The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-09-03 00:00:00

TUESDAY 1110RAING, SEPT. 3, ISI4.

• That very virtuous body, the Anti-Corn-law
League, is not addicted to doing its work by halves.
For the last two years it has been occupied in sow-
ing sedition and discontent throughout the king-
dom; and its achievements in this line have not
been" inconsiderable. The manufacturing districts
in a state of fierce outbreak ; the town of Manches-
ter itself in the absolute pawer of a mob ; then a
special commission, and next the incarceration of its
dupes, were the fruits produced in its own neigh-
bourhood. Blazing stockyards and barns have
SI igna!ised its operations in the agricultural dis-
tricts, from which its deluded victims are at this
moment gracing the hulks or voyaging towards our
penal settlements. Its steps throughout have been
marked in blight, and have left wailing and desola-
tion behind them.

A new course of operations, however, are now
teing adopted by it ; not so full of wickedness and
Amager as its past proceedings—not so diabolical in
spirit and widely injurious in effect,—but at the same
time equally unconstitutional and unprincipled.
The League has devoted itself this year to the task
of falsifying the registries—of disfranchising the
electors throughout the kingdom ; and the degree
of wickedness and insolence which they have brought
to the task may be judged of by the fact that in this
'county—their own county, where they may be sup-
posed to have sufficient local knowledge to keep
them from very gross mistakes in their objections
and claims—they have served notices of the former
upon two-thirds, if not more, of the Conservative
constituency, (and not been particular in confining
themselves to Conservatives, where Whigs could he
found suspected of hostility to their own confede-
racy,) whilst they have put in some thousands of
claims to be registered on the part of members and
tools of that confederacy, some of them, we are in-
formed, mendacious and impudent beyond belief.
The result of this will be, of course, as its aim has
been, to compel the attendance of every voter, so
objected to, before the revising barrister; or, as the
consequence of neglect of such attendance, to throw
the'county, for a year to come, into the hands of the
Whig-Radical party, in the event of an election oc-
curring during that period.
We could mention a host of names objected to,
in illustration of the recklessness of decency and
truth which characterise the proceedings taken—
names of men of undoubted wealth—extensive land-
owners—men whose title to be upon the register is
so unquestionable that the most charitably disposed
cannot set down the fact of their being so dealt
with to any other motive than a disposition to insult
and annoy. But it is needless to point to particular
cases, when entire districts have been operated
against, and the electors sought to be disfranchised
by wholesale. We have heard of one in which up-
wards of one hundred and forty votes were this
year recorded for the Conservative candidate for
South Lancashire, and in which not more than thirty
votes now stand unassailed upon the register !
Shameful as is this proceeding (and that respecta-
ble men can countenance it by remaining members
of such a confederacy is surprising,) we anticipate
from it little real damage to the Conservative cause,
if it serve, as it ought to serve, to spur up every
loyal and high spirited member of the community
to think and act for himself in putting down a nuis-
ance so gross. It cannot be endured, and it ought
not to be endured that the convenience and the
franchises of Englishmen should be permitted thus
to be played with by any man who can write his name
or his alias, at the foot of a notice of objection; and
still less can it be endured that a body of men shall
be permitted to associate themselves for the declared
and deliberate purpose of inflicting insult and wrong
upon better men than themselves. Morally it is as
great a crime to conspire to take away the franchise
from another, as it is to conspire to rob him of his
purse or his estate; and if the law is not strong
enough at present to reach such an offence it ought
to be made so. It is plain enough that the act by
which it was sought to put down this practice of
annoying electors by unfounded objections is not
strong enough to meet the end in view. Unprinci-
bepled men can always be met with, willingenough to
become tools in the hands of such a body as the
League for defeating its provisions. Another
remedy must therefore be found, sufficiently com-
prehensive to bring the arch conspirators themselves
within its provisions.

Another bombshell has fallen, and exploded too,
over our town, and a second time we are bound to
Consider ourselves as a done-for community. With
mach feelings, at any rate, the Mercury would have
us treat the announcement just made from the other
side of the Mersey of a new railway from Birkenhead
to Manchester, by which the cotton of Liverpool is
to be " trucked' off, in the most jaunty style
imaginable, from the vessels' side in the docks of
Wallasey to the spinners' door in Manchester, and,
consequently, freed from all those charges of cart-
age, porterage, &c. which " bales are heir to."
Wonderful discovery I Surprising people, indeed,
these Commissioners of Birkenhead! But let us be
serious, if we can, for a few minutes, and examine
calmly this last and most astounding product of the
brooding enterprise of our Cheshire neighbours.
A new railway from Birkenhead to Manchester
would not be so very bad a thing in itself. It would
be a little roundabout, to be sure, for us on this side
of the water; but then its formation might, with
this disadvantage even, convince a certain Liverpool
Company of the propriety of affording their greater
facilities at a little less than what we pay for them,
and thereby confer a boon upon the public. How
much less the new concern could carry us for we
ta.nnot guess; but from their known liberality we
may presume that their rates would not be much
more than sufficient to cover the cost of working
end the price of land : the expenses of construction
of all works on the Cheshire side of the water being
so insignificant, and the merchandize traffic being
-likely to he of such vast extent as to render any great
revenue from passengers unnecessary.
One circumstance, however, connected with this
yew scheme we cannot but remark upon, viz, the
alleged advantage gained by the power of conveying
cotton, &c. from the ships, per railway, to the manu-
facturing districts. If we forget not it was dwelt
upon as one of the greatest advantages of the Wal-
lasey Docks that vessels could discharge their
cargoes there into flats for Runcorn and Man-
chester with greater convenience and at less
cost than in the docks of Liverpool. Runcorn, we
know, was in extasies at the prospect, and Man-
chester merchants were getting ready engraved bill
beads with'' Port of Manchester" on their foreheads.
Whence is this change from water to the rail,—from
the flat to the locomotive ? If the cotton of Man-
chester is now to go only under the locks of Run-
corn instead of through them, what is to become of
the Duke's and what of the Old Quay ?
Of course we cannot, at present, pretend to ex-
press any opinion as to the prospects of the share-
holders in this undertaking. We are told that its
stock is already " all taken up," or applied for, which
is the same thing in Cheshire; and we are therefore
bound to conclude that it is a good thing. It is not
very handsome in its concoctors, however, to keep
it all to themselves. They might have left the Dicky
Sams a small slice.

The detailed description given on Wednesday last,
by the Chairman of the Dock Committee, of the
alterations which had been decided upon in the
formation of the new docks on the North Shore, has
elicited, as we anticipated it would, a lively feeling
of gratification in the mind of every supporter of the
interesti and prosperity of the good old town. An
addition of twenty-nine acres of dock area has been
gained, without a sensible increase, or an increase
It all, in the amount of the estimate of the proposed
works. Besides this, the present plan affords much
greater facilities of working, more manageable docks,
and more quay room. With the original plan of one
dock on this site, running north and south, it is pro-
bable that five years at least would have elapsed be-
fore a single ship could have entered its gates, and
the present pressure upon the resources of our Dock
Estate could have been relieved. By the present
division and alteration of the plan to one embracing
four docks, running east and west, the Committee
trill be able to have a dock to the north and one to
the south, communicating with the Leeds canal,
ready for working within two years, without in the
slightest degree retarding the construction of the