The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-02-01 00:00:00

yes to be hurried into

sanction to measure
may be irremediable.

the consequences

FOR the last two years the questions have been

,nd more

canvassed amongst the
-
tradesmen, shopkeepers and others, whose avoca-
tions bind them to a residence within the parochial
limits of Liverpool,—" by whom ought the heavy
burthens, to which they are at present subjected,
to be.borne ? " and " what course should be pur-
sued to prevent those burthens becoming absolutely
insupportable ? " During the past ten or fifteen
years,the wealthy portion of the residents of the
town have ' been gradually withdrawing themselves
to the surrounding outskirts. The streets once

occupied by our commercial magnates are so occu-
pied no longer; but have been abandoned to the
more humble lodging-house keepers, and, at re-
duced rents, to professional men, artists and others.
Paltry courts and cottage houses have been erected
upon sites which once formed the gardens, or
upon which were built the out offices of our town

mansions; and their occupants contribute more
pauperism to the parish than rates. A steady ad-
vance in the imposts to be borne by the shopkeeper
and the tradesman has been the result; and the

amount of those imposts threatens to be increased year, as the railway system, and other con-
veniences for conveying the wealthy classes beyond
the reach of our poverty and our smoky, unwhole-
some and badly-cleansed thoroughfares progress.
In the mean time the growth of our vast dock
estate has been from time to time decreasing the area
of the most valuable and productive rateable pro-
perty of the borough. The docks north of Prince's
swept away a large quantity of buildings and other
property—ship-building yards, block-makers shops,
&c.—and the area which they covered thenceforth
ceased to be visited by the overseer, or noted in the
parish books. The Albert Dock removed nearly
the whole of Nova Scotia, with its valuable ware-
houses and building yards. A further extension of
the docks northward removed a vast additional
mass of rateable property. We have now about to
be removed, in the neighbourhood of Wapping. a
mass of warehouses, shops, and dwellings which
are rated at the yearly value of above .£50,000,
thus reducing further the area of the property
which is at present liable to taxation, and of course
enhancing the burthens to be borne by the pro-
perty which remains. Where, men are asking
themselves, is this to stop ? What is to be the re-
duced area of the town after a few years of conti-
nued encroachments, and what is to be the amount
of the rates to be levied upon the few solvent occu-
piers of property, whose avocations compel them to
remain within its limits ?

We have said that the excitement created by
these natural questions have been growing in inten-
sity for some years past. But it has recently been
stirred up to the boiling pitch by two concurrent
circumstances. The first of these was the recent
invasion of Irish immigrant pauperism, by which
our local burthens have been fearfully augmented ;
and the second has been the proposal of the Dock
Committee to carry out an extensive warehousing
business, in erections to be built upon the dock
quays, and which they have declined to take the
initiative in rendering subject to local burthens, by
the insertion into their bill of a rating clause. At
the present moment the warehouse property be-
longing to private individuals, in various parts of
the town, form one-fourth in value of its rateable
property; and already the operation of the existing
warehouses erected by the Dock Committee, has
emptied many of these, from which, of course, the
parish will cease to derive funds for the support of
the poor, whom the increase of commerce brings
in its train, as a set-off against the wealth which it
creates ; and those which are not empty are greatly
deteriorated in value. Any further increase in dock
warehouses, without stringent powers in the parish
authorities to tax them to our local burthens, must
inevitably bring about one or other of these alter-
natives, which we have, at present, no space to do
more than merely point out for consideration.
The first is the extension, by parliament, of the
rateable limits of the town, by incorporating with
it outlying parishes. The second is the concession
of powers to the parish authorities, to rate not only
the dock warehouses but the docks themselves, and
the Corporate estate. There is a third mode of
relief, which, however, is not at present much
mooted, viz.—a general measure for the payment
of the poor throughout the kingdom, out of the
consolidated fund. One or other of these measures
we must inevitably have; for it is impossible, as
long as Liverpool remains the port of entrance for
the poor of Irelandto the manufacturing districts
of England, that we can sustain the burthens which
are being increasingly forced upon us.