The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-02-01 00:00:00

ved during the sub-

,ed as a portion of th

The true and just

alf-year's earnings from
lber, would be as follows

CR.
£13,644

Received and outstanding

g account

.evious half

6,618

Balance being nett earnings from

25th June to 24th Dec

£13,644 £13,644
This sum therefore of £5657 is what has really to
be placed against the interest of money expended
in the formation of the warehouses, which is in
round numbers £460,000. Taking this interest at

the lowest average at which it has been borrowed,
viz., 4 per cent., the charge for the year will be
£18,400, and for the half-year
From this deduct the amount earned 5,657

and we have a loss on the half-year of .. . . £3,543
But Mr. Henderson informs us that in the ac-
count furnished, no payment towards the local
rates was included. As the Warehouses, we believe,
are rated at £20,000 rental, and the rates amount
to 25 per cent., the amount for the year will be
£5OOO or £2500 for the half-year. Add this liability
therefore, as properly belonging to the past half-
year ; and we have a total loss upon the half-year

f £6043, or £12,086 per annum.
It will be urged, no doubt, that, during a portion
of the half-year in question, the whole of the ware-
houses were not yet opened. We believe, in fact,
that the last two of the warehouses were not opened
until September or October. We can well sffird
the committee a thousand pounds or two on this
score. Indeed, we observe that, by a resplution of
the Dock Committee, on ThursdaY last, a return has
been ordered, which is to embrace .the period be-
tween the 25th September and the 24th December;
and again, from the 24th December to the 24th
January. It will, doubtless, be attempted to be
shewn that the return for this period, during which
all the warehouses were in working, affords the only
fair criterion of the revenue, which they are likely
in future to produce. We must, however, remind
our readers that we have already included in Mr,
Henderson's statement, the months between Sep-
tember and the end of December; and we may re-
call to their recollection a few of the circumstances
that period.

attendin,

From September to December the commercial
world was in a state of utter confusion; and the
consignees of a great number of vessels, having
valuable produce on board, were induced by a mis-
apprehension of the law, and without the sanction
of the owners of such cargoes, to discharge them

occupied by our commercial magnates are so occu-
pied no longer; but have been abandoned to the
more humble lodging-house keepers, and, at re-
duced rents, to professional men, artists and others.
Paltry courts and cottage houses have been erected
upon sites which once formed the gardens, or
upon which were built the out offices of our town
mansions; and their occupants contribute more
pauperism to the parish than rates. A steady ad-
vance in the imposts to be borne by the shopkeeper
and the tradesman has been the result; and the
amount of those imposts threatens to be increased

every year, as the railway system, and other con-
veniences for conveying the wealthy classes beyond
the reach of our poverty and our smoky, unwhole-
some and badly-cleansed thoroughfares progress.

•
In the mean time the growth of our. vast dock
estate has been from time to time decreasing the area

01 LUC MOW, vatuauic anu jJIUUuI;LIVC rdLedUle pro-
perty of the borough. The docks north of Prince's
swept away a large quantity of buildings and other
—ship-building yards, block-makers shops,
and the area which they covered thenceforth
eased to be visited by the overseer, or noted in the

property

parish books

The Albert Dock removed nearly

aluable ware-

the whole of Nova Scotia, with it
houses and building yards. A further extension of

the dc

ks northward removed a vast additional
mass of rateable property. We have now about to
ite removed, in the neighbourhood of Wapping. a
mass of warehouses, shops, and dwellings which
are rated at the yearly value of above £50,000,

thus reducing further the area of the property
which is at present liable to taxation, and of course
enhancing the burthens to be borne by the pro-

perty which remains. Where, men are asking
themselves, is this to stop ? What is to be the re-
duced area of the town after a few years of conti-
nued encroachments, and what is to be the amount
of the rates to be levied upon the few solvent occu-
piers of property, whose avocations compel them to
remain within its limits ?

We have said that the excitement created by
these natural Questions have be

en growing in inten-

sity for some years past. But it has recently been
stirred up to the boiling pitch by two concurrent
circumstances. The first of these was the recent
invasion of Irish immigrant pauperism, by which
our local burthens have been fearfully augmented ;
and the second has been the proposal of the Dock
Committee to carry out an extensive warehousing
business, in erections to be built upon the dock
quays, and which they have declined to take the
initiative in rendering subject to local burthens, by
the insertion into their bill of a rating clause. At
the present moment the warehouse property be-
longing to private individuals, in various parts of
the town, form one-fourth in value of its rateable
property ; and already the operation of the existing
warehouses erected by the Dock Committee, has
emptied many of these, from which, of course, the
parish will cease to derive funds for the support of
the poor, whom the increase of commerce brings
in its train, as a set-off against the wealth which it
creates ; and those which are not empty are greatly
deteriorated in value. Any further increase in dock
warehouses, without stringent powers in the parish
authorities to tax them to our local burthens, must
inevitably bring about one or other of these alter-
natives, which we have, at present, no space to do
more than merely point out for consideration.
The first is the extension, by parliament, of the
rateable limits of the town, by incorporating with
it outlying parishes. The second is the concession
of powers to the parish authorities, to rate not only
the dock warehouses but the docks themselves, and
the Corporate estate. There is a third mode of
relief, which, however, is not at present much
mooted, viz.—a general measure for the payment
of the poor throughout the kingdom, out of the

consolidated fund." One or other of these measures
we must inevitably have ; for it is impossible, as
long as Liverpool remains the port of entrance for
the poor of Ireland:Ao the manufacturing districts
of England, that we can sustain the hurthens which
are being increasingly forced upon us.