The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-09-12 00:00:00

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TUESDAY MORNING, SEPT. 12, 1348

A writer in the Albion, who signs himself "A
Town Councillor," and complains that "the Liver-
pool press, with one exception, has either been si-
lent on the question of rating the Corporate and
Dock property, or has sided with those who advo-
cate" such rating, has stepped forward to support
-the continuance of the present exemption of that
property from contributing to our local burthens;
amt.], as he seems to intimate to us that he is the
-chosen champion of his party, in the Council or
the Dock Committee—one of the many, " inde-
pendent of professional editors. who are able and
willing to expose the superficial arguments in sup-
port of," what he styles, " this extraordinary con-
-oeived act of spoliation and of municipal suicidal
folly;" we shall, contrary to our usual custom, with
respect to invisible and anonymous letter writers,
offer a few words in reply to his production.
The communication is of itself somewhat in the
nature of an attempted refutation of the various
arguments offered in favour of rating ; and we
-submit that he scarcely puts some of these so fairly
as he might do. Our first quotation is an instance
-of this unfairness. The wiiter says :

"The first argument to notice is, that " the present de-

pression of trade and the prospect of increased local bur-
dens" render it convenient to seek alleviation by throwing
2s. of the 35., the present rating of the parish, upon the
Dock E- ate. Thus, for the purpose of screening trades-
men and others from the distress of paying taxes, the
trade of the port, the source of Liverpool's prosperity
and commercial existence, is to be preyed upon and
weighted with a new and heavy annual burden, while
-competition with other ports, which are now furnished by
-railways, affording ready access to the interior, demands
the throwing off every incumbrance possible, to enable
Liverpool to hold its own with some, or to outstrip others,
rivals in the commercial contest."
The italics are our own; and we contend that
'this is neither a true exposition of any argument
put forward by the promoters of the movement,
-nor is it a correct statement of facts. We may add
also that this is scarcely the spirit in which the
question can be argued. The "tradesmen and
others" of the port " have no wish to "screen
themselves from the distress of paying taxes," but
seek only to be asked to pay no more than their
fair proportion of such taxes. They see this port
the resort of a vast commerce, enriching the ship-
owners and the merchants, not only of the suburbs,
or the neighbourhood, but of the whole empire;
and they ask only not to be made to pay the whole
cost of the pauperism and other burthens which
this commerce brings with it. There is surely
nothing unreasonable in this! If a capitalist
chooses to fix his factory, or work his mine, in any
given locality, does he say to the inhabitants "see
what custom I am bringing to your shopkeepers
and your artisans; then don't tax the profits of my
-enterprise to your poor and other rates ?" Cer-
tainly not. And the commerce of a large portion
of the empire having fixed itself here, upon the
margin of the Mersey, and within the parish of
Liverpool, from which locality it distributes wealth
and employment to the manufacturer, the mer-
chant, the shopkeeper, and the working classes of
the most populous district of the empire, has no
right to be permitted to saddle the whole of the
burthens which it brings, upon the parishioners of
this particular parish.
But, "A Town Councillor" misrepresents a ma-
terial fact in the case. The rate-payers do not wish
•to "throw 2s. of the 35., the present rating of the
parish, upon the dock estate." Their proposition
is this :—lf the whole of the property within the
town, including the dock and corporate estate,
contributed equally to the burthens of the parish
of Liverpool, a poor-rate of 2s. in the pound would
-suffice for its ordinary wants. This 2s. rate has
been laid ; but, if the dock and corporate property
refuse to be rated, then another Is. rate will be re-
quired, which will fall upon the already over-bur-
thened parishioners of Liverpool. This is a rather
different story from that of our letter writer, that

- we wish to abstract 2s. out of 3s. of our rates out
•of these estates. Perhaps, however, the mistake
may be involuntary. At all events, it says some-

thitig as to the amount of iftforniation on the sub-
ject upon which he writes—or the want of it—pos-
sessed by "A Town Councillor."
We are quite as well aware as he that it is advis-
able that the port charges of Liverpool should be
kept as reasonable as possible; but we deny his
assertion that " low charges, merely, compel a pre-
ference to be given to the port where they exist."
Whilst we remind him that the charges of the port
of Liverpool are much below the average scale, he
must permit us to doubt that, were we even under-
bid, our commerce could be seriously diminished.
But we will argue with him upon his own text,—

that " low charges compel a preference," &c. Now,
upon whom will " low charges"—and bear in mind
that we have these already, and that the chance of
lower being established elsewhere, the accommoda-
.

Lion given considered, is very distant—confer the
power of even competing with us ? "A Town
Councillor" admits as one of the advantages of any
port the facilities of communication with the inte-
rior of the country. What port on this western
coast possesses these in a greater degree than the
port of Liverpool ? We have communications with
every quarter of the kingdom ; and no other port
can beat us upon this ground. Here, then, we are
safe; and "low charges" merely, therefore, transfer
a profit into the pockets either of consumer, manu-
facturer, or merchant. Low port charges convey
something into the pockets of the railway pro-
prietors, and others, who are concerned in the
transfer between the manufacturer and consumer

and the shipping port. It is rather too much, then,
to ask that the rate-payers of Liverpool should be
the scapegoat of these various parties to whom low
port charges are so desirable. We are prepared to
reciprocate ; but such a species of free trade as is
insisted upon is very one-sided.
"A Town Councillor" is triumphantly eloquent
upon the point, that it is happy for us that the
docks of Liverpool have been a quasi-public instead
of a private property; and in his remarks that "a
tax upon the former would fall upon trade in the
abstract; in the latter, it would fall upon private
profits, 'which must be immense in all cases, where
the supply and competition of docks is not in excess
beyond the demand for dock accommodation." This
is the first time we ever heard, from what we con-
clude to be a free trade authority, that public works
are cheaper than private, or that competition is not
more likely to be found when the supply of dock
accommodation is left to private and individual
enterprise, than when it is left to a monopolist
body. Had George's Dock been permitted to com-
pete with Prince's, or the King's Dock with the
Queen's, should we not have seen these docks in-
finitely better worked ? Or, had private indivi-
duals, or companies, been permitted to compete
with each other in the formation of new docks,
should we not have seen docks more cheaply
constructed ? Of course we should. The zeal of
our letter writer, here, has a little outrun hie dis-
-cretion_ _ _ _

The main question, however, which "A Town
Councillor" very cleverly blinks, lies in a nutshell.
It is simply whether the parishioners of Liverpool
are to pay the burthens imposed upon them by the
commerce frequenting this shore of the Mersey.
And such a question is rapidly affording its Own
...solution. We cannot do what is so unreasonably
required of us. We might possibly put up with
the burthens imposed upon us, if the rates were
spread over the whole area, now occupied by those
whom the commerce of the port benefits, if the
-out-townships would join with us, if Aigburth
and Wavertree, West Derby, and Everton, Walton
and Kirkdale, would contribute fairly towards the
-rates of the port. But that the " Shopkeepers and
others" of Liverpool can pay all is simply an im-
possibility.

Tim Free-trade portion of the community, by
this tire, we should suppose, arc finding out that
--matteri3 are not exactly as they ought to be. Pro-
phecies have been left most remarkably unfulfilled,
and anticipations most lamentably disappointed.
Last year, of course, was a bad year to test the
working of this great remedial measure. It was
not an ordinary year, We had a potato rot, and
all the ills that such a rot is heir to. We had
Ireland, too, to support. Last year, therefore, we
generously put out of the catzgory of the years of
prosperity, which free trado was to have ensured
.to us. _

But, this year? Surely, some of these years, we
- shall have our new system allowed a fair operation.
This year—a fortnight ago—we had some rumours,