The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-06-02 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 2, 1846.

In another column we give the substance of the
parliamentary proceedings on the Dock Bill ; and
we greatly wish that it had been in our power to
give them in full.
The object of the opponents of the Bill may
be gathered from the brief report which we have
given. It is to arrest the progress of the purchase,
for dock purposes, of the Wapping property, on the
ground that increased dock acreage is not wanted,
or likely to be wanted ; or, in the event of such pur-
chase being permitted by parliament, to insist, as a
condition,, that the compact of the Dock Trustees
with the warehouse owners, as to the erection of
warehouses upon the dock quays, should be broken
through. The Dock Committee are asked to give
up the further extension of the water space of the
port, and to limit themselves, at present, to the
carrying out of the pet scheme of Mr. Eyre Evans
and others, viz., the surrounding of the existing
water space of the port with warehouses on the
dock quays. We need not say that Mr. Eyre
Evans is himself a prominent mover of the op-
position ; and we are sorry to see associ-
ated with him the promoters of the docks on
the other side of the Mersey. These gentlemen
have again and again asserted, and the public have
believed in the honor of their word, that they had
no local object to serve in pushing forward their
scheme—that their object was purely the advance-
ment of the general interests and commerce of both
sides of the Mersey. In parading their scheme,
however, as calculated to furnish dock room for
both sides, and attempting to confine the energies
of the Liverpool dock estate to the erection of ware-
houses only, they are, somewhat too glaringly, flying
in the face of their professions of disinterestedness.

There is, we believe, an erroneous impression
abroad as to the exact position in which the bellige-
rent parties are placed by the temporary adjourn-
ment of the question. The Dock Committee are
presumed to have experienced a difficulty, if not a
defeat. Their sole difficulty, however, is that of
assenting to or dissenting from vexatious modifica-
tions of their bill, without first consulting their con-
stituents in the Council. They have conceded in
the Lords' Committee nothing to opposition which
they had not already voluntarily offered to concede
in the Commons. They are in no dilemma—no
fear of their scheme being carried out in all its
integrity. They object only to the demand made
upon them to break faith with the warehouse-
owners, who lately, so handsomely, relieved them
from that portion of their compact which had refe-
rence to the period of completing the warehouses
on the quays of the Albert'Dock. Their course
in this matter the Council will no doubt sanction at
its meeting to-morrow; and the decision of Parlia-
ment, in favour of such a course, we look forward
to with perfect confidence. The sorry figure which
some of their opponents made before the Lords will
materially tend to give the Dock Committee the
confidence and countenance of that house.

Mr. Goulburn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
has always been considered a gentleman of great
discretion. He is seldom feund tripping in figures;
and is cautious and correct in most other matters.
But zeal will occasionally overrun discretion. The
right hon. gentleman has succeeded in equalizing
the public revenue and the public burthens. He
has substituted a surplus for a deficit. He has ef-
fected some important reductions in the charge of
the public debt; and whist detailing these achieve-
:rents to the house on Friday night, we could rea-
dily have allowed him to indulge in a more than or-
dinary amount of self gratulation, and to take a
more than ordinary latitude in adducing his evi-
dence of the happy state of things which he has
succeeded in bringing about.
- The right hon. baronet's discretion failed .him,
however, when he adduced as evidence of the im-
provement which his financial policy had created,
the increased religious feeling of the country, as
shown-by the increased amount of church building
which had been going on of late years.
" There were times," he said, " in this country that
Hic legislature thought itself entitled to high approbation,
when, in the course of a century, it had built 50 churches
for the purpose of communicating to the lower orders the
benefits of religious truth. But in our own day, in the
present period, I am happy to say, we should not think it
much to have built 50 churches in the course of a century.
1n a single year there have been 50 churches built and
endowed with funds by the rich of the land, to furnish
temples in which, conjointly with the poor, they can offer
tip a common prayer far the prosperity of the country.
The ardour with which this object is pursued, and the
equal ardour with which congregations rush to them for
instruction, is, I think, conclusive evidence of the im-
provement in the moral and religious habits of the people;
nor is it a transient improvement—l believe it to be of a
permanent character."
_ _ _ _

With all due deference to Mr. Goulburn, we sub-
mit that this was rather dangerous ground to touch
upon. It may be that in a single year there have
been 50 churches built and endowed by the rich of
the land ; but that Sir Robert Peel's government has
had any hand in promoting their building, or en-
dowment, Mr. Goulburn will scarcelyassert. They
kve, however, we may be told, created by their po-
hey the wealth with which they were built and the
clisposition so to employ it. Be it so. But, then,
they have created and are creating the necessity of
so employing it—the want of church accommodati-
on—in a tenfold degree, by the concentration of our
population in the large manufacturing towns and
villages. During the last five years, since the cen-
sus of 1841, Manchester and Salford have added to
their population, at a moderate estimate, 100,000
souls. The increase of the manufacturing villages
around is in a similar ratio, viz„ as 1 to 3 in 1841.
Liverpool we may put down at 40 to 50,000 increase.
The total yearly increase throughout the United
Kingdom is estimated, by great statistical authori-
ties, at 365,000 souls, or 1000 per day, the bulk of
whom are absorbed by the manufacturing districts;
and, to meet this increase,where do we see the 50,000
churches, and how far does their erection, if we
could discover them, leave us still in arrear in pro-
viding for the religious wants of the whole people.
It is not a fact, however, to the extent, at least,
which Mr. Goulburn would have us suppose, that
increased commercial prosperity has anything to do
with increased church building, or that it is empha-
tically " the rich" who thus take care for the spread
of religious truth. Commercial prosperity makes
railways, erects factories and villas, consumes luxu-
ries, and employs artificers and artists of the higher
class ; but it builds few churches for the poor. If
it be a fact that we have had these fifty churches
built within a year, we venture to assert that one
half of the funds have come out of the pockets of
the industrious tradesmen and the working classes.
It is so amongst ourselves ; and the manufacturing
districts will show a like result.
Mr. Goulburn would find, too, on enquiry, that
much of this boasted increase of church building
may be traced to the movement
,which has been
going on, within the last few years, in the church it-
self—a movement which, if it has produced some
disastrous results, some lamentable defections, has
undoubtedly stirred up a considerable amount of
energy amongst churchmen, a portion of which has
thus expended itself. But the instances of that
self-devoting zeal for the service of God, which ani-
mated our ancestors in the erection of those noble
fanes, which they have left as their monuments
throughout the land, will be found rare indeed.
But, now, since Mr. Goulburn has introduced
the subject of church building, and informed us
that the community has done something towards
removing the destitution of which every statesman
and every wise man must acknowledge the exist-
ence, let us ask—what does the government, of
which he is a member, intend to do, as its own
portion of the good work ? We have had, for a few
years past, a considerable surplus revenue. This
year it amounted to two millions and a quarter ster-
ling, which the Right. Hon. Chancellor has got rid
of, in Useful expenditure no doubt. But whilst we
can give so largely, of our savings, to commetce, to
capital, to the national defences, to the improve-
ment of our public buildings, and other merely se-
cular and human undertakings, let us think of
giving something, as a nation, to God him self,—
something for the spread of his knowledge
amongst those toiling millions, who create for
us our overflowing prosperity and abundance.
One or two hundred thousands a year would
be a trifling- contribution for the state, but a
powerful encouragement to the zeal of the com-
munity. Let Mr. Goulburn, or Sir Robert Peel,
cast his eyes over our manufacturing districts—
over our large towns and villages—over the me-
tropolis itself even. Will they see nothing to de-
plore, no sabbath riot, no deficiency of religious
accommodation and teaching ? They will see tens
and twenties of thousands congregated together in
every large town throughout the land, to whoa the