The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-10-06 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

%YE SA LTH OU E AS A N EXPORT DOCK.—A correspondent, who
suggests the use of this dock for an export dock, in con-
nexion with the Albert warehouses, is informed that such
has all along been the intention of the Dock Committee, and
indeed is the natural mode of employing to the best effect
these two adjoining properties. At the present moment the
Paragon, recently discharged in the Albert Dock, is loading
at th north-west corner of Salthouse; and a week ago, we
caw a cargo of 3.,00 bags of sugar warctouseing in the
Albert warehouses from the Salthouse, no doubt because the
importer c dculated upon its deposit' there being more con-
venient than in a warehom,e in any other locality.

'e cannot answer the question put by " A Subscriber," but he
way obtain the information. in all probability, at any of the
insurance offices. Had we received his letter a little earlier

uld advis

tely to consulta respectable
at class would n:ost gladly forward his

our last, the tonnage of the ship
ie Albert Dock, was given at 435

fact, the registered amount, but
than that; and it is no more than
e discharged in that d••ck from
was completely cleared in 38

th the wishes of " A Convert." Surely,
esiming a high preeminence for the
on of the young. Luther—even
tree from the errors of Popery—
advanced by us now. In the
ress on Romish superstitions, he says, " I am
11 afraid that the universities will prove to be the great
s of hell, unless they diligently labour in explaining the
Scriptures and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I
se no one to place his child where the scriptures do not
paramount. Every institution in which men are not un-
ingly occupied with the word of God must become cor-
." These are noble words, and deserve as weighty con-
ration now as they did three centuries ago, when first

e is nothing new i
I of God, in the ei

the same claim as

Ely Riberpool Manbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, OCT. 6, 1846

We are quite happy to meet our contemporary,
the Albion, again upon the subject of the dock re-
venue of the port. The more such questions are
discussed, the more likely is the truth respecting
them to he elicited, and the community at large to
be put in possession of the facts and figures required
to render them proof against the sneers and mis-
statements with which their ears are continually

ng assailed

We showed in our last, from the published

zeneral statement"

of the accounts of the dock
estate, that the bonded debt had increased up to the
34th June, 1846, by a nett sum of £308,198 13s,
The Committee, however, had paid for new works,
to their bankers, and for extra materials on han d
1391,129 is. Bd., being £82,930 14s. Bd. surplus
paid out of the current receipts of the year. A
simpler mode of stating the case there could not
well be. If a merchant is £2,000 better this year,
after paying all the expenses of his establishment
and his living, that sum is his surplus earnings.
The correctness of the principle the Albion does
not dispute, although he appears to think it is not
abstruse, or " arithmetical" enough, for his tastes.
We give, however, his comment upon it, in which
finds one error in the detail. He says—
" Nothing can show the necessity of the Dock Com-
ittee keeping separate accounts for the expenditure on
eir old and new works more than such a statement as
Here we have the cost of the `river wall

he foregoing.
entral works

carried off as expenditure on new works,
whereas it is merely a replacement of the old. The ma-
terial is certainly new, but it is as much a part of the
yearly disbursements of the Dock Estate as clearing out
the mud, and ought to be charged against the annual
revenue. The carrying off to capital account the current
disbursements of the year, is a very convenient way of
Peak' ng a large surplus revenue, but like all such ingenious
pia of mystifying facts,' must, sooner or later, come to
sr nd."

makinv•

Had the Dock Committee adopted our contem-
porary's plan of "keeping separate accounts for the

expenditu're on their old and new works," the
balance, showing the amount of surplus earnings
carried to the payment of the general expenditure of

the estate, would have stood almost as we have
stated it in our last. The "river wall central works,"
moreover, would certainly have been put down as
7 works. They are not merely " a replacement
old works," but <•re works undertaken by the
ck Committee which, so far from being " as much
r!y disbursements as clearing out the mud,"
e actually to be paid for ultimately by another
e Corporation--for the improvement of
(the tobacco warehouse, &c.) they
)een undertaken, at the especial request of the
oration. We leave our contemporary to get
rid of this " fact."

e propert

The Albion proceeds to give his notion of the
;de in which the surplus revenue of an estate
ould he shown :

Surplus revenue we take to be the balance of the

current receipts over the current expenditure, and the
introduction of items of stock and banking accounts only
complicate any statement from which such surplus is

.oceeds to draw out

a statement after h

ttern, in whi

ch, dismissing " items of

and banking accot

unworthy of his

aeration, and

£19,478. 176 sd.
vorks " as current and

for " river wall c

uown the

nary expenditu
of the estate

s the surplus earn-

urn of

38,002 Bs. 7d

a comical w

of managing matters ;

to show it,

s absurdity

aust give the pattern

PENDITUF

£114,700 15 8

n account cf

215 2

propriated to our side of the account many items
which have swelled the surplus very considerably.
We suppose, for instance, that something over
£600,000 h:s been expended upon the Albert Dock
and works, in addition to the cost of land for the
new North works, and the expenditure upon them.
These amounts are included in the present bonded
debt ; and the interest upon them, amounting to
between £30,000 and £40,000, has a perfect right
to be deducted from the £98,000, with which the
Albion debits the Trustees as for the current expendi-
ture of the existing estate. We have, therefore,
understated rather than overstated our case.
The concluding portion of the Albion's remarks
we need not notice.

From the first proposition of the Free Trade
measures of Sir Robert Peel and his late colleagues,
we contended that their effect would be, at first, to
impel the population of the colonies of Great Britain
to ask the question, " Of what value to us is our
connection with the parent country ?"—and to pave
the way gradually to ultimate separation. Our
anticipations have been realised even more rapidly
than we dreamt of. A document is before us con-
taining the views of the Chamber of Commerce of
Toronto, Upper Canada, which shows that public
opinion, in that colony at least, is setting in precisely
the direction which we pointed to, and enforcing
those views by reasoning, the justice of which it will
take far more than ordinary ingenuity to impeach.
The colonists of Upper Canada say, by this docu-
ment, to the imperial legislature, " You have thrown
us upon our own resources to compete with the
industry of the rest of the world; you have stript
our agriculture of every rag of protection hitherto
afforded to it in your markets : you must now, in
common fairness, release us from those restrictions
to which we have submitted as the price of your
favours and from our sympathy with the industrious
population of the country of our birth." In the
first place, they point to the duty of 3s. per qua, ter
imposed, in connection with the Canada Corn Bill,
upon American wheat crossing the frontier, and
demand its repeal, as operating, under the present
relations of that colony with the mother country, to
prevent the grain of the western states of America
finding its way through Canada for shipment. It
is not easy to see what plea we can advance against
this reasonable demand.

The Canadians say again that the discriminating
duties, imposed upon foreign produce and manufac-
tures imported into Canada, should be abolished,
and the population of that colony be permitted to
resort to the cheapest markets for their supplies ;
that the cottons, the linens, the woollens, the hard-
ware, and other productions of Great Britain, and
the sugar, coffee, &c., of her colonies, should no
longer be protected by duties against the foreign
article ranging from 5 to 25 per cent. They are
themselves called upon to submit to the operation
of the Free Trade dogmas, as applied to their supply
of produce for the British markets : they ask for
its application to their own commercial relations
with foreign countries. There is assuredly reason
in their demand, as every consistent Free Trader
will acknowledge. The existing imperial tariff of
Canada cannot be maintained without a sacrifice of
principle by a Free Trade legislature.

The most important deMand of the colonists,
however, is the removal of the restrictions imposed
upon their foreign commerce by our navigation
laws. If they have to send a cargo of staves or
lumber to the West Indies, it is not just, they say,
to compel them to employ British shipping exclu-
sively for its transport. If they wish to import a
cargo of sugar from the West Indies, they ask why
they should be compelled to seek out a British
vessel to bring it, whilst, perhaps, a dozen foreign
bottoms are on the spot ready to accept much lower
freight. They say—Do not compel us to send the
entire traffic of the St. Lawrence in British ship-
ping, whilst the farmers and merchants of the
United States can get their business to England, or
elsewhere, done for half rates. Are the shipowners
of this conntry prepared for the relaxation, or entire
removal, of the protection which these laws have
afforded them ? We suspect not ; and yet it is
difficult to defend their retention under a system of
Free Trade.

It is, indeed, almost matter of certainty that we
cannot much longer refuse concession to any of
these demands of our Canadian brethren. The
colonies themselves, embarked by• the act of the
British legislature in the race of competition with
other countries, must have their hands unbound, to
enable them to pass through the ordeal. Let us
see, then, what will become our mutual position
when our policy shall have been fully carried out.
Commercially they then cease to be the children of
Great Britain. They no longer favor British in-
dustry. We no longer favor theirs. Where, then, i
is the bond of connexion ? The tie of blood re-
mains,
indeed ; and that is all. We may continue
for awhile to protect them against foreign aggression,
or they may continue to take part in our conflicts
with neighbouring powers. But will not those co-
lonies, when embroiled by their sympathy with us
for other countries, begin to ask—why submit to
have our commerce interrupted, our frontiers ,
attacked, and the means and the industry of our
own population wasted in a quarrel in which we
have neither reasonable part or interest ? Un-
doubtedly they will ; and Great Britain herself,
should she even he precipitated into a war in de-
fence of Canada, for instance, or e'..en called upon to
vote supplies for her local government, will be justi-
fied in asking—where is her interest in such a quarrel
that she should derange fur it her commercial re-
lations with the rest of the world ? We expect to
hear these questions asked; and, whenever they
are pressed, the integrity of our colonial empire may
be regarded as doomed to destruction.
The subject is a serious one, and well worthy of
the earnest consideration of the statesman. We
have had for years past in these noble colonies the
most valuable markets for the productions of native
industry. In proportion to their population, they
consume more than any other cettmtries. We see
year by year the surplus labour of Great Britain
betaking itself to till their fertile vallies and rich
prairies—to hew down their vast forests, and to
carry the arts of civilised life, and its busy industry,
to their solitudes. Yet these seedlings of tributary
nations we are sacrificing to an insane dream—a
bubble, which is already bursting in our grasp.

The beauty of our common law consists in its
clear, though, perhaps, somewhat oblique, applica-
tion to our social necessities. When we first hear
the law propounded on any particular point, we are
often inclined to laugh at it, as absurd. But, some-
how, it happens that, after trying how it applies to
other similar cases, after arriving at the principle on
which it is based, we find that it contains more com-
mon sense and justice than we, in our hasty wisdom
had imagined. We find that it best meets the ma-
jority of cases : that however it looks, at all events,
it works well.

And why is this ? Simply, because it is founded
on experience. Such a law was found to be neces-
sary, before it was enacted.
The case is similar with regard to many old
church principles and customs. Our individual
experience, of twenty, forty, or three score years,
does not show us all their utility. But the some-
what longer experience of the church's life has
taught her their necessity and value.
These views make us rejoice at the attempt which
is now. being made to restore a principle of public
worship, that churches should be free—as open to
the poor as to the rich—that all money-changing
and " respect of persons" should be kept as far as
possible
.out of the sacred precincts.

And this rule, we submii, is not more a result of
the church's experience than the very principle on
which Christian worship first set out. We are fond
of drawing our church models from scripture.
What, then, must have been the practice, the inno-
vation upon which St. James so strongly condemns ?
" If there come into your assembly a man with a
gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also
a poor man with vile raiment, and ye have respect
to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto
him, sit thou here in a good place, and say to the
poor, stand thou there, or sit thou here under my
footstool, are ye not then partial in yourselves, and
become judges of evil thoughts ?"
What was this but the beginning of that exclusive
system which we have now so deeply to deplore,—
the first breaking out of that human pride in religi-
ous worship which broke out again so strongly
some three centuries ago ?

We can happily go one step further in this argu-
ment, and say that the experiment has been tried.
Churches have recently been built upon this revived
principle, and have been found to answer beyond
the most sanguine expectations. The poor have
been found willing to come to churches when no
sense of their own inferiority is thrust upon them.
And if a prejudice on either side has to be given up,