The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-08-02 00:00:00

attention to this remark by placing the
P issage in italics ; and we added, (again, however,
ahout the usual typographical sign,) a commendation
0 the picture to our free-trade agitators. Yet the
%hole of these passages the Guardian discreetly sup-
presses ! That the American manufacturer regards
the native agriculture of his country as a valuable
support to fall back upon, is a fact which the league
oracle, who would fain persuade the British people to
destroy their native agriculture, is not desirous to
obtrude upon the notice of his readers.
'We should not' perhaps have noticed these petty
meannesses but for a rather obtrusive flourish of his
own excessive virtue, and dislike of " petty misquota-
tions," exhibited by the Guardian in the same publica-
tion in which he thus offends, added to our wish to
address a few remarks to the gentlemen of the Anti-
Corn-law League, upon the very passages which their
organ has chosen to garble. We are told by these
gentlemen, on every occasion, that America only wants
a market for her agricultural produce, to become a
large purchaser of our manufactured goods. The
American market is a losing market, exclaims the
league manufacturer, because you will not enable him
to buy by taking of his abundance of corn. But what
says the American journalist? Why that unless we
take the corn of America " at profitable rates to the
producer," there is " little prospect for a demand for
manufactured goods, DOMESTIC or foreign"---that
there is little prospect of American mills and American
manufacturers being re-employed! In other words,
the modest demand of America, and of the league, is
this : take the surplus corn of the republic ; destroy
the British farmer; leave England without that source
of strength to fall back upon which a prosperous
native agriculture affords;—in order that AMERICAN,
not British, manufactures may GO AHEAD!

At a meeting of the Dock Committee, on Thursday,
a reference was made by the surveyor to " a report on
'Change," to the effect that the transit sheds on the
west side of Prince's Dock were " giving way ;" and,
in answer to a question from a member of the com-
mittee, with respect to the party upon whose authority
the report in question was* circulated, Mr. Hartley is
reported to have said that " the subject had been men-
tioned to him by Mr. Chapman." A copy of a letter
addressed by that gentleman to the chairman of the
Dock Committee, explanatory of his real share in Mr.
Hartley's " report on 'Change," has been handed to
us for publication, which, as a matter of justice to
him, we -
now lay before our readers ; and we are, in
addition, authorised to state that not a syllable, directly
or 'indirectly, has passed between the surveyor and
himself upon the subject of the sheds alluded to.

Liverpool, July 29th, 1842.
MY DEAR SlR,—When you spoke to me yesterday about
the transit sheds, I scarcely knew what your drift was. My
attention, however, has been called to the proceedings of the
Dock Committere, wherein it ap pears or
(with his usual want of accuracy) stated Ithe adDock b toldSurve
him the
transit sheds were giving way.
kuuw
F his information, and yours, I beg to state what I do
or
of the report mentioned ; it is as follows :—Whilst
Passing along the west side of Prince's Dock some time ago,
a gentleman pointed out one of the transit sheds as having
sa,gged, and which certainly has that appearance. I have
alwaYs been opposed to the erection of the transit sheds, con-
sidering the expence would be a waste of money ; and I
have
"dared my opinion to be, that ultimately they will have to
come down, or be granted to the public free of charge, for the
Purposes of export, and not import, as instead of expediting
poses of
of the latter, they will only impede it. With
t_espect to the design of the transit sheds, or the specification
fur the contract, I am quite satisfied that the Surveyor, al-
.t,h,ough anxious to do his best, would be sure to botch every
"ng, as he has done the graving docks.
As You be your Surveyor is fond of " reports on 'Change," will
kind enough to ask him if he did not discharge one
thof the head foremen of the dock yard for having laid down
e
new works railway according to the Surveyor's section,
feet 81 in the centre, (instead of 4 feet Si in the clear;)
and had not some of the rails to be taken up again ?
PI hope you will give the Surveyor an opportunity of ex-
laining• Ile has always been 8o very accommodating 'to
the shipowners and shipbuilders, that I, as one of the for-
'er; watch him narrowly, in order that he may receive at
(4e hands of the public the reward due to his merits.-1
remain, my dear sir, yours faithfully,

HENRY CLEAVER CHAPMAN
To Thomas Sands, Esq.,
Chairman of the Dock Committee.

Of course Mr. Hartley will be able to explain how
this discrepancy between himself and Mr. Chapman,
upon a matter of fact, has arisen. In the supposition,
however, that the defects alleged to exist in the con-
struction of the transit sheds had been noticed by no
better an authority than Mr. Chapman appears to be
regarded by a portion of the Dock Committee, we
really cannot see that the exclamations of " hear," and
the " laughter" with which the surveyor's flippant
allusion to that gentleman is reported to have been
received by the committee, were in the best possible
taste. Mr. Chapman, we are aware, is not one of
those who are in the habit of regarding as the per-
fection of wisdom or skill every dictum or every con-
struction of the dock surveyor. But the committee
may believe us when we say that there is a large body
of the public who are similarly incredulous ; and it is
scarcely safe for gentlemen who are, or ought to be,
representatives of the interests and the opinions of a
large community, to sneer at the judgment of portions
of that community, however unimportant they may
imagine them to be. On the present occasion, it
appears that the " report on 'Change," so flippantly
disposed of by the surveyor, does not rest upon the
authority of Mr. Chapman ; and we venture to say,
that if any half dozen members of the committee will
take the pains to examine the erections complained of,
it will take some better authority than that of the sur-
veyor himself to satisfy them that the report in question
is without warrant, or that the sheds are such as the
trustees of the Dock Estate ought to be proud of ! We
state this deliberately, after having viewed them
throughout, that they would be disgraceful to the
architect of a cow-shed; and that any engineer for
wilt" they had been built by a responsible contractor
Would not do his duty if he did not require them to
be pulled down again ! They are, in fact, A BOTCHthllo_Ugllollt.

With respect to the subject mentioned in the con-
cluding paragraph of Mr. Chapman's letter, we can of
course know nothing, or what amounts to nothing.
We have, however, heard of the matter before—that
an old and valuable servant of the Dock Estate was
dismissed at a moment's warning, because of the mis-
construction of the railway mentioned ; and it cer-
tainlY does appear to us, now that the affair has
assumed the shape of a tangible charge, made by a
known and responsible party, that the Dock Committee
are
r hound to put it to rest by instituting an enquiry
in its correctness. Difficulty there can be none in
hematter, even under the peculiar management of
Public works of our Dock Estate. Had the laying
of the railway in question been let to any respectable
criolnt et
srt..4-,ur, the expense of any error of construction
w "a" fallen upon such contractor, and there
nlii have been an end of it. But as such was not
the case ; as the work was done by a servant of the
Dock Trust, and done so incorrectly that that servant
Was discharged ; as the expense of the mistake must
have fallen upon the Dock Estate, and it is broadly
charged that the mistake itself lies at the door, not of
the poor man who has been made the victim, but of the surveyor himself ;—it is certainly the duty of the
committee to ascertain in what quarter the blame 18
justly chargeable. The ed man must have
dischar
had a section of the
railway to work by. Let that
section be produced to the committee; and if the rails
are there laid down as 4 feet
81- inches in the clear—
the width of nearly every railway in the kingdom—
th
charge fallsen Mr. Htoartthe ground. and
Mr.. Chapman's
•
We may have something to say on a future occa-
sion respecting the recent order of the committee to
appropriate the western side of the Prince's Dock to
vessels discharging. At present our space is limited;
but we venture to hazard an opinion, nevertheless,
that a more absurd project was never attempted to be
carried out by any public body, and that it can never be
worked for six months !

TESTIMONIAL OF THE BRAZILIAN MERCHANTS

TO DR. DUNDAS

°trate 16th of March, last year, a general meeting of the
British merchants, resident at Bahia, was held in that place
for the purpose 01 ex'p ressino. their attachment and esteem
towards Dr. Dendas,
late surgeon to the British Hospital
two-
there, previous to his leaving that city, after a residence of
and-twenty years.
chair, and the foil Richard Latham, Esq., was in the
adopted : owing resolutions were unanimously

Ist.---" That a service of plate, value three hundred gui-
neas,
with a suitable inscription, be presented to Dr. pandas'
late surgeon to the British Hospital, in testimony of our es-
teem, for his talents as a physician—his virtues as a man—
his value as a frienddisplayed in the zealous and successful