The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-10-30 00:00:00

PROPOSED ESTABLISHMENT OF A LIVERPOOL

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.

We have taken little part hitherto in the movement
which has been set on foot for the establishment of a
general Chamber of Commerce, to be formed inj Liver-
pool ; and for this reason, that we have not as yet been
able to see how such a body could be constituted so as to
steer clear of party bias, and leanings towards the self-in-
terest of particular trades and classes. Our attention is
now drawn to the question by. a pamphlet, advocating the
establishment of such a body, just published by Mr.
Leone Levi, upon whose views we shall proceed to offer a
few remarks.

It would be well, we admit, that we should have some
general source, under whose sanction should be collected
and issued the statistics of the trade of our port. It might
also be desirable that we should have some central body,
under whose auspices should be rallied the voices of com-
mercial Liverpool, in support of, or in protest against,
measures affecting the commercial interests and conve-
nience of the town. We have missed the services of such
a body on several occasions. For example, should we, if
we had been able to make a general and powerful protest
by all the commercial classes of Liverpool, have been
doomed to see our present fleet of West India steamers
despatched from such a port as Southampton, with Liver-
pool.and Manchester, the manufacturing districts of Lan-
cashire and Yorkshire, and the port of Glasgow, so
deeply interested in the trade with these possessions ?
Should we even have seen the removal of the Irish mails
to Holyhead ? Upon such questions as these our present
system of separate associations has proved defective. We
have suffered from a want of concert in these bodies. An
East India association is cold in a matter which concerns
only Western India. An American Chamber of Com-
merce does not care to stir in a matter which affects only
Mexican or Brazilian trade. Each have their especial in-
terests; but the general interest of the port has no com-
mercial exponent and advocate. So far as regards the
supply of these wants, we go with the writer of the pam-
phlet before us.
But we stumble upon a difficulty when we come to the
action of such a body upon a question of a political or
economical nature. We will take, for an instance, that
pointed to by Mr. Levi—the Navigation-laws question.
Upon that question, he says, a Chamber of Commerce,
composed of representatives of all the various branches of
the trade of the port, could have expressed the sentiments
of the community better than the community itself,
through the constitutional form of petition. We doubt it.
The working man would have had no voice in such a
body. Upon all such questions the constitutional mode
of giving expression to opinion is the best. Mr. Levi
seems to imagine that the vote of a Chamber of Com-
merce established upon his pattern, would have been for
the abolition of the Navigation-laws. A poll of the con-
stituency of all classes would have been against the mea-
sure. Many other questions might arise, in which the
voice of such a body would not be a fair exponent of the
voice of the whole community, or even of the local opi-
nions and wishes of the people of Liverpool. Take, as
one such, the question of dock-rating. Here we should,
in all probability, have a few representatives of the mer-
cantile interests expressing an opinion in complete anta-
gonism of the mass of their fellow-townsmen.
Mr. Levi lays great stress upon the use of a Chamber
of Commerce in " diffusing a knowledge of economic
principles;" and points to the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce as a triumphant instance of the success of the
principle. We can remember, however, a time when
that body; and its representative in Parliament and chair-
man, the late Geo. Wm. Wood, were the laughing-stocks
of the political world. More recently, so completely par-
tizan did that chamber become, that another body was
compelled to be formed. The commercial opinion of
Manchester is now sectional. The legislature would be
puzzled to know whether the Chamber of Commerce or
the Commercial Association were its most influential
exponent.
With respect to the uses of such a body, if it could be
guarded from an improper exercise of its functions, we
hold many of the opinions put forth in the pamphlet be-
fore us. As a statistical authority it might be rendered
invaluable, as a check both to the interested statements of
individual trades, and the distorted and doctored state-
ments of the Colonial and Board of Trade officials. We
say, with respect to the former, that it might be such a
check ; for we have never yet known a breath of suspicion
urged against the returns of our Cotton Brokers' Asso-
ciation, or of any of our local bodies' circulars. Such a
body might also afford the materials for the settlement of
commercial disputes by arbitration. One of its uses,
however—the establishment of Liverpool as a place of
exchange, in which foreign bills may be made payable—
we place little reliance upon. The metropolis will always
be the great mart of exchange, so long as the Bank of
England is the sole issuer of money, and the great regu-
lator of the rate of discounts. Upon the whole, we should
hail the establishment of a Chamber of Commerce; but
we are fully alive to the difficulties to be met with in its
constitution and operation.