The Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1860-11-09 00:00:00

certain cases, and for defining (if necessary) the duties
of traffic managers, to be appointed under the ' Mersey
Dock Acts Consolitation Act, 18.58,' see. 32."
Mr. HurmAeß, in submitting his Motion for the con-
sideration of the meeting, said that they would probably
recollect that the subject of the Dock Quays was one
which had occupied; his attention for some time ,past.
In 1857 he moved for a special committee to inquire
into this subject. That committee met on the 27th of
October in that year, and the majority were in favour of
the change, which he suggested, being carried out. But
circumstances occurred at the time; and the parliamen-
tary notices not being given in that form which would
enable thein to carry out the recommendations of the
sub-committee, the matter was not decided; at the time.
'HE was well aware that all improvements required some
time before the general holy of the community received
and entertained them, and gave them that consideration
which their importance so imperatively deinanded, and
before they lent their adhesion to the suggestions which
Were proposetl. But being perfectly satisfied that the
peesent.system was bad in principle—it being vexatious,
and irregular in its. application,. and unsuited for the
purposes to which it was intended to have it applied—
he should continue, as long as he occupied a seat at the
deliberations of that board, to call
.attention to the
matter, till he had finally succeeded in bringing about
ttohee
ffclelcatn. e(
Hw
ehaicrh,
hi l
et
arm.)d been so l
u ewoul!lntgh heni s aim
bri and desire
etlydeseribe
the present system. By sec..BB in their last bill, alt
goods were liable to a fine after they lay forty-eight
hours on the deck ; they were also liable to a fine
if they lay. one•hour after the cargo had been discharged,
and if they could be proved to be an obstruction. There
was, however, one article of commerce which enjoyed a
benefit and advantage over all other kind of goods, and
that was timber. By secs. 104 and 105, in the same
Act of Parliament, timber was allowed to remain seventy-
two hours during the summer months; and the period
for carrying it in this.port, according to the regulations
•of the Custom-house Offices, did not commence till the
sunset of the day after which it was discharged. He had
'no doubt that when that law was framed, the interests of
timber Merchants and others of that class were well
represented in the Dock Board. (A laugh.) These
gentlemen generally took tare of their own interests, and
he would be the last man to blame them for doing so.
(Hear, hear.) Well, they knew that the first informa-
liois that a police-officer obtained as regards an obstruc-
tion being cansed on the dock quays by the discharged
cargo, Wag immediately communicated by that official to
his superior, the inspector; that is, when the goods.-
were supposed' to have remained beyond the forty-eight
hours, after which they were looked upon as an obstruc-
tion. The information being laid by the coustable; a
notice was sent to the consignees, to the effect that the
goods had been on the quay beyond the time specified,
ang for this infringement of the law they are to be fined
ZS, £lO. £2O, or whatever suns the magistrates may
inflict Tinos/ them. Every morning, at the police-court-
The Csfifsixfs.:4—The flue is limited to £5.

Mr. IferinAck continued Every morning" at the
police-court they found some forty, or fifty police officers
who confirmed the statements Which had been made by
him as to the goods beingliable to a fine.
The CHAIRAN- explained that the fine wan ss. the
hour for every package of goods.
Mr. HUTBACK proceeded in his speech, and remarked
that the forty or fifty police officers at the police-court
were met by a large number of employA from the
variond warehouses and offices along the docks, and, as
a matter of course there was a good deal of swearing
and counter-swearing. After theimagistrate had heard
the whole* qtiestion, he, of course, gave what he con.!
sidefedd. fair and proper decision in the case. He (Mr.
IL) need.,seareeTy saV that fines were most irregular in
their application. There Was a .great want of confor-'
mity and oneness in the decisions, to which he did not
object on principle, but he certainly objected to the
system which led' to these decisions. He had known
instances where the goods had remained beyond the
forty-eight hours on the dock quays, and the owners of
them had been fined £3 the first day on which the offence
had been ,committed,•and the next day the goods were
found to be in the same position, but the offending
patty having been brought before a different magistrate
he fined theni XI. Hence that indifference, as it were,
to the result of the application of the fines caused mer-
chants to seeni careless about escaping the amount levied
by the bench. fn, fact, the very uncertainty of punish-
ment proved a sort of incentive to the crime. He
admitted that the present system might act, and did act,
very well before the tariff made some years ago, and
known by the name of Sir Robert Peel's tariff: A great
number of articles which had been previously liable to
duty were made free. Previous to the passing of that
act, no goods were allowed to be removed from the ship
in a larger einattity than the custom-house officers could
pass. at now, when the
,great bulk of imported goods
were free from duty, and there was no restriction what-
ever put on ships or their cargoes, the same rule could
not be expected to apply. He need not say—as what
he was about to state was confirmed and proved by the
experience of every day—that it was totally impossible
at times to remove gooN in that quick and rapid manner
in which they were discharged. Not that he meant, by
expressing this much, to throw any difficulty in the way
of disthar,ging; on the contrary, he would suggest that
every facility. should be given to the shipowner in this
respect. He Pelieted that if a shipowner who was true to
his own interests adopted this plan, arid saw that his cargo
was as •quickly removed as it was discharged, he would
be conferring a great advantage on himself as well as on
the port in which he traded. On the otherhand he found
occasionallt that a large number of . vessels got into
berths in this port, and perhaps occupied these berths
for twelve or fourteen clays, when, with facility and
without any cause of troutile or inconvenience being
occasioned to themselves thereby, they could haVe disL
charred their load in two or three days. (Hear, hear.)
Here, then, was a gross irregularity in the useless
occupancy of valuable space, which might, and would,
ii(l doubt, be of great use and service to the port at larve.
Then, again, with reference to appropriated berths, l'he
asked how the system worked ? Why, it depended and
worked entirely on the whim of the consignee. He
meant whether the goods were an obstruction or not.

He might.certainly'say that they were an obstruction,
and then, of course, the fine fell upon himself. -If, on
the other hand, the goods were not an obstruction, then
they might remain four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine days
on the quay. But the fine was the cause why this system
was bad. There was an irregularity here which he
thought would tend to show itself obviously. The
consignee might have goods in a certain position ;
he might take them in an appropriated berth, or he
might discharge them at any other part of the dock
quays where the herth was not appropriated. These
statements which had been very fully embodied in a
report which was composed by a special committee
upon the dock fines some time ago, were already amply
discussed; and at the time that report was brought up
before the present board the following recommendations
were made by the committee,—First, it was condemna-
tory of theiresent mode of laving informations by the
police officers, and in lieu of fines •they suggested the
adoption of a fixed penalty rent.; secondly, the com-
mittee recommended the 'appointment of traffic mana-
gers, whose duties should be defined to be that they
were to exercise some control over the discharge of

cargoes, and take precedenee of the master porters,
dumpers, and men, and, see that the penalty rent,
according to the scale to be decided upon, was enforced
and-paid.- Now, he was far from impugning or throw-
ing any disparagement oil the magistrates, nor had he
any intention to enter into that matter at present, as
the subject had already occupied the attention of the
special committee which he had mentioned nearly four
years ago, when that committee broulht up their report.
The CHAIRMAN —That report was not passed by this
board.

Mr. HunnAcK—lt was received by the board.
The OTIATRMAN—But it was not passed by the board
at all.

Mr. HUBBACK proceeded to say that what he proposed
as a' remedy to the previous system, which at present
existed, would bd simply to carry out, upon these open
docks, a system similar to that which existed in the
enclosed decks, as far as practicable. And for the infer-
tion of the board,. he might state that at the Stanley
Dock Warehouses during the last year—that is, front
June 1859 to the same period in 1860—of the total ton-
nage landed there was delivered over the quay nearly
throe-fourths the total quantity of goods landed (173,070)
—there were delivered over the quay 117,058 trim.
They had heard of no fines before the act was passed,
when they were allowed twenty-four hours ; and why
so ? Because the consignees knew full well that if they
had not removed the goods within the twenty-fout
hours, they would not be allowed to do so for ,one
month. There was a certainty and uniformity in the
application of this measure, and hence the speedy action
of the consignees. In the -Albert Wapping Dock the
goods were, of course, sonic of them at least, of
a valuable and costly character; and of these goods
placed in warehouses, the one-third of the total
quantity landed was removed over the dock quays. He
therefore had no hesitation in saying that if this system
were applied to these docks it would remove a great
deal of the inconvenience, trouble, and annoyance that
at present existed. What he proposed was—but, of
course, he could not at this stage go into details, its at
the time when the billwas brought up the matter could
he more fully gone into—that the cargo should be dis-
charged and delivered by (Me. set of men, under the
'control of.a master porter, and that master porter should
be allowed to keep a book similar to that kept in the
enclosed docks, which would show the landing of each
vessel, and also exhibit on the Ilface ~of it the time at
which each package and bale of goods was discharged.
This was again to be under the management and control
Of the traffic manager, whose duty it would also be to
send to the eousignee of the cargo, after hit expiration
of a certain time, unless, indeed, the goods ,had been
removed within the specified period, a notice to
this effect, and also the, amount of the rent for
which he would be held liable. The adoption
of this course of procedure, the speaker opined, would
make it an almost moral certainty, that the goods would
be removed; unless they were removed, he could, upon
the principle referred to, double the rent. (Hear, hear.).
The goods could also be allowed to• remain till the.l42istt
vessel
was paid. (A laugh.) lie said that if the d; a
charged her cargo, and it could be removed within
fair and reasonable time, it was emphatically
of
.the owner of that vessel to pay for the pr.ivilreegncair
enjoyed in having his cargo so discharged. With
threed
to the duties of traffic manager, he thought that
or four men might do the work of the wholeliport.rraniate
Whether it might be thought desirable to amalgamate
of
the
this office with that performed by other servants the duty.
so as to have two duties performed by
"e
that such a
board, as sketched by Mr. Arnold in his lucid statement,
so
lesn,ast,
not for him to say. Again, he thought
knew that the
estate (the Dock Board estate . They aderable sum—he
system would bring a large amount of revenuei into this
present dock fines amounted to a considerable
thought £3,000 or £4,000 a-
ud one-third of
of that sum went into the borough funds,
police fund.
it was appropriated to the sup two-thirds
It might be remarked by
some
he himself thought that
be deprived of those fines; be
considerableawonldtake£3,ooo or £4,000
n the they would
f these fines the
place, by substituting
by him. However, be that as
penalty rent,
saggesitet(hatthe present system was an
it might, he considered
to the port. Ile then alluded to •
almost perfect disgrace
the north decks, and he gave it
the course pursuedinthe
plan followed there was a great
as his opinion that .
of property—a disgrace to the
waste and destruction
1 not only a disgrace toThe port, but
port generally—
immoral and injurious influence upon the
it had a meatti
the lower classes particularly, of this town.
population,
would much, very much, he thought,
, hear.) it
(Bear,
only the protection of property, but also,
facilitate, not
would tendmaterially•lessen
believed,
he firmly .
deplorablyprevalent
crime which at present was so
the
within their docks.
He concluded by submitting his
motion.
Mr. Forwood seconded the motion.
increase
ebvestn:teolterit:detsisltachaartl,y,