The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-06-04 00:00:00

religionists to usurp the possession of property held
in trust for another class—the non-recognition of
robbery—lns the effect of punishing the usurped
"by civil forfeitures !" But another clause is even
richer than this; for we find it stated—
" That the attempt, on the part of one denomination,
to wrest from the members of another, on the ground of
doctrinal belief, the chapels in which they have always
worshipped, the schools in which they have charitably
laboured, and the burial-grounds which contain their most
interesting family memorials, cannot but engender la-
mentable animosities, and bring a reproach on the religion
of peace and love; whilst by making the courts of equity
judges of religious truth and error, the course of justice
is embarrassed with questions beyond its natural province,
and, in relation to a class of unoffending subjects of the
realm, the law is turned, in effect, from an instrument of
protection into a weapon of persecution."
The law, then, which this bill is to change,
wrests from Unitarians, on the ground of doctrinal
belief, "the chapels in which they have always wor-
shipped." This, we are assured, notwithstanding
the notorious fact that that law only so operates
upon them on its being satisfactorily proved that in
those chapels they have not always worshipped !"
Again it is ground of complaint that it takes from
them " the schools in which they have charitably
laboured," in direct and proved perversion of the
interests of their pious founders; it takes from
them " the burial grounds which contain their most
interesting family memorials," whilst it restores
those burial-grounds to the descendants and con-
scientious followers of the faith of those who first
slept within their hallowed precincts; and finally,
notwithstanding these plaintive appeals in behalf of
the sanctity of the " most interesting family memo-
rials" of these petitioners, a new measure is prayed
for, which would enable them to wrest possession
of the graves of others as soon as ever they are
able to prove a twenty years' usurpation ;—which
in fact provides that the son or daughter who may
to-day inter, in the burial-ground of the chapel in
which he has worshipped, a beloved parent, may
twenty years' hence, when he had hoped to be laid
in the same grave, be called upon to resign that
hope unless he is content to be buried in accordance
with the forms and service of a faith which he pro-
tests against and detests !

This-is impudence enough; but not so thought
the concoctors of the petition. Distinctively ema-
nating as it does from a Socinian source, the Bri-
tish parliament is actually to be told that it is " the
humble petition of the undersigned inhabitants of
Liverpool and the neighbourhood, MEMBERS OF THE
ESTABLISHED CHURCH (!) and of others."

It has been remarked that the LIVERPOOL
STANDARD is the only organ which has resolutely
stood forward to protect the local interests of this
port from the injury with which they are menaced
by the bill now before Parliament, for forming
Docks in Wallasey Pool ; and, before proceeding to
offer a few more observations upon the subject of
that bill, and the projects which it is intended to
carry out, we owe to the public, and still more to
ourselves, some little explanatinn, with respect to
the motives which have actuated us in assuming our
present position. We have no objection to the
utmost possible extension of the prosperity of our
neighbours of the rising town of Birkenhead. We
have no fear of any rational dock scheme, at Wal-
lasey or any other point upon the Cheshire shore,
being injurious to the trade of Liverpool or her
own docks. But we have contended and must con-
tend, that such scheme can he carried out to as
great an extent as is desirable for the interests of
Birkenhead itself without injury to the port of Li-
verpool; and that in looking at this or any other
measure projected by our neighbours, the safety
and unobstructed navigation of the river, upon
which depends the prosperity of Birkenhead as well
as Liverpool, should be the one absorbing object of
solicitude. In this spirit we have throughout
treated the questions involved in the measure now
before Parliament; and regardless of being mis-
understood, we must continue so to treat them.

We have certainly heard—who has not ?—strange
rumours of the doings of juntas of great men
here, and coteries of small men there, which if not
calculated to startle disinterested observers like our-
selves, were at least sufficient to tell them that, in
justice to the public at large, and the public of Bir-
kenhead in particular, such doings should be care-
fully and cautiously watched. We have done so;
we have performed perhaps an unpopular duty—
we trust faithfully, not more for the sake of the in-
terests of Liverpool, but of those of the people of
Birkenhead as well;' and we must continue our
watchfulness, notwithstanding the rebukes of thin-
skinned friends, or the bitterness of those who feel
that we are an obstruction in their way.
Having said thus much to prevent our motives
being misunderstood, we proceed to supply some
omissions in our last remarks upon the Wallasey
Dock project. Assuming the evidence of seven or
eight eminent engineers to be correct, we showed
that positive injury to the navigation of the river
would result from the abstraction of seven million
tuns of its tidal waters "at one fell swoop ;" and
common sense tells us that such must be the case,
It has been asserted, however, that the pool is too
near the mouth of the river to allow any injury to
the scour to result from its being closed. We
might admit that there is something in this argu-
ment if we could be assured that the water, which
now flows into it, would go up above the neck of
the river, in addition to the quantity which is at pre-
sent held there ; and thus leave the same force to
operate upon the channels and banks outside. But
we are far from being satisfied that this would be
the case ; whilst the evidence is overpoweringly
strong that as at present held, the water in
Wallasey-pool does materially operate upon those
channels and banks. In answer to the question
" Do you agree with Mr. Rendel that two-thirds of
the water from Wallasey Pool is of little valne as a
scour ?" Mr. Page replies—" No, I do not ; I
cannot imagine that any abstraction of tidal water
from Wallasey, or any other part of the Mersey, so
far as the tide flows, but particularly these portions,
and in that locality, will not injure the sea chan-
nels."

In corroboration of this opinion we might quote
Messrs. Rennie, Vignoles, Giles, Mylne, Walker,
Probis, Colthurst, and Fletcher, together with Mr.
Jervis, Professor of Mathematical and Natural Phi-
losophy in the College of Civil Engineers ; and with
such authorities in favour of our opinion, we are
certainly not much in danger of its refutation. In
addition, however, we may state that, so strongly
impressed was government with the importance of
preserving the tidal waters as a scour, some
years ago a bill was brought into Parliament by the
Admiralty itself, for the special protection of all the
government harbours from any tampering with those
waters ; and at this moment we believe its provisions
are most rigidly enforced, and no jetties are allowed
, to be constructed, or abstractions of any kind per-
mitted, without the fullest enquiry being instituted
as to their probable effects. Pray what enquiry has
been instituted into the effect of the proposed Walla-
sey Dock upon our own noble river—a river destined
at some future and not distant day to be the chosen
highway to the whole western world ? There has
been no enquiry, no evidence, worthy of the name ;
and we submit, with great deference to the Lords
of the Admiralty, that where such vast inferests are
at stake, it is their bounden duty to institute a most
searching enquiry, at once, and especially before they
permit the merits of the present plans to be affirmed
by a deliberate vote of the House of Commons. At
all events, those members of the House of Com-
mons who may be induced to support the third read-
ing of the bill to-morrow night, under the impres-
sion that it has received, in its details, the full ap-
proval of the Admiralty, should be undeceived, both
with respect to the fact itself of such approval being
given, which is roundly boasted, but of which never-
theless we are very sceptical, and also with respect
to the question whether the Admiralty has ever yet
had an opportunity of arriving at a well grounded
conclusion. Before such a bill is permitted to
.pass
the House of Commons, let the plans be submitted
to a Committee of Enquiry on national grounds—
for national interests are involved in its successful
or injurious operation ;—and not be permitted to be
decided upon by private individuals only, who may
be warped by considerations of a private and even
personal character, and who have never looked at it
in the broad light, in which alone a scheme soim-
portant in its tendencies ought to be viewed. Let
the most eminent engineers be called npon to ex-
amine and report, instead of trusting altogether to
naval men who, however eminent in their own noble
profession in all its details, may not have the know-
ledge or the habits most required for the satisfactory
prosecution of such an enquiry as is here necessary.
To revert, however, to practical matters. In our
former remarks we omitted to notice one of the pro-
minent features in the proposed scouring of the
great tidal basin, which is intended to cause so vio-
lent an agitation of the waters as to keep the silt in a