The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-04-05 00:00:00

THE (WERt,A,NO-MA-11. FROM CHINA

The steamer with the Indian Mail arrived at Marseilles
on the 31st ult. The telegraphic despatch was received
in Paris on Saturday, but it does not appear to contain
any other information than the mere fact of the arrival
of the steamer. The letters and papers were expected
in London yesterday morning, and as we shall in all
probability receive the Bombay Times, and our usual
communications from the East at an early hour, we
shall give the fullest details of the important in-
telligence at the soonest possible period in a second
edition.

nt tibtrpool &tanbartr.

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 5, 1842

Our contemporary the Journal has sonic remarks
upon a manifesto which has just been issued to the elec-
tors of the united kingdom by the council of the Anti-
Corn Law League, in one portion of which, at least, we,
cordially coincide. Amongst other insolencies, this
patriotic body, which " claims to he heard as the ac-
credited representative of all the great trading and ma-
nufacturing interests of the kingdom," (?) maintains
that ." a small minority of earnest men in the House
of Commons can preVent the imposition of new taxes,
however powerless they may' be, in the face of a mo-
nopolist majority, to remove existing abuses;" and
urges upon the various constituencies throughout the
country to instruct their representatives to discharge,
this " patriotic duty," (!) or, in other words, to ob-
struct, by every factious manoeuvre which the forms of
the House of Commons allow, and in defiance of the
majority of the representatives of the national will, the
progress of public business, unless their own partim-
lar nostrums be adopted by government. With re-
spect to this advice, put forward by the league, we per-
fectly agree with our contemporary, that it is " irra-
tional and contemptible ;" and we would even gcp a
little further, and designate it as disgustingly factiaris
and incorrigibly wicked."
With respect to the policy of the income tax, how-
-1 ever, our contemporary expresses an opinion of perfect
accordance with that of the league; and it is to this
portion of his remarks that we wish to direct the atten-
tion of our readers :

We fully agree," observes the Journal, with the league
in thinking everything bad of the income tax. It is impos-
sible to speak worse of it ttan it deserves. Tt is the very
wickedest and most vexatious of taxes which the ingenuity
of man ever conceived. Yet in its very badness lies our
consolation. We ure only astonished at the folly which pro-
poses it. It is the veryilefig-"that was wanted to bring all
the inhabitants of the towns, and especially those of the
metropolis, to a full sense of the nature of Toryism, of its
eternal alliance with oppressioe, and of their duty to them-
selves and their country, which so many of them so shame-
fully forgot at the last election."
We are afraid that our contemporary is a little out
in his calculations, with respect to the tendency of the
proposed tax upon income to effect the restoration of
the defeated and despised Whig faction to the confi-
dence of the people of Great Britain. The Journal
urges that such a tax is " the very thing which is
wanted to bring all the inhabitants of the towns to a
full sense of the nature of Toryism," and, at the same
time, of course, to a proper appreciation of the ex-
ceeding “
wisdom and purity Whig-Radicalism ; but
we look around us in vain for any manifestation of
such a feeling. We hear ofnq great convulsions in
dem
society, no overpowering onstrations of hostility
uiealiures, and of returning
towards the government
affection towards Whig rule. • " All the inhabitants of
the towns" have maintainer-thus far, a most provok-
ing quiescence ; and, although• a few small people have
exhibited a little restiveness. Awn the subject of the
proposed tariff—although tio boot and shoemakers
have waxed hot upon the subject of their own particu-
lar trade, the building-club people worked themselves
into an awful perspiration, the timber trade exhibited
symptoms of having played a wrong card, and several
other branches of industry proPhesied their own speedy
extinction,—the country itx- bib it s, upon the whole, a
surprising and gratifying dasire to submit to any tem-
porary inconveniences rendered necessary for the car-
rying out entire of the policy of the government.

ri Olr itobei.t

i~ ~►`~;+?~i~it~+l`; {

thou ;h iicarpOy for trip Yegsons urged by our contetn,
porary; for nothing, we Are satisfied, could have been
devised which is calculated more effectually to impress
upon the minds of the liberal middle classes—the
shopocracy of the large towns—the tendency of Whig
rule, than a direct appeal to their pockets for the cost
of that expensive plaything ; and !zinc illy lacliryn2 !
Raise money by taxes upon consumption; raise it in-
directly to as great an amount as you please, and let
Whiggery fatten upon the vitals of the community,
squander the resources, peril the safety, and sacrifice
the honour of the country ; but it is wicked—'"

•" very

wicked" and very " vexatious"—to compel the pure
and patriotic gentlemen, for whose exclusive amuse-
ment and profit the play has been enacted, to contri-
bute directly to the expenses, when they could so easily
be extracted, without a disclosure of their amount,
from the pockets of the hardworking and industrious,
who have no participation in the pleasure or the profit
of the scene. An income tax is very wicked, not,
however, however, because it will "bring all the inha-
bitants of the towns to a full sense of the nature of
Toryism," but because it will drive these sensible and
sensitive people to an examination of the exact cost to
the community and to the individuals of which it is
composed, at which a dishonest and imbecile Whig
faction may be permitted to riot in place and pay, and
exhaust alike the patience and the resources of an
abused country.

It is not a little instructive to watch the proceedings
of the Manchester free-trade cottonocracy at the pre-
sent moment. But a few months ago, in their ardent
appeals to the working classes, these gentlemen were
loud in their protestations that the reductions which
they contemplated in the price of food were not sought
for to enable them to lower wages to a corresponding
extent, and that they would not he attended with that
result. "The price of fond has no connexion with the
price of labour" was reiterated, again and again, by the
organs of the league, in parliament and throughout the
country. "We shall give to the working man the full
benefit of the cheap loaf," was their constant rejoinder
to those who, acquainted with their selfish and grasp-
ing avarice, maintained that the benefit in question
would be transferred at once into the breeches pockets
of the millowners. And what do we see going on
around us now in the cotton manufacturing districts ?
Let us examine.

A bill is before the House of Commons which, al-
though not that "total and immediate repeal of the
corn laws," which has been the object of the frantic
quest of the leaguers, it is acknowledged, will be at-
tended by a considerable reduction in the price of
bread. A new commercial tariff has also been intro-
duced, which will lower the cost of beef, mutton, ba-
con, timber, coffee, and a number of other necessaries
of life to the working classes. And what is the course
which the free-trade millocracy are pursuing with re•
spect to these measures and to the wages of their ope-
ratives ? Are they endeavouring to secure to the
working classes the benefits which they hold out ? No.
They are, on the contrary, endeavouring, by every fac-
tious opposition, to retard the passing of these mea-
sures and to prolong the existing commercial disorga-
nization, whilst, in the mean time, they are eagerly and
actively engaged in an effort to appropriate to them-
selves the full measure of benefit which ought to ac-
crue, from them, to the depressed and wretched labour-
ers whom they employ.
A Manchester contemporary (the Courier) of last
week informs us that "the reduction in wages proceeds
at a humming rate, and must be highly gratifying to
the liberal heart of every corn-law repealer. Indeed it
should appear we shall very soon rival our continental
neighbours in the matter of lowness of wages. We

have heard of large spinning and manufacturing con-
cerns, here and elsewhere, in which, dining the last
fortnight or so, a saving of nearly 25 per cent. has
been effected in the cost of production."
A reduction of 25 per cent. in the wages of the fac-
tory operative and the starving hand-loom weaver ! We
knew that it would do so. We told the wretched
dupes, who were clamouring for cheap bread and cheap
beef, that not a penny of the saving would be permit-
ted to come into their pockets; and not a penny will
they receive•from these measures! The millowner has
the working classes at this moment completely at his
mercy. The limit between subsistence and starvation,
and below which the working man cannot be depressed
without becoming dangerous, is the present regulator
of manufacturing wages. Reduce that limit by de-
creasing the cost of food, and the working man must
descend too, and occupy that debateable ground be-
tween mere existence and famine, in which, by a few
days' or weeks' privation, he may be reduced into the
condition of an abject and dispirited slave, an incendi-
ary or a frantic rebel.
It will be said, we know, by the millowner—" We
have no other resource except a reduction of wages at
the present moment. We are not resorting to that
step on account of
_the reduction by Sir Robert Peel's
tariff in the price of food, but on account of the depre-
ciation in the price of our goods and of the embrrassed
state of commerce." The world, however, knows you
better, gentlemen, than to credit your asseverations.
And when your organs in the House of Commons—
the Cobdens, Gibsons, and Bowrings of your tribe—
get up, night after night, to retard, by every factious
motion within their reach, the progress of the govern-
ment measures, we trust that some public-spirited
member will rise and tell them that these dishonest and
disgraceful proceedings are only resorted to in order to
retard the returning prosperity of the country, and to
give a colour to the efforts of the millocracy to grind
down the working man and to divert from his expect-
ant lips the good which a wise and beneficent govern-
ment offers to his acceptance.

In the notice paper of the council we perceive that
on 'Wednesday next Mr. Alderman Evans will move
" that the inspectors, appointed by the Council of
Education acting under government authority, be in-
vited, at their own convenience, to inspect the Schools
of the Corporation," Why, what Jesuit proceeding is
this, Mr. Alderman ? 'What earthly business has " the
Council of Education, acting under government autho-
rity," with the schools supported by the Corporation
of Liverpool ? None ! And at this moment, notwith-
standing the lofty opinion which we entertain of the
plausibility and cunning which are the distinguishing
characteristics of Mr. Alderman Evans, we have not
the most remote expectation that he can establish any
tenable ground for an interference so impertinent and
uncalled for. •

If we remember right it was but a few months ago
-sinee-this -same enlightened gentleman was. Ipad in his
complaints, that to municipal constituencies, such as
ours, much larger powers of legislation than they at
present possess were not committed. " Why trouble
the state legplature"—was the
.exclamation of the
Alderman-14 with matters upon which the locallegis-
latures are equally, or even better calculated to de-
cide ?" And, in the abstract. there was much reason
in the question. If municipal bodies could be per-
suaded to lay aside their petty personal squabbles—to
legislate for the welfare of the population around them,
and not for the indulgence of party spleen;—we might
admit that they were perfectly fitted to deal with ques-
tions far more important than those which at present
belong to them. But though we cannot admit that
greater powers than they already possess may be safely
entrusted to local bodies, constituted like our own, we
were scarcely prepared to find Mr. Alderman Evans—
the advocate of local legislation—conceding, as by this
motion he does concede, that the collective wisdom of
the borough of Liverpool is unequal to the management
of a charity school ! Hide your diminished heads,
aldermen and councilis of Liverpool—fellow-towns-
men of a Ewart and a Thornely—of men who would
experience no difficUlties, which their consummate
modesty would not enable them to overcome, in un-
dertaking the professorships of poetry, rhetoric, moral
philosophy, or political economy at Oxford, Cam-
bridge, Glasgow, or the modern Athens itself—hide
your diminished heads, for you are unfit—(Evans
seipse testant&—to direct even the initiation of little
boys and girls into the mysteries of A. B. C., the Horn
Book, the Multiplication Table, and the Rule of
Three ! You are incapable of directing the charity
schools of the corporation, without the distinguished
supervision of Doctor J. P. Kay, and the paid com-
missioners of the Council of Education !