The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-11-05 00:00:00

LIVERPOOL JEALOUS OF BIRKENHEAD

The exposition which we gave last week of the increasing
financial resources of Liverpool, and tle accounts which
have since been Oven of the growing prosperity of our
noble Dock Estate, ought really to furnish matter suffi-
cient, in the minds of all reasoning men, to absolve us
from the trumpery charge of viewing, w'th anything re-
sembling jealousy or fear, the projects of our neighbours
of Birkenhead. For all this, however, we may be excused
if we allow ourselves occasionally to smile at the absurd
vaunts which reach our ears with respect to these projects,
of which we give here a couple of specimens, extracted
from a letter of Mr. Herapath, addressed from. Liverpool
to the R iilway Magazine of last Saturday.

BIRKENIIEAD'SPECHLATIONS.—The following may, I believe,
be depended on. One gentleman, in a small way, has cleared
£12.000 by land speculations; anothe•*assured me he had cleared
..13,005 in a fortnight ; a third bought some land, several years
ei,?o, for £3,000. and thought he did exceedingly well to sell it,
some years after, for hut his successor has actually re-
sold the same land, lately, for £89,000.
Now, is not such bra gadocio sufficient to tempt any
man, who is not possessed of Jamblike meekness and the
gravity of a stoic, to retort upon the boasters or to expire
in a fit of laughter ? Might it not tempt one to remind
these fortunate speculators of a fact, which we suspect
they know already, that " all is not gold which glitters;"
that debtor and creditor statements which look surprisingly
well, on paper, do not always wind up auite so well. It
would be wisdom in such men to keep their gains secret
until they are actually in hand. Puffery of this descrip-
tion is rarely the accompaniment of bona fide prosperity.
But let us proceed to extract No. 2.

BIRKENHEAD AND LIVERPOOL.—Many will, doubtless, he the
lets and hindrances Birkenhead will have to encounter, but it is
and must continue to be a rising place. Whether that ris.ng
will be to the prejudice of Liverpool is another matter. Few
think it will ; but many think that London will suffer by it. I
have heard that London merchants have already prepared for
making Birkenhead their head-quarters. The Wallasey Pool is
a place which nature seems to have formed for docks. It is a
long narrow lake, of 150 acres of water, which, besides wharfs
and warehouses, requires little to render it one of the finest
floating docks upon one of the nobl ,st rivers in England, and in
the very heart of our manufactures. Birkenhead, therefore,
can hardly fail to rise, and rapidly; and it appears to me, that,
instead of Liverpool being jealous of its prosperity, it should re-
joice and foster it, as it will he the means of conceWrating on
this spot, more and more of the export and import trade of
England. If any parties should feel alarm it is London. Bristol,
Hull, &c. These places may suffer, but Liverpool hardly can.
This is almost too provocative of mirth to be withstood.
The London merchants "already prepared for making
Birkenhead their head-quarters!" The Trinity House,
the new Royal Exchange, the Eat India House, Lloyd's
Coffee [louse, the Goldsmith's Company, and all the
other companies, migrating to Wallasey Pool ! Why the
whole peninsula of Wirral will shortly become worth its
weight in gold !
Seriously this is sad stuff. The parties who have been
beguiling Mr. Herapath have much to answer for.

THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY v. THE MEMORY
OF THE LATE RICHARD RADCLIFFE, ESQ.

When, last week, in common with others of our brother
journalists, we had imposed upon us the task of paying
our humble tribute to the memory of the late town-clerk,
we certainly did not conceive that we were in danger of
drawing down upon ourselves, or upon them, the censure
of one individual in this community. We spoke of Mr.
Radcliffe's talents and manly honesty of character in terms
which our feelings, as well as our observation, dictated to
us as just and well warranted. We had, occasionally, had
to express our objections against some of his public acts
and opinions ; and we never hesitated to do so freely, but
without acerbity. The hand of death, however, had just
sunk alike the public officer and the man in the lot of our
common humanity ; and we thought we could, at such a
moment, afford to sum up the excellencies of both, with-
out an imputation upon our motives, or being compelled.
to search with too prying a g ,ze for frailties by which they
might have been obscured.
We erred, however, it would seem, in common with our
contemporaries, as the following rebuke, administered to
us by the editor of the Liverpool Mercury, and to which
we beg to direct the attention of our readers, will show :

" DEATH OF THE TOWN-CLERK.—It will be seen from our
obituary that Mr. Radcl ffe, whose health had, for some time
past, been visibly dec:ining, departed this life on Friday night
last, at Leamington. The important offices he held under the
Corporation of this town, at a salary of .e2OOO a year. are now
vacant, and will probably be filled up on the gth of November.
The deceased had the reputation, in the minds of many persons,
of being a sound and ready lawyer, and is described by some of
our contemporaries as being possessed of many excellent quali-
ties in all the relations of lite —indeed, of all the virtues that can
adorn a human being. We are sorry that we should have been
compelled, by the indiscriminate and somewhat injudicious eu-
logiums, confounding all distinctions of the real characteristics
of our felow-men, which they have lavished on the memory of
Mr. Radcliffe, to intimate, even thus vaguely, our dissent from
their opinions. So far as private feelings are concerned, the
,maxim de mortuis nil nisi bonum may be a good one, but for the
public good and the ge eral welfare of society, we must say that
we consider its counterpart, de mortuis nil nisi vsatrM, infinit ly
preferable."

Upon the charity and amiability of heart (I) which
prompted this most uncalled-for paragraph, we will not
trust ourselves to remark. Let it speak for itself. We
are bound, however, to say a few words in vindication of
our own course in this matter ; and to enable us to do so,
we beg of the Mercury to point to that portion of our
notice of the deceased against which he so strenuously
" dissents." We do not conceive that it is any part of
the duty of the joutnalist to drag from the newly-closed
grave, and to holdup to the contemplation of the world,
the private frailties.of any man. Ours shall never be the
hand thus wantonly and unnecessarily to lacerate the
grieving heart and flood the weeping eyes of the widow
and the fatherless. The Mercury thinks differently;
and, as the question is only one of taste, we leave him
to folios his path, and shall keep to our own. But, so
far as regards the truth and justice of what we have writ-
ten of Mr. Radcliffe, we challenge him to show how we
have offended, and have little fear of the result.

Nearly £26,000 has now been subscribed for the Man-
chester public walks and parks.
EMBEZZLEMENT.—On Tuesday, at one of the Metro-
politan police-offices, a young man named Whitton was
charged, upon his own confession, with having embezzled
.he fproperty of a butter factor at Liverpool, in whose
service he had been as confidential clerk. He had gone
up to a pol-ceman, and delivered himself into custody.
He was remanded forinquiry. When he was again brought
up, a letter from Mr, Powell, of this town, (the gentle-
man whose money the prisoner had embezzled,) was read.
in which Mr. P. stated that he declined to prosecute, and
the young man was therefore discharged.
RIBBONISM IN LIVERPOOL.—At the meeting of the
Repeal Association, on Monday, Mr. M. O'Connell was
obliged to confess that ribbonism was " but too prevalent
in Liverpool, and Mancbester,under the names of Friendly
Brothers, Hibernian Societies," &c. Perhaps it is not
out of place to call the attention of the magistracy to this
lamentable avowal from one not likely to confess too
much as to the existence and spread of this frightful con-
federacy amongst us, a participation with which, as Mr.
O'Connell added, " was criminal and. dangerous, and
likely to bring those guilty of it to Norfolk Island or
Van Dieman's Land."

LIVERPOOL GUANO MARKET.—During the past week,
several large parcels of lchaboe on the spot are currently
reported to have changed hands at £6. That price has
been offered and refused for several cargoes deliverable in
January and February next ; 100 tons have been taken
for export to Hamburg. A new feature in the market is
the receipt of orders from France for the vineyards there,
at limits, however, a shade below present prices. On
Thursday last, the cargo per Sphynx, in the hands of
Messrs. Priestley Griffith and Cox, and the cargo per
Tantivy, in the hands of Mr. Richardson Part, were both
offered at public auction ; £5 15s. being the highest bid
for each, both shipme: ts were taken in by the selling
brokers at £6 ss. The cargo per " Aurora " held by Mr.
Vincent Ve'anostrocht, North John-street, is by far the
best yet imported from lchaboe. It very much resem-
bles the Peruvian in colour and dryness and possesses,
according to Mr. Huson's analysis 782.5 per cent. of rich,
available fertilising matter. The first contract was ef-
fected from the quay, on Thursday last. at £6 55., but
the bulk has gone into the bonded warehouse, originally
the station of a Customs 'locker, who was immediately
compelled to quit his quarters, owing to the noxious efflu-
via threatening his health. It has just come out that
several crops manure d with guano have been utterly de-
stroyed in Scotland, and on tracing the affair it turns out
to have been imported from here, where the article was
artificially manufactured last year to a greet extent from
sea sand, the refuse of hide cargoes, and all sorts of "rub-
bish. From this it is evident how essential it is to have
it either out of the bonded stores, from the ship's side, or
from parties of the first standing, whose character is a
gnat antee against all frauds.
SATURDAY EVENING CONCERTS.—On Saturday even-
ing last, the first of the concerts for the winter, (with lite-
rary and other recreations,) for the working classes took
place at the Nelson-street Assambly-rooms, under the
patronage of his worship the mayor. The room, which is
admirably adapted for the purpose, whether as regards ac-
commodation for visitor s, or facility for hearing, was well,
and, we may add, respectably attended, the body being
well filled with honest men and bonnie lasses of the indus-
trial order, and the reserved seats and gallery above, by a
concourse of well-dressed persons of both sexes, anxious
to partake and contribute to the general enjoyment. The
entertainment went off throughout with the greatest cc/dl.
Miss Whitnall, Mr. Ryalls, Mr. Armstrong, and Mr.
Crank, kindly contributed their undouLted talents, as vo-
calists on the occasion ; and the excellent selection of
songs, duetts, glees, &c., was only equalled by the taste
and precision with which they were accomplished—many
of them being loudly encored. Where all was so good,
we shall not attempt to particularise, especially as we have
but little time to spare, and hope to hear the same talented
singers again, on a similar occasion. The mayor honoured
the meeting by his presence—having come from Aigburth
to countenance these rational recreations for the mechanic
and his wife and children, at the close of their weekly
toil. He was enthusiastically received, and more than
once addressed the meeting, in a facetious and agreeable
manner, dwelling on the advantages of such amusements
to all, in preference to the wasteful and demoralizing se-
ductions and indulgencies of the tavern. Those present
were also addressed, at intervals, by Mr. W. Rathbone,
Mr. John Smith, and others, to a like effect. Mr. H. V.
Lewis presided at the piano, and favoured the company
with a splendid " Fantasia" on that instrument. At the
close, thanks were heartily voted to Miss Whitnall—and
also, separately to the gentlemen vocalists, who had so
handsomely come forward to gratify those present ; the
treat closed by " God save the Queen," as a grand finale—
and three hearty cheers for the mayor, who enjoyed the
concert to the end. The greatest order was preserved
throughout, and it is confidently hoped that other musical
individuals, as well as literary and scientific gentlemen,
will come forward to lend their aid on future occasions,
and thus realise for their less fortunate townsmen and
their " sweethearts and wives" the delights of " Saturday
night a-shore."a