The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-01-28 00:00:00

when a navy contract is five

or a buttonj fewer-has

Used in the construction of a uniform coat ; and
men, even, not so arithmetical as Joseph, who would
scout the notion of such petty and pinching prac-
tices in their private establishments, look upon them
with satisfaction when they are employed to save
the money of the aggregate people. But how sel-
dom do we ask of ourselves the question—" at
whose cost are these paltry savings effected ?" We
never take the trouble to trace the fifty or a hundred
thousand pounds, which we save in any partictdar

item of the national expenditure one step beyond the
warehouse of the wealthy contractor who has sup-
plied the articles which it includes. Vie never ask
from how many thousand homes our economy has
abstracted a meal—from how many thousand toil-
worn frames it has extracted a groan—to how many
the effort to indulge it has brought rnin, or how
many it has stimulated to dishonesty and fraud.
We only hug ourselves with the consciousness that
we, individually, have been saved, by financial cle-
verness, some thousandth part of a farthing ; and
exalt the name of him by whom an achievement so
grand has been effected.

But is this the feeling with which such policy
ought to be regarded by a generous and well-prin-
cipled people ? Is this slop-shop practice, which is
now being introduced into every department of the
national service, one of which such a people ought
to be proud ? We will give an instance of the effect
to which it leads, and then await an answer. The
paragraph which contains it was given in cur last
publication ; but it will bear repeating :
MISERABLE REMUNERATION.—On Thursday a man
was brought up at the Clerkenwell Police-court, charged
with neglecting to support his wife. The prisoner said he
was by trade a tailor, and his pension being altogether in-
adequate to support himself and child, he was obliged to
work. He could stet nothing to do but army clothing;
and the want of constant employment even at that, ill
health, and the scanty remuneration, occasioned his fall-
ing into arrears with the parish.—Mr. Combe: The army
clothing is not so badly paid for as the slopwork of some
of our London shops.—Prisoner : We:l, I don't think,
your worship, a man could be much less profitably em-
ployed than in working seven hours for 6cl.—Mr. Combe :
Seven hours for 61!—Prisoner : Yes, seven hours for
6d., and find all your own trimmings. It will take a man
seven hours to make a pair of army trousers, and you get
only 6d. for them. It will take a man 12 hours of hard
work to make a jacket ; yet you must take it and find the
trimmings out of Is."

Here: then, we see a poor fellow, who has served
his country, and to whom his country generously (!)
gives 6d. for making a pair of soldier's trousers and
finding trimmings,—sixpence for seven hours work !
His country has him a bargain ; but his parish has
to eke-out his scanty wages. His parish has to
support the wife in the Union Workhouse, who
ought to occupy her natural position in his own
home. But army estimates must be reduced to the
lowest limit ; the grumblers of the House of Com-
mons must be appeased and the finance minister
must earn a cheer and the puffing approval of an
opposition press, whatever the cost of the achieve-
ment in human tears and suffering.
Such is the direct effect of national parsimony;
but does it stop here ? On the contrary, may we
not see it extending the influence of its evil example
throughout the whole of our public bodies and into
every private establishment. We have an example
at this moment before us. The wealthy Corpora-
tion of this very town is just now, in an humble
way, imitating the state. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer issues his notices for army contracts ;
and forthwith the Minories, Fleet-street, Bishops-
gate and Holborn are in arms : tailors sit down to
calculate the lowest cost of miles of stitching, and
the smallest number of square yards in which a
battalion can be swaddled. The Corporation
of Liverpool have no regiments to clothe ; but
the Town Clerk's Office wants brief paper and copy-
ing paper, red ink and blue ink, goose quills and
steel pens, black wafers and red wafers ; the
schools want primers and copy books, slates and
slate pencils ; the Town Dues] Office wants gum
water and twine and pins ; and the respectable
tradesmen and shopkeepers of Liverpool are re-
qured to state at how much per gross, per bottle,
per box, or per lb., they will bind themselves to
supply for three years, these office indispensibles—
these quill-driving paraphernalia! Our local Budget
will doubtless announce to us some very important
saving effected in consequence of the adoption of
the Downing-street mode of doing business ; and
the happy tradesmen, who may be fortunate enough
to secure the privilege of furnishing the supply, by
knocking off the greatest amount of their legitimate
profit, may perhaps, as the result, in spite of every
device used to effect cheapness, find their way into
the columns of the Gazette, or into a place even less
pleasant and honorable !

And yet ask any of the gentlemen who in their
public capacity, a, guardians of the public purse,
thus endeavour to screw down the reward of the in-
dustry and enterprise of their fellow-townsmen,
what feature it is in the present aspect of the coun-
try which is most to he deplored ; and, with a unani-
mous voice, they will say, that very excess of com-
petition in trade which they now endeavour to sti-
mulate. In the conduct of their own private con-
cerns they would scorn to put in practice the same
machinery for attaining a fictitious cheapness. In
their capacity of British merchants they would not
descend to the search after cheese-paring savings.
But corporations—proverbially bodies without souls
—can do things without a blush, of which private in-
dividuals would be utterly Ashamed.

We would by no means have it inferred from
these remarks that the utmost economy ought not
to characterise the proceedings of such bodies—still
less that the subject is one which at all touches our-
selves as tradesmen. We should wish to see all im-
proper expenditure put down, in whatever quarter
it may be found. But surely, whilst we are spend-
ing thousands in adornments of our public build-
ings—when such a building as St. George's Hall is
swallowing up the funds of the Borough Estate by
wholesale—when we can afford to give to a railway
company, already wallowing in wealth, a couple of
thousands to beautify the front of their station—it
is scarcely the time to be scraping up candle ends,
or cheapening steel pens and bottles of ink, at the
probable risk of having to support from the poor
rates those who ought to live by their manufacture.

We had prepared some remarks upon the ques-
tion at issue between the Dock Committee and the
warehouse owners, relative to the construction of
the Albert Dock Warehouses, which should have
appeared in our last publication. The amicable ar-
rangement which has since been come to between
the parties, renders them now unnecessary. We
cannot, however, refrain from the effort to set some
of our liberal contemporaries right, with respect to
the origin and the real nature of the objections taken
by the warehouse owners to the building plans; and,
in doing so, we shall be able to explain to our
readers the extent to which each party have made
concessions for the securing of peace.
It is well known, already, under what circum-
stances the act authorising these erections was ob-
tained. By a direct and imperative clause in that
act, the whole space upon which the warehouses
were to be erected was to remain open quay room,
the buildings being placed upon pillars, and con-
fined to four stories in height. At the time o the
passing of such act it will be remembered of what
materials the Dock Committee were composed.
Mr. Evans and his friends were supreme in the
Committee of Works ; and the car-ying out of its
provisions, of course, was exclusively in their hands.
The foundations of the warehouses in question were
duly laid ; they rose brick by brick and stone by
stone, not a human being dreaming that they were
not in strict accordance with the act of parliament,
.and that perfect faith had not been kept with the
public and with the legislature. Such, however, it
was recently discovered was the case ;—faitll had
not been kept, and the letter and spirit of the act
had both been violated, the Committee of Works
Ilving departed materially from the parliamentary
plan, by taking upwards of one-half of what was
stipulated to be open :quay space for warehouse-
room, thus snaking the buildings five stories in
height above the ground storey instead of four, the
number prescribed.
What was, under these circumstances, the position
of the Dock Committee ? They had been placed,
by the attempt of the Building Committee to grasp
at more than the Act of Parliament had given them,
under the liability of having their works stopped at
the pleasure of any individual who might choose to
apply for an injunction to the Court of Chancery.
What was to be done.? They saw their difficulty ;
and, like straightforward men, took a straightfor-
ward course to relieve themselves. The warehouse
owners, to conciliate whose opposition the clause in
the act, which had been infringed upon, had been
inserted, made no extravagant demands. There
was no question of pulling down the buildings, or
any portion of them mooted by the warehouse owners.
On the contrary, they at once agreed to aid in lega-
lizing, by a clause in a new act of parliament, the
past proceedings of the Dock Committee, stipulat-
ing only that the basement floor of a portion of the
warehouses,intended to have been appropriated for
warehouseing purposes, shall be kept in its present
state, as open quay room, according to the original
act. By this concession (for such it is on the part
of the warehouse owners) one additional story is
still gained, beyond the number first authorized to
' be built.

It was for the purpose of acceding to this
reasonable and most beneficial conclusion of their

difficulty, that the Dock Committee held the meet-
ing which, as being in some degree a secret one, on
account of their not wishing their position to be
unnecessarily published to the world, has drawn
down upon them the vehement reprobation of the
Radical press and the Literary wrath of Mr. Alder-
man Evans, himself the principal author of the
necessity under which they laboured. The worthy
ex-alderman would have had them defy alike the
warehouse owners, the public and parliament—
repudiate their deliberate engagements and make
use of the public purse in their hands to defend
themselves in admitted wrong. We are thankful
that the Dock Committee have taken what we con-
sider a wiser and a more honest course than that
into which Mr. Evans and his admirers would have
betrayed them.