The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-02-18 00:00:00

and Sout

The proposed outlay in enlarging the Toxteth
Dock we regard as unwise, because whilst not
ensuring the necessary accommodation for an
increasing trade, it cannot prevent importers from
taking the greater number of their cargoes to the
cheaper and more convenient docks and yards to
he provided at the north end of the estate, to which
brokers arid dealers will inevitably have to follow
them. A much more sensible proposal, to meet
present requirements, would be that suggested by
Mr. Steele, viz., to increase the facilities for worki-
ing the Brunswick Dock, by removing to some other
place thelarge quantity of North American and other
tonnage, jconstantly lying there for sale, and the
space occupied by which could be so much more
usefully employed.

LARGE communities are proverbially slow to
move even in matters which vitally concern their
own well-being ; and very frequently they are only
roused from their apathy and blind confidence in
their own inert strength, after that strength has
been successfully undermined by some wily and
energetic enemy, Small and isolated interests, on
the other hand, are ever watchful against aggres-
Assault one of these, and forthwith the
assailant finds a hornet's nest about his ears. This
town of Liverpool has bad especial warnings of the
danger attending want of promptitude in examin-
ing the tendency of proposed measures affecting
its interests, and of energy and activity in opposing
them, if prejudicial. Need we go further than to
the Rivington Pike scheme as an instance of this?
The public at large looked on unconcernedly, whilst
engineers, amateur and professional, were spending
their money by wholesale, besides pledging that of
generations to come ; and only awoke from their
dreaming to find themselves fast bound by an act
of parliament, and by contracts, to an expenditure
of nearer a million and a half than a million sterling,
for the prosecution of a vast scheme, the necessity
and beneficial nature of which are, to say the least of
them, as yet a little problematic.

We do sincerely trust that the bill to which
we directed the attention of our readers last week,
and which has been twice read,—a bill which has
for its declared object to take away all practical
control of the Town Council and Burgesses of
Liverpool over the management of the Dock Es-
tate—will not bs treated with that apathy, the con-
sequences of which we have had so much reason
The more we examine its provisions,
they appear to us to be fatal to the real
F this community. The whole bill is
based upon an assumption which is grossly untrue.
In the preamble it is recited, " Whereas it is
t the constitution of the said (Dock)
Auld be changed by giving a greater

the mo

interests of

expedient tha

Uomm

1 over the management of the said docks
and harbour, and the warehouses, works, and pro-
nertv nnnnented thprewith_ to the merchants and

siverpool, paying the rates and

said acts, or any of them, authorised

aised and levied." We deny that it is ex-
-except for the serving of their own inte-
any such increased control should be
and .we unhesitatingly assert that " mer-

rests—that

given
chant