The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-03-04 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

If the party who inclosed the " Five reasons why ladies
should neglect their household duties to obtain signatures
to an Anti-Corn-Law petition," will refer to a late num-
ber of the Standard, the paragraph inclosed to us will be
found therein.
" A Stranger " will find his letter anticipated on perusal of
this publication.
" Oxonian " is quite correct, the man alluded to is an
impostor.
ERRATUM.—In our notice of the Theatre-Royal in our last,
for " sententatious," read " sententious."

Ebt Eiberpool tanbarb.

FRIDAY

MORNING, MARCH 4, 1842

We were favoured yesterday with copies of the
Guiana Times of the 10th and 14th January, containing
six days later news from that colony; and regret to say
that the state of affairs which they develope is amply
confirmatory of our worst anticipations. We noticed,
in our last article upon West Indian affairs, the dissa-
tisfaction which had been created amongst the working
population of British Guiana, and especially by some
of the recent immigrants, by the attempt of the planters
to reduce the cost of production to the level required
to meet the existing price of West Indian produce.
This dissatisfaction has not subsided : on the contrary,

it appears to have been fomented by the injudicious
tone in which the ordinances complained of have been
spoken of by the governor of the colony, Mr. Light ;
and at length has grown to such a height as to induce
that injudicious functionary to declare that no alterna-

tive is left to him except that of proposing to the Colo-
nial Secretary to send back to Sierra Leone, " in some
vessel of war, or other conveyance authorised to be
procured by her Majesty's government," such immi-
grants from that colony as have, or imagine that they
have, cause of complaint against the planting body.
Upon the exparte statements of the labourers them-
selv es, without the accuracy of those statements being
tested by any reference to their employers, the governor
has arrived at this determination ; and if such a hasty
course is listened to by the Colonial Office, we need
scarcely predict that emigration from Sierra Leone, or
any other quarter, must he entirely put a stop to, and

he ruin of our West Indian colonies sealed without

redemption

We must confess we scarcely anticipate that Lord
Stanley will approve of the conduct pursued through-
out these unhappy differences by the representative of
the Crown in British Guiana, and, least of all, that he
will adopt, without some stringent inquiry into the true
facts of the case, the step recommended by him. In a
recent despatch, his lordship has expressly recognized
the necessity, on the part of the planters, to regulate
the standard of wages by the value of produce, and
repudiated the notion that the immigrant has any right
to complain so long as such reductions are not exces-
sive. " The rate of wages in the West Indies," writes
the Colonial Secretary, " is liable to fluctuations, which
it is impossible to calculate beforehand, and every im-
migrant must take his chance of such fluctuations,
without any guarantee against the depreciation of the

value of his labour." Entertaining these sentiments,
therefore we trust that the attention of the government
will be directed to the instituting of a scrutiny into the
whole difficulties which now present themselves, in
this and other colonies, rather than be duped into an
implicit belief of the one-sided representations of the
governor and his satellites.
The question of immigration to the West Indies,

under the direct sanction of the government, must

now, we think, force itself upon the attention of Lord
Stanley. There can be no question as to the unreaso-
nableness of the course pursued, under the influence
of bad councils, by the immigrant labourers of British
Guiana; and so long as any governor of that colony
has the power of holding out, as a threat, in aid of
their extortions, the resort to a step which would as
effectually put a stop to all further immigration, the
unreasonable tone will be persisted in. Let Lord
Stanley concede to our West Indian colonies a similar
measure with respect to immigration from Sierra Le-
one, and other African parts, to that which he deve-
loped in the House of Commons, on Tuesday night,
so ably and satisfactorily, as about to be extended to
the planters of the Mauritius, and we venture to pro-
phesy that in those colonies all will go well, with the
immigrants themselves and with the planting body,
who will be benefitted by it. Such a measure may re-
ceive the opposition of a handful of pseudo philanthro-
pists out of parliament, and of a few gentlemen of the
calibre of Mr. Vernon Smith within its doors; but de-
pend upon it the great majority of the people of Eng-
land are tired of listening to the absurd twaddle of these
very absurd people. The question which presses now•
for consideration is, "are our West Indian passessions
to be abandoned to progressive and rapid decay ? "
And if such a calamity is to he averted, his lordship,
we are confident, will not lightly be driven from the
adoption of the only measure by which such a consum-
mation can be secured.

The remarks which we offered on Tuesday, upon
the position held by the British- manufacturer in fo-
reign markets, has somewhat ruffled the temper of our
oracular contemporary, the Manchester Guardian. We
are certainly not heartbroken at this circumstance :

" The flesh will quiser where the pincers tear ;"
and the world will not fail to draw the conclusion that
some deep sore must exist, when so gentle an applica-
tion of the probe has drawn forth a howl of pain and
anger so wild as that uttered on Wednesday by our
Manchester contemporary :

" We should have thought," writes this apologist of ' the
League,' " that with the exception of a few tory country
gentlemen in the House of Commons, who are silly enough
to swallow any cock-and-bull story that may harmonize with
their own prejudices, there was not a single animal walking
upon two legs, and calling itself a man, that would receive
the statements of Mr. Ferrand, Mr. Oastler, and other
worthies of the same stamp, with any other emotion than
that of utter contempt. It seems, however, that there are
'people oat-of the House of Commons, and out of Bedlam,
who either'berteve, ar affect to believe, that the manufac-
turers of this country are all either rogues, or so blind to
their own interests-as,to make inferior and trashy goods, by
which they cannot obtain a profit, when there is at the same
time a demand for fabrics of a better character at remuner-
ating prices. Amongst others, a writer in the LIVERPOOL
STANDARD of yesterday undertakes to read the manufactu-
rers a long lecture on this subject," &c. &c.

Not so fast, gentle brother,—not so fast ! Let us
just whisper in your ear the fact that there are " ani-
mals walking on two legs, and calling themselves
men," who, nevertheless, do not " receive the state-
ments of Mr. FERRAND, Mr. OASTLER, and other
worthies of the same stamp, with utter contempt ;"
and, amongst these " animals," not the most insigni-
ficant is the man "of gentlemanly habits" who does
the dirty business of the league in the columns of the
Manchester Guardian. Our contemporary certainly
appears, to us and to the world, to view the statements
of the gentlemen in question with anything rather than
contempt ! He has condescended to get into a passion
with them; they have ruffled his "gentlemanly ha-
bits ;" they have extorted from him a coarseness of
tone which is, at the least, very unbecoming; and
these effects are not ordinarily produced by things
which are in themselves only contemptible. We are
quite willing, therefore, to be ranked amongst the
" animals " in question, seeing that we have our con-

temporary with us.
It is said, however, by the Guardian, that " there
are people out of the House of Commons and out of
Bedlam who believe, or affect to believe, that the ma-
nufacturers of this country are all either rogues or so
blind to their own interests as to make inferior and
trashy goods ;" and amongst these people out of Bed-
lam is classed " a writer in the LIVERPOOL STAND-
ARD," or, in more courteous and " gentlemanly"
terms, the editor of that journal. We beg respectfully
to decline the honour intended us by the classification
in question. We never said or thought that all th•

manufacturers were alike rogues or fools; Mr. Ferranti,
we believe, never Aid so ; and Mr. Oastler never said
so. Jill this, mreover,. the Guardian knew whai lie
imputed such opinions to us and them ; and we leave
that shifty lover of the " lie by implication" to rub
shoulders with the Rev'. Muggletonian Member for
Salford. They are "par nobile fratrunz."
But let us see with what arguments or facts the
Guardian meets our remarks upon the inferior status
of the British manufacturer in foreign markets. We
quote from his article at length, premising that the