Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-02-26 00:00:00

OUR DOCKS

IT is to be hoped that from the explanations
which took place at the Dock Board, as they were

yesterday reported in our columns, and the
decisions which arose upon them, there will now
be no further misunderstanding upon a question
in which the interests of the port and of the town
are so deeply involved,--- that, namely, of the
provision of such additional amount of dock
accommodation on the Liverpool side of the
Mersey as the increasing trade so urgently
requires. It is surely not to be inferred—it
would be most unreasonable and most unfair
to do so—that because due regard is to be paid
to so pressing a requisition as that of extended
Dock accommodation here, on the really business
side of the river, it is done in breach of faith with
Birkenhead. If circumstances have arisen to
delay the Dock works at that place—or if the zeal
for their prosecution, that once prevailed, has been
damped in anywise by a growing conviction of
their comparative unimportance, and their com-
pletion may therefore be indefinitely deferred—
that were certainly no good reason why Liverpool
should suffer for want of more Dock room.
Birkenhead would indeed be made to act the part
of the dog in the manger with a vengeance, if
that were to be the case. For it would just
amount to this,—Birkenhead cannot get on with
its works, or, what is much more serious, with its
trade for which those works were to provide, and
therefore Liverpool must stand still likewise, —must
have no more Dock accommodation, how much so-
ever its extending trade may actually require it.
Well—and the alleged engagement it was pretended
had been entered into by the Liverpool Dock Board
would have clearly implied some such ridiculous
absurdity as that. Why. it would have
engaging to pursue a course which the Dock Board
could not have done, it is evident, without sacri-
ficing both their own interests and those of the
port,—interests which, in fact, are one, and ought,
in all they do, to be regarded as one. Well did
Mr. TOBIN declare, that "it would, indeed, have
been most unworthy of them, and a gross breach of
trust, to have accepted any proposal which would
have fettered, in any shape or way, either their
own hands or the hands of their successors:,
Talk, forsooth, of breach of faith with the Railway
Companies on the other side of the river, or with
any other interested parties ; why to have ac-
cepted any such proposal would have been a breach
of faith with their own body, with their own
interest, and with the port which entrusts them
with their most responsible duties. They would
have deserved to be impeached for gross malversa-
tion of office, and for positively obstructing
thereby the still growing trade of this great port.
It was only, therefore, what was to be expected, to
find that, as Mr. ToBIN declared, " there was not
one stipulation of any kind with reference to the
Board being fettered in going to Parliament, in
the next or any future Session of Parliament,
provided they thought fit, for works on the Liver-
pool side of the Mersey ; and he would state with
confidence, that if such a proposition had been
made, it would instantly have been rejected by
that board." And this assurance was in strict
agreement with the Report of the Board of
Trade, which set forth, as shown at the
Dock meeting, " that the Birkenhead plans shoul d
first be finally settled, and fairly put in hand ; and
that, in the next or future years, it would be com-
petent for the new Mersey Board, which would
then have received its final constitution, if they
should be of opinion that the trade of the port
required dock extension at Liverpool either on the
north or south of their estate of the Mersey, to
prepare a well considered scheme, in which the
works to be done, and the money to be spent on
them, should be fully brought to the notice of
Parliani;it." In introducing, then, the present
Docks' Bill into Parliament, our Dock Board are
only acting, we repeat, in strict accordance with
their understanding, 62.1 d with their engagements,
from the first.

There was another interesting matter before the
Board, upon any discussion of whic:2: however, we
are unwilling to enter, on account of very per-
sonal nature. We allude to the case of a gentle-
man being upon the Dock Parliamentary Committee,
at the same time that he was decidedly inimical,
and was taking an active part in opposition to the
very measure which it is the object of the Com-
mittee to promote. There can be no question that
it was a most unfair, a most unseemly, nay, a
monstrous thing; and the Dock Board, we are
humbly of opinion, would have failed in their duty
had they consented to tolerate it. It was, to all
intents and purposes, as was remarked, having " an
enemy in the camp." One's only wonder is that any
gentleman of right feeling could reconcile it to his
sense of propriety. The immediate retirement of
the member who had placed himself in so anoma-