The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-12-01 00:00:00

Same day. at Whiteht
MUND WALSH. late of tits l(
On the 20th ultimo

builder and tuner. Birr _
ceased was one of the pri
don, at the erection of t
Birmingham, and for many ye

fami'yto deplore their

kneW him
On the
cldest dau
Park. Den

day, at Wells

SLADE, relict of the R
of Wells Cathedral. and
Same day, aged b 9 y
FROST, Gre G
James Atcherle
bury schools

Sime day, at Lisburn, ANDREW CRAIC

Same day, at Ely-place, 'mt.(
ZABETH, wifeof G. LOVELL. ffe
Small Arms, and sister of Colonel IV
Scots Fusilier Guards.
Oa the 23d ititi!ro. aged 27 years, N
nephew to Mr. John Tonkin-on, build(
Sama day, at his house in the Groves,
Mr. C. DENT, of the late firm of 13ramIc
city.

Same day, at Upper Buckingham street, the
brother, John Fotterell. Esq., aged 70 years, Car
FOTTERELL, Royal Marine.
Same day, at hi father's residence, Lynco
aged 18 years, JAMES, second son of Mr. J. INi
Same day, at the residence of her son-in
Sewell, at the Royal Veterinary College, aged
ELEANOR ROBINSON, formerly of Bishopwea
Same day, at Tretonnen, in the county of
years, Mrs. SARAH WILLIAMS.
On the '.4th ultimo, at his residence, Stafror
years, HEN RY, youngest son or the late WILL
this town.

On the 26th ultimo, in the 47th year of her a
of W. MAWDSLEY. Esq Meghull.
Same day, at the residence of her son-in-law, D. H. Davies,
Castle-street. Kirkdale, JANE, relict of the late WM. SEDDON
MARSH, merchant, of this town.
Same day, at the Parsonage House, Dunboe. the Yen. THOS.
BEWLEY MON-4:4,L, Archdeacon of Derry, and Precentor of
Christ Church Cathedral. Dublin. The ven. gentleman has
ministered in the diocese (or more than thirty years, for up.
wards of twenty of which he filed the (thee of Archdeacon.
Same day, aged 26 years. JAMES KELSHAW. of this town.
On the .6th ultimo, at Cheltenham, aged 82 year.:, HANNAH
relict of the late Mr..JOSEPII AB:tAHAM.
Same day, at her residence, Sydney-street E;
ELIZABETH ATHERTON.
Same day, aged 14 years, ROBERT JAMES
late Captain ROBERT BAIR
James Orphat. sincerely re
Same day, of scirlet it
CLAY, only and dear
kine-street

Lir, ANNE, wife

,n of the

Same day, aged 11 months, DIARY, daugt
PYK R. Chester.street. Toxteth•nark_

Same day, at his n
W I l ITN E Y.
On the 27th ultimo,
SON, of Fitafield-stre

me day
dr. W. FOX, i

Tiverton, de

Canon ittdo, brother of the each,'

in this c

co. rucceJly
regretted, aged 47, ELLEN, trite of Mr. DANIEL JONES,
tobacco manufacturer.
Oo the 29th ultin o. FANNY FREDERICA. infant daughter
of JAMES B. MARSDEN, Zsq.,Plumpton-terrace, Everten.

TUESDAY MORNING, DEC. 1, 1846.

Before proceeding, in accordance with our pro-
mise, to examine what has been remarked upon as
the most important consideratiorr, connected with
the proposal to divide the magisterial business of
the borough—viz. the cost of such an arrangement—
we may be excused if we set our readers right upon
one point about which, we believe, some misconcep-
tion prevails. A comparison has been drawn be-
tween the labours of Mr. Rushton and of the metro-
politan stipendiaries, with a view to shew the justice
of the former gentleman's claim to an increased
salary. But it has never been stated what the latter
are paid for their lighter amount of labour. A pa-
ragraph in the London Times of Thursday states
that

" The magistrates of the 13 police courts in the metro-
polis are paid £l,OOO a year, and the chief magistrate
£1,200. There are 22 at £l,OOO a year, and one at
£1,200, making £23,200 a year paid in the salaries of
magistrates."

The gentleman receiving £1,200 a y.,ar is, we
believe, Mr. Hall, formerly stipendiary magistrate
of this town ; and certainly we never heard that his
talent was at all inferior to that of Mr. Rushton, for
whose services £2,000 are demanded. It must be
borne in mind too that we have in Liverpool, to
assist in the performance of the ordinary magisterial
business, a large number of borough magistrates,
who, we presume, are quite competent to administer
oaths, anal to sign the ordinary documents connected
with the administration of justice. At all events we
End them ready enough to assert the dignity of
their office, and to obey the summons of the stipen-
diary, whenever that gentleman feels called upon to
lecture any unfortunate body—the Watch Commit-
tee or the Select Vestry—which has fallen under
the weight of his displeasure. Surely the borough
magistrates, as a body, are of some use upon
the bench, beyond occasionally sitting as silent
members upon cases which the law requires to be
decided before two m gistrates ; we might not
have any such gentlemen from all the arguments
of our contemporaries. Let us proceed, however,
to the question proposed—the expense of a division
of the magisterial business.
The cost of the staff attached to the present
police court, and required to conduct the entire ma-
gisterial business of the town, was last year as
follows : £ s. d.

Edward Rushton,—salary
Benjamin Ellis, d0.,
John Wyberg, jun., d0.,

.._.. .. _
John Tasker, do.,
John Greenwood, d0.,
Henry Walter, do:,
J. C. Parkinson, do~
J. Walter, do.,
W. Parkinson and wife, d0.,

Total £3133 9 11
We include Mr. Parkinson amongst the staff of the
court, because he appears to us an essential portion
of it, and one who contributes largely to the justice
of its decisions ; and yet, we may remark, en pas-
sant, that if ability and industry, shown in the col-
lation of most valuable statistics of crime within
the borough, deserve reward, Mr. Parkinson is an
underpaid officer. There are other parties em-
ployed about the court and the main bridewell, and
some expenses attached to both, the cost of which
comes under the head of "constabulary and police
force," and " expenses of bridewell and police sta-
tions;" but, as these will he in a great measure
distributed merely by the establishment of another
court, we have not included them in the above
amount.

To meet this expenditure, we find, on the credit
side of the account,—
Received for fees on magisterial £ s. d.
business
Do., fines on summary convic-
tions; less paid to justices,
poor fund, and collectors of
town and dock rates

Total receipts £7836 11 3
Deduct expenses above 3133 9 11

And we have a balance 0f.... f 4703 1 4
accrueing to the borough fund by the present ma-
gisterial system and establishment.
It would have been a sufficient answer to those,
who tell us that the establishment of a new court
will involve an expense of £5,000 a year, to have
shown that th cost of the present court and magis-
terial staff amounts to £3,133 9s. lid. ; for, al-
though, certainly, additional buildings will be re-
quired, it cannot be necessary that we shall, in
providing them, incur a rental of nearly £2,000 per
annum. But we have preferred giving the above,
inasmuch as it shows that the cost of administering
justice is not a dead loss to the borough fund ; and
warrants the inference which we draw, that the cost
of a new court will be, to a certain extent, repro-
ductive expenditure. Let us come then to the
question as to the probable actual expense of the
new court proposed.
The rent of necessary buildings, salaries of a
complete and efficient staff, expenses of new dis-
trict bridewell, keeper and matron's salary, and in-
cidental charges, we think we are beyond the mark
in estimating at £3,500 per annum ; and even this
amount is arrived at upon the supposition that we
pay for magisterial and other services at a much
higher rate than is required. The Journal, we
observe, makes the amount £5,600; but the esti-
mate altogether is so exaggerated, that it is scarcely
worth while remarking upon in detail. We showed,
however, last week, that the establishment of a new
court would greatly increase the magisterial busi-
ness of the borough, by facilitating access to jus-
tice, and allowing both individuals and the police to
press charges which are now suffered to escape
notice. We shall not be over-estimating if we
calculate upon an increase of one fourth in the
fees for magisterial business and the fines on sum-
mary penalties; and, taking last year's amount for
our guide, we have from this source an amount, in
round numbers, of £2,000. Looking over the sa-
laries paid for the present establishment, and taking
into consideration that we are materially reducing
the duties of the staff there, it will be seen that a
clerk, or two, can be transferred to the new esta-
blishment. From this source, we may save £4OO
per annum in salaries; and we have this £2,400
to deduct from the gross amount of £3,500, leav-
ing £l,lOO as the nett cost to the borough fund
of the additional establishment proposed.
This, however, is far from being all that can be
urged in behalf of such a change of system on the
score of its comparative inexpensiveness. During
the last few years, we have been increasing largely
the extent of our police force, with a view to pro-
teet properly our growing outskirts. Last year, we
paid for superintendents', inspectors', bridewell
keepers,' and constables' wages, £24,894 11s. 7d.,
and on the same account for the dock division,
£10,674 2s. Sd.,---in all, £35,568 14s. 3d. ; in 1840,
we paid a total amount of £29,596, spewing an
increase in the sixyears of £6,000. With the
new dock works going on, and some of them ap-
proaching completion, and with the town extending
itself in every direction, we shall be called upon to
incur again a considerably increased cost of police su-
pervision—a cost vastly out of proportion with the
trifling outlay required for an additional stipendiary

magistrate. Yet we have no hesitation in saying,
that by pursuing the course which we recommend,
and thus rendering the duties of the police force
more easy, we can stave off the necessity for any
increased cost under this head for three or five
years to come. A dozen constables, with a police
court and a magistrate close at hand, will do the
work of a score of constables who have to go two
or three miles with every prisoner, and spend three
or four hours in procuring a conviction. The
twelve need not on an average be an hour each per
day absent from their beats ; of the twenty, under the
present system, one half of their time is totally lost
to the public. In other words, by the new arrange-
ment we shall have eleven effective men for the cost
of twelve, whilst, by the present, we are getting the
effective services of only ten for the cost of twenty.
\Ve think we may dismiss the question of the
expense of a division of magisterial duties as ut-
terly unworthy of consideration. Before doing so,
however, we may again remind our readers that the
borough fund is deriving a nett sum of nearly
£5,000 a y ar from the profits of magisterial busi-
ness, and from fines on convictions. How can this
be better or more properly spent than in procuring for
the public speedy justice, repressing crime, and pro-
tecting property ? Surely we are not to have the
magisterial bench made into a source of profit,
until we have the objects, which it was meant to
achieve, fully and effectually accomplished, and such
speedy and cheap justice brought to every man's
door.

Since our last week's remarks, another proposal
has been placed before the public, which is not with-
out its reasonableness, but, in our humble opinion,
is not calculated to meet the emergency in which we
find ourselves. It is said,—Appoint another ma-
gistrate, at a salary of £BOO per annum, to sit either
in the Nisi Prius Court or in the Magistrates'
Room. By this arrangement, the expense of an
additional Bridewell and an additional set of officers
will be saved ; and, by a proper division of labour,
the whole business may be got through in four
hours, instead of occupying five or six. There will
be the advantage, also, that the magistrates can
confer with each other in cases of difficulty. The
great Question with the public, however, will be,—
is the temporary saving—for it must be but tempo-
rary—at all calculated to reconcile us with the loss
of the vast advantages which a bolder and more de-
cided course offers to us ? We are surely not such
a very poor community that we must he startled
from the pursuit of a great public good by the pros-
pect of a few hundreds, or even thousands, to be
expended in the salaries of half a dozen clerks, a
Bridewell, and a few Bridewell keepers. One of
the main defects of our present system is the dis-
tance of the court from the two extremities of the
town. Why should an inhabitant of the Dingle be
dragged away from his house or his occupation up-
wards of two miles to the Sessions-house, to answer
a charge of setting his chimney on fire, or having
his cellar grid unfastened, when he could have the
whole matter equally well disposed of, without going
a quarter of the distance ? Why are two policemen
and hal a dozen witnesses to be brought down from
Windsor to the Exchange for every petty offence
or squabble occurring, when justice could as effec-
tually be done, without having to seek for it further
than the end of Parliament-street ? The advocates
of this plan admit that another magistrate is wanted.
We say place him where he is wanted. They say
arrange and divide cases so as to reduce the time
which people are compelled to lose in attending the
court. We say divide the area within which crime
is occurring, and save the time spent in travelling to
the court by which it is adjudicated upon. The
magisterial business of the borough brings in
revenue; let us have all the convenience possible,
since it is already paid for.
We remarked upon the hardships felt by mer-
chants in the case of dock summonses, in reply to
which our contemporary the Journal remarks that
such summonses are " disposed of daily within an
hour." It may be so occasionally. Often, how-
ever, it is not so. On Thursday last, we believe,
the dock summonses occupied an hour and a half.
One great objection, however, is, that parties have
to go so far to have them thus disposed of, that in
many instances full justice is not done. The time
actually spent in court is not the only time lost. A
witness may be taken from his business half a mile
to give his evidence, who will not so readily be in 7
duced to go a couple of miles. The business arising
from our extending line of docks affords, in fact,
one of the strongest arguments in favour of two
courts—one at the north and one at the south.
Ultimately we shall be driven to divide the borough
into four magisterial districts. For the present,
however, the public will probably be content with
two.

The Journal adds, that " two courts would not
be any relief to the police," and that " the whole
business being done in one office contributes greatly
to promote the efficiency of the police force." We
must take leave to differ from him upon both points.
It would certainly be a relief to a policeman living in
the neighbourhood of his beat to be enabled to press
any charge when off duty, within a reasonable dis-
tance of his own home ; and when this is to be done
whilst on duty, the public would save their length-
ened absences from their beats, by which crime is,
no doubt, materially increased, by the additional im-
punity given to offenders. Our contemporary will
not deny that the arrangement by which the police-
force was formed into two divisions, instead of being
inspected in one body at the Central Station, has
been productive of great goo 1, and great satisfaction
to the men themselves. We believe, if the ques-
tion was left to the decision of the police themselves,
there would be, on this point, a great majority in
our favour. The efficiency of the force, we con-
ceive, would be best promoted by any measure
which would secure them ample and efficient super-
intendence, and allow time to the bench to weigh
properly their testimony, and to form an acquaint-
ance with their characters. Under the present
sy stem the superintendents and inspectors are too
frequently withdrawn, and far too long, by the ne-
cessity of attending upon Mr. Rushton. To a
court with a more circumscribed jurisdiction they
might be readily summoned whenever wanted, and
be immediately upon duty again, scarcely ever losing
sight of those over whose performance of their
duties they have to watch. A district magistrate,
with no more duty to perform than he could effi-
ciently perform, would not have to trust so much to
his own impressions, and to hurry through business
at the rate witnessed sometimes in the present Cen-
tral Court. He could afford more time to weigh
the credibility of a policeman's testimony when op-
posed to the oaths of respectable witnesses; and the
result would be, so far as the force is concerned, the
weeding out of its unworthy members. The real
" efficiency" of a force is not shown by the mere
number of convicticns or of charges, but by the
fact that impartial justice and the repression of
crime is the result. It is idle any longer to insist
Upon the possibility of Mr. Ru-hton, or any other
man,getting through the mass of magisterial bu-
siness which we shall shortly have. It is admitted
on all hands that we must soon make fresh ap-
pointments, and that, meanwhile, the present
amount of business is not satisfactorily performed ;
that great irregularity and loss of time are the con-
sequence of the'present system. Even the Liverpool
Mercury, in a letter from a correspondent, the sub-
stance of which we give elsewhere, tacitly admits
the fact. If we are to make a new arrangement
then, let us do it at once, and do it effectually.
Peddling half measures—mere expedients to stave
off the immediate pressure of a difficulty—are al-
ways the most expensive in the long run, and in the
meantime entail upon those who adopt them incon-
venience and disappointment.
We intended to have said something with respect
to the manner in which the business of the court
could be best divided, and the police force governed
under a new system. We find, however, that we
have not left ourselves space, and must, therefore,
postpone the subject. Before concluding, however,
we may venture to express a hope that we have not
been arguing against a foregone conclusion. Ru-
mour says that the increase of Mr. Rushton's salary
to £2OOO is already determined upon ; and rumour
makes very unfavourable comments upon the matter,
to which we shall not give increased currency in our
columns. We trust the fact is not as represented;
but that there is still an opportunity of adopting a
better considered and a wiser course. The Council
meeting of to-morrow, however, will, perhaps, in-
form us whether the thing is settled or not. We re-
peat that our advocacy of division of the magisterial
business is prompted by no ill-feeling towards Mr.
Rushton. The feeling which prompts us is a very
contrary one. Certainly, we may have sometimes
told the stipendiary of what we conceived to be his
faults ; but we have all along been impressed with a
sense of the vast duty imposed upon him, and the
impossibility, under such circumstances, of that
duty being at all times faultlessly performed. Most

confidently we believe that he would be the first
man to thank us for our efforts, were they success-
ful, to afford him, along with the position and the
income of a gentleman, that amount of leisure which
a man of his refined tastes and pursuits can turn to
so much advantage and self-satisfaction.

Some grand national system of Education is
doubtless about to occupy the attention of her
Majesty's Whig Government. Be it so. The
schoolmasters par excellence are in office ; and we
must bear, as patiently as we can, an infliction of
pedagogueism. So far as Liverpool is concerned,
however, we have the fact to console us that our
educational efforts are not eleemosynary, and are
therefore not liable to State interference. We have
only to go on, and, if possible, extend the sphere of
our exertions, and we shall at least be progressing in
the right direction.
We are not at all regardless of the fact, however,
to which a correspondent of the London Times—the
Rev. W. G. Osborne—has recently directed the
notice of the public, that an attention to the duty of
instilling even religious education into the minds of
our juvenile population will not be efficacious, in
producing a greatly improved moral condition of
that population, without an attention also to other
most important measures conducive to that end.
Mere education does, after all, little or nothing.
The adult, and even the convinced, Christian are
liable to fall into error—to be overcome with the
temptations, by which the most favourably-circum-
stanced amongst us are surrounded. The poor,
however, for whom we devise our systems of educa-
tion,, have influences amongst them and around
them, against which no mere teaching can protect
them. It is of no avail that we instil into the minds
of their children a knowledge of the saving truths of
religio , whilst we send them home to be submitted
to the contamination with which that home is filled.
It is of little avail that half of their time is passed in
the moral and healthy atmosphere of the well-regu-
lated school-room, whilst the remainder is spent
amidst the squalor and vice which abound in the
neighbourhood of the filthy court, or the crowded
and noxious cellar. We are compelled to confess
—all p rties confess, and the records of our daily
police court prove—that, thus far, education, upon
whatever system conducted, has done little to ad-
vance our rising population in the social scale. The
lessons of the teacher are soon unlearnt. The good
sought to be instilled oozes out too readily beneath
the pressure of the bad example, which the scholar
has continually before his eyes when he has escaped
from the surveillance of the teacher. The vicious,
the careless, or the necessitous parent, undoes all
which we have striven to do, however great the ex-
pense to which we have gone in our efforts, and
however excellent the system upon which those
efforts have been based.

We dignify one committee of our Corporate body
by the title of the " Education Committee." We
have, however, more education committees than one,
in the true sense of the term. The Health Com-
mittee is an education committee. The Watch
Committee is an education committee. The Im-
provement Special Committee comes under the same
category. The physical must go with the moral.
We cannot teach virtue, if we will not allow to our
neophytes the opportunity of practising virtue, or
remove them from the contamination of vice. What
is it to boast of, if, when you have taught a child
that he has a soul, and that there is a Redeemer for
us all, we send him home to learn the sad lesson,
that, practically, so far at least as worldly matters
go, that Redeemer has died in vain ; that toil is re-
warded with miserable lodging and scanty food ;
that industry lacks its just reward ; that the astute
wicked prosper, whilst the deserving pine and suffer ?
Can we wonder that our time, our money, our
worthy aspirations, have been thrown away ? Our
selfishness has been all along counteracting the
efforts which we have been making, with such shoe
o: virtue and disinterested zeal, for the welfare of our
fellow human beings.
It is of no use, or of very little use, to persist in
our education schemes, unless we are prepared to
look the whole emergency of our position in the face,
and to act, for the carrying out of our views, like
rational and intelligent men. We must cease to
look at the hoarding of money as the s.ile object, or
the principal object, for which a man lives, or a com-
munity is formed. We must cease to treat our po-
pulation as the mere machines by whom our wealth
is produced. We must get rid of the whole fabric
erected by our modern politico-economical philoso-
phy. It it bad—wretchedly bad—unchristian, and
inhuman. We must recognise our poor fellow
worms in our treatment of them—in our workhouse
and prison regulations—as beings of the same value
in the eyes of their Nlaker as ourselves ; dismiss our
cold-hearted notions, and admit that it is as vitally
necessary that the working man and his children
should he able to subsist in comfort—to approach
the same Throne of Grace—to breathe the same
pure air—to enjoy the same opportnities of health—
in a word, to be in all respects upon something like
the same footing, so far as external and palpable
comforts go, with ourselves. The labourer is worthy
of his hire. He ought also to enjoy the comforts
which that hire will afford. We are not of the
maudlin school of political economists. We have no
wish to paint the rich man as habitually oppressing
the poor ; the former as habitually vicious or un-
feeling, or the latter as paragons of virtue. We take
mankind in its every day garb, stript of the melo-
dramatic hue in which it is painted by some people.
We are compelled, however, to confess that, thus
far, we have not done our duty to our weaker
brethren. Education, indeed, we have attempted to
provide for them. But we have surrounded Educa-
tion with counteracting influences. We have ma-
nured ; we have selected our seed ; we have watered
and the sun has shone; but we have neither weeded
nor pruned, nor provided a garner for the produce
of our labour, into which either moth or rust cannot
enter at will. An amendment of our past system
—some atonement for out past shortcomings—we
hope for from the committees we have named. The
Health Committee must do its duties fearlessly. Let
its members not forget that their avocations are as
vitally important in an educational capacity as in the
mere removal of causes of physical disease. From
the Improvement Committee and the Watch Com-
mittee we expect the same proper appreciation of
their duties. A large income is derived from the
public estate of this town. Let no penny-wise mode
of using it be permitted to impede our growth in
honour and respectability as a community. Expend
it freely; but expend it wisely—not in ornamental
decoration of our town, but in measures which will
secure to our population the blessings of health and
those which attend upon honesty and virtue.
We are not expecting any miraculous changes—
any sudden conversions—to be wrought by any of
these bodies. All that we ask is that their efforts
shall be made in the right direction, and that they
strive to emancipate themselves from the paralyzing
fear, under which they have hitherto been pressed
down, on the score of the cost of improvements.
We have in this town very many localities which
are acknowledged dens of crime; into which de-
cency never penetrates; and which are unsafe by
day as well as by night. Let the sun shine upon
some of these localities. Admit the light and the
fresh air into them, Remove the filthy hovels and
dark courts in which vice skulks to hide from
justice and erect upon their sites respectable
streets for a decent population. It is of little use
educating the children thus herded together in such
abodes of moral and physical pestilence. With all
our efforts—with all the vigilance of our police—
these wretched places are only rearing tenants for
our prisons and our hospitals. Our authorities may
take this for an established fact, that there never
will be a moral and a well conducted population in
abodes and localities shut up from the light of day,
and the surveillance of the communi y around
them.

Mr. Eyre Evans is well known by his friends to
entertain a very high opinion of his own abilities
with respect to matters connected with dock ma-
nagement, combined with no little personal sore-
ness against the gentleman who at present occupies
the position of Chairman of the Dock Committee.
He loses few opportunities, even in private compa-
nies, we are told, of exhibiting these fee ings. We
were quite prepared, therefore, when a meeting and
a dinner were announced to take place, in celebra-
tion of the worthy gentleman's return for St. Paul's
Ward, to find him entering into a diatribe upon
dock management in general, and giving vent to
one of his customary attacks against Mr. Bramley
Moore in particular. We were scarcely, however,
prepared for so powerful and bitter an effusion as
Mr. Evans delivered himself of upon this occasion
—an effusion which many people think would have
been in much better taste, if delivered in the pre-
sence of the gentlemen, whoever they may be,
against whom the charge which it conveys is di-

rected, by which an opportunity would have been
afforded them of at least asking what was meant.
For instance, such a question might very pro-
perly have been asked with respect to the following
passage :
" There was an immense Corporate income here, and
there was a very large Dock income also. If it were only
the expenditure of that income in the town it would have
a very considerable corruptin; effect, but it was not con-
fined to that, for they had gone to work with the capital
as well as with the income, and an ambitious man, who
gets into position in Liverpool, either in the Corporation
or Dock Committee, if he wishes to achieve his own ad-
vancement in obtaining civic honours has only to call his
surveyors, get large plans, which he calls improvements,
which will enable him to sweep away houses and ware-
houses, and purchase the lands and other property of a
great number of individuals in the town. All these in-
dividuals, consequently, expect, in a movement of that
sort, to get from thirty to forty per cent. above the value
of their property, and, of course, the ambitious man en-
lists on his side a very large number of influential people,
who believe unless they support the party of which he is
the representative, this great and beneficial enterprise will
not be carried into execution. That would account for
much of what had been done."

JITho are the parties, or rather, who is the party,
against whom Mr. Evans means to charge the
heinous conduct of " going to work with the ca-
pital as well as with the income," to " achieve his
own advancement in obtaining civic honours," and
"enlisting on his side numbers of influential people,"
by giving them 30 to 40 per cent. above the value
of their property ? Who is the " ambitious man"
pointed at? If this is anything more than after
dinner talk, we ought to know who is the criminal.
Mr. Evans talks also of the " Harrington job."
Now there are some parties formerly interested in
that property in the Council, of which Mr. Evans
is a member. Why go behind their hacks to throw
out imputations, when he has abundant opportu-
nities of meeting them face to face ? It would be a
more manly proceeding to moot the question, as to
the existence of any jobbing by those parties, in the
Council Chamber, than thus to attack them in after
dinner speeches in hole and corner gatherings.
Mr. Evans takes upon him to complain of the
working so far of the Albert Dock warehouses, and
asks triumphantly, " if men like Mr. Aiken, Mr.
Mellor, Mr. Holt, Mr. Higgins, and Mr. Benn, had
had the management of this dock up to this hour,
was it to be supposed that there would have been
only two ships in the dock with all the warehouses ?"
What the four latter gentlemen might have accom-
plished we certainly do not know. We never re-
cognized in any of them very strikingly superior
abilities; and it does not appear that the constitu-
encies have. Mr. Aikin is a member of the Dock
Committee still, and as such responsible for the
management of its affairs ; and as we have never
heard much complaint from him on the subject of
the Albert Dock and its warehouses, we presume
matters there are progressing as well as is possible
under all circumstances. Besides it is not very in-
genuous in Mr. Evans to assert that the committee
have "all the warehouses" available. He knows
that they have only two of them.
Alas, alas ! we fear that such railingis but the fruit
of mortified vanity after all. Mr. Evans fears that
the world will discover that " great improvements"
can go on without him; that the docks of Liver-
pool are not shut up, or the Mersey run dry, not-
withstanding he does not occupy his wonted chair
at the Dock Board. The figure of Britannia has
never yet fallen from its position on the dome of
the Town-hall, although Mr. Evans has never been
enabled to occupy the civic chair, and to dispense
the hospitalities of the Mayor's table. Let him be
good tempered and wait his turn. When that ap-
proaches, we trust that neither he nor we shall again
have the mortification of finding that the required
seat in the Council itself has been snatched from
him.