The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-01-16 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

OASTLER A:VD THE MERCURY'S LAST SLANDERS.—After
having fired his poisonous arrows in the dark for weeks, and,
like a hush-fighter, when attacked, flying from sheler to
shelter, and from charge to charge, our contemporary con-
descended, on Friday- last, to give us an idea what was the
real matter to which he had referred, as connected with
Messrs. Rawson Cousin, and Clayton, and Mr. Oastler; and
added, Irons his private storehouse of malignity, another
charge, about some mill of Mr. Thornhill's at Brighouse. A
letter from Mr. Oastler, in reply to these detailed• slanders,
will be found in another column ; and to that we refer our
readers. In the meantime let us see what is the Mercury's
position in this affair. He challenged us originally to write
to Messrs. Rawson arid Co. about some discreditable circum-
stances within their knowledge, affecting the character of
Mr. Oastler. At first we did not feel called upon to do so ;
but nearly a fortnight ago we wrote to these gentlemen. and.
as we expected, we hate, to this -moment, received no answer!
The Mercury, therefore, must now, unless he wishes to be
branded as a deliberate libeller, and his statements as forge-
ries, himself prove the truth of those statements, and bring
forward their author. In tne meant!me, let not the Mercury's
discreditable animus be lost sight of. These charges were
made by him for the purpose of crushing a political opponent,
of whose person he knows nothing, but whose sufferings in a
debtor's prison are sweet objects of contemplation to so " libe-
ral" a mind !
Pray will our good Mercury tell us whether, in truth, any Re-
porter at that time or now connected with his paper, reported
the speech of Mr. Oastler, to which he at first referred, or
whether his assertion, like his cowardly insinuations, were
borrowed from Manchester. ‘l'e have some curiosity on this
subject, for if we remember right, about the time of these
charges being made—and especially that affecting Messrs.
Rawson and Co.,—the Anti Corn Lau. League had a meeting
in this Town, Verbum sap !
We have received from George Beley, Esq., of this town:—
For Oastler Liberation Fund 0 0
Relief of Messrs. Branckers' Men 0 0
And for the former fund 2s 6d from W.M.

Elie Eiberpoot attanDarl3.

TUESDAY MORNING, JAN. 16, 1344.

There was never, perhaps, a period, since Liver-
pool was ranked amongst the leading ports of the
empire, at which her prosperity appeared more ca-
pable of large increase or decline, according as the
Circumstances with which she is surrounded shall
be wielded with judgment and firmness, or the re-
verse, than the present period. A universal feeling
appears to have grown upon the public mind that,
vast as are its present capabilities—as already the se-
cond, and at no distant date destined to become the
first port of the greatest commercial country in the
ivorld,—this locality has still mighty resources to be
developed, and that the time of their development is
at hand. On every side a disposition is being

evinced to seize opportunity by the forelock—to
look and to operate in advance of present neces-
sities :—and it well becomes us therefore, as jour-
nalists, anxious for the welfare of our town, and for
the increased prosperity of its inhabitants, to draw
attention to the policy, on the part of those who
have the management of our public estates, which
we conceive best calculated for the crisis in which
we are placed.

Let us, for an instant, glance at all the varied cir-
cumstances of our position. For the past half cen-
tury we have been engaged in erecting, upon the
shores of our river, within the bounds of our cor-
porate estate, one of the most noble properties to be
found in any city in the world. We have nearly
reached the extremity of those limits. Our docks
extend, now, in a continuous line from the furthest
point of land which we possess in the south of the
town, to the extremity of our estate on the north ;
and our commerce still loudly demands increased dock
spact. Our necessities have thus far grown with, if
not faster than, our means to supply them; and the
all important question meets us—in what direction
are we to turn ourselves in search of these means ?

Meantime we are not left calmly and coolly to de-
liberate the best steps to be taken, and leisurely, as
in times past, to put those steps into execution. We
haN:e a pressure from without--a threatened compe-
tition—impelling us to decide upon, and proceed with
at once, some GREAT EFFORT, to relieve the vast
commerce which resorts to our river from the in-
conveniences and the onerous charges to which it is
at present subjected. A demand is made upon us
by the people of the adjacent manufacturing dis-
tricts for the admission of their produce direct
through the port of Runcorn. We have been threat-
ened by them with an improvement in the naviga-
tion of the river Irwell—with the establishment of
bonding and other warehouses in Manchester itself.
And these projects, wild as they appeared to us
once, are at the present moment assuming a pros-
pect not only of ultimate but of speedy and vigorous
realization. A powerful proprietor—the owner of
the Bridgewater Canal—has already possessed him-
self of the navigation of the river Irwell, to Man-
chester, by the purchase of the entire property of
the Old Quay Company; and with this important
adjunct to his former great influence, aided by the
spirit of enterprise and determination with which
his Lordship's property is wielded, we cannot dis-
guise from ourselves the fact that in him we have a
competitor for a valuable portion of the trade of the
port and the town—one whose power we cannot
afford to despise. We cannot stand still now. We
cannot trifle with half measures now. We must go
on, unless we wish to see Liverpool thrust back from
her present eminence, and commencing a course of
certain, if not of rapid decline.

Again, if we direct our eyes to the opposite shore
of the Mersey, we have the prospect of future dock
competition reminding us of the necessity of vigo-
rous efforts to maintain our present preeminent po-
sition. An active and enterprising community,
there, have possessed themselves of a site, late the
property of the Corporation of Liverpool, having
eminent facilities for dock purposes, and which is
well capable of being wielded, conjointly with the
Bridgewater property and the new purchases of its
noble owner, for the infliction of no small amount
of injury to the commerce and the property of this
port. That all the projects of the new proprietors
of Wallasey Pool will be carried into effect, at any
early period, we do not say. The acceptance or
non-acceptance of the additional plots of land in that
neighbourhood, offered them by the Council, will
afford us some idea of the bona-fide character of their
intentions. Notwithstanding any doubt, however,
which might reasonably be entertained of immediate
competition from this quarter, the mere agitation of
such extensive schemes ought to warn us that the
time for acting, on the part of the authorities of
Liverpool, has arrived !
We regard none of these projects with alarm.
We trust that their realisation is destined to be the
forerunner, as it is the omen, of a vast acquisition
to the capabilities of the Mersey, as the inlet for the
commerce of the world to the manufacturing dis-
tricts of England. But still Liverpool must do its
duty—must claim her share in the advantages to be
derived. She must prepare for this expected influx
of commerce by widening her boundaries—by ex-
tending the capabilities of the port. And it is not a
trifling addition here, or a doubtful experiment
there, which will suffice for our wants. A large
measure, we repeat, is now required. We must
provide, not for a few years to come—not for a
trifling increase of the trade of our river ; but for
many years, and for a large increase—larger proba-
bly in its ratio to our present accommodation than
has ever heretofore been called. for. Taking into
consideration the circumstances of the times, the
trade of this port is already increasing more rapidly
than it has ever done heretofore. The commercial
depression of the past three or four years has affected
the revenue of nearly every description of property
—railways, canals, &c.—dependent upon the activity
of the trade of the country. But the Dock Estate of
Liverpool. siands alone in its increased productive-
ness; and, with the revival of commerce, which is
even now visiting us, and has shewn its effect in an

addition of nearly £7OOO to our last half-year's
amount of dock-rates, as compared with that of the
corresponding six months of the year preceding;
and taking into consideration, as well, the effects of
improvements to be made in internal navigation, we
may fairly look forward to a vast increase of the de-
mands of commerce upon us, to take place within a
very few years.

To meet these, we have many conflicting proposi•
Dock warehouses are the nostrums of one
party; the conversion of our outward basins, and
our dock-yards, &c., into docks, is the suggestion of
another; whilst a third, supported by a majority in
the Dock Committee, boldly propose the purchase of
the Harrington Company's property, its conver-
sion into wet docks, and the formation of a large
steam dock at the north extremity of the existing
Dock Estate, with a dock for coasters, having a
communication with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.
From the opinions expressed above, the public will
have no difficulty in arriving at a knowledge which
of these propositions we advocate. The large mea-
sure is that which the Dock Committee should re-
solve boldly to grapple with. Of its details, which
we recently laid before our readers, we of course can
say nothing. But its main features are ably con-
ceived; and their adoption, we are confident, would
serve materially to advance the interests of the port.
To a discussion of the question, as regards these
various plans, we shall address ourelves in our next
publication. In the meantime, in order to direct
our readers to an attentive consideration of our
position, we may point out to their notice a few
facts. The existing want of dock room is not de-
nied ; but it is said that the opening of the Albert

tions.

Dock will fill up this deficiency. In part, perhaps,

it may do so. But two years must elapse, in all
probability, before that dock can be opened ; and

then, we have the declaration of the Dock Surveyor

that the trade of that dock will be one peculiar to
itself. It will not accommodate the timber trade of

the port, which is sustaining, from the effect partly
of the new tariff; a gigantic increase. And within
these two years, the increase of our general trade
will have outrun the amount of additional dock faci-
lities thus afforded. We must go to parliament now
for increased dock-room somewhere, either north
or south ; and when we have seen, from expe-
rience, the encroachments made upon our privileges,
during past applications to parliament, it is surely
better to approach that tribunal for a bold and am-
ple measure at once, than to throw ourselves open,
by fresh applications, every session or two, to
the onslaughts of the opponents of our local
prosperity. Besides, docks, it must be remem-
bered, are not the work of a day ; nor are
acts of parliament got in a day. The act for
the Albert Dock, which cannot be opened until

1846, was first applied for in 1839; and either of
he proposed docks, north or south, will occupy, at
he least, four years in construction, during which

time the Albert, with its warehouses, can do little
more than merely stave off the pressing difficulties,
under which we are labouring. Despatch and de-
termination are therefore earnestly required, to avert
consequences which, in our present position, threaten
serious and permanent injury to our port.

Well ! the great "AGGREGATE MEETING" Of

the Catholics of Ireland has taken place—the meet-
ing which we were taught to look forward to as to
another monster Mullaghmast or Tara Hill. And
where, does the English reader imagine—upon what
vast plain, or lofty mountain—did this aggregate
assembly thunder forth its denunciations against

the proceedings of the Irish Government ? - The
meeting was held in the Music Hall, Abbey-street,
Dublin !—a place which, notwithstanding the enor-
mous gift of exaggeration possessed by the Repeal
press, is only estimated by its reporters as capable
of containing 3,500 persons ! As well might any
one of our annual Protestant meetings in the Liver-
pool Amphitheatre, have been styled an " aggregate
meeting" of the Protestants of Great Britain, as this
wretched affair have been designated in terms so
pompous and inflated.

But if in numbers it was a miserable abortion,
compared with the past gatherings of the Repeal
faction, its object and its proceedings were perfectly
contemptible, and even farcical. This aggregate of
the Catholics of Ireland—these representatives of
the unanimous feeling of the nation—met to protest
against the iniquity, on the part of the Crown, of
striking off every pledged repealer from a jury panel,
before whom is about to be tried the legality or ille-
gality of the proceedings of an association, of which
they themselves are members, and of proceedings to
which they were, in all probability, parties ! How
reasonable the complaint ! How exquisite the judg-
ment of men who could imagine that the law-officers
of the Crown, at a crisis so threatening as the pre-
sent, would hesitate to use firmly all the powers
which the law has placed in their hands, to secure
an honest verdict !—and this, too, while the tra-
versers themselves had equal powers, and exercised
them throughout against those jurymen supposed
to be hostile to the agitation sought to be put down.
The Crown struck out twelve jury men, eleven of
whom were Roman Catholics, and, we believe,
known repealers. The traversers struck out twelve
names, the whole of whom were known Protestants
and loyalists. Surely, then there is little cause of
complaint on either side !
The Aggregate Meeting, however, complains of
the course thus taken by the Government advisers,
as (save the mark !) an insult to the Catholics of
Ireland—a declaration that they are not to be trusted
upon their oaths as jurymen !—and this, too, in the
face of the attempts, openly made by the Repeal
body in Dublin, to swamp the jury panel with their
own creatures, and their chuckling boasts that,
with a single Roman Catholic on the jury, a verdict
for the Crown could not be had ! Call it perjury,
or what you will, which, assize after assize, procures
the acquittal of offenders against the law in Ire.
land—which enables murderers and felons to walk
free, in the teeth of evidence the most conclusive as
-to their guilt—there is scarcely a sane man in that
country who does not know that the admission of
two or three Roman Catholics and repeal jurymen,
to sit in judgment upon O'Connell and his fellow-
traitors, would have enabled them to have defied the
law,defied justice, and laughed at the clearest evidence
of crime which could have • been brought against
them. And more than that, there is not a conscien-
tious Roman Catholic juryman, whose name has
been struck off the pane], who does not in his secret
soul rejoice at the circumstances which have relieved
him from that ecclesiastical ban, and that dan-
ger from fire, bullet, or steel, which would have
been the result of his concurrence in a verdict of
guilty against the prisoners
One great consummation, however, this "Aggre-
gate Meeting of the Catholics of Ireland," in the
Music Hall of Dublin—this huddling together of
seven millions of people in a pint bottle—has served
to accomplish. It has enabled that poor Whigling,
Richard Lalor Shiel, to emerge from his sulky re-

tirement, in which he has been for months past ru-
minating over his denouncement by
the arch-agi-
tator, and grieving for the sweet sops of office which
he has lost, to take the initiatory step toward the
adoption by his party, in the coining session, of the
weapon which Irish disaffection offers them for the
embarrassment of Sir Robert Peel. Lord John

Russell, with the little hero of Pen enden Heat h
aid him, is about to hug treason ; and they trust, in
return, to be dragged back, in the chains of its
burly and braggart head, to the soft cushions of
Downing-street, and another to revel upon the pros-
trate institutions and the ruin of their country.
THEY WILL BE DISAPPOINTED ! They :mistake
widely the feelings of the English nation upon this
subject !

Our Whig-Radical contemporaries are dissatisfied
with the explanation of Mr. Sands, as to his manage-
ment of the negociation with the directors of the
Harrington Company; and their grumblings are
echoed, if not prompted, by two much greater
authorities in such matters, Messrs. Evans and
Aikin. The formergentlemen at the recent meeting
of the Dock Committee "continued to think" that
there had been, on the part of the late chairman, " a
most unwarrantable suppression of offers which he
had for (of) the land. He had received no satis-
faction from the letter of the chairman, nor did he
consider that it, in the slightest degree, exculpated
him ;" and the latter defended throughout the harsh
expressions of his colleague towards Mr. Sands.
We have already expressed our opinion pretty fully
upon this subject ; and we shall certainly not at-
tempt to " satisfy" either of the gentlemen in ques-
tion when the conduct of a political opponent is
concerned. They are too " good haters" to be
moved from their position of hostility by either facts
or reasoning. Mr. Sands was, perhaps, not quite
so communicative upon the subject of the details of
his negociation with the Harrington Company
as he might have been. He might have communi-
cated the absurd offers of 425. and 35s.—both of
them intended, obviously, as obstacles to the selling
of anything less than the whole of the property. But
he would have told the committee nothing more, in
effect, than that the company were indisposed so to
divide their property, unless the Dock Estate would
consent to stultify themselves by the purchase of the
worst portion at a price per yard greater than they
were willing to take for the whole.
The public, however, see through the animus of
Messrs. Evans and Aikin in this matter; and we
shall say no more on the subject than remind them,
that if they still wish for their 40,000 or 60,000
yards of the worst land at 355. they will be accom-
modated. Let either of them at once make a motion
for its purchase, and spare us this ceaseless growling
with which they pester the Dock Committee and
their fellow-townsmen !