The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-03-04 00:00:00

alned that the utterer of such a piece of etopidity could

the commere

al philozophor of tiro Liverpool '1

An ad valorem duty of 2Q per cent is all" the duty

which the American tariff imposes upon foreign imports!
Ini pity we must endeavour to throw a little light upon
our benighted contemporary with respect to this matter.
At the present moment the duty upon plain cotton
goods, imposed by Mr. Clay's tariff act of 1833, is '
per cent. upOn an assumed value of 30 cents the sc
yard, which in practice is equal to about 40 per cent.,
allowing for the progressive deductions for which that
act provides. Upon the average of plain and printed
cottons, the average duty is probably 30 per cent.;
upon woollen goods the average duty, originally 50
per cent., is now reduced to 29; upon rod, sheet,
hoop, &c. iron, 47 9-10ths ; upon mixed manufactures
of cotton and silk, cotton and stuff, or cotton and
linen, the cotton duty-; upon wearing apparel, _
cent. ; and, by a more recent enactment, the lowest
ad-valorem duty has been raised to 20 per cent.
It is true that, on the 30th of June in the present
year, these duties (unless legislation upon the subject
should take place in the meantime) are to be reduced
to a uniform rate of 20 per cent. apparently ; but in
practice no such happy consummation for our com-
merce is anticipated. The mode of valuation for duty
after the 30th June, with the cash payment of du-
ties and other regulations, are fully expected to add
at least 10 or 15 per cent. to this nominal duty
of 20 per cent., giving still a protection to the Ameri-
can manufacturer, including freight and shipping
charges, of 40 to 50 per cent. as against the manufac-
turers of other countries.

'/9 per

We stated, in our last notice of the state of trade in
this district, that the Manchester market had displayed
some symptoms of amendment; and we added as an
" on dit," which we have since. the best authority for
believing to he a strict fact, that " many orders were
at that moment in the market, the holders. of which
only waited until agitation had subsided to operate
freely."

This passage the Mancheste)- Guardian—who, we
are happy to see, pays great attention to anything
which falls from us—has, in his last publication, orna-
mented with all the graces of italics and notes of ad-
miration. The conclusion, however, which he draws
from it is not quite so logical as he seems to think it.
" We cannot help expressing our admiration," writes
the Guardian, " for the philanthropy displayed by the
parties who hold orders, which at present, if we may
believe our Liverpool contemporary, they abstain from
executing, because, owing to the movements of the
League, the price of goods is too low !" With all due
deference to our sapient contemporary, our remarks
are not at all susceptible, except by a very uncandid
or ignorant reader, of being interpreted as they have
been by the Guardian. We believe that, above all
other things, a merchant dislikes to operate in an un-
steady market ; and it is not at all because prices are
at present " too low" in Manchester that the parties
to whom we alluded do not execute their orders, but
because, whilst the " Leaguers " continue their present
course of agitation, and our contemporary his present
croakings, there is no satisfactory assurance that they
will not be even lower !

Our contemporary may imagine that the world is
prepared to take its views of the state of affairs in
the Manchester market from his atrabiliouseffusions,
and that we have no means of acquiring information,
and no right to express an opinion upon the subject.
Upon this matter, however, we, and others as well, hold
a different opinion ; and we can assure him besides, that
he is quite in error if he supposes that he can be per-
mitted to blink the truth, to subserve the purposes of
the League agitation or his own interested journalism.
The public is pretty well acquainted with the capabili-
ties and the morale of the Manchester Guardian.