The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-11-20 00:00:00

die game

the best use of the miserable

voted to ma-king
nnant of their

eyes of unfeeling and th

iuffering an and

uggling to seem in the
ghtless crow(

ls as mar-

:rued death !

In a word,

let every execution take place within the precincts
of the gaol in which the criminals are confined, the
spectators being only the authorities, and perhaps
Duld be well to include the neophites in crime
Is. The press could convey
le world out of doors.

within the same w

sson to t

But there is one thing due to society, and due
also to offenders against the law, on the part of
government. In cases where criminals are amena-

ble to capital punishment, there must be greater
certainty than at present exists of sentence of death
being carried into effect. We do not refer to those
cases in which sentence of death is recorded, without

slightest idea of its

eing carried into effect—a

practice, by the bye, which might well be dispensed
with—but to the somewhat capricious • exercise,
under the auspices of the present Home Secretary,
of the mercy of the crown. This subject is well
treated by our contemporary the Morning Herald,
who instances three recent cases of persons whose
sentences have not been carried out. One of these
was-a servant girl, who, having become criminally
intimate with a soldier, deliberately shot him, be•

cause he had neglected her. Another was the case
of a wife, who poisoned her husband by slow
degrees, wearing his life out day by day. A third
was the wretched youth, who, having seduced an
innocent girl, cut her throat, to save himself the
expense of having to maintain her and her unfortu-
nate offspring. To these atrocious criminals mercy
has been extended. What wonder then that Mrs.
Manning, acquainted as she was with noble fami-
lies, to the last moment entertained the idea that
there was aback stairs access to the royal mercy ?
That wretched woman died, no. doubt, with her
crime unabsolved, and her heart clinging to earth.
She had hoped, and equivocated to the last
moment. The very fact that she went to the
scaffold with her face concealed from the gaze of
the mob proved that she still retained, at the last
hour, the fierce passions of her nature. Had all
expectation of remission of her sentence of death
been earlier removed, it is possible that the ice
which surrounded her heart might have been
thawed by the exhortations of her spiritual adviser,
and that a soul might have been snatched from
eternal perdition.

WE have received, from a highly respectable
quarter; the following communication, bearing
upon the case at issue between the Earl of Derby
and his lessees at Bootle, to which we directed the
attention of the public last week. We erred, it
seems, in describing the tenure of this portion of
his lordship's property; but the actual state of
affairs, as given by our correspondent, makes the
case of the lessees one of greater hardship than we
had ourselves represented it.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL ,STANDARD.

Stn.,—ln the observations in your paper of the 13th
instant, you have not quite correctly stated the case of
the lessees of the Earl of Derby. I therefore venture to
trouble you with the following statement.
The original leases granted by the Earl of Derby, and
under which the greater part of the property on the north
shore is still held, were for three lives only, and not for
an additional term of twenty-one years, as you supposed.
That the public works in progress in that neighbourhood
are calculated ultimately to increase the value of the land
is not denied by the lessees ; but that improvement is pro-
spective, and many years must elapse before the beneficial
effect on the adjoining property can be felt. The loss to
the lessees is, however, immediate and certain ; and indeed
houses which were erected at great cost for the residence
of gentlemen's families, are rendered valueless, or at least
worth only the old materials. Looking then at the un-
certain tenure of the lessees' estates, it may possibly, or
even probably happen, that those estates will cease by the
death of the lives named in the leases before any benefit
can accrue to the property from the works in question,
thus throwing all the loss on the lessees and giving all the
benefit to the Earl of Derby. The works of the dock
trustees on the north shore will extend along his lord-
ship's estate about 1800 yards, and will enclose between
the present sea front and the proposed dock a strip of land
130 yards in width by about 1800 yards in length.
Throughout the whole length of this strip of land the
dock trustees will form a street 30 yards in width along
the dock wall, reducing its width to 100 yards, through
which the dock trustees are to form another street of the
width of 20 yards, and about 30 yards in advance of the
present sea front, thereby reducing the available land to
two blocks of 50 yards and 30 yards in width respectively.
Thus the Earl of Derby will gain two blocks of valuable
land, heretofore subject to the flow of the tide, one con-
taining 90,000, and the other 54,000 square yards.
His lordship's lessees ask that the present leases may be
extended, not by the addition of another life, but into a
fixed term of 75 years, and that they may include the
block of land between their present frontage and the pro-
posed 20 yards street. And if the Earl accedes to this
proposal the question will be upon what terms. The
lessees contend (especially those who have buildings on
their land,) that as they are so great losers by a measure
by which his lordship is so great a gainer. they have a

natural equity to call on his lordship for compensation,
and that to appropriate the block of land between the 20
yards street and their present frontage to his own use
would add to the loss of the lessees by depriving them of
their present frontage and converting their land into back
land.

The lessees have been received by the Earl's stew
Mr. Hale, with the greatest urbanity, and they enter

their claims

strong hopes that
tained by his lordship

ill be favourably enter

Yours,

Nov. 17, 1849.

We trust most sincerely that the anticipation of
our correspondent will be realised; and that the
grant of a fixed tenure of seventy-five years, on
equitable terms, will be conceded to the lessees, so
seriously injured by the works now being carried
on. The Earl of Derby can well afford to deal
considerately towards them. He is about to have
added to his property by the Dock Committee
144,000 yards of land, worth at a moderate compu-
tation two pounds a yard, besides the immense
improvement which must accrue to the remainder
of his Bootle estate; and we shall have mistaken
his lordship's character if he permit himself to
accept of such aggrandisement, at the expense of
his tenants, ill prepared as many of them are to
suffer the heavy pecuniary loss which threatens
them.

WHEN the advocates of the Pike scheme selected
as their especial organ, not the most influential
paper in Liverpool, they calculated no doubt that
their instrument would make up by the intensity
of his efforts, for his inefficient position. The
smallest sre,-;imen of humanity may make his voice
heard, or his presence known, in a crowd if only he
shouts loud enough, or is sufficiently outrageous in
his attempts to attract notice. Our contemporary,
the Liverpool Times, the organ in question, has
certain!y done his utmost to fulfil this portion of
his compact. He has displayed an amount of
vitality which has surprised his friends, and thrown
dirt with a vigour quite at variance with the ordi-
nary torpidity of his effusions. A forty-fishwife
power of Billingsgate has been stirred up within
him; and the mouthpiece of the gentlemanly por-
tion of the_ community has not bad need to fear a
comparison of his achievements in vulgar vitupera-
tion with any professor of the art, either in petti-
coats or trowsers.

In noticing his performances of Thursday last,
we are not about to direct attention to the classi-
cality of their style, or their peculiar elegancies of
language. We shall not, for instance, dwell upon
such a statement as the following ;—" The Town
Council are the trustees of the docks, and elect
three-fourths of the Dock Committee, whilst the
dock ratepayers, or merchants and shipowners,
elect the other third" (!) further than to suggest
that our friend must have been on an Irish tour
lately. Our only object is to correct a few of his
statements of facts. The Times represents the ad-
vocates of dock rating as proposing to "abstract a
large sum, probably some twenty or thirty thou-
sands a year, from the docks for parochial pur-
poses." They only ask for ten thousand a year,
which is not nearly the cost of the pauperism
which the docks create. " Every thousand," he
continues, "taken from the docks and applied to
parochial purposes is taken at the bondholders'
risk, and to the injury of the security, on which
they lent their money." It is sufficient, in reply to
this, to remind our contemporary that the commit-
tee possess at this moment a surplus income, and
that the same objection might be urg