22 JUNE 1844, Page 14

COMMERCIAL NAVIGATION: THE BIRKENHEAD • DOCKS BILL.

• THE local administration of the harbours of great marts of com- merce is scarcely less important to the commerce of a nation than a sound system of financial imposts. Local restrictions and exactions may go almost as far to check or drive away trade as protective duties and exorbitant rates of customs. Shore-dues, lighting-dues, ballastage and wharfage dues, require as sharp lookinr, after by the general Legislature as the Customhouse itself. The details of management are, it is true, best left to local functionaries ; but a strict watch must be kept over municipalities and corporations, to prevent their becoming nests of local or personal jobs.

It is this principle that lifts the Birkenhead Docks Bill, now before Parliament, out of the class of mere local bills, and confers upon it a public importance. The Mersey is not merely the port of Liverpool; it is the high-way by which communication is main- tained between the manufacturing-districts of the North of Eng- land and great part of the world ; it is the harbour of Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire, and we might almost add Lanarkshire and the whole of Scotland. All these densely-peopled 'districts have as immediate and direct an interest in the proper management of the Mersey as Liverpool; and every new railroad that is constructed extends the region, to which it is of vital import- ance that the mercantile police of the Mersey be regulated on sound and comprehensive principles—as a national object, not as the property of a local corporation. The inhabitants of Liverpool are in reality (we say it without disrespect) the mere commission- agents and warehousemen of the manufacturers of Great Britain.

It is therefore clearly a national concern that the channels and shores of the Mersey should be made available for national trade to the utmost possible extent ; and this is precisely the question at issue between the promoters of the Birkenhead Docks and their opponents. These docks will give an additional accommodation of '200 acres to shipping on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, at a cost of less than 350,000/. The docks will be accessible to mail and all other steamers at all times of tide. There will be ten acres of beaching-ground for the convenience of the coasting-trade free of toll. The largest vessels will be able to lock into the dock by day or night at all times. The local position of these docks is more favourable to quick and regular mail-communication with Ireland than the present Liverpool docks. Lastly, the construction of the Birkenhead Docks will improve the general navigation of the river, All these circumstances conspire to render their speedy completion of these docks desirable as a means of bringing into play the capa- bilities of both shores of the Mersey—of developing the resources of that river as those of the Thames have been developed, if not indeed to a greater extent. Nor is the navigation of the Mersey alone concerned : the disposal of the Birkenhead Docks Bill will form a precedent—upon its success or failure probably depends the fate of many projected harbour-improvements throughout the nation.

The opposition to this scheme proceeds from narrow local inte- rests. The warehouse-proprietors of Liverpool fear that rival warehouses will be erected on the shores of the Birkenhead Docks, and the enormous rents they are at present enabled to charge diminished by competition. We do not believe that there is any exaggeration in saying that the warehouse-charges at Liverpool are among the most exorbitant in the world. And the frequent and very destructive fires which take place there indicate some radical vice in the police-arrangements. The commerce of Great Britain has a deep stake in the promotion of any plan that promises to diminish the expense of warehousing at Liverpool and affords greater security against fires. The competition created by the docks and warehouses of Birkenhead will effect this. It is to be hoped, therefore, that every effort will be made to impress these truths upon the minds of the Committee of the House of Lords, before whom the bill now is. The warehouse-owners of Liverpool have, doubtless, a strong motive for opposing it : they are powerful in the corporation—a corporation for wealth and power second only to that of London. This influential body is at this moment arrayed in active hostility to the national commerce.