The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-02-12 00:00:00

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1856

LIVERPO OL TOWN DUES.

MR. LOWE, the Vice-President of the Board of
Trade, met with so much success, on Friday week, in
his propositions to amend the law of Partnership, that
he felt emboldened to take a higher flight, and, on the
Monday following, indulged the House of Commons
with another long speech, in which he declared his views
on the burdens borne by the shipping interest, and
the necessity of relief, owing to the repeal of the
Navigation Laws. There is no occasion to argue the
question as to the claims which the shipping interest
have upon the attention of the Legislature, because
that is universally admitted; but if the position as-
sumed by Mr. LOWE be worth anything, it is condem-
natory of that interference with the Navigation Laws
which a Radical Ministry boasted of as placing the
capital on the column of Free-trade. The electors of
Liverpool displayed their wisdom when they rejected
Mr. CARDWELL for their representative, on account of
his hostility to the maintenance of the great maritime
charter ; but the majority by which he was discarded
would have been far greater, could it have been fore-
seen that the attack on the shipping interest was to
have been made the excuse for a still more unjusti-
fiable assault on the revenues of the borough.
There never, perhaps, was an occasion in which a
cause so destitute of reasonable foundation was ushered
into notice with such a grandiloquent enunciation of
principles. The Government of which, for this pur-
pose, Mr. LOWE is the mouthpiece, admit that their
uncalled-for meddling with the Navigation Laws has
been injurious to the shipping interest, and they pro-
pose an infinitesimal portion of redress by a wholesale
robbery of corporation property, with this striking
disadvantage—that while the measure of relief will be
scarcely felt, the injury committed will be of the most
serious character. Truly, Mr. LOWE must possess an
extraordinary power of countenance—showing his
fitness for the task which Mr. CARDWELL shrunk
from undertaking—when he gravely told an as-
sembly of intelligent Englishmen that the shipping
interest suffered from a toll of one farthing on two and
half tons of coals ! It must have been a polite consi-
deration for the difficulty of the duty he had assumed,
which induced his hearers to refrain from laughing at
the absurdity.
There is not one point of his laboured argument
which offers the slightest proof, either that the tolls
which he proposed to abolish are in themselves any
serious injury to the shipping interest, or that their
appropriation is not in accordance with the purposes
for which they are levied, whether the maintenance of
lighthouses or harbours, or the support of ancient
mariners and the orphans of seamen. The whole
scheme is a shallow pretence of zeal for a branch of
national industry which their own system of legisla-
tion has notoriously tended to injure, and should there-
fore be resolutely opposed by every member of the
Legislature who has sufficient independence to vote
according to his own convictions. The case as stated
by Mr. LOWE is utterly worthless ; no such reason
having been shown for making the change proposed,
and the proposal can only be attributed to that incli-
nation for tinkering which has ever been one of the
prominent vices of Radical legislators.
Our chief concern, however, is with that part of the
scheme which proposes to confiscate the right of the
Corporation of Liverpool to dues which have been
levied from time immemorial. We shall not stop to
argue the question upon the claims of legality, re-
ferring to the purchaser of and payment for them,
which have been declared by the highest court of law
to be indisputable. This point has been raised in their
defence, and may be met, as it has been met, with the
right of Parliament to deal with corporate property,
however acquired, when the public welfare is involved
in its continuance. We may, however, take the broade
ground, and appeal to Parliament for the maintenance
of the Liverpool town dues on the intelligible prin-
ciple, that while their imposition is no appreciable
hardship upon shipping, and no impediment in any
way to that extension of navigation and commerce for
which Mr. LOWE professes such an ardent zeal, the
receipt is of infinite consequence, not only to Liverpool
as a town, but to its efficiency as a port. To those
acquainted with the facts, there is something ludi-
crously absurd in the case which the Minister en-
deavours to set up for his proposed raid upon Liver-
pool, and the statements with which he attempted to
beguile the House into a consent to his plan on the
plea of justice. He told the assembled senators that
while Liverpool levied a tax upon shipping to the
annual amount of £125,000, only £3,000 was devoted
to maritime purposes, the remainder being applied to
borough expenditure, as indeed was expressly com-
manded by the Municipal Corporation Reform Act.
This is a lively instance of the way in which figures
seemingly true may be made to support the most
absurd falsehoods. Of the £1.25,000 which Mr. LOWE
falsely asserts to be taxes upon shipping, the greater
part of it is levied upon merchandise ; and when he
asserts that only £3,000 is devoted to maritime pur-
poses, he knew, or ought to have known, that the
greater portion of the whole receipt is applied to the
rendering that merchandise available, by affording
facilities for its circulation and transmission. Upon
his own principle of taxes being levied for the benefit
of those who pay them, the town dues of Liverpool
may be amply defended ; for it is notorious that much
of the extended trade of Liverpool and the surround-
ing country is owing to the judicious manner in which
they have been expended.
Mr. LOWE'S allusion to the charge of dock dues on
the Sarah Sands and the Braziliera is a sufficient proof,
if any were needed, of the weakness of his cause. It
might have been injudicious to strain the legal right,
in the cases alluded to ; but since the purchase of the
Birkenhead Docks by the Liverpool Corporation, they

cannot again occur, and the instance, therefore,
amounts to nothing. But, beyond this, he told the
House that, owing to the imposition of town dues,
trade was driven from the Mersey to Chester, although
it is a notorious fact that the Dee is silted up so as to
render it almost unnavigable, and that not one cargo
is taken to or from Chester that would, under any other
circumstances, be added to the trade of Liverpool.
He endeavoured to create the impression that the
commerce of Liverpool had been seriously impeded
by the imposition of town dues, although the fact is
equally notorious that no other port in the kingdom,
or even in the world, has shown such a rapid and con-
tinuous increase, outrivalling all its competitors, and
proving to demonstration that the payment of town,
dues forms no impediment whatever to commerce and
navigation.
Why, it has been asked, should Manchester pay for
the improvement of Liverpool streets P It may be
answered that Manchester does not pay more than she
receives full value for ; that she is far more indebted
to Liverpool than the latter is to her; and the very
allusion betrays the animus of the movement, that the
Government, conscious of their Parliamentary weak-
ness, are, under the pretence of the public welfare,
bidding for the support of that little shred of faction
known as the Manchester party. On that question of
outlay which formed so prominent a part of the Minis-
terial case, Manchester is interested to the full extent
of her contributions, inasmuch as the charges upon the
raw material of her manufactures are considerably
affected by the means of transmission ; and no one can
deny that facilities of no ordinary extent have been
afforded by the town dues being devoted to the im-
provement of the streets of Liverpool.
This is an element in the discussion which ought to
be pressed upon the Legislature, because Mr. LOWE,
with studied inaccuracy, has endeavoured to make it
appear that, of the large sums received, only a very
small proportion is devoted to purposes not exclusively
for local benefit. The House should be informed that
the expenditure of Liverpool town dues has raised St.
George's Hall—perhaps the main cause of Manchester
jealousy—but which includes the Assize Courts for
South Lancashire ; that above £70,000 has been
expended in a Landing-stage, and about £150,000
more for another exclusively devoted to the trade of
the Mersey ; that more than £70,000 has been
expended in a Custom-house and other offices for the
purposes of Government ; while bonds have lately
been given, under the sanction of Parlia-ment, to the
amount of more than a million sterling, in order that
the incomplete docks on the Cheshire side of the
Mersey might be rendered available for the purposes
of commerce, and thereby facilitate that extension of
trade for which the Government profess to be so
solicitous.

We cannot believe that, in the face of facts so dia-
metrically opposite to the false and absurd assertions
upon which Mr. LOWE obtained leave to introduce
his bill, the House of Commons will consent to its
passing. On the whole question, notwithstanding
his pretensions of zeal for the shipping interest, he
has made out no case which can entitle his proposal to
the support of any intelligent and independent man ;
and though it will, of course, receive the votes of the
Government party, aided by the little Manchester
clique, and those who view the importance of Liver-
pool with something like feelings of jealousy, it has no
other recommendation, and should be resolutely
opposed at every stage, as far as the forms of Parlia-
ment will allow. Should, however, the House of
Commons be so oblivious of justice or principle as to
legalise robbery at the bidding of an almost defunct
administration, we have a resort to the House of
Lords, where Liverpool may surely number among
her friends the Earl of DERBY, with his powerful
influence ; the Earl of HARROWBY, notwithstanding
his connection with the Government ; the Earl of
ELLESMERE, Lord-Lieutenant of the County ; and
Lord RAVENSWORTH, so recently our representative.
The division on Thursday last shows the doubtful
tenure of ministerial influence in the Upper House ;
and hereditary legislators can never consent to such a
barefaced imposition on popular credulity.