The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-06-20 00:00:00

prove not

It has been urged, in reply to those who now
ask for time to examine and inquire into the
question, that all these points have been fully
discussed, before a Committee of the House of
Commons and the Commissioner sent down to

Liverpool to make investigations on the spot ; and
that, if the public have not been attentive to the
evidence, they ought to have been. We may,
however, recal to memory, that on the first

origination of this and other rival schemes the
public were in almost a fever heat on the subject of

water, anxious to have it at any cost, and from
wbereever it could be got. Men in such a state of
mind are not always very prudent; do not always
look before they leap. Besides, a new state
of things has arisen within the last two years.
We cannot afford to ride a hobby at so high
a charge as we could have done two years ago:

shewn to be—by the aid of the additional Green-
lane works, and more liberal management of the
old companies—a kind of bugbear which will not
be in a position to bite severely for a few years to
come. Moreover, we find public men changing
their minds upon this very subject—men of large
experience in local matters, and men of great engi-
neering and geological skill—and why may not we,
who acknowledge to have allowed ourselves to be
committed and bound down by an act of parlia-
ment, without having taken the trouble of forming
an opinion at all ? We can remember, for instance,
that, two or three years ago, Mr. Hawksley, at that
time engaged in opposing a Corporation scheme,
declared in evidence that Corporations were the
worst people in the world to have anything to do with
water supply ; and that their management was al-
ways more expensive than that of private Companies
—(we can give his exact language from the short-
hand writer's notes if required); but does Mr.
Hawksley say anything of this kind now? Of
course not. He has changed his opinion. We can
remember a letter too, addressed to Mr. Harmood
Banner, during the enquiry for the purchase of the
Harrington and Bootle Company's Works, in the
following extract from which we find nothing indi-
cating any suspicion on the part of the writer in the
deficiency of the red sand stone supply of Liverpool :
" When we erected our new premises in Benson-street,
we put down a 50-horse engine, and to supply that, and
our general establishment, we sunk a well. This well is
just 400 yards distant from your well in Hotham-street.
At eighty feet from the surface we found plenty of water.
The bottom of the lodge is 114 feet from the surface, and
such was the rush of water that it required all the force of
the engine, night and day, with an 11-inch pump, to
enable us to excavate our lodge. The entire cost of sink-
ing this well was £232. Our consumption is very great;
supplying a 50-horse condensing engine, and thirty horses
with water, together with mortar mills, the dwelling-
houses, smithies, and workshops, and keeping immense
tanks and cisterns constantly full, and yet we discharge
every twelve hours 80,000 gallons of pure water into the
public sewers, for which we have no use ! And this is
daily occurring close to a double row of cottages inhabited
by working men who are, no doubt, paying for their
water. So plentiful is our supply, that on one occasion,
working the engine at full speed from three in the morn-
ing till nine at night, we only lowered the water seventeen
feet, leaving seventeen feet of water in the chamber; and
beyond this we could not reduce it. I never heard that
our well, so close to yours, at all diminished your supply;
and, pump as much as you. please, I have no fear of your
injuring us. Now if I add the cost of the pump, the
cost of an engine to raise 1,500 tuns a-day, with men's
wages, wear and tear, &c., it will not cost quite
one penny per tun to raise the water, and let it not
be forgotten that water is not an article of manufacture,
but merely requires an excavation, and a pump to raise it
to the surface. Yet. if I recollect rightly, your charge to
the Commissioners is fourpence per tun. lam borne out
in my calculation by Mr. Wicksteed, the engineer of the
East London Water Works Company, who gives in the
Sanatory Report, vol. 2, page 12, a detailed estimate of
the cost of raising 1,000 gallons of water 100 feet high ;
and which he asserts is less than one halfpenny per 1,000
gallons. You will therefore believe that my penny against

..
your fourpe,nce is a sufficiently liberal calculation
---- - -

When we find such opinions operating in the
mind of such a man as our excellent townsman,
Mr. Samuel Holme, so very recently as two years
ago, and that gentleman now one of the most
eloquent supporters of the Rivington scheme, as
evinced by his able speech at the meeting on
Wednesday, we say that the public has a full
right to have time to sift thoroughly the evidence
and weigh the new facts, which have brought about
changes so sudden and so signal.
We must confess that we. have little expectation
of producing any effect by the ordinary measures
hitherto used by the constituencies to procure a
postponement of further proceedings with respect
to this measure. Individual remonstrances with
the representatives have failed to move them.
Ward meetings havebeen held with similar want of
effect. The last resource must at length he tried.
His worship the Mayor must be solicited to call a
town's meeting, at which the sentiments of the
public can be fairly tested. If those sentiments
are averse to the further progress of the scheme
at present, we have only the hustings in November
to appeal to. The demonstration which a town's
meeting would call forth could not, however, we
think, be set at defiance, and would spare us the
ungracious task of opposing old and tried friends,
who, perhaps, have only offended us upon this
question.

At a meeting of the Court of Examiners, held on Fri..
day, Mr. John Sinclair, of this town, was admitted a
member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

SERIOUS FALLING OFF IN OUR EXPORTS TO

BRAZIL AND CUBA

It was predicted that

one result of our free trade policy

towards these countries would be a large increase of our
exports to them of manufactured goods, if in the first
nineteen months following the Sugar Act of 1846 there
was an increase over the corresponding months antece-
dent of £455,381 of nominal value. It was stated, how-
ever, in committee of the House of Commons, by a
Liverpool merchant, engaged in the Brazilian trade, on
the authority of his captain, for twenty years in the habit
of going to Rio Janeiro, " that he had never in his life

een in Rio Janeiro such a quantity of goods as there
he thought there must be enough to last them
" This evidence has been proved to be

in the ex-

ports during the first four months of the

present year.

plain calicoes" we sent to the Brazils in the first

four months of

347, 25,153,708 yards, and this year only
Of printed calicoes, we sent in 1847,