The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-23 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

The " Story" of " J. C." will not spoil by being postponed
until Tuesday.
A " Cotton Broker's Apprentice," if we understand him,
for his object is not clearly expressed, is too unreasonable.
" R. A." has no right to expect us to publish his letter on
anonymous authority.

Our correspondent at Newcastle upon Tyne should have for-
warded to us copies of the papers to which he refers. We
have no means of referring to them here.

ire have a large accumulation of letters on our file, and un-
less our correspondents see their contributions inserted in
the course of a publication or tmo, they may presume that
we have been compelled to decline them.
S. K." will perceive that we have availed ourselves of one
of his communications—the other we have reserved until
Tuesday. The manuscript has unfortunately been mislaid,
but we hope to find it in a day or two, and it shall then he
forwarded as requested.

Etbirpoal OtanDarb.

FRIDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 23, 1842

A large amount of important legislation, having for
. _

its object the development of the national industry
(toned. and commerce, was effected during the last session of
" A number of stores and buildings were blown down. The
episcopal church, which cost 6000 or 7000 dollars, is a perfect Parliament. The revision of our entire commercial
wreck ; and also a small Catholic church. The water rose tariff was
-Qt over the island, and the waves beat through many of 4,, of itself, far more than would have con-
tented some administrations to hold up as the work of
• ----ta. The whole damage done is not less
a session. We must not, however, allow ourselves to
An Antonio was completely surprised on the Ilth Sep-
conclude that all has been done which may be effected,
mber by 1,300 Mexicans, under Gen. Wale ; 53 of the
principal citizens, says the paper from which we quote, were in this field of legislative exertion ; and that, if our
taken. The Circuit Court was in session, and the judge and
court were made prisoners. The proclamation of
commerce still languishes—if industry is still pros-
,dent, headed " The Enemy Again," orders the trated—there is nothing left, for the statesman, but to
•rching forthwith of the militia of Brazors, Austin, Fort
,end, Colorado, Victoria, Gonzales, Jackson, and hlonta- enter upon the carrying out of those sweeping changes,
Aorda counties, against San Antonin ; and the counties of towards which the voice of agitation would impel him.
the Upper Brazors and Colorado to march to Austin, and
The fact is not so; All has not been done which may
the citizens of the other counties to hold themselves in
istant readiness. be done. On the contrary, there is a wide field, corn-
Thf ---!utive had issued orders to the effect that in the paratively untouched, which invites the supervision of
yen' the evacuation of San Antonio by the Mexicans,
-ies ere to be pursued bey,ond-tte Rio Grande, and chas- the legislature; and by the exercise of a wise and
" audacity deserves. ' In ire tverirof a formal in
'os are to hold them in check until
- 'vigorous remedial action here, it is within the power of
the government to realise vast benefits for the whole

officers of
the Presi

event of

vasion, t

western count

the rest of the republic can rally to a

community, without periling the stability or sacrificing
the interests of any portion.
The following letter on the present state of our communi-
We shall endeavour to direct the
cation with the West Indies bas been written by a party who readers to a few subjects, upon which we trust to see
is well conversant with the subject:— the cabinet of Sir Robert Peel occupied during the
" The present remarks have been purposely withheld till
after the departure of the mails of the 15th of December for session of Parliament which is at hand; and, first, let
us point to the existing duty upon the importation of
+l West Indies ; but the state of those of the Ist of Decem-
cannot remain entirely unnoticed ; for it is a fact that all
ails of the Ist (except those for Corunna, Madeira,
upon the impolicy of this duty upon the raw material
cotton wool. We have, again and again, remarked
Thomas) will remain at St. Thomas till the Bth
, 1843, and thereafter will only reach their destina-
of a staple manufacture; and we are convinced that
company with the next succeeding mails.
ppears that the contractors had no large class steam- nothing, save the necessities of their position, could
er, in condition, at Southampton, to proceed with its pas-
sengers on the evening of the Ist for Falmouth, there to have induced its maintenance, by the present govern-
receive her mails, and go at once to sea. As if to give the ment, whilst remodelling our tariff. It is a tax clearly
appearance of implementing their contract, however, they
despatched from the former place on the 6th, and from the opposed to the principles upon which that tariff was
latter place on the 9th, the smaller class steamer, City of framed—one of the most important of them being to
free from impost every article of produce which enters
Glasgow, long known to many on the route from the river
Clyde to Liverpool; and which vessel, according to their
own calculation of 19-i days, will not reach St. Thomas till into the composition of a manufactured article ; and
six days too late for the further immediate forwarding of the •
nothing can have stood in the way of its abolition but
mails and passengers.

COMMUNICATION

KITH THE WEST INDIES

attention of our

and St
Januar

" It would have been more manly and more straight-
forward, to have openly declared to the public, that as the
Atlantic outward steamer had not started at her appointed
time, British merchants and others ought to be on their
guard, that their half-monthly letters of the 15th of Decem-
ber, and, in some cases, their monthly ones of the Ist of

the fact that it produced a revenue—upwards of six
hundred thousand pounds—which could
_not, in the
then state of our financial affairs, be spared by the
Exchequer.

January, would reach their destination as quickly as those
of the Ist of December • and that duplicates of all these
letters, and of all bills, had better be retained till the Ist of
January or the Ist of February, as the case may be—unless
they wish originals and duplicates to proceed from and
beyond St. Thomas in the same vessel; and it might perhaps
have been added, that the only object of despatching the
City of Glasgow on the 9,h was to give the latest news to the
Spanish port of Corunna, the Portuguese island of Madeira,
and the Danish island of St. Thomas.

We trust that the time has come when no such im-
pediment exists. We may not, as yet, have realised
the full advantages which may be expected for the
revenue of the country from the financial measures of
last session of Parliament. The revival of commerce,
however, which is gradually taking place, and the
termination of two expensive wars, for which we had

it is necessary to remember, that by the
e Atlantic outward-bound steamer should
lepart on the 3rd and I7th of every month from Falmouth ;
ld if any one of these ' does not reach St. Thomas before
on the 22nd day from the appointed day of depar-
Falmouth, the four collected steamers at St.
1, with the inter-colonial mails, on their
; the outer-mails, in such case, being con-
mails, to remain after their arrival at St.
-malls from Europe arrive and are

iew contr

last year to provide, will, we trust, place the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer in that easy position which
will enable him to concede the abolition of this tax
to the suffering manufacturing community.
We could point to many other parts of our financial
system, in which important improvements might be
; but we wish more particularly to draw atten-
tion to the course of legislation to be pursued to
benefit the industrious classes in the manufac-
turing and mining districts of the country. We feel
whilst so doing the great difficulty of treading upon
this delicate ground. Ye appreciate the responsibility
incurred by the statesman who attempts, by legisla-
tion, to regulate the wages of the labourer; but we
feel, also, that the time has come when that subject
must be approached, and the attempt in question

ture fro

`1 The four steamers alluded to, viz., the Western grand
branch steamer for Jamaica, Havannah, &c. ; the Western
minor branch steamer for Porto Rico, Hayti, &c. ; the
Southern branch steamer for Antigua, Barbadoes, Demerara,
&c. ; and the Northern branch steamer for Bermuda, must
all, therefore, leave St. Thomas at midnight on the 25th of
December, on their routes, without their European Ist of
December mails and passengers ; these four vessels, not only
circulating in their own route the tidings of a missing

it communicating these tidings to the Mexican
inner, to the Trinidad branch steam

er, to th

1-bound steamer, to the La Guayra branch
:bagres brunch schooner, and to the klon..

entered upon in earnest

" The mails and passengers for Tampico and Vera Cruz,
for Honduras ; for Chagres, Carthagena, and Santa Martha;
for Porto Cabello, and La Guayra, are only carried forward
once a month; and those from Europe of the Ist December
not arriving in their proper time at the stations from which
they respectively deploy will likely lose a whole month in
their rnnte

There are few men, even of the Malthus and
M‘Culloch school of philosophy, who can contemplate
the past and present condition of the labourers and
artisans of this country, and say that the prospect is
a satisfactory one. Contemporary with the vastly-
stimulated manufacturing and commercial activity of
the past twenty-five years; concurrent with the vast
accumulations of manufacturing and commercial
wealth ; the remuneration and the social condition of
the labouring classes—the producers of that wealth,
the hands by which the mighty machine of commerce
is moved—have kept steadily deteriorating. Of the
extent to which this backward progress in the scale of
comfort and independence has proceeded, there is
abundant evidence before the world, as well as of the
danger with which its further backward progress
menaces society. The statistical details of misery,
which were accumulated, ad nauseam, in the speeches
of the Bowrings and Cobdens, during the past session
of Parliament, furnish ample proof of the former; the
recent outrages of the misguided turnouts, in the
manufacturing and mining districts, are startling
warnings of the latter. And the same progress
towards the lowest depth of misery which human
beings can exist under, without being goaded to a
frenzied war against the constituted order of society, is
still going on, and will continue to go on, even though
we concede to the boasted philosophy of the day all
the nostrums which it puts forth, professedly for the
benefit of the suffering classes ; because the same in-
ducing causes are still at work, and those nostrums do
not strike at their continued operation ! The conces-

" The City of Glasgow cannot herself, in any way, remedy
the matter, for she cannot proceed one inch beyond St. Tho-
mas before midnight of the Bth of January : it being expressly
provided by the contract, that the Atlantic outward bound
steamer shall, immediately on her arrival at St. Thomas, be
re-coaled, &c., and ' ready to form one of the four steamers
to assist in the dispersion of the outward mails arriving at
the end of fifteen days by another steamer from Europe.'
The British merchant residing and conducting his busi-
-3 in London does not so readily see the mischief in the
sen ,s does the British merchant who conducts his
Alsip s abroad; for the latter is the first to experience the

)resent case

" Facts are stubborn things. Upon one occasion the
writer of these remarks bad with some labour prepared. de-
posited in the post-office of one of our colonies, and paid the
postage, of no less than 29 letters, for despatch by one of
these steamers; but on the captain of the steamer declaring
that he did not intend to take the route prescribed, the let-
ters and postage money were demanded back ; the postmas-
ter (though unusual) complied with the demand, and the let-
ters were despatched by the writer in a merchant schooner.
On another occasion he had fixed to come to England by one
of these steamers ; yet, although the steamer was in the
river, be found so much uncertainty in her departure from
it, so unsatisfactory the answers to his questions as to his
r,robable arrival in England, and so unpopular the whole
plans and regulations on board, that he and another gentle-
man, acting on exactly the same principle, paid their £5O
each for a passage in a sailing barque ;. and though they had
a passage of forty-nine days, yet we in Liverpool (singular
and incredible as it may appear) within three days of their
letters of advice by the steamer alluded to. _

-- -,
" The passive British merchant was told eight or ten weeks

it the new arrangements, by lessening the extent of
work on the contractors, would prevent the re-occurrence of
,uch events, and would ensure more regularity after the Ist
October; yet, within two little months from the coca-
new arrangements he finds a more gross
irregularity than all,—an irregularity, not in one of the
branch routes. but in the main one, in that which constitutes
the very foundation of the whole fabric; in that where it
was least to be imagined, can certainly least be tolerated,
—at the port where, if from neglect they could not have a
vessel of their own, one ought to have been provided at any,
expense.

ago tha

nieocement of these

sions to which we are urged are concessions to

CAPITAL—are concessions to a power which is already
too great; which has ground down the labourer to
the dust, and is day by day grinding him still loWer
than the dust !

It won't do to tell the public, that dependence was placed,
by the contractors, on the arrival of the Clyde in time to take
out the Ist of December mails; she was on her route home,

The working class—if the purpose for which all