The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-30 00:00:00

EIR Ettnrpool &tanZian.

FRIDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 30, 1842

To Great Britain the year Eighteen-hundred•and-
forty-two has been, indeed, eventful; we trust eventful
for good. Tired with the wild fever for speculative
change, and disgusted with its results, the national
mind has at length directed itself to the repair• of social
disorganisation ; and we have witnessed, in the pre-
sent year, a series of valuable legislative efforts, having
for their object the restoration of society to that well-
balanced state, in which alone is to be found safety
from the assaults of anarchy, on the one hand, and
oppression on the other. An ill-adjusted corn-law,
added to the effect produced by a succession of deficient
harvests, had raised the cost of food to an almost
famine price. A faulty tariff was impeding the healthy
motion of our commerce, and inflicting serious injury
upon many important branches of native industry.
The financial affairs of the kingdom, too, had become
seriously disorganised, and its credit imminently
penilled. By a course of wise and cautious legislation,
aided by the dispensations of a bountiful PROVIDENCE,
these evils have been materially alleviated. We are
blessed with cheapness and abundance of most of the
necessaries of life; our commercial activity is steadily
reviving; industry-is raising itself from its late pros-
tration ; whilst, to right the financial condition of the
nation, we have submitted to a measure of wise self-
denial which may justly entitle British honesty to rank
second to that of no other nation. Added to these
noble efforts, we can point to many important legisla-
tive measures, conceived for the protection of the in-
dustry of the country, and which we confidently believe
will result in completely fulfilling the benevolent
intentions of the statesmen by whom they were
brought forward.
So much for the internal policy of the government
during the present year, and its results; let us briefly
glance at our external position. We found ourselves,
at its commencement, engaged in two expensive and
unjust wars in Asia. In one of these, during its pro-
gress, we sustained disasters at the contemplation of
which, as having befallen British arms, the entire
nation stood amazed and indignant. We have ter-
minated both quarrels, in honour and triumph. The
British name is once more, and more than ever, para-
mount in Asia. We no longer occupy, in Affghanis-
tan, that false and aggressive position which brought
disaster and slaughter' upon the heads of so many of
our brave fellow-countrymen; and, in China, we have
achieved the opening of her vast markets to our com-
merce, whilst her three hundred millions of people are
brought within the reach of European civilisation and
the blessings of Christianity. We were threatened,
through a prolonged dispute, upon a question of terri-
tory, and a misapprehension with respect to the course
to be taken for the suppression of the slave trade, with
a suspension of our friendly relations with the United
States. We are now —by successful negotiation,
guided in its efforts by justice and a knowledge of the
extent to which Great Britain might go, in the effi
to conciliate, without stooping from her proud posit
as a nation—relieved from all fear of embroilment iv

that country.
To whatever quarter, then, we turn—to our foreign
relations, to our social condition, to the state of our
commercial and industrial interests, to our financial
position or to the temper of the national mind,—we
are met with a gratifying prospect as compared with
our condition at the close of last year. And though
we are quite ready to admit that, upon one question—
as to whether the recent changes made in our com-
mercial system are to be pushed to an extreme length—
an attempt is being made to excite popular ferment,
and the boast is indulged in that such attempt is sure
of success, we have that reliance upon the native good
sense, and good principle, of the British people, and
the wisdom of the statesmen who now rule the desti-
nies of our country, that we cannot bring ourselves to
contemplate, as at all probable, such a course of rash
legislation, and the disastrous consequences which
must inevitably be its result.

Above the surface, all that we see is gratifying, or
nearly all; whilst, below the surface of society, a strong
undercurrent of changed feeling is recurring, from
which, at no distant period, we anticipate important
and blessed results. The heart of the nation, which
has for years past been narrowed by a selfish philoso-
phy, is becoming enlarged with a religious sense of its
duties towards those who form its most numerous and
most suffering classes. The cold utilitarian feeling,
which prompted the passing of a new poor-law bill,
is no longer the feeling of any influential portion of
the British people. It is no longer regarded as the
acme of enlightenment to teach that the industrious
poor of the country are to he coerced into self-depen-
dence—that utter blasphemy !—but, on the contrary,
the opinion has gained ground, and is daily gaining
ground, that the state has a duty to perform to those
poor, of a far different description, and the perform-
ance of which it has, as yet, scarcely attempted. In-
stead of being coerced into self-dependence—which is,
in other words, uncomplaining starvation—by work-
house tests or labour tests, the opinion is gaining
ground that the poor man may be raised to a con-
sciousness of his duties, by an attention, on the part of
the state, to its duty of providing moral and religious
instruction for the people. A sound scriptural system
of education, widely developed and rendered accessible
to the children of the poor; an extension of church
accommodation to the poor;—these are the instru-
mentalities, and not the coercive tests of a Malthusian
poor-law, by which the poor of the empire are to be
won to a sense of their moral duties and their interests,
and to be taught the important truth—which has too
often, in their unalleviated and uncared-for wretched-
ness, appeared to them but a bitter mockery—that

A few more hours—another sunrise and sunset—
and the year, which is now running its course, will
have passed away; will have been gathered to the
years before the flood, and become, with all its busy
thoughts and feelings, its eventful histories, its crimes,
its sorrows, its triumphs and its disasters, but A
MEMORY—to be enshrined in some hearts, to be
blotted out in others, to fester, as an irremediable sore,
in—alas, how many! It is not our province to enforce
upon the minds of our readers, as individual members
of this Christian community, the lessons which the
approach of such a season is so strikingly calculated'
to convey—to moralise upon the noiseless but terrific
rapidity with which we prOgress towards-" the end of
all things." We cannot enter by the Christmas fire-
side, to mark the vacant chair or the added blessing—
the tear of bereavement, or the joy which beams upon
the face and throbs in the heart which the passing
year has gladdenied—the gray hair, the enfeebled gait,
or the stooping frame which has visited the aged, or
the lusty manhobd and the womanly grace which are
now seated at the festive board, where so lately
thoughtless youth and playful girlhood smiled. We
can only pray that, in the year which is to:come, the
mourners' tears may he dried, die step of age may be
held up by a hand from above, and that the shadow
which is over the hearts which time has visited
roughly, may not be cast over those which are now
bathed in life's sunshine and gladness.
As journalists, however, we are entitled to remark
upon the mingled good and ill with which the year
now passing has visited us, as a nation, and to specu-
late upon the prospect which the coining year brings
with it. To that duty, therefore, we now address
ourselves.