The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-07-11 00:00:00

" DOCK COMMITTEE.

" The report of the committee having been read,
" Mr. G. H LAWRENCE said the cost of the proposed
warehouses at the Albert Dock had been differently stated,
it being, according to one account, £36 ss. per square
yard, according to another, only £ll. He wished to know
which was correct.

" Mr. SANDS was as much surprised as anybody to see
it stated in the papers that the warehouses were going to
cost £4O per square yard. His friend, Mr. Stewart, knew
that that was quite fallacious. The cost of the warehouses,
including the vaults, would be £lO 10s. per square yard,
and without the vaults, £8 Bs.. They would be fire-proof,
as far as it was possible to make them so, and he had the

best authority for stating, that when so built, the Fire In-
surance Offices both here and in London would insure
them at rates as low as those charged in London, or any
where else. (Hear, hear.)
" Mr. PLATT.—What Dock Warehouses?
" Mr. SANDS.—Yes. _

• "
_ln% Alderman EARLE.--Does the estiMate incluoe
the land?
" Mr. SANDS.—No,—not the making of the land.
"Mr. Alderman EARLS.—Then the cost will be some.
very like 440 per yard.
then confirmed, "

1' The report
It really does appear to us surprising that a body
"I— the Dock Committee, amply provided with sur-
veyors and other officials, should display such an
extraordinary want of decided information—shoulo,
give to the world such extraordinary differencP„ of
statement—with respect to a matter so imP;(tant as
the cost of the warehouses now in cours'. of erection
upon the dock quays. We have no,, had, within a
couple of months, three distinct. statements, none of
..nee. First, on the 18th
them agreeing with each o
of May, we had, from the lips of the Surveyor,
£36 ss. per square yard mentioned as the total cost
the warehouses in question. Upon of erection of
that statement we commented ; and we may say
with truth, that, in addition to our own, it excited
the amazement of the entire community ! At a
meeting of the Dock Trustees, held on the of
June, the same Surveyor who had thus deliberately
given to the Committee his estimate--in writing or
not we cannot say—protested that " he could not
say how the mistake" (qy. whose mistake ?) " had
arisen" ; but that the actual "estimate was £ll lls.
per square yard." We have now, from the re-
spected Chairman of the Dock Trust, another ver-
sion ! " The cost of the warehouses, including the
vaults, will be £lO lOs. per square yard, and with-
out the vaults, SS Bs."

How are we to reconcile these conflicting ac-
counts—first £36 ss. ; then £ll 1 ls. ; and then,
with the vaults, £lO 10s. ? The latter, we are fur-
ther informed by the Chairman, does not include
the land,—or, as he says, perhaps more correctly,
" the making of the land." The land cost £2 12s.
6d. per square yard. The " making of the land"—
the piling, filling, &c.—what may that cost ? Any
man who has gone over the stupendous works
which have been carried on upon the site of these
warehouses, and to form that site, may almost be
disposed to believe, with Mr. William Earle, and
in accordance with our first calculation and the
Surveyor's first calculation of their cost, that these
warehouses will not be completed, including land,
piling, &c., for less than £4O per square yard !
When will the Dock Committee solve, beyond
dispute—it cannot be very difficult—this most im-
portant question ? At the present moment, it is
all important !

At length we have before us the opinions of the
leading members of the Council, with respect to the
question recently mooted by the commercial asso-
ciations of the port, and upon which we have lately
remarked ; viz. whether as the remedy for the fre-
quent fires which have of late occurred in our exist•
ing warehouses, it is expedient, or just, to seek the
withdrawal of those clauses in the Dock Act, which
restrict the powers of the committee to erect ware-
houses upon the dock quays. We must confess
that, upon such a subject, we have referred, with the
greatest interest, to the remarks of Mr. Alderman
Evans ; not because we conceive that there is any
thing which we ought to receive as oracular in the
sayings of that gentleman; but because we have all
along entertained the opinion that the alderman
was the motive power, of which the busy and loqua-
' cious Mr. rrodd, who has come so prominently
before us of late, was the vox et preteria nihil. To
the speech of Mr. Evans, therefore, we turn for the
most potent arguments which can be adduced, for
setting aside the deliberately-recorded opinions of
the town, and of Parliament, as to the extent to
which his favourite experiment of dock warehouses
stimuli ne tried.

But first let us set ourselves right with respect to
our own objections to ride upon Mr. Alderman
Evans's hobby horse. We have no objections, in
the abstract, to the principle of erecting warehouses
upon the dock quays, although we feel convinced
that any land which we have to spare—and that we
have little enough is notorious—might be devoted
to a better purpose. If there is no safety, however,
in any other locality, build them on the dock quays ;
but build them as private speculations, or sell the
land to public companies, under any restrictions, as
to plans of erection or management, which you
choose. We object only to the Dock Committee
becoming warehouse owners, or warehouse keepers,
on the dock quays, or anywhere else! We object to
the capital of the dock estate being lavished in an
injurious and unfair competition with the capital
and the management of private individuals; and so
strongly is this principle impressed upon our minds,
that we would almost go the length of Mr. North,
and allow the docks themselves to be leased to pri-
vate individuals or to companies. From all that we
have seen of corporate management, or dock ma-
nagement, we are convinced that the public interests
would be better served by any other management !
Again we must protest against the frequently-
expressed notion that the restrictions under which
the Dock Committee—or, rather, that imperium in
imperio which is styled the Committee of Works,
and which is the Dock Committee—labour, are re-
strictions imposed upon them by " the warehouse
owners." Whatever may be the sins of that vilified
body of men, this sin is not to be laid exclusively at
their door. The Council—which, if we mistake not,
represents, or ought to represent, the town—willed
that these restrictions should be imposed. The
great majority of the community, who elect the
Council, willed the same. The restrictions, there-
fore, a e not the result of " an improvident bargain
with a few warehouse owners," but a security taken
by the community against the carrying out of the
hobby of a few crotchetty experimentalists !
/11111.4 11,./•• 111 3

pass by the somewhat flighty portion of it, in which
he refers to the warehouse' owners as the parties
originating the restrictions to which we have re-
ferred, because we have already shewn that the
imputation is senseless ; and proceed to quote the
most material part, in extenso :
" It was a principle of English law, quite consistent
with the practice of the constitution, that parliament
should give relief wherever an injustice had been perpe-
trated; and whatever might be their views in that room,
however they might feel themselves restricted by the late
act, the public at large would feel no more restricted by
it than by any other act of the legislature which they
wished to have repealed. It was a rule of law, as the
professional gentlemen would tell them, that for every
thing valuable there must be an equivalent. Now, the
warehouse interest could not pretend that they had given
any equivalent for availing themselves of their momentary
political power to impose upon the public an unjust re-
striction. On these grounds, he believed that the mea-
sures adopted out of doors, or likely to be adopted, would
in all likelihood succeed ; and he did consider that it
would be a great deal more creditable for the warehouse
interest themselves to take the initiative in the business,
and to abandon a restriction which they never bad the
least right to propose."

We are perfectly ready to admit the soundness of
the Alderman's view of the spirit of British parlia-
mentary law and practice. Parliament will, no
doubt, give relief, even to the extent of revising its
own acts, " wherever injustice has been perpetrated"
by the operation of those acts ; but it will first re-
quit., proof of the existence of such injustice. Can
Mr. Evans, or any one else, prove that injustice ?
Upon whom has it been committed ? Upon the
dock trustees ? We rather think, on the contrary,