The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-04-26 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

The STANDARD is forwarded to the The Advertiser Office
Stockport, every Tuesday.
The letters of " P." we will do our best to make room for,
but he would oblige us by keeping them as concise as pos-
sible.

EN) Eibtrpool Attan

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 26, 1842

There could be no better example of the difficulty
attendant upon any amendment of the tariff of a coun-
try, containing interests so varied as our own, than is
afforded by the course taken, with respect to the pro-
position of Sir Robert Peel, by the timber trade of Li-
verpool. Upon the first promulgation of the govern-
ment measures, an influential portion of our timber
merchants were up in arms to exclaim against it. We
were then told that the proposition to bring the altered
duties into immediate operation was fraught with cer-
tain ruin to the trade. A deputation proceeded to
London to urge their views upon the premier and his
colleagues; the doors of the Treasury and of the Board
of Trade were besieged with supplications ; and, as the
result, by the amended scheme, the period from which
the operation of the measure, so far as timber is con-
cerned, was to commence, has been postponed from the
sth April to the 10th October. By the proceedings of
a meeting held on Friday last, it will be seen, however,
that by another section of the trade—and, we believe,
the most important section—the postponement in ques-
tion is viewed as infinitely more ruinous than the car-
rying into immediate operation of the measure origin-
ally proposed. The government and parliament are
now urged, as they value the interests of the trade and
of the public, to rescind their changed determination
and to act upon their own original measure as the best
for all classes of the community !
How, we ask, is a minister to act in such a case ?
With what justice can he be blamed if, after having
bestowed the fullest consideration upon the details of a
measure—having weighed each conflicting interest,
calculated every circumstance, and formed, upon deli-
berate conviction and upon the best of information, an
impartial judgment—he refuses to be swayed by the
outcry of parties who imagined themselves to be ag-
grieved, or who, not being the majority of those inte-
rested, are, in reality, aggrieved ? The best course,
we maintain, is to abide by his original conviction, if
arrived at upon sound and well considered data; and
we are therefore satisfied that it would have been infi-
nitely better if the period of the coming into operation
of the altered duties upon timber had been adhered to
by Sir Robert Peel as it was fixed upon in his original
proposition.

We will not enlarge upon the motives of the party
by whose urgent representations to government the
adoption of the altered plan, which is now found so in-
jurious to the trade, has been procured. The facts are
tolerably notorious. A few influential firms through-
out the country had made a leap in the dark, and leapt
in the wrong direction ! The records of the custom-
houses in our principal ports would sufficiently show
how and when the grievances so loudly complained of,
and which have had so great an influence upon the de-
termination of ministers, arose; and we do think that
a reconsideration of all the circumstances and the re-
flection that the concession which has been made must
have the effect of completely paralyzing an important
branch of industry during the whole of the present
year, would fully warrant Sir Robert Peel in retracing
his steps and determining upon an adherence to the
details of his original measure. We are convinced,
moreover, that, in adopting this course, he would re-
ceive the thanks, at last, of the very parties upon whose
representations he has deviated from the course which
he had at first laid out as the most just and politic.
In expressing this opinion we are occupying no new
ground. From the first agitation of the question we
maintained that the then holders of Canadian timber
had nothing to fear from the immediate reduction of
the duty. The stocks at that time on hand had been
laid in at prices which bade defiance to all competition
from importers under the new tariff; and if, as is un-
doubtedly the case, the few holders of bonded stocks
were more favourably situated than the majority of the
trade—(and this was the pinching point !)—those gen-
tlemen who, acting upon the result of a speculative
impression, and hoping to improve their position, had,
within afew days of the introduction of the tariff', paid
the-existing duty, had surely no right to complain if
their neighbours, who trusted to chance merely, were
more fortunate than themselves ; and to secure these
gentlemen from the consequences of a step, taken to
advance their own interests alone, Sir Robert Peel was
not called upon to grant a concession which must throw
into difficulty and distress so large a number of enter-
prising merchants, tradesmen, and industrious ar-
tizans.

The London Times of Saturday contains the follow-
ing paragraph, which we recommend to the perusal of
those politicians who give faith to the amusing fiction
maintained by Lord John Russell and the opponents
of the proposed income tax, that Great Britain is at
present in a state of profound peace I

"MORE TROOPS FOR INDIA.—On Wednesday afternoon
the transport-ship Columbus, of 467 tons register, Captain
Short, chartered by the Hon. East India Company, on go-
vernment account, sailed from Gravesend for Bombay,
Madras, and Calcutta. She carries out 220 troops, to aid in
avenging the butcheries committed by the treacherous
Afghans. The Columbus, along with the transport-ships
York, Captain Legg, and Nith, Captain Shaw, also for
Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, left the Downs early yester-
day morning. The ftillowing ships are also engaged to con-
vey troops to the seat of war in the East, and all are expected
to sail in about ten days—viz., the Inglis, 400 troops ; Berk-
shire, 200 ; Rajasthan, 300 ; Margaret, 300 ; Henry, 180 ;
Ocean Queen, 230; Mermaid, 200; Volusia, I 60; Dauntless,
150 ; Princess Royal, 250 ; Ann, 250 ; Mellish, 190; Ma-
dras, 120; Princess Royal, 150; Frances Smith, 200;
Morley, 200; Repulse, 400; Mary, 250; Lord Lynedoch,
250 ; Boadicea, 160 ; Lady Feversham, 150 ; Charles Kerr,
200 ; Royal Consort, 170 ; Brooke, 230."
Five thousand five hundred and ten British soldiers
are here shown to be preparing for instant embarka-
tion. " Other transports " too, we are informed by
by the same journal, are " about to be chartered for
the conveyance of troops; and the greatest activity
prevails in getting them fitted out with the least
possible delay." Another five thousand men, we may
therefore conclude, shortly follow the detachment
which is now in the act of embarking; and before
the
complement is made up not less than twenty thou-
sand troops. (1)
will have left Great Britain for the
scene of recent slaughter and shame in Affghanistan.
And with what great object in view does this gallant
as We are here told, " t 6
army leave our shores ? Is it,

aid in avenging the butcheries committed by thelrea-
cherous Affghans ? " Will our slaughtered fellow-
countrymen, sacrificed by Whig recklessness and cow-
ardice, sleep sounder in their bloody graves because the
thunder of the British arms has been heard volleying
in triumph through the mountain passes of Caboul ?
Will they sleep sounder because a heathen lustration
has been poured over their ashes and the blood of the
murderers is made to die the same sod which is already
red with that of the murdered ? With no such unholy
end in view these troops, we trust, are sent out by a
British and Conservative government. History, we
trust, will never have it to record of Great Britain that
she entered into a war of extermination against a horde
of ignorant and fanatical barbarians, with no other ob-
ject in view than that of exacting vengeance for disas-
ters which the meddling and imbecile policy of her own
rulers alone brought down upon her head. No—no !
A better reason—a juster and more defensible reason—
than this of mere passion can surely be given for the
dispatch of twenty thousand British troops to the banks
of the Indus; for all the cost, the sacrifice of life, the
rending asunder of those ties which bind even the sol-
dier to the land of his birth, involved in such a
step ;—and from the government of Sir Robert Peel,
the country will, ere long, we trust, receive a full expo-
sition of the policy and the pressing necessities by
which it is demanded.

We are well aware, it can never be permitted that the
defeat and disgrace which Whig meddling in the affairs
of Affghanistan has brought down upon our arms,
should be passed by in humiliating submission. The
honour and the name of England—if we are still to
maintain in security our noble Indian empire—must be
vindicated. Let it not be said, however, that a blind
desire for vengeance is the chief inducing cause which
actuates us in the warlike operations upon which we
are entering. If vengeance, only, was demanded, it is
not upon the wretched fanatics of Affghanistan that we
would ask for it to fall, but upon the heads of the sel-
fish and dishonest faction by whom a gallant army was
sacrificed to their ignorant fury. To the preservation
of British pre-eminence in India impaired by Whig
imbecility, the armament which is now leaving our
shores is alone directed. To promote this object it may
be necessary that the power of the British arms should
be felt where their weakness and shame has so lately
been witnessed; but there is not, we trust, throughout
Great Britain, one man in ten, or in a hundred, who
desires to see the shedding of one drop of blood more
than is required to repair the injury which defeat has
brought upon the moral strength of our position in
that great continent.

Yes, to avert the consequences—the danger and in-
security—with which the reckless policy of Lord Mel-
bourne's government has surrounded our Indian em-
pire, we are now called upon to furnish fresh troops
for the conquest of a valueless territory in which the
hostile foot of a British soldier ought never to have
trod. Let this fact be ever before the eyes of the Bri-
tish nation ! Let us not, by an appeal to our passions,
be led away from the true positior_ in which we are now
placed; let us not, by a cry for " vengeance against
the Afghans," allow the reprobation, which is their
due, to be diverted from the heads of the real offend-
ers ! The blind and selfish councils of Whiggery,
alone, have plunged us into this struggle. It is these
which have induced the necessity for a further sacrifice
of blood and treasure in this unjust and ill-starred
quarrel; and although we know that by every loyal
and devoted Englishman the sacrifice will be cheerfully
made, we would have every coin that is paid and every
drop of blood which is poured out, accompanied, not
with curses upon the wretched beings who are doomed
to be swept before our destroying onset, but with a re-
cord that such is the penalty which humanity is doomed
to pay, when the affairs of a great nation are entrusted
to the guidance of charlatanism, dishonesty, and be-
sotted folly !

The Whlg party have always been fond of imputing
the practice of bribery at elections to their political op-
ponents. In every contest where success has crowned
the Conservative cause, the cuckoo cries of " Bribery,"
" Corruption," " Intimidation," have been rung into
our ears by the defeated, in every variety of intonation
from the shriek of a Rathbone to the growl of our
venerable Mercury. The snow was not more spotless
than Whig-Radicalism ; Diana herself was not more
pure than this political vestal, who shrunk, we were
told, with sensitive horror from every contact with
pollution ; whilst Conservatism was eagerly branded
with all manner of wicked epithets, and reputed as
guilty of every species of electioneering naughtiness !
We live, however, it seems, in a changed world.
The once pure and immaculate thing Whiggery has
fallen from its lofty position and " taken to bad
courses." Listen reader—listen ye much vilified free-
men of Liverpool—to the following resolutions of the
committee appointed to inquire into the validity of the
election of two Whig gentlemen—two of this exces-
sively pure and chaste faction—for the borough of Ips-
wich ! But first—Freemen of Liverpool !—did you
ever hear of such a man as RIGBY WASON ? You
have ! Then we proceed :

" 3. Resolved unanimously—That Rigby Wason, Esq.,
and George Rennie, Esq., had by their agents been guilty
of bribery at the last election for the borough of Ipswich.
" 4. Resolved unanimously—That this committee are of
opinion that extensive bribery prevailed at the last election,
and that the issue of a new writ for the said borough ought
to be suspended until the evidence shall have been taken into
consideration by the house.

" 5. Resolved unanimously—That the chairman be re-
quested to move that this report, together with the evidence,
be printed, and that the speaker do not issue his writ for the
return of two members for the borough of Ipswich until
such report and evidence be printed and submitted to the
house."

If we remember right, one of these very gentlemen,
Mr. Rigby Wason, did, not very many years, ago,
move the House of Commons to disfranchise the very
corrupt people we are now addressing—the freemen of
Liverpool. That, however, was in the days of Whig
purity—in those days when a Whig candidate was in
sufficient odour to be able to solicit the suffrages of a
respectable borough without the necessity of having a
bribe in his fist ;—when whiggery had not been drag-
ged through so many political sloughs that electors
cannot be induced to embrace it without being pre-
sented with money to buy soap to cleanse themselves
from the consequences of the contact. Then every
Whig was a patriot—a Reformer—the friend of the
people—the lauded of democracy which knew him not;
now Whiggery is found out, and that's the whole of

We are especially sorry, however, for poor Rigby
Wason. Last night, we find from a notice on the
Journals of the House of Commons, this very imma-
culate was to move an obstruction in committee upon
the Income Tax Bill. Alas ! he was found, however,
to have made another kind of motion, and in company
with the respectable sombre gentleman kicked out for
bribery from the adjoining Borough of Sudbury, was
at that very hour chanting the melancholy lamentation
" Who will fill our vacant places ?
Who will sing our songs to-night ?"

SLATE OF TRADE, MANUFACTURES, &c

Our market for Cotton this week has shown an improved
spirit, and a large business has been done, at improved prices,
39,920 bales having been sold during the week ending on
Friday. On Saturday 4000 bales were sold, and 4500 yester-
day, to meet a steady and healthy trade demand. With all
the rumours of closing factories and short time which we
hear around us, it is important to notice the trade purchases
this year are greater than at the same period last year.
339,000 bales have been taken for consumption since the Ist
January, 1842, against 321,000 bales up to this date in 1841.
The firmness displayed in the Cotton Market has been
felt in Manchester, and a better demand for Cloth has been
evinced. Still, however, things are far from being as we
would wish them in that market; and we are afraid that
some time must elapse before confidence is restored, and a
profit upon business transactions will be derived by the
manufacturer.

MECHANICS' INsmurioN.—ArrangFnoents are now
making to, render the approaching Exhibition of Works of
Art, Manufactures, &c. in Mount-street, one of the most
complete and interesting exhibitions that have ever yet been
opened in this country. Among the many attractions which
it will possess may be mentioned Mr. Catlin's large collection
of paintings, costumes, of the North American Indians.
This collection weighs no less than six tons, and it is intended
to erect a shed, 90 feet long and 50 feet broad, for its exhi-
bition, which will cause great expense, and render a small
extra charge necessary. The present collection is the fruit
of several years' residence among the Indians, and not only
are their nature and habits illustrated by paintings, &c., but
several of Mr. Catlin's assistants will be present, dressed in
full Indian costume. The success which has attended Mr.
C., and the interest which his collection has excited, through-
out the country, warrant us in saying that it will form ono of
the greatest attractions of the:approaching exhibition.