The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-06-25 00:00:00

THE DOCK COMMITTEE AND THE BIRKEN -

HEAD COMMISSIONERS.

We must bestow a little of our tedionmess upon an ar-

tide of a local contemporary of yesterday, although we
have already given, what our readers will perhaps con-
sider quite an adequate notice of the subject upon which
he writes, in another column. In doing this we shall not
direct our attention to more than one or two parts of his
lugubriously jocose article. It is said,
" Take our advice in preference, gentlemen of the
Dock Committee, and mind your own bill. You will have
difficulty enough to get the Harrington " affair" safely
through. You will require all your ability to persuade
the Lords that £268,000 is a moderate price to pay for
the strand at the north now that it appears the Woods and
Forests have freely given the Birkenhead Docks double
the quantity on the opposite shore. You have work
enough to cut out fs you in carrying your own bill, with-
out encumbering yourselves with your neighbour's. As
your deputy-chairman ought to tell you, Keep your ain
breath to cool your ain parritch :' it will be hot enough,
or we are much mista ken."

This is very witty ; and especially the allusion to the
country—Scotland—to which the Deputy Chairman of
the Dock Committee belongs, an allusion which might
with equal propriety be made to another member of
the Dock Committee, an unvarying opponent of the ma-
jority in that body. Are the facts alleged in it true? We
think not. First, neither £268,000, or any other price,
is fixed upon as "a moderate price to pay for the strand at
;he north ;" and, in the next place, the Woods and Forests
nave not "freely
_Given double the quantity on the oppo-
site shore." The contract for " the strand at the north"
is still, at this moment, an open contract ; and an express
chose in the Birkenhead bill, introduced in committee,
ard passed on the 23d of May (if we are required to be
prticular as to dates), shews, that thisfrPe gift from the
Woods and Forests is encumbered with conditions which
may render it any thing but a windfall, the rights of the
crown being just so far freely given, as to enable the Wal-
lasey projectors to accept them without making absolute
geese of themselves, whilst they are withheld just so far
as to prevent them making any valuable use of their al-
leged free gift. In other words, (and we refer the alder-
man to the " proposals on the part of the crown assented
to by the Birkenhead commissioners," dated the 21st May,
1844, and passed by the commitee on the 23d of the same
month,) the projectors of the Wallasey Docks are allowed
"freely" to enclose a portion of the Pool now subjected
to tidal overflow, and to snake some 120 acres of land, of
which, not the fee simple, but the preference of purchase
is to be given to them ! A limited space of quay room
they have indeed ; but " no warehouses or buildings, other
than huts, shall be erected upon any part of the said quay
room !"
We are happy to observe by one part of this witty dia-
tribe, that "no youths still in their apprenticeship will
be produced before the Lords' Committee as ' eminent
engineers.' " We are glad of this, inasmuch as it will
release Mr. George Page; " an assistant of Mr. Rendel,"
who, we suppose, is the Page alluded to from further at-
tendance before the committee. Mr. George, or Master
George, is certainly not an " eminent engineer," although
Mr. Thomas Page, who was examined on the part of the
opponents of the bill, is such an engineer.
We will pass over the jocosity directed by the Albion
against Mr. Alderman Nicola But one passage in the
article we must quote, for the purpose of asking a question
of Mr. Evans. The passage is this :
" A bargain might be struck with the minority of four
not to make a public demonstration of triumph ; a cross-
fight' could be easily arranged to save appearances ; and
Mallaby and Worthington, each with his bill in his
pocket, might, by this day week, be fighting their battles
o'er again, at Lovegrove's,' over white bait and iced
Champagne, instead of battling in a hot committee-room.
We throw this hint out as an olive branch for both parties
to pick up."
And this is our question. Was it by this free and
easy mode of settling matters, the conservancy of our
river and other rights of the Dock Trustees and Corpo-
ration of Liverpool were handed over to our bitter oppo-
nents " at Lovegrove's over white bait and iced Cham-
pagne," when the dock warehouses and other projects
were advocated in the House of Commons ? Surely no
one unused to the management of such matters could
have suggested so happy an " olive branch for both par-
ties to piok up."