The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-03-28 00:00:00

"Make roe,

The Cha:irman having read the advertisement calling
ih‘
b„,,,lneetlog, said—The collectors of town dues in various
i'n-'lB of the United Kingdom appear to be determined still
tVlllTTopriate to private municipal purposes taxes which
sY Sather from public sources. The government of the
had wisely brought in a measure which would
!erred these abuses, which we have assembled this morn-
lea ° g t°rornote the removal of. But I have to regret, in
sh04:11 aea with yourselves, that the administration has
of .;, want of administrative courage. (Loud cheers.)
elle've there has been a fickleness evinced upon the part
84 Majesty's Government, which has been unueces-
till?, for if they had for a single moment ,rellected that
1' were supporting the interests of the many, merely
.ValUst the private possessions and aggrandisement of the
Iv'
they would have felt strengthened in the 'opposition
Which tbeY assumed. Now, the time has arrived, in my
°Pi4l°ll, When we should assume, in the manufacturing
thistrixh, an important attitude. (Hear, hear.) Deeds,
—lot words, should characterise us.' We must be up
ii
11.daing; and I hope art organisation-will be called into
1-711!e to-day, which will never cease its labours until
11.1,,`"na gathered from public sources are applied unlver-
"‘"Y to public convenience and for the advancement of
Pahlie objects only. (Hear, hear.) I trust that we shall
Zit3e to see Liverpool, and some other ports of the United
ai..ng„(l°ln, adorned and possessing municipal advantages
i; le cost of the people of England, and that every com-
ItaitY, as this community does, will be called upon to
Pay for
the social requisites which are necessary for their
self-ro
thp•, ertunent, and the well-being of the people whom
her epresent. (Hear, hear.)
N. Wood proposed the first resolution. He
clerk
Although, sir, the kindness of yourself and the town
mach h _
.3 placed me in this position, I cannot but very
41 regret that it has not, fallen to the lot of some gentle
", Who has taken a more active and prominent part in
utione.earlY proceedings upon the subject to move this reso-
.
1, 'ea I can only say, that although I have not
ta
k
e
nan active part in it, my own feelings upon the sub-
Jett are clear and decided. I believe, sir, that the griev-
,44lee which we are now seeking to have removed, is a cer-
'lna relic of old times, of a state of things which has now
used away, and it is a grievance which must speedily
removed by the advancing knowledge and intelligence
the present day. When I have travelled, sir, it has always
:road to me that great rivers were the natural highways
tile world, and that as such. they ought to be open to
(near, hear, and cheers) There is a growing ten-
tieneY to this all over the world. There is probably, sir,
°lle in this room who has not often travelled along that
k 'atitiful river, the Rhine, and who had not contrasted its
Present state, where innumerable steamers pass up and
4 °Wii on her every day, transporting not merely passen-
'l.er% but merchandise of every description, with the relics
of former times which its banks bear, and which attest
naw, at an earlier day, that river (which is now the scene
of friendly intercourse and peaceful commerce) was for-
'erly the scene of war, of rapine, and of plunder. Every-
ovvuhere, sir, I believe you will find the same thing going
• e d,r°.o will find friendly intercourse existing and ex-
tben- 1311 Will find all the obstacles of intercourse
log will
; and although I do not compare the town
of Liverpool with the former wars u.,,0n the Rhine,3lr ye Liverpool
I believe that the principle is very much the same.
, sir, have lately been contending at another corner of
th world, and more recently, I suppose, we have been
e°•ilteading at Paris, for the free navigation of the Danube.
mwa
ge are contending, upon a similar principle, for the free
Neation
What natural
the '3'lersey. (Hear, hear.) I ask, sir, by
-ur right, upon what principle of equity, the
iiPoration of Liverpool are authorised to impose a duty
ail:n the free use of the Mersey for all who inhabit its
filb. 8?I Will not longer detain this meeting. I have a
conviction that this is a work of time ; we are
-•gvane.
.eiPle tng a principle somewhat new. Like all new prin-
kla Ito use:the language of a great English statesman—
i's° be abused, discussed, and filially adopted. (Hear,
an-dr) ?aye no doubt that our perseverance, our energy,
slice the Justice of our cause, will ensure for us a final
'expess. Mr. Wood then proposed the resolution, which
ther eBsed the regret of the meeting at the withdrawal of
the ig,ercolent bill for the abolition of passing tolls and
thitt-egmulation of town dues on shipping, and their opinion
inftic':*l6 importance of the subject, and the injustice
Pa
rt `ed by those;dues, called for a special effort upon the
.of that
5 district to support the government in carry.
corn.to effect the recommendation of the shipping dues
,rnissioners. The speaker added that he was iuclined
iiliZelieve the withdrawal of the bill was attributable
tnelit, More to the house of commons than to the govern -
iitifLlv. latch showed the necessity of constituencies rightly
subject, 7'14 and directing their representatives upon the

. .
air, see_
In
doing --e,on, of Ashton,: seconded the resolution.
so, he strongly commented upon the fact, that not
one
b member for the whole of Lancashire, or for that
oroele,eugh. had raised hisvoice in support of the Govern-
hin,`LaPeasure. The withdrawal of the bill appeared to
be— Inevitable after the silence of the Lancashire me.mt-
re The ,
ZartYThe people of Manchester had a powerful antagonis. .
, able, ever on the watch. to attack their trade in
eh-03412art, and therefore their members of parliament
u be told that they were placed in th House to be di !r to reply to those attacks. The
ise
srlet peoples of that
-ad made up their minds that the question should
_o
417
they
at rest TO attain this end, they would have to d agitate done had done before, to organise, subscribe, and agitate,
with ee—teirt one single session, but session after session,
rained perseverance, untilthe question was fairly
treakt rest He believed the justice of their cause.was
ele.,ltt,rent thatthey would have no need to retain some
Vliai ',.'in'er in the house to defend it. (
tostio,, wlth oppressive factory bills, and L.iverp'eol ex-
th 'B, and threatened despotic education bills, he .
theoioeght tl,,
manufacturers of that district would need ail
endunanimity and all their perseverance to keep their
01 „„.• (Hear, hear.) Mr. Mason passed a high eutio-
of.''' uPon the speech of the Town clerk on the occasion
_ the recent meeting in Manchester upon the subject and
li?e general value of that gentleman s services, and con-
cluded by seconding the resolution.
The
Paanimously Chairrnan put the resolution, which was carried
Mr, Thomas Fairblirn moved the second"resolution,
ithich expressed the high approval by the manufact.uring.
districts of
in the services rendered by the corporation of
Manchester that came, and declared it to be the duty
'F the manufacturing district earnestly to co-operate
With- the corporation in order to secure the abolition,
() due appropriation, of the town -dues. Mr.
irairbairn expressed his full sense or the grail-
'Pelode which .the manufacturing district , owed to
corporation of Manchester, and to their excellent
loestrovvreclerk for the measures they had taken upon that
ion. He eulogised the speech of Mr. Lowe, in intro-
reing the govermnent
_bill as being the outpouring' of an
41onest man, thoroughly convinced of the iniquity of a
tertain Pleasure, and anxious to put it down. 11l re-
to to the second portion co: the resolution, he urged
stirt°,llgly upon the manufacturing district at laree, not
° leave hew ork altogether on the hands of the Man-
eoester corpation, but to give their general and ener-
getic assistance.
.
le:Mr. James Aspin all Turner seconded,the resolution.
eie thought they would all jfor theoin in heartilexertions the
Y praising the
ei °rPoration of Manchester, y h
vnatie in support of the bill, and their efforts in
endea-
ad
ou
Znuldrine to do away with that objectionable tax. He
not distress the town-clerk by any further allusion
° him
a , because he knew that that gentleman was
b
traught 'erY m st
ode man, and would blush, no doubt.
.....
••--
Cr.)l nut ' the town-clerk might rest
114 quite assured that he had made an impression
111 man minds on the occasion referred to most favour-
,ii'e in his great talent and assiduity in working out that
etirtion• (Hear, hear.) The Chamber of Commerce, and
in
, Commercial Association, had also exerted themselves
11,1,1_ furtherance of the object. The meeting and the district
_o_ p_l(l.not now be contented making speeches and saying
Liurd vvords, but they should now raise a fund, and have
410 efficient committee to work the question in the same
VaY that many public questions had,been already worked
in that •
Until theil3utcl'
and never relax their exertions
object was
,accomplished. (Hear, hear.) They

should call not only on the gentlemen present, but upon
vast numbers who were absent, and who would, he hoped,
listen to the voice which would go forth from that room,
and join hand and heart until the impost of which they com-
plained was abolished. The country had been recently
engaged in a great war, of which one of the objects
seemed to have been to open the navigation of the
Danube. He hoped now that by a little, not blood-
shed, but hearty co-operation together, and fighting
with one heart and mind against that which they thought
—whether those who imposed it thought so or not—an
unjust taxation, they would open another great river, and
see the boats which had been stopped at the mouth of
that river, not exactly by deposits of sand, but by the
tax-gatherers who waited upon them immediately on
their entrance, allowed to proceed along the course of the
river free, and without taxation. (Hear, hear, and loud

cheers.)
The Mayor of Salford (Mr. Molls) in a few words sup-
ported the resolution, bearing testimony to the high
ability displayed by the town clerk, and adding that
although he was not given to agitation in general, he
thought that question one of the instances in which they
might agitate for an object so beneficial.
Mr. Malcolm Ross proposed the third resolution, which
was to the effect that an association, to be called an
"Association to obtain a right appropriation of the Liver-
pool Town Dues " be formed for the purposes mentioned
in the preceding resolutions, and that the support
of the leading merchants and manufacturers, by
subscription and otherwise, be solicited. The resolution
contained the names of a president, vice-president, and
committee, the latter an exceedingly numerous body,
formed of representatives from a great number of towns
in the district around. In proposing the resolution, Mr.
Ross alluded to the recent debate in the house of commons
upon the-town dues question, and compared Sir Frederick
Thesiger's defence of the impost to Sir Charles Wetherall's
defence, twenty-five years ago, of the old borough-
mongering system. In Sir Charles Wetherall's speech
Gatton and Old Sarum appeared to be considered as
identical with the British constitution, and their destruc-
tion was pointed out as the destruction of the empire. In
the same manner, it would appear from Sir Frederick
Thesiger's speech that if the town dues were abolished, a
general alienation of property, and the destruction of the
British constitution, must be the result. Twenty-five
years had shown the fallacy of Sir Charles Wetherall's
arguments, and he hoped a far less number of years would
demonstrate the fallacy of Sir Frederick Thesiger's. He
contended that there was a strong feeling in Liverpool.
itself among those who were well-informed upon
the subject, against the town dues. There were
some enlightened merchants there who did not
wish to pocket what did not belong to themselves, and to
see a mal—appropriation of the money, in addition to the
wrong done in levying it. He held in his hand a paper
drawn out by a Liverpool merchant, who was well known
to the corporation, bat whose name he did not wish to
mention. So far, however, from wishing to hide his in-
formation under a cloud, he had sent the paper to be laid
before the meeting that it might demonstrate that there
was a feeling in Liverpool opposed to the vigorous attack
made upon Mr. Lowe. Mr. Ross then read the heads of
several items of complaint from the paper he held in his
hand, commenting upon %tame of them as he went on. The
first complaint was that the .corporation had not appro-
priated the town dues for the extension of facilities to
shipping. The Liverpool town clerk, Mr. Ross observed,
wished it to be impressed upon the public that the cor-
poration were not called upon to do so. A. statement
of Mr. Samuel Holme, in the Liverpool Town Council,
was quoted to show that the corporation had neglected
their duty in this respect, so far as regarded the Wal-
lasey embankment, and its present condition. The
corporation, it was complained, who fined small
huxters for incorrect weights, provided no means them-
selves for . the correct measurement of goods shipped
there, which were the subject of constant fraud and
deception. Mr. Ross said upon that point he could speak
personally. On a late occasion he had reason to com-
plain that bales packed in Manchester iu the morning
weighed twenty per cent more in Liverpool than they did
when they left.the warehouse here. Unfortunately, the
goods were got on board before any redress could be
obtained, and although such over-charges were as much
a fraud as any other fraud, yet the corporation could
practise them with impunity. The letter then complained
that the corporation preferred employing their receipts in
widening the interior streets of the town than those
connected immediately with the docks, and which alone
were used Ly the traffic from the manufacturing dis-
tricts. An immense amount of the town dues, it was
also urged, was collected upon no tariff printed, circu-
lated, or known, but was left to the discretion of clerks,
who frequently differed in their views, and the
uncertainty arising from this fact offered a tempta-
tion to pilfer to young men, chiefly apprentices,
who paid 'the dues. The writer enumerated, a long.
list of articles in the Customs' bill of entry for the previous
day (Tnesduy), which he found had been entered on that
day alone, and for which there was no charge specified in the
published tariff—among them were nitrate of soda, tin ore,
tapioca, isinglass, hats, twine, saddlery, plated ware, guns,
gas fittings, anchors, lead pipes, and a great number of
other articles. The government customs' officers, it was
added, were the chief providers of the dues, as they refused
to pass an entry until the payment of town dues was marked
upon it, and the arrangements for paying the dues in
Liverpool were complained of as cualberse and unneces-
sarily expensive. Mr. Ross commented on the points
complained of in the letter, and concluded by proposing the
adoption of the resolution.
Mr. Ashworth seconded the resolution ; and, in doing so,
took occasion to reply to the statement made in the House
of Commons by Sir Frederick Thesiger, that the corporation
of Liverpool had paid £374,000 for the privilege of
levying the dues in the reign of Charles the
Second. That sum, he stated, was paid, but
not for that privilege alone. it was joined with the
purchase of 1,000 manors, and separating the value of
one from another he believed the value of the privilege
now enjoyed by Liverpool was then valued at about £7OO.
Mr. Ashworth at some length repeated many of the
arguments already frequently urged against the principle
of the town dues.

The Town Clerk, Mr. Heron, addressed the meeting
at considerable length in support of the resolution. He
expressed his entire concurrence in the steps which the
meeting was about to take, and his belief in their success.
He explained that if the debate on the town dues had
been adjourned to a second night, it was the intention of
several members to have spoken in support of the bill
including Mr. Milner Gibson and Mr. Cobden. On the
first night of such a debate it was usual for the opponents
of a measure to make erery effort to come forward and
spca,r. While supporters usually waited to reply. He
declared, however, that the people of Manchester had every
reason to be satisfied with the result. The Town
Clerk then addressed himself to replying to the
speech of Sir Frederick Thesiger, whose statements ha
declared . were calculated to deceive the house and
the public, and were only intelligible upon
the conclusion that Sir Frederick Thesiger was the
hired and instructed advocate of Liverpool. He referred
to the statement as to the sum of £374,000 paid by the cor-
to which he replied in the same
poration for the privilege,
manner as was previously dons by Mr. Ashworth. Having
gone over several points in Sit Frederick Thesiger's speecli,
lee came to that of Mr. Horsfall, and alluded to the com-
parison which the latter gentleman had made between the
town dues of Liverpool and the market tolls collected by the
corporation of Manchester. What the Manchester corpora-
tion collected, he stated, were market tolls under an act
which could be obtained by any town which chose to go to
the expense of obtaining it, and building a market. These
tolls were paid voluntarily by those who went into the mar-
ket, for the accommodation they received there. 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 other 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.
(Hear, hear.) Tlai Liverpool Corporation said they were
under no obligation to spend the money for the benefit of
commerce in general, and yet on every possible occasion
they were struggling to prove that they had been spending
it all the time for th benefit of general trade and shipping.
If that. were true the meeting would not seek to make any
great change in their mode of expenditure. Let them
expend it for the benefit of trade and shipping and
Manchester would be content. But even admitting, all
that Mr- Horsfall stated had been expended for that
purpose, it would only come to between £eoo,ooo and
£400,000, while the corporation had been receiving the
dues for 150 years to an amount which he would hardly
venture to calculate. Sir. Hursfall stated, as gravely
as posale, that the corporation had in addition spent
upwards of one million in repairing and improving the
town of Liver col, This created very naturally a laugh
in the House of Commons, and the hon. gentleman did not
seem to be at all aware that he was stating a most astound-
lug and conclusive fact in favour of the bill. (Hear, hear.)
The town clerk observed that he should he always ready to
receive all complaints of the corporation appropriation of
the dues from Liverpool merchants ,vbo did not dare to give
them publicity within the precincts of their own town ; and
whenever he lead an opportunity, lie would promise to give
them due publicity, and they would, of course, have a
tenfold effect coming from parties best informed of the
facts. The town clerk then read extracts from the corpo-
ration account for (we believe) 1853, to prove that but
£3,000 to £4 000 was all which was expended for
shipping purposes out cf the whole of the receipts.
Amongst the accounts, he remarked that £BO was set
down for the chain cable testing machine, which was one
of the points prominently dwelt upon by Mr. Horsfall as
an instance of what the Liverpool corparation were
expending for the general benefit of shipping. The town
ele,rrkhealrl'eusiel(ul
resolution
!several points in the debate upon the
bill in the Meuse jef Commute, and finally concluded by
supporting the resolution,Chn put,
rijoinoidulil3o was and carried unanimously
naunsek.laey proposed a resolution, t the effect, that the
Mr, ,fames Plant
eloptei by the meeting be advertised in the
And
provincial newspapers.
,seconded the resolution, which was
carried.

The chair was then tat- by the Mayor of it anchestert
and a vote of thanks passed 3 the former chairman.
This closed the proceedings.