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.

Ebe Ziforrpoot &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 8, 1849

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 tho 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 ia
the honesty and ability of any administration. The
suffering of every class—and how minierous 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 Cott); 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

persons who yearly emigrate from their fatherland to
seek, in the wilds of Canada, in the United States, or
in Australia, that peace and comfort which Great Bri-
tain 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