The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-05-10 00:00:00

ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

riIHE Subscribers to this Establishment, and the Public,
are respectfully informed the

FIRST GR.AND 'OPENING FETE OF THE SEASON
will take place
ON MONDAY NEXT, MAY 16,
with the Novel and Extraordinary Exhibitions, and
PICTORIAL MODEL OF ROME,
the once proud Mistress of the World ; comprising, amongst
its most striking features, the Ancient Bridge and Castle of
St. Angelo, the Vatican, and Pontifical Palace, the Capital
di St. Spirito, and the vast and marvellous edifice of St.
Peter's. _

This magnificent representation has been constructed from
the most accurate Designs, by the most celebrated Artists of
the day. The delineations are so strictly accurate, and the
proportions so stupendous, as to offer a perfect realization of
those Wonders of Architecture which still render the Eternal
City the most interesting spot in the world.
At dusk, this novel exhibition will be seen under the
aspect which the scene presents during the rejoicing in cele-
bration of 11 Giorno di San Pietro, when the whole vast
Edifice of St. Peter's is Illuminated, and every detail of the
glorious Architecture shines forth in lines of resplendent
light. It is on those festive occasions also that the celebra-
ted Girandora, or great FIRE WORKS of ST. ANGELO,
are displayed from the summit of the Castle, beyond all com-
parison the grandest display of Pyrotechnic Art ever invented,
being a fac simile of this GORGEOUS FESTIVAL. With
these will be given Cascades of Fire Fountains of Stars and
tremendous Flights of Rockets, forming a scene of the most
inconceivable magnificence ever attempted out of Italy.

Pyrotechnic Artist, SIGNOR SEMONA

N.B.—Every possible care has been taken in forming a
first-rate MILITARY BAND, which, under the superin-
tendance of Mr. STUBBS, will perform during the Season.
ADMITTANCE, ONE SHILLING.

TO CORRESPONDENTS

Several communications stand over for consideration

Cbe kibtrpool &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 10,.18 4 2

On Friday evening, during the debate upon the in-
come tax, Sir Robert Peel declared his regret that " he
could not; express any very sanguine expectations with
respect to a revival of trade. He was bound to say
that the arrival of spring had disappointed the antici-
pations he had formed ; for his impression had been
that that season would have been accompanied by more
cheering indications of prosperity than had yet ap-
peared." In this disappointment of the right honour-
able baronet, we must confess that, to a considerable
extent, we participate. We certainly did think with
him, and give expression to our opinion, at an early
period of the year, that the cloud which had hung, for
the past twelve months, over the commerce of the em-
pire, was about to disperse, and that the dawn of more
prosperous times was at hand. The incubus of a bad
government had been removed from off the energies
of our industrial and mercantile interests. The para-
lyzing feu- of domestic and foreign entanglements had
given way to a confidence in the' firmness, ability, and,
above all, the honesty, of the new administration. In
addition to this gratifying change of circumstances,

create by the change of government, the period at
which, under the ordinary course of things, a revival
of prosperity was to be anticipated, had, it was gene-
rally thought, arrived; and we were fully justified in
indulging in those hopes, the failure of which Sir Ro-
bert Peel here acknowledges and regrets.
We never, however, anticipated, notwithstanding
the admiusion of some degree of disappointment which
we have already made, any sudden and large amount
of revived prosperity, and we are therefore far from
viewing with great despondency the existing state of
things. More than once we have expressed our con-
viction till tt, in our manufacturing districts especially,
the same degree of activity, the same amount of profit,
and the s•.a.me rate of remuneration for labour which
has exist 3d up to the period of this last check, would
probably :never recur. We have got rid, perhaps for
ever, of Ivhat we have been accustomed to term " MA-
N UFACT URING PROSPERITY"-Of the addition of mill
to mill— loom to loom—warehouse to warehouse ! The
leviathan efforts of mushroom capitalists to encompass
earth and sea, and to drag their riches in heaps within
their clot ch, will npt again be made. The protegees
of joint stock banks will not be permitted to run the
same racer for the same ruinous .stakes which,thev have
adventur 5(.1 upon in time past—in that day of bubbles,
whose ex plosion has left them to sprawl helpless to the
obscurity from which they were originally inflated.
The restoration of the fictitious and inordinate pros-
perity (!) which has enabled a race of kite-flying
schemers to strew every foreign market with stocks of
unsaleablie goods, the property of unfortunate British
creditors, we have never expected or indeed desired ;
and althc rugh the symptoms of a return to solid and
permanumt prosperity, which we anticipated, we cannot
as yet with certainty discern, yet we see too many ex-
traneous circumstances, which have contributed to ob-
struct such a result, to permit us to underrate the power
of British commerce to right itself, and ultimately to
reassume its wonted healthy condition.

Amongst other retarding circumstances, we see our
Indian empire in a state of financial prostration—the
result of the depletion produced by the policy of the
Indian government of Lord Auckland. Our com-
merce with China is interrupted by a state of actual
hostilities between Great Britain and that country.
The condition of the United States of America is such
as to forbid, for a time at least, any extensive and safe
commerce with that country. In every market of the
world the trade with Great Britain is only recovering
from the consequences of inordinate stimulation ; and
these are circumstances over which no government at
home—no revival of confidence at home or abroad—
no improvement in the social condition, even, of the
country—can Q:ercise any material influence. In ad-
dition to these, however, the prolongation of uncer-
tainty with respi ct to the passing of the financial mea-
sures of Government cannot but have operated to
retard the reviw .1 of commercial activity. We know
that it has so rei.arded it—that it has, in fact, in many
instances, arrested those trading operations which,
under a state .of certainty as to duties, &c., would,
under the worst condition of the internal administra-
tion of the country, have been made ; and however
much, therefort!, we may have anticipated improvement
in commercial affairs, and however much we may be
grieved to see that no such improvement has taken
place, we feel, certainly, when we weigh all the con-
current obstacles which have intervened to prevent so
desirable a consummation, no great degree of surprise,
and certainly no extraordinary depression of spirits,
that the result which we contemplated is, as yet, un-
realized.

The commerce of Great Britain must, we are firml

assured, progress gradually—nay, even slowly—to a
state of prosperity. Health it is already attaining—
the frail health of the patient from whose frame the
ravaging fever has just been driven ; but that rude and
vigorous health, which it is most desirable to witness,
and which is alone likely to be permanent, it may and
will require another, and above all, a favourable revo-
lution of the seasons to produce. The bounty of Pro-
vidence bestowed in a prosperous harvest will do for
Great Britain in a few months what no merely legisla-
tive measures could accomplish in as many years.

In the course of a comment upon the opinion ex-
pressed by the Town-clerk, at the recent adjourned
meeting of the Council, that the Watch Committee is,
unlike other committees, independent of the control of
the body by which it is appointed, our contemporary
of the Journal urges that, if such opinion is correct,
the reporters of the press ought to be admitted to its
me etings, as they are already to those of the Dock
Committee. We shall not take upon ourselves to con-
tzr overt the question of right in this case. Probably
-our contemporary would have the better of us if we
did. But we really must question a little the prudence
of such a regulation. By the present arrangement of
things it does appear to us that the principal business
of the Council is to talk to the public, through the fa-
cilities afforded to them by the presence of reporters,
and not to work. The business of committees, on the

other hand, is to work, and not to talk ; and we greatly
fear that the only effect of the admission of the mem-
bers of the press to the Watch or any other commit-
tee, would be to inflict upon the pvblic, weekly or
daily, the tiresome or factious twaddle of this or that
radical solon, which, with whatever stoicism we endure
it once a month, would infallibly mesmerise us, or
throw us into convulsions, if oftener repeated.
But although on this ground, even, we are warranted

in refusing the eo,operation.which is requested from us
by the Journal, for the purpose of urging forward this
absurd demand, we have another very sufficient excuse
for the disinclination which we feel to load our pages
weekly with the squabbles of committees, in addition
to the sayings and doings at the ordinary monthly
field-day. It may be pleasant enough to the Journal
to collate for the amusement of gossiping people the
bons morceaux from such reports ; but, unfortunately,
the labour and expense is thrown upon our shoulders
of reporting them in full ; and we have, we can assure
him, in supporting our newly acquired title of " the
mirror of Town Council proceedings," (for which we
must express our thanks to Mr. Geo. Hall Lawrence,)
quite as much of this description of work as we re-
quire, without becoming, as well, the mirror of the
proceedings of the Watch or any other committee.

We have been flattering ourselves for the past few
weeks that, as a political body, the Anti-corn-law
League was, if not defunct, at all events in such a des-
perate condition that its resuscitation was hopeless.
Since the introduction of the measures of Sir Robot
Peel, the utmost feat which it has been able to perform
in Manchester, the scene of its past glories, has been
the plunder of a few bakers' shops and a riotous as-
semblage of its Irish bludgeonmen around the doors
of the parish office; and this, notwithstanding the
stock talent of the body, has been increased for a time
by the'importation, from our own town, of that su-
blime of Maww• orms, Mr. Lawrence Heyworth. By an
intimation, however, conveyed to us by a contempo-
rary, the Manchester Chronicle, we are glad to find that
there is still life in the paltry thing—that in these dull
times the battered merry-andrew is still able to writhe,
and howl, and play fantastic tricks for the amusement
alike of the Manchester cottonocracy and of ourselves.

The following is the announcement in question :
" Tim LEAGUE AGAIN.—The New Corn Law having
come into operation, the League have summoned a general
meeting of their body for Wednesday next, when a totally
new scheme of agitation is to be announced. We presume it
will be founded on the project we formerly alluded to—of im-
porting and liberating foreign corn, so as artificially to depress
the market and punish the home grower. The funds are said
to be provided."

" importing and liberating foreign corn"
pressing the market and punishing the home grower".
(by giving bread for nothing, we presume, to the
starving weaver.) No, no ! Our friend of the Chro-
nicle must not attempt to tickle us with such a palpable
hoax as this. When the league gives anything away,
except its own mendacious tracts or the halfpenny ora-
tions of Mr. Richard Cobden, we will submit to
wear sackcloth for a month. If there is anything in
this importing scheme, depend upon it we are far more
likely to witness an importation of cheap labour or a
de-portation of some hundred of the ruffians in the
pay of the league, with Messrs. R. R. Moore, as their
Jack Cade, and Lawrence Heyworth, as his chaplain,
to kick up a row in some peaceable locality which has
the misfortune to be peopled with a race imperturbable
enough to resist the journalism and the spoutings of
this enlightened body.