15 | 334 | 20,457
Vessels | |
| |
Dock Dues. - | 600 | 211,743 pounds
| |
Income of 20 | 1,115 | 139,152 pounds
Corporation | |
| |
Customs Dues 272 | 70,000 | 3,366,284 pounds

This extraordinary progress, of which we have far from seen the limits, has
been founded and supported by a position which every commercial change, every
new invention relating to sea-borne coasting trade, or inland conveyance, has
strengthened.

The discovery of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, and improvements
in the art of navigation, destroyed the commercial importance of Venice, and
extinguished a line of river ports from Antwerp to Cologne. In our own
country, the Cinque Ports, Harwich, Great Grimsby, and other havens, fell
into decay when navigators no longer cared to hurry into the first harbour on
coming within sight of land. But Liverpool, situated on the banks of a river
which, until buoyed and improved at a vast expense, was a very inferior port
for safety and convenience, has profited by the changes which have rendered
the American the most important of our foreign customers, and Ireland as
easily reached as Runcorn in a sailing flat.

The rise of the cotton manufacture has been as beneficial to Liverpool as to
those districts where the yarn is spun and woven. The canal system has fed,
not rivalled or "tapped," the trade of the Mersey. The steamboats on which
the seafaring population of Liverpool at first looked with dislike and
dismay, have created for their town--first, a valuable coasting trade,
independent of wind or tide, which with sailing vessels on such a coast and
with such a river could never have existed; and next, a transatlantic
commerce, which, through Liverpool, renders New York nearer to Manchester
than Dublin was five and twenty years ago; while, at the same time, the
opposite coast of Cheshire has been transformed into a suburb, to which
omnibus-steamers ply every five minutes. And yet little more than five and
twenty years ago there was only one river steamer on the Mersey, and that a
flat bottomed cattle boat, with one wheel in the centre.

Bristol