The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1848-05-23 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

SOUTHERN AND TOXTETH HOSPITAL, MAY 10.  TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 23, 1848.  A curious specimen of flippant insolence and ignorance was afforded in the House of Commons on Wednesday evening, on the occasion of a motion by Mr. Hutt to substitute, on the Slave Trade Committee, the names of Mr. Cardwell, Sir Edward Buxton, and Lord Brackley, for that of Mr. Richard Cobden, who was unable to serve. On the first na:ne being proposed, the venerable dandy of the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston, objected that neither of the hon. members for Liverpool could be trusted upon such a Committee ; that if there were any part of the United Kingdom in which merchants entertained a sympathy towards slave trading, it was this town; and instanced, as a crushing proof of the correctness of his assertion, the fact that manufactured goods suitable for the slave markets of Africa, were shipped in large quantities from Liverpool to the Brazils and Cuba. Mr. Cardwell very properly resented the unprovoked and unparliamentary libel upon his own character and that of his mercantile constituents ; and was administering a spirited and dignified rebuke to his lordship, when he was compelled, by an announcement from the Speaker, that it was six o'clock, to desist. _ _ _  The gross absurdity of this insolent aspersion will readily be perceived. In the first place, there is no community mcre deeply interested in the complete extinction of the Slave Trade than the mercantile constituency of Liverpool, so many of whom are connected with West Indian property, now ruined by the direct encouragement given to that trade by her Majesty's Ministers. Another large section of our merchants desire to see it terminated, as one of the most material impediments to an extension of our legitimate trade with Africa. The few even now left of our community, who remember the slave trade when it was tolerated by the British law and carried on in British ships and with British capital, shudder at the increased suffering which, in its present state and as a consequence of the abortiveness of our efforts to put it down, it inflicts upon the abducted negro; and would hail with rejoicing the success of more efficacious efforts. But the mercantile community of Liverpool are not in high odour with the Protean foreign secretary. On two different occasions, when he has been offered as their representative, they have failed to display a sufficient appreciation of his transcendent abilities ; and hence the explosion of mortified vanity; hint idlce irce ! With respect to the fact that goods suitable to be used in the slave markets 'are shipped from Liverpool to the Brazils and Cuba, no one except a blockhead, or a dishonest man, could urge it as a proof of our implication in the criminality of the slave trade. Liverpool happens to be the port of outlet for Manchester cotton goods to the Brazils. Of course we forward them if consigned to us, and buy them if ordered. If the great increase of exports to these slave growing countries, which was promised our manufacturers as the result of opening our ports to slave products, consists mainly of the gaudy and trashy fabrics usually bartered for slaves, that is rather more the affair of Lord Palmerston•and his free trade confederates than that of the Conservative merchants of Liverpool. We should scarcely wonder if his lordship some of these days should accuse us of encouraging the barbarism of Lynch Law in Kentucky, because bowie knives of Sheffield manufacture pass through our port; or accuse us of the high crime of treason or of murder as having permitted the bogtrotters of Tipperary to take home with them the muskets which they display at Repeal gatherings, or use so efficiently in bringing down an agent, or a landlord. Poor Palmerston ! It has come to a pitiable pass with 'him when such drivelling spite is all which he has left to substitute for his former smartness.  took place on Thursday night; and after another miserable exhibition of feebleness, his venerable lordship's objection was withdrawn and Mr. Cardwell's name added to the Committee.