The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-04-19 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 19, 1842

In an article in his last publication, entitled " Dear
Food and Low Wages," the Manchester Guardian has
taken upon himself to read us a lecture with respect
to the tone of our remarks on Friday, upon the sub-
ject of the recent reduction of wages by the league
millocracy. Ihe remarks in question, our contempo-
rary designates as " one of those scurrilous and offen-
sive articles which are the disgrace of the Tory press
of the present day." " The statements made or im-
plied" by us " that the reductions of wages taking
place" in the manufacturing districts " are consequent
upon or have any connection with the tariff proposed
by Sir Robert Peel," or are confined to the " league
millocracy," are, in the gentlemanly language of the
Guardian, "gross and impudent falsehoods "; and
our polite contemporary only notices them in order
"to let the manufacturers know with what relentless
hate they are pursued by the low and bitter dregs of
the Tory party "—ourselves, of course, included—and
how infinitely thankful they ought to be for the thick-
and-thin advocacy which he is ever ready to afford
them.

We shall certainly not he driven from the pursuit of
truth or from the expression of our honest convictions
by the hypercritical sensitiveness of the Manchester
Guardian. We care little for his strictures upon our
manner or our language, which we are in the habit of
adapting as closely as we can to the description of sub-
ject which we have in hand. Upon the occasion which
has moved our contemporary's spleen, we felt our-
selves called upon to disabuse the minds of our read-
ers, with respect to the reality of those professions of
sympathising regard for the welfare of the working
classes, which have been vaunted so loudly by the agi
tators of the anti-corn-law party. The cry of " cheap
bread," accompanied as it has been with the attempt to
impress upon the world that its benefits were to be un-
attended by a reduction in the price of labour, we de-
signated as a fraud upon the working man. We were
prepared to prove that it is, on the part of the mill-
owner and manufacturer, all this and more; and, how-
ever much it may offend the sensitive ears of our po-
lite contemporary, we can see no reason why we should
adopt any mincing, honied style of condemnation, when
speaking of a party whose agitators and itinerant
spouters, and whose press, have certainly not been so
very select in their choice of terms, when speaking of
their political opponents, as to deserve any great mea-
sure of forbearance at their or our hands.

Passing over, however, this as a mere question of
taste or propriety, let us see whether we are, or are
not, warranted in maintaining that the agitation of the
Anti-Corn-Law League, for a reduction in the price of
food, was undertaken with a perfect understanding that
with such reduction must come a corresponding reduc-
tion in the price of labour. We restrict ourselves for
the present to the manufacturing districts. We were dis-
tinctly told, indeed, in the House of Commons, by Mr.
Milner Gibson, that the millowners and manufacturers
of Manchester "contemplated no saving of wages as the
result of, or as attendant upon, the repeal of the exist-
ing protection upon provisions." Mr. John Brooks
took upon himself to rebuke the Rev. Hugh M‘Neile
for having maintained that the contrary was the fact :
that the manufacturing millocracy did contemplate a
reduction of wages. We have ever maintained that
such was their expectation ; and we think it will not
be denied that if, with this result of a free trade in
corn in their view, the agitators of the league held out
to their working population that the cheap loaf for
which they clamoured was for the benefit of that work-
ing population and not for their own, they were guilty
of a manifest fraud; and the cry of "cheap bread for
the working man" was "a juggle—a lying pretence—
a disgraceful and hypocritical swindle " !
We will not for the present, although we are quite
prepared to deal with the fallacy which it contains, be
led aside by the theory of the Guardian, that the wages
of the labourer invariably decline as the price of food
advances. The question before us is simply,—did the
manufacturer contemplate a contrary result ? Did he
contemplate a reduction of wages as the inseparable
consequence of a reduction in the cost of subsistence ?
The constant outcry of the agitators of the league has
been that we could not produce so cheap as the foreign
manufacturer. We could not compete with the untaxed
labour of other countries. Now what is the plain,
common-sense meaning of this? Why, that we can-
not get our goods manufactured for the amount of
wages which the foreign manufacturer pays. An Eng-
lish spinner, weaver, or calico-printer cannot live on
the same wages which sustain the foreigner of ithe same
class. The human machine requires, in all countries,
a certain quantity of food, as the iron machine requires
grease or oil. The manufacturer must supply ithat food
or that oil ; and the British manufacturer urges that
he cannot compete with the foreigner unless he can