Recollections of a Busy Life — Chapter VII, Part 2

THE WATER COMMITTEE.

In the 'seventies I joined the Water Committee, at a time when further supplies of water for Liverpool had become a pressing necessity.

We had opened the Beloe "dry dock" at Rivington (so called because many people believed when this reservoir was being made it would never be filled), and it was felt that no further supply could be obtained from this source; nor could we rely upon any further local supply from the red sandstone, although Mr. Alderman Bennett made long speeches in his endeavour to prove that the supply from the red sandstone was far from being exhausted.

[Illustration: LAYING THE FOUNDATION STONE, VYRNWY DAM, BY THE EARL OF POWIS, 1881.

] When it was decided to seek for a new watershed our attention was first directed to the moors round about Bleasdale, some ten miles north of Preston, but the prospective supply was not sufficiently large.

We then turned our attention to Hawes Water, in Cumberland, the property of Lord Lonsdale, and appointed a deputation to inspect this lake.

We dined and stayed all night at Lowther Castle, and drove to the lake next morning.

We came away much impressed with the quality of the water and the cleanness of the watershed, as there were no peat mosses or boggy lands to discolour the water.

Mr. Deacon, our young water engineer, had however a more ambitious scheme in view; he proposed to impound the head waters of the Severn in the valley of the Vyrnwy.

The battle of the watersheds, Hawes Water _versus_ the Vyrnwy, was waged furiously for several years.

The committee made many visits to the Vyrnwy, taking up its abode at the Eynant Shooting Lodge, a very picturesque spot (now submerged) standing at the western end of the lake.

Mr. Wilson and Mr. Anthony Bower, the chairman and deputy-chairman of the committee, were strongly in favour of the Vyrnwy scheme.

Alderman Bennett continued to be the persistent advocate of obtaining additional supplies from the wells, and his opposition to every other scheme was only set at rest by the Council authorising Mather and Platt to put a bore-hole down at Bootle at a point which he selected; with the result that no water was found.

During all this period Mr. J.

H.

Wilson had a very arduous task, demanding great patience and endurance, and to him and to Mr. Deacon belong the credit of ultimately securing the adoption of the Vyrnwy scheme.

I led the section of the committee in favour of the Hawes Water scheme.

There was no question as to the Vyrnwy yielding an abundant supply, but the opposition contended that it was brown peaty water, and would remain brownish after being treated by filtration, and the cost would greatly exceed that of Hawes Water.

I spent days on the moors at Vyrnwy collecting samples of water.

My samples were brown and bad; the samples collected by Mr. Deacon, on the contrary, were clear and translucent.

The committee were divided as to the relative merits of the two schemes, and the Council were equally divided.

When the question came for the ultimate decision of the Council the debate lasted two days, and I spoke for one hour and a half.

We thought the Hawes Water scheme was winning, when the Mayor, Mr. Thomas Royden, rose and spoke for half an hour all in favour of the Vyrnwy.

His speech turned many waverers, and the Council voted in favour of the Vyrnwy by a small majority of three.

It was a great debate, perhaps the most important we have had in the Council, certainly in my time.

Mr. Royden (now Sir Thomas Royden, Bart.

) was an effective speaker, both in the Council and on the platform; his voice and his genial smile were a valuable asset of the Conservative party.

I was greatly assisted in drawing up a pamphlet in favour of Hawes Water, and in conducting the opposition, by the town clerk, Mr. Joseph Rayner.

Mr. Rayner was an exceedingly able man, but unfortunately died comparatively young.

It fell to my lot, as Mayor in 1881, to take the Council to lay the foundation stone of the great Vyrnwy dam.

It was on a very hot day in July; the stone was laid by the Earl of Powis, who made a very eloquent and poetical address, comparing the Vyrnwy with the fountain of Arethusa which would spring up and fructify the valley, and convey untold blessings to the great community in the far-off city of Liverpool.

The building of the dam, and the laying out of the banks of the lake, called for many charming visits to the Vyrnwy; and although I was not in favour of the adoption of this scheme I now believe on the whole the Council did the wisest thing, as there can be no question of the abundance of the supplies secured by the city.

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE.

For twelve years I was chairman of this committee, and had much interesting work to carry through Parliament.

The widening of St. Nicholas' Place and the throwing of part of St. Nicholas' churchyard into the street was a great improvement, relieving the congestion of traffic at this point.

We also endeavoured, during my term of office, to extend the boundaries of the city.

We had a fierce fight in the House of Commons.

The local boards of the districts we intended to absorb assailed us with a perfect torrent of abuse, and criticised severely our system of local government.

We failed to carry our bill, the chairman of the committee remarking that Parliament would not grant any extension of city boundaries when it was objected to by the districts to be absorbed; but he added, "We are quite satisfied from the evidence you have given that Liverpool is excellently governed in every department."

We made a mistake in pushing forward this bill on "merits" only, we should have done some missionary work beforehand, and arranged terms and conditions with our neighbours.

My successor in the chair of this committee, Sir Thomas Hughes, profited by our experience, and succeeded where we failed.

We were greatly assisted in our Parliamentary work by Mr. Harcourt E. Clare, who was most able and diplomatic, and an excellent negotiator.

His appointment as Clerk of the County Council, though a gain to the county, was a serious loss to Liverpool.

MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL.

With the attitude of Liverpool in regard to the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal I was very prominently identified.

I had to conduct the opposition to the Canal Bill through three sessions of Parliament, six enquiries in all.

The Dock Board took the labouring oar, but it fell to me to work up the commercial case, to prove from a commercial point of view that the canal was not wanted, and would never pay.

I prepared a great mass of figures, and was under examination during the six enquiries altogether about thirty hours.

Mr. Pember, Q.

C.

, who led the case for the promoters, paid me the compliment of saying I was the only witness he had ever had who had compelled him to get up early in the morning to prepare his cross-examination.

We defeated the bill in the first two enquiries.

At the close of the second enquiry Mr. Lyster, the engineer to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, completely gave the Dock Board case away.

Mr. Pember remarked: "Mr. Lyster, you have told us that if we make our canal through the centre of the estuary of the Mersey we shall cause the estuary to silt up and destroy the bar.

What would you do if you had to make a canal to Manchester?"

Mr. Lyster jumped at the bait, and replied, "I should enter at Eastham and carry the canal along the shore until I reached Runcorn, and then I would strike inland."

Next year the Manchester Corporation brought in a new bill carrying out Mr. Lyster's suggestion, and as Liverpool had no answer they succeeded in getting their bill.

There can be no doubt that the railways had for long years greatly overcharged their Liverpool traffic.

The rate of 12s 6d per ton for Manchester goods for the thirty-two miles' carriage from Manchester to Liverpool was a gross overcharge.

I had headed deputation after deputation to the London and North-Western Railway to represent this;

Mr. Moon (afterwards Sir Richard Moon) always received us with much civility, but nothing was done.

The Dock Board had the remedy in their own hands; they could have bought the Bridgewater Canal, and made a competitive route; but the prosperity of Liverpool was great, and they altogether failed to see that Manchester, with its Ship Canal, might one day be a serious competitor to Liverpool.

The promoters of the Ship Canal secured an option over the Bridgewater Canal, and this was really the backbone of their scheme.

At the close of the first parliamentary enquiry, when the Canal Bill was thrown out, Mr. Wakefield Cropper, the chairman of the Bridgewater Canal, came to me and said, "The option given to the Ship Canal people has expired; can you not persuade the Dock Board to buy up the Bridgewater Canal, and this will put an end to the Ship Canal project?"

I walked across the Green Park with Mr. T.

D.

Hornby, the chairman of the Dock Board, and Mr. Squarey, the solicitor, and told them of this conversation, and they both agreed with me that the Dock Board ought to make the purchase, but, unfortunately, nothing was done.

In the following year the Ship Canal Bill was again thrown out, and Mr. Cropper again urged that we should secure the Bridgewater Canal.

I called at the Liverpool Dock office in London and saw Mr. Hornby and Mr. Squarey; they both agreed that the purchase of the Bridgewater Canal ought to be made, but again no step was taken, and the Ship Canal made their third application to Parliament, and succeeded.

I have always felt that the Dock Board thus missed a great opportunity, which in years to come may prove to have been the golden chance of securing the prosperity of the port.

CORPORATION LEASEHOLDS.

One of the most important enquiries in which I engaged was into our system of fines on renewals of the leases of the property belonging to the Corporation.

The Corporation owns a very large estate within the city.

The first important purchase was made by the Corporation in 1674, when a lease for 1,000 years was obtained from Sir Caryl Molyneux, of the Liverpool Heath, which bounded the then town of Liverpool on its eastern side.

This land had been sold on seventy-five years' leases, and as the leases ran out the lessees had the option of renewal on the payment of a fine;

and in order to encourage the frequent renewal of these leases the fines during the first twenty years of a lease were made very light.

It has been the practice of the Corporation to use the fines received as income in the year in which they are received.

The fines received in the fifty years, 1835 to 1885, amounted to £1,762,000. This system of finance is radically wrong.

The fines ought to be invested in annuities, and if this had been done these fines would now have returned an income of £66,000 per annum, and would have gone on increasing.

The committee, of which I was the chairman, held a prolonged enquiry, and examined many experts and actuaries, and our report is to-day the standard authority on the leasehold question.

Our conclusions and recommendations are as sound to-day as they were then, but unfortunately the Council declined to accept or adopt them, and we still pursue the economically bad system of spending in the first year the fine which should be spread over the term of the lease.

When I retired from the Library, Museum, and Arts Committee in 1908, I was invited to take the chair of the Estate Committee, and found myself again face to face with the leasehold question.

The revenue of the Corporation from fines on renewal of leases had fallen off to so alarming an extent that something had to be done to stop the shrinkage in revenue and restore the capital value of the estate.

We had for so long used the fines as income that the position was a difficult one, and one only to be surmounted by a self-denying policy of accumulating a large portion of the assured income from fines for at least twenty-five years and encouraging leaseholders to extend their leases from seventy-five to ninety-nine years.