The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-09-22 00:00:00

,

•"40,

TUESDAY MORNING, SI:PT. 22, 1846.

The Anion of Monday week contains an article,
in reply to some remarks from us. upon the recently
published statement by the Birkenlicid Dock Com-
pany, of the comparative advantages of the Liverpool
end Birkenhead Dock Estates, to which, or at least
to such parts of it as are intelligible, we feel called
upon to offer a brief rejoinder. In doing this, we
shall pass over the introductory paragraphs, which
impute to us motives which we never had in view,
and proceed to the :atigible facts and figures, which
alone bear upon the glustion. Our contemporary
says, of the Ducks over the water :
"In Nil the Birkenhead Doe': Commissioners pro-
cured their first Act. cf l'arlia,vent, which authorised
them to rase .t:•100,0A on he seminty of the works, and
toils levied upon slipping rx,,ltintr u,e of them. The
Crown gl.nted theta the. whole site of the works ; in
economic.] langtv.ge, the whole sum of £400,000 wuuld
be re-produc ive expenditure."
And agjn, of the 'same Docks:—
" In 1845, the B'ekenhend I.),ek- Commissioners pro•
cured their st rood err, which :tutu r'z-s them to borrow
£600,000, to he expend, d in il:epening Wallasey Pool
and building wharf walls round it : the crown living the
commssioners the whsle bed of the pool, or one hundred.

and fifty acres. Of rills sum two-thirds are chargeable on
the landowners whose property fronts the pool, the re-
maioirnz one-third on vee.sels nraking•use of the dock thus
con-- Ilene, again, the whole sum spent is re-
pro,.hc; ice : not a penny goes into the pocket of the land-
owner."

Now we cannot, for the life of us, tell what is
meant by this " re-productive expenditure." Here
is a million of money authorized to be raised for the
formation of Wallasey Docks; and the Interest of
that sum, has to be paid. The tolls to he levied are

- surely not to reproduce the million. " Not a penny,"
we are told, " goes into the pocket of the land-
owner." What of that ? There is the cost of
'making a great portion of the land. and deepening
the pool, to pay for ; and that is much the same
thing.
The other side of the question is thus stated :
"In the same year the Liverpool Dock Trustees pro-
cured an act, ant horisn,e th,•in to rase, on the security of
their rates and wo, ks, 1:1,5a0.000, for !hie construction of
works at the north and south enus of the town. On re`er-
ring to their pith islie I they have already paid,
up to the 24'h June, 1845, for land alone, under this act
•of 7 and 8 Vie ..
And by the Corporation accounts, we find
Oat, on the 31st of August, 1843. the
amount due from the Trustees of the
Dicks, for land purchased under this
act, was ..

Making a total unproductive expendlture £784.875 5 8
Now it requires no re.c.: 'fling to prove, that, if the Dock
Trw4tees bast got alt this hand for nothing, they could have
.eff,ralett to lower their rates one half ; that, for instance,
the noes upop shipping alone would have been sufficient
to pay the interest upon the rely productive expenditure."
It is always very desirable, when men meddle
with such matters as the above, that they should
know some little of accounts. By not being so
informed, our contemporary has debited the new
wo• ks of the Liverpool Dock Trustees with pre-
cisely •£ '2.71,875 54. Bd. too much. The Albion
finds that the Dock Trustees have paid "for land
alone," under their Act, £ 512,945. The item is
quite correct. This sum is the total value of the
land purchased by the Trustees, and for which, like
good hook-keepers, they debit the Estate. The
£ 271,930 54. 81. is part of that sum, the amount of
the purchases from the Borough Estate, for which
they have given Dick Bonds at 31 per cent., which
Dock Bonds, accordingly, form portions of the
Bonded Debt, and are, of course, transferred to that
account. When a merchant has bought a thousand
pounds worth of goods, and given his acceptance
for them, for an accountant to turn round upon
him and say. "those goods'cost you £2OOO, because
I find that, although you have entered them as your
own, in stock account, I find you still owe A. B. a
thousand pounds," would 1 e quite as absurd as our
contemporary makes himself.
We shall not dwell upon this strange error, how-
ever,
but proceed to grapple with our contemporary's
general conclusion, which is, that because the Bir-
kenhead pcoje have paid nothing for their land,
whilst the Dock T:ustees of Liverpool have, the
former can do without dues upon any thing but
tonnage, whilst the latter will be compelled to charge
rates on goods. Be it so : let us then apply the
axiom hid down. The duties on tonnage levied in
1846, in the whole of the docks of Liverpool, ex-
cluding the graving docks, au-mounted to £114,709
15-3. Bd. The expense of working, police, &e.,
would make up probably £30,000 tote deducted from
this amowat. We allow nothing either for repairs.
The total income therefore derivable from rates on
tonnage in the whole of the docks of Liverpool
would not pay interest upon two millions of money;
and those docks have co: more than four times
that amount. The Birkenhead doiks are to cost
only a million: Will they accommodate and work
half thethe shipp:n2 on an average accommodated on
this si,le of the water? Yet it is clear they ought
to do this or more, to pay -five per cent. upon the
capital expended. We really don't wish to frighten
any body ; but we must speak when such dangerous
fallacies are so injudiciously thrust before the world.
It is inexpressibly absurd to find our contem-
porary harping so much upon the difference be-
tween productive and unproductive expenditure.
Doe; he mean to say t at the situation of a dock
is nothing; that Prince's Dock would fill as well if
it were five miles north or south of its present
position ? Men will give more rent for a house in
a thriving town than for one in a swamp, or for a
dock in the centre of business than for one in the
distant outskirts. [low can we he told, then, that
the additional price paid for the land required for
the one is " unproductivo" expenditure, whilst the
price of the bricks or stone and mortar used upon
the other is " re-productive expenditure." The
Albion rather misleads his readers, when he inrorms
them that the debt and liabilities of the Liverpool
Dock Estate are now about three and a half millions.
The present debt and liabilities are precisely
£2,645,242 18-s., as per printed statement, up to
the 24th of Jitne. Undoubtedly the trustees will
have to raise more money to complete their works ;
but then they will have more docks to exhibit to
add to the efficiency and convenience of the port,
and to their own revenue. With respect to the
£564,000, which. he attempts to frighten us by
stating to be " due on demand," he is equally out,
of his latitude. That. amount, which had increased
up to 2011 of June, 184 , to £746,494 2s. Bd., is
only " redeemable on demand," inasmuch as the
bonds given for it are past due, and the parties
lending it are to, satisfied with their security to
seek for better. None of it need be paid without
six months' notice; and the fact that out of the large
amount of bonds run out, only £16,125 was called in
during the whole of last year ought to have rendered
•
que unnece,sary for the Albion to have informed
us that the whole amount if requi ed, "in the case of
a panic, is one which our Dock Trustees could at
any time command."
With respect to the demand for an instant appli-
cation of our surplus-revenOe to the reduction of
rates, or, rather, to tie extinction of till duties on
goods, we suspect the prompters of the Albion's
. article could experience nothing so unpleasant as
the adoption of such a step, unless accompanied
with the adoption also of the following kind sug-
gestion :
•• Wray not at once take the dock-rates off goods alto-
gether, enter into a rech rocit y treaty v.; ith the Birkenhead
. people, and let the payment of one rate 'upon the ship
free alt the docks on both sides the river? It will have
to come to this, and 'the ;onger it is delayed the worse it
will be for this side of the ricer. Government will not
'allow two public ousts in the same port to inconvenience
the trade by keeping up d fferent rates of charge, if they
can, with an equalised ra e, keep faith with their bond-
holders. The Standard shows they can do so, and we
say the sooner we reduce the better; and, in saying so,
. we believe we speak the sentiments of nine-tenths of the
trading community."
' In other words, allow the shipping now paying
for the use of our docks to di,charge into and to
pay to the docks of the Birkenhead Commissioners,
to stow their cargoes in certain warehouses erecting
there by private speculators and London and other
Capitalists; and then let them come to Liverpool
• for an outward freight of fine merchandise and
•other loading not procurable on the Cheshire side,
without contributing a farthing to the property of
the town ! 'L'his is • a little too bad • and we scarcely
,
think our contemporary can be in earnest.

The cry of a famishing
of ng people has at length pe-
netrated the fastnesses
hDerrynane. '1 hat they
have pierced the marble art of the man who
revels there upon the hoard:Wrung from the igno-
rance and wretched delusion of char same
people, he would be a bold ma n whofamishing
asserted.
'
Daniel O'Connell knows, however, now, that hunger
and disease are beneath the thatch of hun.
, dreds of thousands of his wretched dupes, He has