The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-07-05 00:00:00

MR. I3RINDLEY'S REPLY.

Mr. RUMBALL'S Challenge having been referred by me to
a Committee of Professional Gentlemen, who have consented
to act on my behalf, and it being considered that that Chal-
lenge is couched in such terms as to warrant the conclusion
that a fair and candid inquiry is contemplated, I HEREBY
ACCEPT IT, on such conditions as may be hereafter mu-
tually agreed upon.
(Signed) JOHN BRINDLEY.
Chester, June 29, 1842.

In accordance with the above recited Challenge and its
acceptance, it is hereby announced that
THE PUBLIC DISCUSSION ON PHRENOLOGY

WILL BE CONTINUED BETWEEN
MESSRS. RUMBALL. AND BRINDLEY,

AT THE PORTICO, NEWINGTON,

ON THE EVENINGS OF
TO-MORROW, (Wednesday,) the 6th, FRIDAY, the Bth,
MONDAY, the Ilth, and WEDNESDAY, the 13th instant,
commencing each Evening punctually at Seven o'clock.
Admission to the Body of the Room, One Shilling ; to
the Gallery, Sixpence ; Reserved Seats on the Platform, by
Ticket only, Two Shillings each ; to be bad at the News-
paper Offices.

M•••••M.••••••IM

Elit iLibrrpool tanDatt.

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 5, 1842

If there is one public question more completely es-
tablished than another, it is the almost universal pre?
valence of severe commercial distress, and the cause,
as well, from which it has originated. Whatever may
be the differences amongst us, with respect to the pro-
per remedies to be applied,—although one may pre-
scribe a free trade in corn, another a free trade in su-
gar, another an action upon the currency of the coun-
try, and another extensive emigration,—the fact that
suffering is rife throughout the land is admitted by all ;
and there is not one man in a hundred competent to
form an opinion upon the subject who is not, in his
own secret soul, ready to admit that at the root of all
this suffering is the late over-production of manufac-
tured commodities, the undue stimulus afforded to
commercial operations of every description by false
credits, the stoppage of foreign markets, and the reck-
less competition which these causes combined have in-
troduced into every branch of trade.
Yet, with these facts before us, we have a member
of the House of Commons deliberately proposing, and
a large minority of that house supporting him in the
proposition, that her Majesty be requested not to sanc-
tion an adjournment of the legislature until an inquiry,
conducted by the House of Commons, shall have been
instituted into the existence of distress, its cause, and
the remedy to be applied, and until that house " shall
have been assured by her ministers that effectual
means are secured to provide sustenance for the un-
employed and their destitute families, until their suffer-
ings shall be terminated by a demand for their industry
and wages for thetr labour ! "—an inquiry, in fact,
which will enable every demagogue in that house, every
trader in agitation, to rake up and foist upon the world
his exaggerated statements of distress, the reality of
which is already amply provocative of sympathy and
alarm, and every philosopher and state doctor to pro-
pound his particular nostrum for its alleviation or
cure!

Surely, a madder or a more mischievous course
could scarcely be adopted than this, which was pro-
posed on Friday night by Mr. Wallace, the member
for the borough of Greenock. If the commerce of
the empire is to continue in its present ruinous state;
if the revival of confidence amongst mercantile men is
to be retarded; if the salutary operations of the mea-
sures already passed to promote industrial prosperity
is to be impeded ; if the patience, under suffering, of
the industrious classes of our population is to be in-
terrupted ; if the hopes of the well-disposed are to be
blasted, and the bad passions of the evil-disposed are
to be stimulated to outrage and crime ;—what instru-
ment so powerful to effect these ends as an agitation
carried on within the walls of the House of Commons,
which may excite expectations, but cannot, by any pos-
sibility, conduce to any useful or definite result ! There
can be none ! Unmitigated evil,—disappointment and
exasperation,--must inevitably be the result, and the
only one, produced by such an inquiry.
And yet, although brought forward at a moment
when pressing public business cats for the action of
parliament, and necessarily, if not intentionally inter-
rupting that business, we cannot regret that the pro-
position has been mooted. Absurd as it is in itself,
we are satisfied that, from the discussion upon it, im-
portant truths which it behoves the country seriously
to weigh, will be elicited, and have already been elicit-
ed, by its discussion. The speech of Sir Robert Peel
on Friday night will be read with satisfaction by every
dispassionate man, and the convincing statements with
which it abounds will afford ample arguments to en-
able Conservatives to tear into very tatters the flimsy
sophistries by which they are assailed ; but the most
striking remarks during the debate, and to which we
beg here the particular attention of our readers, were
those which fell from Mr. D'lsraeli, with respect to
the operation, in producing commercial difficulties, of
the foreign policy of the late administration.
For years past it is well known that a commercial
treaty with France has been one of the favourite hob-
bies of the government of Lord Melbourne. To pro-
mote the attainment of this object the illustrious Dr.
Bowring voyaged, wrote lengthy reports, and received
his pay; to promote this object Lord Palmerston proto-
coiled and diplomatized. By its operation the vast
markets of France were to be thrown open to the cut-
lery of Sheffield, to the hardwares of Birmingham and
Wolverhampton, to the linens of England, Scotland,
Ireland, to the woollen cloths of Leeds, and to the
cottons and yarns of Manchester. The treaty, in
question, was all but signed; the markets, in question,
were within the very grasp of our manufacturers.
What, then, prevented the realization of the great be-
nefits thus held out to our hope ? The intermeddling
of Lord Palmerston with the affairs of the Mediterra-
nean powers ! By the treaty, for settling the affairs of
Syria, which placed the French government for a time
in a state of isolement, the vanity of that people and
their growing attachment to amicable relations with
Great Britain were dealt a blow which years will not
efface from memory ; and to the estrangement, thus
produced, we owe not only the loss of the particular
good held out to us as the result of tedious and ex-
pensive diplomacy, but those measures of absolute ex-
clusion from her markets with which France is at the

present moment visiting our commerce.
To the result of the same policy we owe the deterio-
ration of our commerce with Syria and Egypt, both of
them important inlets for our manufactures to the

markets of Asia. By the same mischievous policy o
the For2ign-office, the vast markets of China have for
three years past been closed to us, whilst the reckless
expenditure of onr Indian Government, which has

prostrated the financial strength of that great conti-
nent and scattered throughout it distress and embar-

rassment, in order to carry out its mad projects beyond
the banks of the Indus, has ruined, for years to come,

our commerce with India herself. In every eastern
market, the goods of British manufacturers are abso-
lutely a drug—unsaleable even at prices below the

cost of their production at home; and this, not because
the necessities of the population of India no longer re-
quire them—not because that vast field for British
enterprise is permanently lost to us—but because the
exactions which have been rendered necessary by the
warlike and aggressive policy of the Foreign-office
have withdrawn from the people of British India the
means to consume, and plunged their industry into in-
extricable confusion and suffering.
And yet, these men, this party it is, whose foreign
policy has been thus disastrous to our commerce in
every quarter of the globe, which has had the insuf-
ferable assurance to turn round,—when they felt the
corning of that popular indignation which has hurled
them from office,—and point, as the cause of the distress
which covers the face of the country, to our agricul-
tural policy—to the corn laws ! We must shut our
eyes to the causes which have deprived thousands of
our manufacturing population of the means of earning
bread for their children ; which have spread bank-
ruptcy and insolvency amongst the trading classes;
which have dissipated capital like a morning mist, and
plunged merchants, millowners, bankers and shop-
keepers into one wide abyss of ruin ; and this in order
to enable baffled Whiggery to scramble out of the odium
and disgrace into which it has fallen, by the sacrifice of
the only interest in the empire which its mischievous
hand has not as yet been permitted to involve in the
distress which tracks the march of its legislation !
If the proposed inquiry into the condition of the
working and trading classes, and the causes which
have led to that condition, was at all likely to be con-
ducted in a spirit of earnestness after the truth, we
should willingly agree to the attempt being made,
because we are satisfied that nine.tenths of the distress
existing could be traced to the botching policy of
Whiggery at home, and its meddling and insolent in-
terference abroad. If we thought that the demand for
such an inquiry came from any large mass of the peo-
ple, we should certainly be disinclined to refuse that
demand, however unproductive of benefit we might
feel such inquiry to be. But when we know that the
object sought is only to get up a clamour upon the
corn laws—to enable Whiggery and Radicalism to hold
up their various nostrums to the public eye, and in-
terrupt, if they can, the return of the community to a
state of social and commercial tranquility—we are
heartily glad to think that, by the firmness of the
Conservative body in Parliament, they will be baffled
and deprived of their cherished purpose.

It was not our intention to have noticed a statement
which appeared lately in a local contemporary, respect-
ing the resignation of the Rev. C. F. Wilson, of St.
Thomas's Church, Toxteth-park, had it not been for
the number of communications on the subject with
which we have been favoured by correspondents justly
indignant at this attack upon Mr. Gladstone; and in
justice to them and to Mr. Gladstone, the extent of
whose endowment of this church is stated by our con-
temporary to have been " trifling," we have been in-
duced to seek information, and to lay the same before
our readers. On no other grounds should we be
tempted to reply to an article which we consider a con-
temptible libel.
The facts, then, we have ascertained to be these :
the endowment required by law, where the patronage
of a church is vested in the builder of it, is £1,000;
in the case of St. Thomas's, Mr. Gladstone endowed it
with £2,000. With respect to the pew rents, after
paying the necessary expenses of the establishment of
the Church, for Clerk, Sexton, Organist, &c., the sur-
plus is to be paid to the Minister as stipend, in addi-
tion to what he receives from the endowment, so that
not one farthing reverts to the Patron, nor does he re-
ceive any consideration whatever for his outlay in
building the Church and providing the endowment,
thus, in reality, making a free gift, to this extent, to
the town of Liverpool. During the six months Mr.
Wilson officiated, notwithstanding the extent and nu-
merous population of the district assigned to the
Church, only about one-eighth part of the pews were
taken, although the rates of rent were low indeed;
not half the sum necessary to pay the current charges
was received. Under these circumstances, Mr. Glad-

stone seeing no prospect of a congregation being
formed, or the good he contemplated being effected,
when Mr. Wilson tendered his resignation, postponed
for several months his acceptance of it, in the hope of
a further trial producing a more satisfactory result.
This however, unfortunately, had not the desired
effect. Mr. Gladstone provided 160 free sittings in
this Church for the poor and for seamen. We have
ventured to lay these particulars again before our
readers, and leave the public to judge of the conduct
and motives of the writer of the article in question.