ABSTRACT
We direct attention to two letters of correspondents. The subjects will, we hope, be promptly considered. If the north of England and other manufacturing districts do not wait for their tone from the mercantile community of Manchester, they will at least be stimulated by the example of those who have carried the cause of free trade. While the leading journalists, in their sympathy, or from misapprehension, pander to the policy and selfish interests of a still dominant aristocracy, it is needful that the merchant princes of Britain look well to the interests of trade and the claims of commerce. Let this nation become a garrisoned and military cantonment, to please or subserve the schemes of martial dukes and place-hunting nobles, and trade will soon sink to secondary consideration. It is the duty of the principal merchants, whose trade is with every nation, and whose success depends on the maintenance of peace with all lands, to look well to this clap-trap ruse about national defences. Richard Cobden should not stand alone. Let his wonted colleagues rouse themselves. We shall be glad to see our correspondents’ suggestion adopted, and such a meeting convened in the Free Trade Hall as will leave no doubt as to the abhorrence in which this hated war cry is held by the myriads of England. Let the Peace Society co-operate. It is their duty, surely. The second topic, alluded to by our correspondents, is the bill of Lord John Russell for removing the Parliamentary Disabilities of the Jews. Lord Ashley has brought his plausible influences to support Sir R. H. Inglis. The antagonists of equal liberty, and those who abhor, most of all, liberty of conscience, are moving all their forces to oppose the bill. Petitions will be poured into Parliament to prevent the bill becoming law. The advocates of civil and religious liberty are quiescent and torpid, not because they are indifferent to the principles involved, but from a confidence that the measure must be carried, – that the opposition of bigotry and fanaticism is ridiculous and futile. This confidence is presumptuous, and may be fatal. We should rejoice to see a Town’s meeting as well as a Corporation petition in favour of the removal of Jewish disabilities and all other badges of prescriptive inequality by which any people dwelling in our land are degraded. There are also modes in which the community may signify their liberality, as by congregational petitions, &c. What other means will so convince the Jews that Christianity is a generous and beneficent religion. The Christians who seek to convert the Jew may thus practically prove the influence and superiority of their principles.
