The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-08-12 00:00:00

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS

We will endeavour to answer the queries of " G. C. 8.,"
and " A merchant's clerk," in our next.

Elie Etbrrpool gganbarb.

FRIDA Y MORNING, AUGUST 12, 1842.

By the arrival of the West India mail we have re-
ceived a file of the Guiana Times to the Ist July. The
news, however, which it contains, are altogether of a
local interest. The wet weather, which appears to
have threatened serious injury to the planters, had
moderated. Immigration was at a stand still ; and
the hopes and anxious attention of the colonists were
directed exclusively to the policy of the home govern-
ment for the remedy for their severe distresses.

Considerable interest was excited by the approach-
ing election of a financial representative in the room of
Mr. W. R. Sandbach, who was about to leave the colony.
Four candidates were named, Mr. P. M. Watson, Mr.
Christiani, Mr. T. Naghten, and Mr. Emery. The
Countess of Elgin had been delivered of a sen, and we
regret to add that her ladyship had been in great and
imminent danger ; but one of her medical men, who
came in the Tay from Jamaica, to proceed to Nassau,
reported that a favourable change had taken place.
The Thames brings home about 20,000 dollars only
in specie, but she has on board a quantity of gold dust.
We have received no advices from Jamaica by this
mail.

From the reply furnished by Sir Robert Peel to a
question put to him on Monday evening by Lord Pal-
merston, we find that there is no truth in the alleged
withdrawal of the troops under Major Pollock and
General Sale from their occupation of the Affghanistan
territory. We are not surprised at this fact. It would
have been humiliating and disgraceful to a British army
to have retreated from foes such as those which sur-
round our troops in that wretched country, whilst two
hundred of their brave companions in arms remain
within the grasp of its savage chiefs, to be butchered
on the first rumour of the withdrawal of their protect-
ing flag behind the Himmelayas : and it would be dis-
graceful above all to any British statesman who, ex-
cept under circumstances of imperious necessity, could
have directed such a step. We are not surprised,
therefore, that from Lord Ellenborough, whatever may
be his future policy with respect to this unfortunate
quarrel, no such order as that alluded to by the East
Indian press had as yet been issued.
But we must confess that however much the assu-
rance of Sir Robert Peel has relieved our fears, we are
a little amazed that the man by whose inquiry the as-
surance in question was elicited from the premier
should be the late Secretary for Foreign Affairs—Lord
Palmerston. If there is one man in the House of
Commons, or in the British dominions, who ought to
hide his head when the name of Affghanistan is men-
tioned, that man is Lord Palmerston. When the dis-
aster which has visited our army in that country rises
no before the eyes of Englishmen; when we think of
the fearful slaughter and defeat which have there be-
fallen us ; when we think of the wretched prisoners
who languish in captivity upon the soil which has
drunk up the blood of husbands, fathers, brothers, or
sons,—with that vision of torture and shame is min-
gled, and will for ever be mingled, the form of one
man, its author,—and that man Lord Palmerston,—a
mark for the indignant reprobation of his fellow-coun-
trymen and the world to point at. Pilloried in the
foreground of this dark picture stands the venal and
heartless incapable; and yet it is this man, whose very
name is allied with his country's dishonour and ruin,
who has the unparallelled hardihood to stand up in
the House of Commons as the interrogator and censor
of the ministry upon whose heads has fallen the duty
of attempting to repair the evils of his own selfish and
wicked policy !

Would that, for a day even, we could return to the
enjoyment of the palmy time of British statesmanship !
Would that, for a day even, the spirit of lofty indepen-
dence and jealous care for its country's honour, which
in past years animated the British House of Commons,
could return to us ! That day would see Lord Pal-
merston, not smirking in the consciousness of the im-
punity which has covered his misdeeds ;—not question-
ing the patriotism and wisdom of men as far above
himself in the estimation of the world as the sun is
above the worm which we trample on ;--but arraigned
at the bar of a British parliament to answer for his
manifold and stupendous delinquencies !

We were told months ago by the agitators of the
League, that the best arrow in their quiver was the
stirring up of the working classes to outrage and
bloodshed. We were told that the government of Sir
Robert Peel would be made to discern the wisdom of
the anti-corn-law nostrum " by the light of the burn-
ing factories of Manchester." We threw back these
threats in the faces of the malignant and unprincipled
impostors by whom they were uttered. Base and bad
as we knew the league millocracy to be—willing to
mislead and to betray their wretched dupes to crime
and to its consequences--we knew too well the deep
loathing in which they are held by the working men
of the manufacturing districts of England, to fear that
more than a paltry outbreak—a miserable gathering of
petty larceners—would be the achievement arrived at
by their utmost efforts.
Well, the threatened crisis has arrived. Mere sedi-
tion has done its worst, and, thus far, has been baffled.
The Thompsons, the Aclands, the Brookees, and the
Cobdens have raved and " maddened through the
land," calling like Glendower, their " spirits from the
vasty deep." But " would they come when they did
call ?" No—the working men of the manufacturing
towns heard the seditious cry, and were unmoved.
The Leaguers were busy in the work of agitation, as a
certain gentleman—their patron, is said to be in a gale
of wind. But the poor weavers and spinners of Man-
chester and Bolton, Oldham and Ashton, had
measured the length and depth of their affected
sympathy for the sufferings which they saw around
them, and found it shallow shallow as the wit
which lies beneath the beaver of the Bolton quaker
of pauper kidnapping celebrity, and empty as
the breeches pockets of any dozen of the League
Debtors of the Bank of Manchester. The agitators
piped, but the working classes would not dance to
their piping.
But if the wiles of the serpent thing Isere thus in-
efficacious, there was another resource by which the
Leaguemen trusted to attain their cherished object—a
civil commotion. Hunger would, if agitation could
not, lash the working classes to outbreaks, by which
peaceable and timid men would, it was thought, be in-
duced to turn their eyes to the Anti-Corn-Law
philosophy as the remedy for all the evils under which
the community laboured. Well, the propelling power
of hunger has been dared. The example of an
attempted reduction of the wages of factory
operatives was set by a League and Socinian tnagis-
trate of Staley-bridge—a liberal of the first water.
The result is before our readers in another column.
With the exception of three—those of Messrs. Birley,
Kenedy, and Stirling and Beckton,—every factory in
Manchester is at this moment standing, and the popu-
lation which they employ clamouritig in the streets for
bread. In the surrounding districts of Ashton-under-
Lyne, Hyde, Oldham, &c., the same disorderly
scenes are to be witnessed. The military and the po-
lice enfilade the streets of every manufacturing town.
Cannon menace the inhabitants of Manchester at every

principal croaaing. And what do the majority of the
League manufacturers and the League magistracy of
that town in such a state of things Do they attempt
to resist the working of the lawless spirit which their
own acts have raised ? No, they do not ! On the
contrary, we are informed, on authority on which we
can confidently rely, that they tacitly encourage the
rioters; and, if cowardice was not an invariable yoke-
fellow with baseness, we fear some of them would be
found heading mobs or Chartists and starving men to
the work of robbery and incendiary outrage.
We have no hesitation in expressing our belief that
a dozen or two of burning factories, even if they were
their own, would be a glad sight to many of these per-
verted and factious men. It would be as convenient
for the League millocrat, at this moment, to receive
from the country the price of his burnt factory, as to
wait for the result of the improvement of the trade of
the country. In such a case we should see nothing, in
the claims made, of the lamentable depreciation of mill
machinery. We should, on the contrary, have thumping
prices put upon every loom, and its first cost upon every
foot of brick-work. We may suggest, however, to these
astute schemers that cunning, like ambition, sometimes
"overleaps itself!" and we may, in addition, intimate
to some few amongst them that in all their present
proceedings they are well watched. In our next
publication, our reporter, who is present upon the
scene of disturbance, may enable us to make public
some facts, with respect to the League proceedings,
which may possibly astonish the w orld and the
Leaguers themselves.

126,955 quarters.
141,212 barrels.
Wheat. Flour.
Corresponding 12 weeks last year 38,613 27,313
Stock of Grain in Liverpool on the 2nd of May, 1842.
Wheat. Oats. Rye. Barley. Beans. Pease. Flour. Oatml.
In bond.. 209,032 13,554 500 11,271 21,166 7.787 165,166
Free .... 25,000 12,000 410 5,000 20,000 5,000 500 80,000
& 500 sks. Ids.
Stock of Grain in Liverpool on the 31st of July, 1842.
Wheat. Oats. Rye. Barley. Beans. Pease. Flour. Oatml.
In bond.. 349,985 11,640 407 11,371 31,697 15,660 99,358
Free .... 18,000 3,000 600 3,000 12,000 5,000 55,000 30,000

8,839
2,422
14,868
12,582
9,331

Total Wheat
Total Flour..

&200 sks. ids

We shall not at present indulge in any lengthened remarks
upon the answer—a triumphant one, we submit—which the
tables above furnish to the attacks levelled against this lead-
ing and most difficult measure of the ministry of Sir Robert
Peel. That it has produced the principal desideratum of
such a measure, the admission of foreign wheat into con-
sumption at a moderate duty, and as required by the existing
demand, cannot now be denied. The total quantity of grain
admitted during the past thirteen weeks has been fairly
spread over the whole period. We have enjoyed, in fact,
during that period—a period, too, which is always, to some
extent, one of speculation and advancing prices—a regular
and steady supply, which has at once kept the price of bread
within the reach of the consumers' means, and checked such
a sudden influx of grain upon the market as would have in-
flicted injury upon the native grower. It is well known that
this result has been attained in despite of the efforts of
speculation to work the averages towards the point at which
grain could have been thrown in at a nominal duty ; and we
believe it is now an almost universally acknowledged feeling
amongst the trade that such efforts will, for the future, be
too hazardous to be lightly undertaken.
It is probable that we shall for a few weeks to come have
some heavier payments of duty than any which we have
hitherto noticed. The improbability of the duty ranging
lower than Bs., and the possibility of its rising higher, will
induce many holders to enter largely. We do not, however,
anticipate, as has been predicted by some authorities, a rush
to pay duty and to inundate the market. The superior
quality of the new wheats which are coming forward, and
the advanced prices which they will command as compared
with the old stocks by which the duty has, up to this time,
been regulated, will, we are satisfied, maintain the present
averages, or nearly so, for some weeks to come. In fact, if
we consider that this year's crop (well harvested) is likely to
be fairly worth four or five shillings per quarter more than
the average of last year's, a decline to that extent in the
price of the best samples will not materially tell upon the
existing duty of Bs. We do not at all events anticipate a
rapid rise or one of great extent.