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

;e tine DIY the

chietinis poiitby

the Ptitcign,oltice, the vast markets of China have Mt'
three years prat 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 awl 6,6ibar-

rassment, in order to carry out its mad projects Beyond
the hanks of the Inthis, 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, nut 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 arid 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have withdrawn from the people of British India the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
coming 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 roust 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 fi e t 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 statemen t
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 farthindreverts 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. tinder 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.