The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-08-15 00:00:00

—the pro pric

Dock and Corporate estat
lye had a large amount o
h, whilst its opponent

—is a nev

have a st

rong ad captandum case, in favour of the
exemption of these estates from any contribution
towards the public burthens, in which they are,
and will be, hacked by a large portion of the pub-
lic out of the borough of Liverpool. Under all the
circumstances, we regard the defeat as a most en-
couraging one ; and venture to predict that the
next, or a very early appeal to the Council, will he
triumphantly successful, so far as that body has
power to effect the required object. We shall take the
liberty of canvassing a few of the objections raised
by various speakers ; and first, with respect to the
proposal to rate the Dock Estate.
It is urged that this estate is a public property,
held on trust by the Dock Trustees for the bene-
fit of the commerce of the whole empire; and, as
such, ought to be exempt from contributing to the
burthens of the locality in which it is situated ;
that, by so rating it, we shall, in fact, be levying a
tax upon the trade and consumption of the entire
kingdom. The argument is certainly plausible;
but no more. The Dock Trustees are neither
bound, nor permitted, to exercise their trust for the
benefit of the public, solely. There is no power in
the legislature to compel them to reduce their
rates, for instance ; and all past reductions have
been made on local grounds, viz., to attract com-
merce to the port. The estate has invariab:y been
treated by parliament as a local estate, bound to
contribute as much as possible to the convenience
and comfort of the local population; and the ap-
plication of the question of locality has even been
extended in favour of the opposite strand, as wit-
ness our spacious marine parades, our noble land-
ing steps, and, more recently, an expenditure of
sixty thousand pounds, for the accommodation of
the river steamers. As a constitutional question,
too, all precedent is in favour of the rating. We
make all other bodies, drawing a revenue from any
locality, contribute to the support of the poor, whom
they attract to that locality; and, in the case of
railways, we levy the tax, not upon the original
value of the land occupied, but upon the increased
value given to it by the outlay of immense capital.
On the ground of justice to the ratepayers of the
town, the case for rating the Dock Estate is very
strong—is, in fact, unassailable. Trace the parish
of Liverpool upon the map, and what is it ? A
narrow strip of land running parallel with the river,

above a Mae from what was once
the strand. Yet upon the population located
within this limited area is saddled the whole of the
pauperism inevitable wherever there is a large and
fluctuating market for labour; whilst, year by
year, we are encroaching upon that area with our
dock works, and thus decreasing the number of the
population so rated, and the consequent pressure of
the burthen upon each. To form the Albert Dock
and Warehouses we swept away a mass of valuable
warehouse and other property. We have occupied
a large space of building ground with the canal
docks at the north end of the town, which would
ultimately have been built upon and contributed to
our local funds. We are about to pull down a
mass of streets and whrehouses at Wapping, by the
conversion of which into non-ratepaying docks the
parish will become serious losers; and contempo-
raneously with, and as a result of this gradual ap-
sorption of the area of the town, we see our mer-
chants and tradesmen—all classes, in fact, except
our shopkeepers, and those who are bound to their
several business localities—getting beyond the
parish boundaries, whilst their former residences
are converted into dwellings, or apartments, for the
working classes. Moreover, Liverpool, to the ex-
clusion of the out-townships, has to contend sin-
gle-handed with the increasing shoals of pauperism
which Ireland casts upon our shores, and which
we must either pay for keeping until drawn off by
the demand for labour in the manufacturing dis-
tricts, or be at the expense of sending back to their
own country. Certainly, in justice, the Dock Es-
tate, take it even as a strictly public property, ought
to bear some portion of the burthen which it thus
creates. Parliament, however powerfully appealed
to, could never vindicate that public selfishness
which would crush a community so situated. At
least, if our docks are to be worked as for the na-
tion alone, exclusively of local considerations and
claims, the nation, and not the parish of Liverpool,
ought to support the burthens which they entail

in no pl

We are quite aware how advisable it is that the
dock accommodation of Liverpool should be pro-
vided at as low a price as possible; but we cannot
htest alarm on this score. Al-

entertain tlr

arswer all the purposes of St. George's Hall; and that his
Worship might entertain the public on sandwiches and
ginger beer, yet we really think that the good old town►
would lose more than it would gain by such meanness.
Whatever may have been the cost of St. George's Flail,
we have at length a building a hich Liverpool may well be
proud of ; and though two thousand a-year spent in good
dinners at the town-hall may appear to some rigid Utili-
tarians to be thrown away ' thinking that

the town has obtained its
sndfriendly spirit wl►

of the town-h-all have dif
not only rendered the int

we cannot help

the itn
Fused t

rtial civic Hospitalities
.ough society, which has

y bringing

cePt in angry conflict."

On mature consideration, however, our contem-
has been, we think, far from proving his
)1 is the un-
healthiest town in England," it occurs to us that

nfr tT

been considered bet)re t
Hall. "a building.," he sa

11 be proud of," 1

ow paying

ight to haysE'

n to him

want of St. George's
pool may

, we a

ich Liver

all submis-

ban proud. It

would have been infi

;reditable to us, as

1 community, to ha
poorer bi

tended to the wants of our

n, brutalized and perishing by thou-

hef

gratify our rani

1 cost of nearly two hundred

We are not rigid utilitarians

to see his