The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-09-25 00:00:00

GREGSO

Same (lay, after a f
AUNA MEE, lithegrai
(lay, in I_7'l

::ante
GREGG

On the 15th instan
third son of Mr. JAN

66, Mr

hs. T F,N

t.,atne day, aged 32, JANE, wife of Mr. THOMAS HUGHEF
Ictualler, Earie-strcet:Sljaul's:square.

:11, son and daughter of .!!'

day, aged 14, MARGARET AB!
Henry Abram, of the Canal Ban
Same day, at Hampstead, London, WM. EDWARD, infant
Son of Mr. WM. SUDLOW, of this town.
Same day, in his 13th year, EDWARD HENRY, yaungest
son of Mr. JAMES MOSS, solicitor.

Mr. JOHN FROST, put

roxteth-park, aged 68, Mr

Same dhY, aged 75, Mr. WNI. ARTHINGTON.
Same day, at Halton, aged 32, ANN, wife of Mr. ISAA(

BRAM}

On the 16th instant. at
PARSON-, of Chiseolia:

ANN, daughter of Mr. JOHN

Same day
WARD

Same da), aged 57

terrace

few hours' Mlles.

and Virgil stree

ENT PIRICS and quacks in all ages of the world have
had their day—some a long one, and those generally
the more impudent and dangerous. But the blow
up has always come sooner or later. The metro-
politan Commission of Sewers, one of the favourites
amongst the multitudinous progeny of Mr. Edwin
Chadwick, appears to be rapidly approaching its
final collapse. For years this collection of sanitary
savans have been poking amongst the bad smells of
Londob, tinkering a little here and patching a little
there, talking magniloquently of comprehensive
schemes, which are to render the great Wen sweet
as rose and lavender water can wash its multitudi-
nous aggregate of foulness; but as yet the compre-
hensive schemes have been all talk, and not even a
plan or a report of anything feasible has been forth-
conling. There are symptoms, however, at length,
that the patience of the public is becoming ex-
hausted; and the powerful advocacy of the Times
has been brought into requisition to put down the
nuisance. Our contemporary thus characterizes
the body :

TUESDAY MORNING, SEPT. 25, 1849.

• THE state of the Railway Share Market has for
some time been an enigma to all save the unini-
tiated. It was conceived by most thinking men
that we had long ago got rid of the evil effects of
most of the insane projects which were originated
durin the mania of 1845 and 1346. The various
bubble "directs" and "junctions," " branches" and
"extensions." bad been swept away; and of their
projectors some had shared the same fate; and a
few more astute than the rest had, from the condi-
tion of penniless adventurers, become " snug" men,
who could, from their bettered position, afford an
" aside" sneer, or laugh, at the folly of their dupes.
It was known that many improvident bargains had
been made by our leading companies ; that too
much had been paid for staving off this or that
mushroom opponent ; that lines of undoubted,
though over-estimated, value, had been purchased
at prices far too high. Still, it was hoped that
when our temporary monetary derangements should
have been surmounted : when stock and scrip held
by-needy speculators should have found their way
into the hands of men of capital, whose object was
bona fide investment, the value of railway shares,
like that of every other kind of property, would be
measured by the extent of the return which they
offered to the purchaser.
Such, in a great measure, was the case when the
extraordinary peculations of Mr. George Hudson
and his colleagues were suddenly brought to light.
A further How was thus dealt against the reviving
confidence of the public. Every great company
found its affairs at once eagerly canvassed by dis-
appointed shareholders and speculators, who had
missed their market. Many of these companies
came tolerably untainted out of the enquiries insti-
tuted. Some emerged from the supervision of
lynx-eyed accountants with triumph, instead of
reproach. Our great Company—the London and
North Western—was not even suspected of delin-
quency, although it has shared in the general de-
pression caused by individual malversation. Yet
even the best lines proved themselves incapable of
paying the same dividends which their working
had originally yielded. Amalgamations, guarantees,
and leases had reduced their profits; and ignorant
panics, seizing hold of the shareholders,'enabled the
" Bear" operators to do with their property as
they listed.

Our powerful contemporary the London Times,
who was the first to raise his voice to check the
madness which characterised the spring of 1846,
has very properly stepped forward to arrest the
equal madness which is just now impelling men
to throw away even the best secured and most sta-
ble railway property. Our contemporary, after
admitting that hitherto the facts which have been
brought to light have been in favour of a decline
in the prices of railway shares, and referring to the
tremendous fall experienced last week, which, he
contends, cannot be attributed to the effect of mo-
netary panic, but instead, to the vague fears cause
by reports of committees of investigation, or de•
creased dividends, thus endeavours to re-assure
timid holders :

"Admitting," he says, " the statements now published
on unexceptionable authority—admitting that the divi-
dends should be scanty, or even nil—admitting also the
injurious consequences of the competition now daily show-
ing itself between the great companies as their respective
lines advance to completion—admitting all this, we still
advise those who can to retain possession of their shares,
and not to throw them away at the present depreciation.
We say those who can;' and it is only a certain class
whom it is possible to advise in this matter. * * * *
We can only address ourselves to those who having other
capital for maintenance or trade invest a disposable por-
tion in shares, and wha will not starve if they receive no
dividend, or be mined if the capital disappears. It is
useless for us to advise any others. This class of share-
holders—a numerous one, it is to be hoped—we do ad-
vise not to be frightened at 3 per cent. instead of 7, or 1
per cent. instead of 5. With the fluctuations of the
prices, of course, they have nothing to do.
" In support of this advice we offer the following con-
siderations. On the authority of the statements before
us, unfavourable as they are deemed to be, the expendi-
ture and burdens of these companies are known and de-
termined, while their profits arc certain, in the long MI,
to increase. The rate of that increase it would be idle to
conjecture, but if any one will consider the rapid steps by
which travelling and traffic have increased in this country
at any given intervals—if, for example, he will compare,
as he easily may, the number of public conveyances in
the years 1775, 1800, 1825, and 1850, he must conclude
that in the year 1875 the internal travelling and traffic of
this nation will be nearly doubled, if not more. From the
last three years we can form no sort of augury. They
have been years of unexampled calamity and depression ;
and railways themselves were the first to suffer by the
throes and agonies, so to speak, of their production. The
original expenditure of the railways, and the immense
fixed incumbrances subsequently undertaken, have re-
duced the profits of the original shareholders to a very
narrow margin. As has lately been proved in some in-
stances, this margin has been easily destroyed by the
pressure of bad times ; but it will receive the undivided
benefit, not only of occasional good times, but of the cer-
tain increase of our travelling and other traffic. The
speculation has been undertaken in a very exaggerated
form by the original shareholders ; they have borne the
brunt of the day, and whatever success there is will be
wholly theirs."
We would advance a few additional considera-
tions to the above, so ably put forward by our con-
temporary. In the first place it is scarcely correct
to say that " the expenditure and burdens of these
companies are fixed and determined." The ex-
penses of management of most railway companies
are capable of being economised ; and, with respect
to one very material item of railway expenditure—
the cost of haulage—it must, unless we take it for
granted, which few will venture to do, that science
has already done its utmost in perfecting the appli-
cation of the steam engine to locomotion, be re-
garded as capable of being much further reduced in
cost. Nor are the fixed incumbrances determined.
Numbers of lines, purchased by large companies,
have fixed dividends, guaranteed only for a limited
period; and many of these guarantees have been
improvidently made. The London and North-
Western, the York Newcastle and Berwick, the
Midland, the Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Man-
chester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire, and other
companies, have guaranteed large per centages to
purchased or leased lines, which, at the expiry of a
brief time, will receive only the dividend earned by
the whole amalgamated lines. Many companies,
too, have been compelled to exercise their borrow-
ing power at extreme rates—say 44 to 5 per cent.
—whereas it is tolerably certain that they will be
able to replace their loans at 34 and 4 per cent ;-
and it must be borne in mind that the saving in
these cases will be upon one-third of the gross
amount expended. There is this absurdity, too, in
taking the whole amount yielded in any particular
year, as the criterion of the value of railway stock.
Independently of the acknowledged effect of mone-
tary depression in decreasing travelling or traffic,
"other descriptions of property, we all know, are
'subject to diminished returns for the capital ex-
pended. Household property is occasionally unoc-
cupied, and necessary repairs frequently inconve-
nience the owners, who are solely, or mainly,
dependent upon its yield. Profits upon capital
employed in trade are continually being swept
away by bad debts and otherwise, yet no one
sells property, or a business, at a value estimated
by its yield in such years. The return of capital
sunk in railways, moreover, is tolerably certain to
go on progressing, as new elements of traffic deve-
lope themselves. The mineral wealth in the neigh-
bourhood of new lines is only in progress of deve-
lopement; and with respect to passenger traffic
even, we have yet to learn what will be its increase
when the movement now going on, which promises
to establish suburban villages and detached resi-
dences in localities within from ten to twenty miles
distance of large towns, possessed of railway facili-
ties, shall have been extensively adopted by the
public. Viewing the subject in all its bearings, we
have no hesitation in advising our friends, who are
bona fide holders of stock, in established lines, to
hold on firmly.
We would say also, to speculators who have
bought for a rise, or are bulls,—and we are not
inclined to admit, with our contemporary, that

" The report of yesterday's proceedings at the Court of
Sewers, which will be found in another column, contri-
butes another page to the long and shameful record of
ignorance, imbecility, and confusion which the annals of
the present Commission have already furnished. Posterity
will be at a loss whether to admire most the indifference
of a public, or the recklessness of a government, which
could have delegated by far the most important work
which this century has conceived—a work upon which the
credit of the whole nation is at stake, and in which the
health and happiness of millions are involved—to the
management of a committee the leading •members of
which know far less about the subject than the humblest
bricklayer employed in the service."
This is pretty fair for an opening, and yet it is
short of full justice, for a more absurd course of
proceeding than that which is being adopted by
the Commissioners cannot be conceived. It must
be borne in mind that they have, as yet, no com-
prehensive system of main sewers. Even the levels
of various portions of the town are imperfectly
ascertained. It is not determined where the outfall
of the various districts is to be; whether the sewers
are to be flushed into the rivers,—poisoning the
water and the atmosphere of the whole metropolis
—or the contents conveyed into the country to be
made available as manure. Yet they are proceeding
to compel the owners of existing streets, or houses,
to make house-drains, into sewers which have no
existence, which they ingeniously suggest should
be so constructed as to suit any outfall which may
be fixed upon ! This is botching the business with
a vengeance; pursuing the very piece-meal course
by which three-fourths of the money, which has
been spent in severing and draining throughout
the kingdom, might just as well have been thrown
into the sea. Well does our contemporary exclaim
" Only conceive a man undertaking to build a house
beginning from the roof downwards ! Conceive an engi-
neer proceeding to erect a water-wheel, without ever
troubling himself about a supply of water, or the means
of discharging it ! Conceive, if possible, a human being
provided with a stomach. and the proper organs of diges-
tion—only destitute of the usual channels by which the
stomach is emptied and replenished ! Such, and many
similar comparisons force themselves upon the mind when
listening to one of Mr. Chadwick's expositions of his ideas
of drainage. Active and restless as his imagination ap-
pears to be, it never wanders beyond the sphere of blocks
of 40 or 50 houses and 4-inch pipes.

" In all that Mr. Chadwick has done he has simply re-
lieved one locality at the expense of others. His system
of house-draining without a supply of water. of flushing
his sewers into the Thames, and of laying down his capil-
laries or house drains without providing or even consider-
ing his outfall, exhibits an ignorance of the first principles
of drainage, of which any mole or rat—those practical
workmen—would be ashamed."

" It is really high time that the Government should
interfere and put an end to these absurdities. We observe
that Mr. John Buller threatened that, in the event of
Mr. Leslie persisting in his motion to abolish the Trial of
Works Committee, he should move, as an amendment,
that the Commission itself should be dissolved. We
think the suggestion an excellent one; and hope it may
be adopted in time to prevent the Commission from poi-
soning the Thames at Kingston and Richmond, as they
have done at Westminster and Blackfriars."

business of any kind can go on without such par- SPECIAL MEETING OF THE COUNCIL.
ties—" If you, gentlemen hold your hands awhile YESTERDAY.
and refuse to sell—(money is easy enough)—you i IMPORTANT PROCEEDINGS OF THE SPECIAL
have the bears' in your own hands. and you may
WATER COMMITTEE.
now, for once, get the best of it. The decline has
been so material, and of such long continuance,
that not only are the dealers inside the stock
exchanges, large bears, but also many speculators
outside—together making a greater bear account
open in the average than there has been for years.
Withhold sales therefore for a few weeks, and you
will reap a rich reward. The cholera is gradually
leaving us, and increased traffics will give an addi
tional impulse to a re-action."

A special meeting of the council was held yesterday at
the Town-hall, to take into consideration and determine
upon the " Report of the Special Water Committee, re-
commending that application be made to the Lords Com-
missioners of her Majesty's Treasury, for permission to
mortgage a portion of the lands, tenements, and heredi-
taments of the corporation, sufficient to raise the sum of
£200,000 to meet the payments due and to accrue due
under existing.; contracts, entered into for the purpose
of the new works authorised by the Liverpool Corpora-
tion Waterworks Act, 1847, and referring also to resolu-
tions passed by the Financial Sub-committee of the Water
Committee, relative to payment of money by the treasurer
of the water account."
There was but a thin attendance of members at the
commencement of the proceedings. His Worship the
Mayor presided, and on opening the business of the
council observed that they were met to take into consi-
deration the report of the special water committee on the
points referred to in the notice paper.
Mr. DRIFFIELD then read the report, which was as
follows :