Liverpool Municipal Records, 1700-1835. By Sir James A. Picton. (G.
Walmeley, Liverpool.)—Sir James Picton does not appear to have learnt the Greek adage that a big book is a big bore ; and the careful reader will have to turn over a great deal of rubbish before he reaches the good material in this book. It is, however, very clearly printed, and divided into convenient headings, with good marginal notes, 80 that it is fairly easy to avoid the rubbish by judicious foresight. The book is extremely interesting in one way, as showing the persistence of the prevailing characteristics of Liverpool. One of the very first entries in the volume, recording the election of an Earl of Derby as Mayor in 1703, at great inconvenience to the Corporation, thaws how true the saying is that " Liverpool loves a Lord !" while from the beginning to the end of the history of the old close Corporation, it is seen to be consistently against reform and progress of every kind. There was perhaps no town in the Kingdom that mere needed a Municipal Corporation Reform Act than Liverpool. The Corporation was, in defiance of the express terms of its charters, an oligarchic, self- electing body, with a large corporate property, from which its members snaked no small advantage, and with exclusive trading privileges for its freemen which were to the serious detriment of the general public. Liverpool was a great centre, first of white, and then of black slavery. In February, 1705, a list is given of no less than fifteen persons to he shipped to the plantations as "apprentices," for terms of four to • even years. In 1771, 105 slave-ships sailed from Liverpool, and carried 28,200 Negro slaves. Naturally, a close Corporation whose prosperity was founded on such trade was vehemently opposed to Wilberforce and Clarkson ; and in 1785, we find them giving £100 from the oorporate funds to the Rev. Raymond Harris, for a pam- phlet showing that the slave trade was in "conformity with principles of natural and revealed religion ;" and in 1800, presenting a gold box, coating £226, to the Duke of Clarence, for his exertions
in the House of Lords in favour of slavery. In 1803, this slavery-supporting Corporation presented loyal addresses against "those pernicious doctrines and principles which are destructive of all true liberty," namely, the doctrines of reform ; and one of its last acts wan to petition the Crown in 1831 against the proposed sup- pression of ten Bishoprics of the Irish Church of the minority. Altogether, we are inclined to think that the borough of Liverpool has no great reason to be proud of the history of its old Corporation, too many of the old Tory traditions of whith have been preserved in the new one, owing to the institution of Aldermen introduced by the House of Lords into the Municipal Reform Act.
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