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

In doing this, we

paragraphs, which

ver had in view,
facts and figures, which
)n. Our contemporary

upon the questit

Docks o

e Birkenhead Dock Commissioners pro-
st Act of ParliaTent, which authorised

,000 on

active expenditu

And again, of the sa

It king. use of them. The
!ole site of the works ; in
le sum of, £400,000 would

e Docks :

1845, the Birkenhead Dock Commissioners pro-
ftir second act, which authorizes them to borrow
0, to be expended in deepening Wallasey Pool
the crown giving the
~co of the pool, or one hundred
this sum two-thirds are chargeable on
ners whose property fronts the pool, the re-
-third on vessels making use of the dock thus
Here, again, the whole sum spent is re-
ive : not a penny goes into the pocket of the land-

ng wharf walls round i

Now we cannot, for the life of us, tell what is
aeant by this " re-productive expenditure." Here
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 be 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
Istakin a great portion of the land, and deepening
the pool, to pay for ; and that is much the same

he other side of the question is thus stated :
a the same year the Liverpool Dock Trustees pro:

an act, authorising them to raise, on the security of
10, for the construction of
north and south ends of the town. On refer-
o their published accounts, they have already paid,
J the 24th June, 1845, for land alone, under this act
and 8 Vic..
d by the Corporation accounts, we find
chat, on the 31st of August, 1845, the
amount due from the Trustees of the
Docks, for land purchased under this
act, was

ates and works, £1,500,

taking a total unproductive expenditure £784,875 5 8
Now it requires no reasoning to prove, that, if the Dock
ustees had got all this land for nothing, they could have
orded to lower their rates one half ; that, for instance,
rates upon shipping alone would have been sufficient
pay the interest upon the really productive expenditure."
It is always very desirable, when men meddle
h such matters as the above, that they should
)1v some little of accounts. By not being so
vrmed, our contemporary has debited the new
ks of the Liverpool Dock Trustees with pre-
•lE 271,875 ss. Sd. too much. The Albion
ands 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 book-keepers, they debit the Estate. The
271,930 ss. Bd. is part of that sum, the amount of
`le purchases from the Borough Estate, for which
r.ey have given Dock Bonds at 31 per cent., which
)ck Bonds, accordingly, form portions of the
nded Debt, and are, of course, transferred to that
Itnt. When a merchant has bought a thousand
's worth of goods, and given his acceptance
.at to turn round upon
_ those goods cost you £2OOO, because
..t that, although you have entered them as your
.1, in stock account, I find you still owe A. B. a
usand pounds," would he quite as absurd as our
temporary makes himself.
TO shall not dwell upon this strange error, how-
but proceed to grapple with our contemporary's
'al conclusion, which is, that because the Bir-

them, for an account

and say,

. -
:enhead people have paid nothing for their land,
whilst the Dock Trustees of Liverpool have, the
'ormer can do without dues upon any thing but
,onnage, whilst the latter will be compelled to charge
rates on goods. Be it so : let us then apply the
:slam laid down. The duties on tonnage levied in
1946, in the whole of the docks of Liverpool, ex-
:luding the graving docks, amounted to £114,709
ss. Bd. The expense of working, police, &c.,
would make up probably £30,000 tote deducted from
s amount. We allow nothing either for repairs.
Le total income therefore derivable from rates on
inage in the whole of the docks of Liverpool
aid not pay interest upon two millions of money ;
I those docks have cost more than four times
Lt amount. The Birkenhead docks are to cost
ly a million. Will they accommodate and work
tf the shipping on an average accommodated on
s side of the water ? Yet it is clear they ought
do this or more, to pay five per cent. upon the
vital expended. We really don't wish to frighten
body ; but we must speak when such dangerous
acies are so injudiciously thrust before the world.
is inexpressibly absurd to find our contem-
ry harping so much upon the difference be-
n productive and unproductive expenditure.
s he mean to say teat the situation of a dock
)thing; that Prince's Dock would fill as well if
sere five miles north or south of its present
tion ? Men will give more rent for a house in
riving town than for one in a swamp, or for a
c in the centre of business than for one in the
int outskirts. How can we be told, then, that
additional price paid for the land required for
one is "unproductive" expenditure, whilst the
e of the bricks or stone and mortar used upon
other is " re-productive expenditure." The
ion rather misleads his readers, when he informs
n that the debt and liabilities of the Liverpool
Estate are now about three and a half millions.
present debt and liabilities are precisely
r printed statement, up to
loubtedly the trustees will
to complete their works ;

40,Z4Z
!4th of J

to raise

then they will have

docks to exhibit to
to the efficiency and convenience of the port,
to their own revenue. With respect to the
A,OOO, which he attempts to frighten us by
sting to be " due on demand," he is equally out
latitude• That amount, which had increased
Oth of June, 184-'2 to £746,494 2s. Bd., is
able on demand," inasmuch as the
Ist due, and the parties
3 with their security to
it need be paid without
fact that out of the large
nly £16,125 was called in

given for

onths' notice

g the whole of

lute unnec

and a

is one wind-

t year ought to have rendered
r the Albion to have informed
at if requi ed, " in the case of
)ur Dock Trustees could at

ne command

espect to the demand for an instant appli-
our surplus revenue to the reduction of
to the extinction of th-. duties on

,uspect the prompters of the Albion's

fe could experience nothing so unpleasant as
adoption of such a step, unless accompanied
adoption also of the following kind sug-

just acknowledged the fact in a letter, dated from

Derrynane, in which he says—" Food the people
want, and food it is the duty of everybody to provide
for them : as well the Government as the. Landlords;
in short everybody having any means whatsoever."
Will Daniel O'Connell, then, we ask, perform
his part in the work in which "every body having
any means whatsoever," is to bear his portion ? He
holds in his own possession, or at least he has re-
ceived within the last few years and not accounted
for, some hundred thousand pounds, or upwards,
contributed by the miserable peasantry of Ireland,
to be devoted to an object which he must know to
he impossible of accomplishment, and which he
has apparently shelved to dip his fingers in official
pay and patronage. We remind him that now, by
his own admission, it is "food the people want,"—
not a delusive dream of a Parliament in College-
green. Let him throw open the Repeal chest.
Let him give back to a miserable people the
thousands of the Repeal fund. Will he do this ?
Will his regiment of reverend agitators urge him to
a step like this—of common honesty towards his,
and their, poor fellow-countrymen ? Alas, we fear
that their patriotism is of a different description.
They will urge upon the landlords of Ireland, and
the people of England, " the duty" of providing
for the wants of Ireland; but the Repeal funds will
not be given up—the weekly rent will be looked for
at Conciliation Hall—the hat will still be sent round,
and the " Liberator" will still demand to be fed by
a people, themselves subsisting upon elymosynary
contributions from a country which they are trained
up to hate, and for whose humiliation and destruc-
tion they are taught to pray.

The voracity of our contemporary of Friday for
misrepresentations of Mr. M`Neile is truly aston-
ishing,. On Sunday week the Rev. Gentleman's
text in the forenoon was from the prophet Habak-
kuk, chap. iii verses 16, 18, " When I heard, my
belly trembled ; my lips quivered at the voice: rot-
tenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in
myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble," &c.
He described the effect produced on the Prophet
by the majesty of Jehovah in connexion with his
predicted judgments against a guilty nation. Af-
terwards when he referred to the painfully distress-
ing accounts of the destitution of so many of our
poor Irish brethren, and described the effects
which such a calamity ought to produce upon truly
sympathetic Christians, he introduced a repetition
of the words of his text with a thrilling energy.
The result was practical ; producing, as we men-
tioned in our last, a liberal contribution. On Fri-
day we, in common with many others, were dis-
gusted by the following paragraph in the Mercury :

The Rev. Hugh M'Neile, if we are to believe the state-
ment of that gentleman himself, has become infected with
the potato disease. He said, on Sunday last, to the
astonishment of some of his hearers, that, after reading
letters received from Ireland, "rottenness entered my
bones."

This in itself is simply ridiculous, and, as far as
the reverend gentleman is concerned, it is utterly
contemptible ; but we think it deserving of notice,
as a fresh specimen of that aptness in malice, that
inventive ingenuity in detraction, by which the
Mercury has exerted itself for many years, to the
best of its ability, to injure an able and zealous
clergyman. Truly, the determined perseverance of
that journal to damage Mr. M`Neile's reputation
can only be equalled by its total want of success.
It has, indeed, contributed considerably to a con-
trary result, because, lynx-eyed as it has been in
its espionage over the reverend gentleman's proce-
dure, and ready as it has ever proved itself to
make him an offender, if possible, for a word, it
has never been able to establish any thing
against him. And we must repeat what we had
occasion to say but a few weeks ago,—that its wil-
ful repetition of known falsehoods is as disgraceful
to the paper, as it is honourable to the distinguished
object of its calumny. Against its opposition to
Mr. M`Neile's opinions, whether religious or politi-
cal, we say nothing. It is all fair; and no one courts
fair discussion more than Mr. M`Neile himself; but
against misrepresentations of matters of fact, amount-
ing to known falsehoods, we must reiterate our pro-
test as against a base abuse of the liberty of the
press.

Although we have already gone far towards get-
ting rid of our pious horror of slavery and the slave
trade, and are stimulating, as much as in us lies,
the consumption of foreign slave-grown produce in
our own country, it is gratifying to have it shown
to us that there is still a prospect of procuring from
our own possessions, in sufficient abundance for our
wants, a supply of that article—sugar--the culture
and manufacture of which are the most oppressive
to the tropical labourer, without the necessity of
having recourse to slave markets. This assurance
we have brought before us in a letter addressed to
"the cotton manufacturers of Manchester and the
adjacent localities interested in the India trade, by

D. C. Aylwin, of the firm of Messrs. Aylwin and
Co., of Calcutta," the substance of which we shall
endeavour to condense for our readers.

It will be remembered by most how largely public
expectation of a supply of sugar from our East
Indian possessions was raised a few years ago, to
result from the equalization of the duties upon the
East and West Indian article. In 1337-38 the
export from Calcutta in bazar maunds (82 lbs.) was
314,771 maunds ; in 1838-39 it was 869,107
maunds ; and in 1839-40, 843,889 maunds. Up
to this period the cane was cultivated by the ryots,
or villagers, mainly for their own consumption, and
was not looked upon as an article of profitable
export. But when the sugars of East India were
placed on the same footing in our markets with
those of our Western colonies, the rise of price to
the Eastern cultivator—who, Mr. Aylwin says,
" was enabled to net a profit of say from 100 to 150
per cent."—brought large supplies into the market
from districts where previously the existence of the
cultivation had been unnoticed ; and in the year
1840-41 the export from Calcutta sprung up to
1,784,791 maunds.
The anticipation of an increase in this amount in
succeeding years—natural, when we consider the
low rate of wages in the country, and the fact that
the cane is grown in nearly every district at a com-
paratively trifling expense to the cultivator—has not
been realized. On the contrary, the export fell in
the following year, 1841-42, to 1,522,092 maunds,
where it has remained stationary, having been in
1844-45 only 1,539,117.
The question with most commercial men, and
with statesmen, has been—how is this apparent
anomaly to be accounted for ? Here is an article
the production of which is one of acknowledged
profit, and for which the East Indian farmer and
peasant possess great advantages. Great Britain
offers them a highly remunerating market. The
continent of Europe is open to them. Yet industry
flags; and the export of an article, of which the capa-
bility of production, at present estimated at 1,250,000
tons per annum, the bulk of which is retained for
home consumption, is almost limitless, retrogrades
instead of increasing.
Mr. Aylwin accounts for this fact by the general
poverty of the East Indian cultivator, and the heavy
drain upon his resources, created by the East India
Company's tax on salt, which, with sugar, is the
most necessary article of domestic use. To " pro-
cure a supply of this indispensible condiment, the
Ryot," he says, " has to surrender as much as three
months of his annual labour." That the reader
may be in a position to judge for himself of the pres-
sure of the tax in question, we subjoin Mr. Aylwin's
explanatory note :
"The value of salt, "free on board ship" at Liver-
pool is 15s. a ton. The tax on Salt in India is £8 3s. 6d.
per ton. The retail price in the interior is about 2&d. per
pound. The consumption estimated. even " by the Litton
Government," at 12 pounds per head, or aay half that of
England : the average number comprising one family,
5 persons ; and the rate of wages in many parts in the
interior, only £1 16s. a year !!! on which the wretched
Ryot has to feed and clothe himself, and also buy salt."
When so large a portion of labour is thus required
for the payment of the tax on salt alone, there is
little surplus time or means left, after earning or
raising the remaining necessaries of life, to extend
the cultivation of sugar.
Mr. Aylwin argues, and we think most satisfac-
torily, that the removal, or the reduction, of the salt
duty, say from three rupees to one rupee per maund,
or from £8 3s. 6d. per ton to f 2 15s. 6d, the Indian
agriculturist would be enabled to bestow more at-
tention upon the cultivation of sugar, as a means of
adding to his personal comforts, and procuring a
more abundant supply of clothing, by which the
demand for British manufactured fabrics would be
largely promoted.
" If, be says, we compute the total production of sugar
in India at 1,250,000 tons a year, out of which 75,000 are
abstracted for exportation, we should, estimating the in-
creased production arising from increased facilities of
labour at only one-twelfth (or one month's average labour)
have at once a further supply for the purpose of exporta-

THE LIVERPO(

tion of no less than .101,166 tons, making in all 179,166
tons, or nearly two-thirds more than the present supply
of our Eastern possessions : and when we consider the
facilities of water communication that exist all over India;
the millions of acres of the richest virgin soil that are
lying valueless and waste ; the cheapness and abundance
of labour ; and the extremely low price at which sugar is
manufactured ; it is beyond a doubt, could the producers
be (as they would by the reduction of the Salt Tax) in a
position to increase their cultivation, that England might
draw the greater part of her supplies from that country
where, if out of the 140 millions of inhabitants, but one-
third became consumers of only clothing enough to cover
ther loins ; we should, estimating an annual average of
three feet for each individual, have an additional market
opened for thy cotton and yarn manufactures of this
country of no less than 46 millions yards of cotton cloth."

That the native Indian is not indisposed to in-
crease his purchases of the commodities of civil-
ized life, in return for any amelioration which we can
effect in his condition, and in proportion to the
extent of that amelioration, we have the best of all
evidence—past experience. We have shown above
that since the equalisation of the duties upon East
and West Indian sugar, the exports, furnished by
the supply drawn from the native producers, have
doubled themselves. What has been the effect of
this increase upon native consumption of our goods ?
Oi the fabrics in use amongst the wealthy classes
in India—muslins, cambrics, lappets, &c., we find
that in 1837-38 we imported into Calcutta 1,027,862
pieces, and in the following year 1,428,237 pieces.
During the years up to 1844, after the increase had
taken place in the exports of sugar to Europe, the
consumption of these articles averaged about
1,300,000 pieces per annum. The imports of fa-
brics in use amongst the poorer classes shows on
the other hand a vast and most encouraging en-
crease. Of long cloth shirtings, jaconets and mada •
pollams, we imported into Calcutta in 1837-38,
19,0770 pieces ; in 1338- 9, 427,452 pieces ; and in
1839-40, 646,751 pieces. In 1840-41, when the
exports of East India sugar doubled themselves,
the imports of the above articles rose to 1,009,885
pieces I and in 1843-44 they had reached the large
amount of 2,479,542 pieces.
There, then, it is clear, is an arena in which the

principle of free trade may be introduced, not only
with immense advantage to the British manufac-
turer, shipowner and merchant, but with infinite
benefit to the millions of our fellow subjects in
India. The substitution of a low for the present
high duty upon salt would remove a mill stone
from the necks of the latter, and bring them daily
more and more within the pale of civilization, by the
adoption of European habits and the acquisition of
European wants and tastes. At the same time the
markets of India would be thrown open more
widely to the British manufacturer. That, in the
end, the East India company, for whose benefit the
impost upon salt is levied, would suffer materially
we do not believe. Should any great loss of reve-
nue arise, however, there are many remedies for
such an emergency within the reach of statesman-
ship. Certainly no slight obstacle ought to be per-
mitted to stand in the way of the adoption of a mea-
sure of justice towards India, the benefits to accrue
from which to the people of that country and to
British industry are so out of all proportion with
the sacrifice demanded.