The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-03-29 00:00:00

EVENING EDITION

or An _Evening Edition of the NORTHERN DAILY
TIMES is now Published every Afternoon, at Three o'clock,
containing the Markets, together with all the News of the
Day, up to the hour of going to Press.

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SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1856

THE anti-Liverpudlians of Manchester held a
meeting in the Town Hall of their native city on
Thursday. The chair was filled by Mr. THOMAS
BAZLEY, the President of the Manchester Chamber
of Commerce; and the precise object he and his
brother malcontents had in view was to consider

" the propriety of organising an association in
" defence of the measure now before Parliament,
" and concentrating the efforts of the various
" localities affected by the bill, so that by evidence
"and otherwise before the select committee of the
" House of Commons, the case of the promoters
" may be sustained." Now, as far as we under.
stand the political and material organisation
of these realms, we believe there never

was a case in which the " propriety" of
engaging in a public agitation was more
necesary, or likely to prove more signally
fatal to the success of a revolutionary movement.
We use words in their literal sense ; and, when

we say " revolutionary movement," we wish
them to be understood as we give them,
for we contend that the worst of all re-
bellious acts is to attempt to subvert the
rights of property. Such designs make the
reformer a degraded rebel—the enemy of all
whose industry has raised them above
beggary, and the foe of the inheritors of the unre-
mitting toil, frugality, and talent, of those,
who have bequeathed their labours to posterity
The mission of true Liberalism is to give to the
public, andiadd wealth and comfort to the common
stock of a people. Men of ordinary political
understanding look to well proved economic
principles, and unswerving morality, in their
administration for the removal of abuses, and the
accomplishment of great social amelioration.
Not so with the Town Dues agitators of the
Corporation of Manchester. They come forth
like locusts, to cut up the produce of every
municipal homestead, to bring fresh inflictions

upon their neighbour, and subscribe money fo.
what ? For what indeed ?

Where is the need of money in the present
instance ? Is it to secure a majority for Mr.
LOWE'S bill ? or is it to make another COBDEN out
a HERON ? We will not presume to think Man-
chester can carry any bill it pleases, with the aid of
cash. And yet they will take money from their
dupes, to take from Liverpool its lawful property

end leave its inhabitants to pay additional taxes to
make good that of which they would
rob them. These are the Municipal Re-
formers of Manchester ! But Liverpool alone
is not to be assailed in their future designs.
The Chairman of the meeting of Thursday
recommended the formation of a national spolia-
tion association, as " the collectors of town dues
"in various parts of the United Kingdom appear
"to be determined still to appropriate to private
" ;nunicl;pal purposes taxes which they gather from
" public sources." We are at a loss to understand
what Mr. BAZLEY means by " private municipal
purposes." That gentleman either knows very
little, or cares less, for the etymology of his mother
tongue. It is the first time we have ever heard
of a municipality's having any private rights, or
any power to apply taxes to private or personal
purposes. Such things may be done in Man-
chester, but the Liverpool ratepayers will not
suffer them in this Borough. We bought the
right to levy Town Dues, and every farthing of
income they produce has been capitalised, and
the borrowed money spent in creating a sea port
for Manchester, and the whole of the manufac-
turing districts—in calling into life a Liverpool
for England and the world.

Were it necessary to go further we would tell
the Manchester orators that the money to do
those things was borrowed publicly, expended
publicly, and trade and commerce are reaping the
harvest. Mr. BAILEY sa)s, " that the adminis-
" tration has shown a want of administrative

" courage" in not following up MR. LowE's pro-
centralisation scheme, and novel notions of muni-
cipal reform. Manchester speakers talk of sea-
ports as though they were so many private drawing
rooms, and MR. BAZLEY hopes to see the day
when " Li,rerpool shall cease to be adorned at the
" expense of the people of England." Who, then,
is to " adorn" this island with ships and commerce,
with docks to hold the former, and all the facilities
required to enable "the people of England" to
carry on the latter ? We are not to go to the New
Zealanders to pay -for these, our greatest national
adornments. No ! We go to those who use our
ports—those who are directly benelitted by them,
as the landlord goes to the tenant for the rent of
the dwelling he occupies. This may be rather too
common place a mode of procedure for Manchester,
but her malcontents are not bound to come to
Liverpool. They can go to any port they please ;
but as long as they come here, they
must pay for the commercial advantages afforded
to them, just as they would be made
to pay in London, Southampton, or any
other place. We do not at all underrate or despise
the trade we have with Manchester, but we think
the conduct of the Corporation of that city in the
Present instance most despicable, and no less
subversive of all the principles of local self-

government

Mr. HERON, unlike most town clerks, talks too
much, even for a whole city council. Yet, as he ex-
hibits simply the weakness we find in all long-winded
spouters, it would be scarcely fair to find fault
with his extraordinary loquaciousness. When
speaking of the difference between the Liverpool
Town Dues and the Manchester market tolls, he
says :—" If, as Mr. BROTHERTON intended to have
" stated upon a second debate, the Manchester
" corporation stationed collectors at the entrance
" of the town, and said to every market gardener,
" and every person who came in with goods of the
" kind, 'we must have a toll from you here at the
"'entrance to pay the local expenses of the
"'corporation,' and then sent them into the

market, and charged them again there for market

" toll, then there would be some analogy between
" the case of the Manchester market tolls and the
" case of the town dues of Liverpool." What
abominable trash for a town clerk to talk ! Mr.
HERON, however, is probably the only man of
business in the kingdom who would name Mr.
BROTHERTON, except in a debate on that most
interesting subject—early to bed. But since Mr.
HERON has ventured to quote what the honourable
Member for Salford said, we tell him that
the Manchester market tolls are derived from the
constituents of the Council, the men who pay Mr.
HERON his salary, before they can sell in those
markets, and that the producer has to pay that man
before he can enter the market as a seller, and that
the income derived from these tolls, if not applied
to municipal purposes, must be put into the
pockets of the Councilmen. Mr. HERON is quite
right in stating that Manchester raises market
tolls under the powers of an act of parliament;
and that any Corporation can obtain a similar act.
But this only shows that Manchester can get rid
of our Town Dues legally by going to the legisla•
ture for a bill to purchase our right and title to
levying tolls from those who choose to make use of
our port, and the accommodation it affords to
ships and commerce. For any work of public
utility, Parliament will always give its consent ; but
measures subversive of the rights of property
will never pass the Imperial Legislature, and to
this moral certainty Manchester may as well
subscribe at once.