
and the happiness of " Old England"—the centre and
the source of their strength—the mighty heart, from
which emanates the vivifying blood which is destined
ultimately to infuse life, health, and the blessings of
civilization into a yet unpeopled world.

At a late hour last night that unhappy Radical, Mr.
William Rathbone, in the name cf the Reform Asso-
ciation, placarded the walls of the borough with a state-
ment of their reasons for not venturing to contest the
representation at the present election. That pure bod)
having, in 1830, by their own confession, bribed hea-
vily the poor freemen of this town, and having expended
some thousands in the vain attempt to foist a repre-
sentative of their own pure principles upon the borough
last year, have at length been seized with a holy horror
of the evils of bribery, and are unwilling, by an oppo-
sition to Sir Howard Douglas, " to gratify the venal
constittency of the Borough of Liverpool, by the ex-
penditure of money, which must be the result."
Pure souls ! how we pity the unhappy state of mind
from which has emanated this atrabilious effusion !
Radicalism could not for once lie down quietly, and
allow the ascendant principle of loyalty to assert its
supremacy in the borough, without this sneaking at-
tempt to spit its venom upon those whose only crime
it is that they are disgusted with its corruption, and
will not be seduced to listen to its hollow pretensions.
The loyal freemen of Liverpool, against whom, in espe-
cial, the fierce hate of Liberalism is directed, . can well
afford to despise its libels upon their character, and to
compassionate the pitiable condition of the opponent
which can descend to assail them with these handfuls
of the mud into which they are fallen. Poor Radica-
lism !