gbe Vrobintes.
We are authorized to state that Mr. Fuller will be a candidate for East Sussex at the next election. There can be no doubt of his return to Parliament, in conjunction with our old tried friend Mr. Darby.— Brighton Gazette, The Leeds Mercury denies the report that Mr. Fort, the Member for Clithero, is about to accept the Chiltern Hundreds. Two persons, however, are canvassing the electors of Clithero; Mr. Wilson, a Whig, and Mr. Cardwell, a Tory. Both are coquetting with hints of their disposition to advance free trade : Mr. Wilson will support any change of the Corn-laws which is compatible with agri- culturai prosperity and the fixed charges on the revenue of the country; and Mr. Cardwell, while he insinuates that the Whigs have done nothing for free trade, observes that it made some progress under the preceding Government ; but he does not believe that any influential party desires total abolition of the Corn-laws. The Council of the Anti-Corn-law League have sent to each voter a number of tracts and a circular note, advising them not to promise support to any candidate who will not unequivocally pledge himself to the total repeal of the Corn-laws.
An important meeting was held at Liverpool on Monday evening, to petition Parliament for a revision of our commercial code. The Mayor presided ; and the platform was filled by the leading merchants, of all political opinions ; the Reformers being slightly in the preponderance. The special question of the Corn-laws was excluded from the discus- sion, in order to secure unanimity. An operative named Duffey en- deavoured to bring it forward ; but the meeting checked him. The speeches were snore marked by practical sense and sturdiness of pur- pose, than by novelty of argument. Good use was made of the Import- duties Report ; and Mr. Huskisson's name was in every one's mouth. The first speaker started by taking the principle of free trade—that the intercourse between countries differing in natural characteristics, resources, and productions, should enjoy uninterrupted intercourse with each other—as self-evident. The speakers mostly handled particular parts of the subject, such as the duties on certain articles with which their own business seems to have made them most familiar.Mr. J. Aiken alluded pointedly to the oft-cited trade of Belfast, as an instance of the advantage of removing discriminating duties— Amore-, many things to which there was a great objection, there was none to which there was more than to the discriminating duties in favour of Ireland, which were thought necessary to nurse her infant manufactures. In conse- quence of the drawback allowed, many frauds were practised in the export of printed calicoes, which, after having been shipped outwards, were smuggled back, to the great injury of the revenue. We have been told, that if these discriminating duties were done away with, the Irish manufacturers must cease to work altogether. What was the fact ? In one year after the discri- minating duties bad been abolished, printed calicoes from Ireland were sent to the Blanchester markets; and this was continued down to the present mo- ment; for some of the finest Irish prints were now sent to London, where the best articles were always required. If one only recollected the examination that took place of one's luggage on crossing the Channel, he would be struck by the resemblance to the manner in which distant nations at enmity with each other acted ; but now we go on in peace, and without that hotbed forcing which never succeeds; and we have the curious fact, that instead of looking to Flanders for the finest cambrics, it now imports our flax; and Belfast triumphs over all the world. Mr. Aiken exposed a grand absurdity in the operation of the discri- minating duties on Baltic timber for the benefit of the Canadian timber trade-
" If we could go to the various ports for the best wood used in the construc- tion of a ship, he would engage that they could not only build a better but a cheaper vessel in England than could be built elsewhere. Was it not extra- ordinary, that whilst the English were looking with jealousy at the progress which America was making in shipbuilding, our Government should refuse to give us the timber necessary to enable us to compete with them at a low price, and pass a law which, though not a complete prohibition, at least burdens the timber with an excessive duty in comparison with what America has to pay ? This was positively offering a bounty to America to compete with England. *a a An outcry had been made about the building of ships in the Isle of Man. There were certainly some half-dozen ships built there in the course of a year. If it were an evil to increase our marine, what would be said on looking to Canada and New Brunswick, where the differential duty acted as a bounty paid on the building of ships; thus holding out a direct encouragement to build ships in the Colonies rather than in Great Britain ? Did any one suppose that he would not rather build under his own eye here than have vessels built for him elsewhere ? And did not they who objected to the building of vessels in the Isle of Alan or the British Colonies, think that it would be better, instead of petitioning against them, to ask the Legislature to enable them to do in Liverpool and London that which was allowed to be done in every one of the dependencies of Great Britain ? The latter object was a great and a wise one, the former paltry and little. It was a curious fact, that he was at this time discharging a cargo of pitch-pine from America. It had been intended for the Isle of Man; bethought it would he better to land it here, although it sub- jected him to the necessity of paying 55s. a load, which he could have saved by bringing it from a British port in North America. But to go there in the winter-months, would be neither a comfortable nor safe mode of procedure.
Mr. Charles Holland urged the expediency of free-trade with Brazil- -. We ought to reflect that, in national as well as private affairs, selfishness was generally visited with punishment. That would be our case with regard to the Brazils? for she would no doubt adopt a retaliatory system, and say to Great Britain, I am your best customer, but you have inflicted on me these prohibitory duties, and obliged me to adopt a retaliatory system.' Ere long this great question must be looked steadily in the face; and England, if she wish to retain her trade, must adopt a more liberal policy with regard to other countries, and particularly with regard to the Brazils. He was aware,that he might here he met by an appeal to the feelings—by the question, "What! will you encourage slave-labour in the Brazils?" He was quite prepared for this, and to hear the interrogatory put by the very men, who, when themselves possessors of slaves, found no such moral argument to induce them to pre- vent slave-labour.
But in fact, free trade was the real cure for slavery— All the coercive measures which had been adopted for the suppression of of the slave-trade had hitherto proved abortive, and the iniquity continued in , equally great if not increased activity. Coercive measures would invariably fail; for it was impossible that any force which could be spared by this country could effectually watch the extensive line of coast resorted to by the slave --balers. The only successful way of wiping out the abomination from the face of the earth, was to carry out the principles of free trade, and thereby increase the value of free labour wherever it could be met.
And Mr. Holland insisted upon the necessity of free trade in labour, ms well as in other commodities, as an act of justice to our Colonies. Mr. John B. Moore gave a practical illustration of the working of the restricted trade with Brazil— Upwards of thirty vessels from the port of Liverpool were engaged in the Brazilian trade ; forty-eight or fifty-two vessels went annually to one port; and yet it would be hardly credited when he told the meeting, that of the forty- eight vessels leaving for the port of Brazil alluded to, not one of them returned
here. There must, therefore, be something practically and radically wrong when this was the case. It might be said that cargoes could not be got ; but the fact was, that the coffee-crop of that port for this year exceeded 60,000 tons, which would have loaded upwards of 300 vessels instead of 48.
At a meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, on Thurs- day, a report was read from the Directors on the injurious effects of our restrictive commercial policy. The report particularly complained of -the duties on foreign corn and foreign sugar. Another meeting is to be held for the purpose of petitioning the Legislature on the subject. Mr. Stansfeld brought forward a motion in the Town-Council of Leeds on Friday last upon the Import-duties, in a speech of great ability, showing that the provision-monopoly imposes a tax on each family of five persons of four shillings weekly. He also showed, by an elaborate calculation, that the borough of Leeds would benefit to the extent of 1,060,6061. by the adoption of the principles of free-trade. The Leeds Times says that several Tories left the Council in a body the moment Mr. Stansfeld rose.
Under the auspices of the spirited Anti-Corn-law Association in the town of Carlisle, Mr. Hudson Scott, the publisher, has printed 12,000 copies of the Spectator's digest of the Evidence on Import-duties, at 4d. each ; and so great is the demand, that they are about to print 8,000 more forthwith.—Anti- corn-law Circular, March 11.
Sheerness, March 8.—Her Majesty's ships Monarch and Vernon have received orders to expedite their fitment, and then proceed to Spithead for orders. It is reported, that owing to recent differences, America is their destination.—Standard.
The Indus, 84, Captain Sir James Stirling, and corvette Tweed, 20, Commander Douglas, went out of the harbour to Spithead on Saturday. The latter ship is ready for sailing, except the payment of advance; but the Indus, being short of hands, will be necessarily detained.— _Brighton Gazette.
At York Assizes, on Monday, two brothers, named Hughes, were convicted of defrauding the licensed victuallers of Hull of money ob- tained under false pretences. The defendants had for some time tra- velled about the country under pretence of procuring signatures to petitions to Government against increased taxation of the innkeepers and licensed victuallers, and then they asked for money to defray the expenses of the petitions.
A shocking attempt at murder had been committed at Manchester William Hampson was sitting in the front room of a beerhonse, in com- pany with Frances Bostock, a girl who lived with him as his wife, and several other persons. Bostock had their child in her arms. Hampson told her to go and boil him some coffee; on her refusal, he manifested no anger, but a few minutes after he put his arm round her neck and. deliberately cut her throat with a razor, making a gash from ear to ear. In their anxiety to assist the woman, the bystanders allowed Hampson to escape ; but he was arrested soon afterwards. The girl was in a_ very dangerous state.
Tuesday evening, before dusk, a labourer named James Howles, em- ployed on the line of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, in the neighbourhood of Norton, was on the line for the purpose of picking up a hammer, when the train came up, and before he could retreat he was run over, and so dreadfully mutilated and injured, that he was imme- diately removed to the Worcester Infirmary, where he died early next morning.— 'Worcester Journal.
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