The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-01-04 00:00:00

capital will be willing to incur the hazard of em
barking in any large operations, whilst a monetary
system is in operation, which in an hour, and with-
out permitting the community to place themselves
in a posture of defence, is capable of being con-
verted into an instrumentality of ruin so extensive
as that from which we trust we are about to emerge.
Once more we repeat that the watchwords of all
parties engaged in commercial operations must be
prudence, caution, and a distrust of merely seem-
ing prosperity.

THE noble thoroughfare, Shaw-street, which
runs from the top of Islington to Everton-ter-
race, forming a portion of an almost uninterrupted
line of communication between our north-eastern
and south-eastern outskirts, has for years past been
regarded as one of the finest of our suburban
streets, For its general salubrity and central posi-
tion, it was selected as the site of our Collegiate
Institution; and three years ago, to protect the
property and character of the street from deteriora-
tion, an arrangement was made with the owner of
the land on its east side, Mr. Shaw, by which the
unbuilt upon space from St. Augustine's Church
to Everton Village was laid out in terraces and
walks, for the use, and, we believe in part, at the
expense of owners and occupiers of the opposite
houses. The land on the west side, not as yet
built upon, was also originally understood to be
secured to the depth of fifty yards for the erection
of houses and offices, &c., on the same scale as
those already in being ; and when the whole should
have been completed, it was fully anticipated that
in Shaw-street we should have the best and hand-
somest thoroughfare in the town, many of the
existing houses having, it is known, cost upwards
of £4,000 in building.
We regret to find that this anticipation is likely
to be frustrated, and the street defaced and deprived
of its respectability, by the erection in it of un-
sightly and, we fear, unhealthy courts and terrace
cottages, unless such a depreciation of the existing
property can be prevented by the exertion of its
owners. Already a portion of the back land has
been covered with terraced cottages, in which one
family is made to live in a ground floor of two
apartments, and another to occupy the terrace por-
tion above. But a further desecration awaits the
street. Plans, we learn, have last week been sent
in, which the health committee have been com-
pelled to pass, for the erection of terrace cottages,
in the front of the street, at the Islington end,
opposite the new Baptist chapel, and nearly oppo-
site the Collegiate Institution. Nearer to the
Everton road, and opposite to the land laid out
with walks as gardens, it is proposed to form a
court of houses, with an entrance to the front of
the street, with cellars constructed to be let off
separately. The effect of these erections upon the
value of the property in the locality, and the respec-
tability of the street, as a place of residence for
our gentry and merchants, must be very apparent.
We are not at all about to questionthe perfect right
of the owners of the plots of land, proposed to be
built upon as above, to deal with their property as
they may think proper, keeping. however, within
the regulations of the building act. We are not
cognizant of any engagement entered into by them
to conform their erections to the character of the
remainder of the street. But we may suggest the
existence of a moral obligation upon them to ab-
stain as much as possible from any course calculated
directly to injure the property of their neighbours.
They might for a moment place themselves in the
position of some of the owners of the property,
which their buildings will depreciate, and ask
themselves what would be their own feelings in
such a case—whether they would not regard it as a
piece of cruelty on the part of a neighbour to per-
severe in the execution of a project calculated to
inflict such widely-spread and serious injury. We
trust that these gentlemen will reconsider the pro-
priety of proceeding with the buildings proposed ;
and that should the owners of property and the
residents in Shaw-street approach them, as we
urge them to do, with proposals for an arrange-
ment of any difficulties which may exist between
them, such proposals will be met in a proper and
conciliatory spirit.
That such a collision of interests should be per-
mitted to occur at all, or that property to so large
an amount as is sunk in Shaw-street should be
exposed to the peril with which it is threatened
by the proposal to erect these low class build-
ings in its neighbourhood, is much to be deplo-
red ; and we would strongly urge upon the Health
Committee, since it is plain they do not now pos-
sess the necessary powers to protect such property,
and at the same time the health of respectable lo-
calities, from depreciation, that they ought to seek
to strengthen their hands. It strikes us most
forcibly that the erection of more cellar residences
in any part of the town should not be permitted.
Medical men, :we are assured, would equally con-
demn as unwholesome and dangerous such terrace
cottages as we observe springing up in various
parts of the town, Let the Health Committee put
a stop to any further buildings of the two descrip-
tions, and it will soon be found that the land in
those streets which we would preserve respectable,
is worth too much to enable any builder, who seeks
a profit on his outlay, to cover it with cottages or
courts. If such a course cannot be adopted, we
must seek for powers to secure uniformity of
building in the new streets, or the town will never
rise from its present unhealthy condition and rag-
ged irregular appearance.

THERE are occasions in which the wisest of us
must humble ourselves to receive instruction from
parties, whose capacity to judge of our position we
are usually inclined to set down as much inferior
to our own. This great commercial country appears
just now to have fallen upon one of those occasions.
We have for twelve months past been growing in
fancied greatness. We have been dictating to the
world a new commercial policy. We havearrogated
to ourselves the possession of the only substantial
basis of sound commercial operations—a perfect
metallic currency. Yet with these two boasted
specifics in operation, we behold ourselves pros-
trated in credit, sunk in insolvency and ruin, with
the realized fruits of years of enterprise slipping
from within our grasp, not by solitary thousands,
but by hundreds of millions at one fell swoop.
The idol Gold, which we have set up as our god,
has turned out a veritable King Stork, which is
devouring its worshippers and subjects, and trampl-
ing beneath its feet those statesmen and the trading
and industrious classes, for the security of whose
monuments of thought and toil it was set up as
the only protector.
The following remarks on our position, which
we extract from the New York Morning Express,
of Nov. 19th, possess a force and originality, which
render them most worthy of the attentive perusal
of Englishmen. We give the article entire :

"The part that Gold and Silver are playing, just now,
in this worid?s
serious in its effects upon the trade and commerce of the
world. England, just now, it is presumable, and it can
hardly be denied, owes the United States. It is very
certain that she has on hand large amounts of our produce
and cotton, and that in the face of starvation in Ireland,
if not in her own manufacturing districts, she has nearly
annihilated the money-value of our corn, grain, and pro-
duce in general, and more particularly of cotton. But,
notwithstanding all this, two millions of our specie have
just gone from us to that England, and, in consequence
of it, stocks fall in value here, and all sorts of property
and of labour are also threat: ed with a corresponding
fall. The extraordinary spectacle is presented of our peo-
ple stripping themselves of the precious metals to put in
the possession of a people that owe us, or have our pro-
ductions on hand, and productions necessary to them, for
a large amount.
" The way this extraordinary state of things is brought
about i' clear enough,—but there is none the less of the
extraordinary in it, because we know how it is done. To
bring back the specie England has lost, England breaks
her own merchants, and annihilates the value of all other
property save that of the precious metals. Gold and sil-
ver have been set up in England as the only thing need-
ful,—of more value, even than beef, pork, corn or wheat,
or cotton to clothe the people with. England having
about annihilated all other property save that of the pre-
cious metals, these metals of course rush there, where
they are in such extraordinary demand. It is but of little
avail that we have on hand English obligations, or credits,
or everything that the people of England want to eat,
because the precious metals have been made the only
thing really in demand.
" Now such a spectacle is, to a certain extent, ludicrous,
—for of what real abstract value the precious metals are,
save as trinkets or as metals, it will puzzle even the most
profound political economists to define. Nobody, when
hungry, has any doubt of the value of a bushel of wheat,
or when cold, of a cotton shirt or jacket. The world is
convulsed, however, in the march and counter march of
these precious metals. Millions come over here in the
steam-ships, and millions are now going back, without
any real bona fide reason, thoughfor well-known apparent
cause. All property and labour, of course are effected by
these extraordinary peregrinations of eagles, and sover-
eigns, and Spanish dollars,—and there is hardly a being in
the United States that will not suffer by these marches of
their Majesties: It is well, perhaps, then, that they are
called Sovereigns and Eagles !