By all these improvements uncertainties have been reduced to certainties, and capital has been more than doubled in value.  On the expected day, well calculated beforehand, the steamer arrives from America; with the rapidity of lightning the news she brings is transmitted to Manchester, to Birmingham, to Sheffield, to London, to Glasgow; a return message charters a ship, and a single day is enough to bring down the manufactured freight.  Thus news can be received and transmitted, a cargo of raw material landed, manufactured goods brought down by rail from the interior of England, and put on board a vessel and despatched, in less time than it occupied a few years ago to send a letter to Manchester and get an answer.

And under all these changes, while commerce grows and grows, the porters and the brokers, the warehousemen and the merchants, are able to take toll on the consumption of England.

Even the old dangerous roadstead, and far-falling tides of the Mersey, proved an advantage to Liverpool; by driving the inhabitants to commence the construction of Docks before any other port in the kingdom, and thus obtain a certain name and position in the mercantile world, from having set an example which cities provided with more safe and convenient natural harbours were unwilling to follow.

The first Dock ever constructed in England is now the site of the Liverpool Custom House; a large building erected at a period when our architects considered themselves bound to lodge all public institutions in Grecian temples.

This Dock was constructed in 1708, and twelve others have since been added, occupying the shore from north to south for several miles, including one which will accommodate steamers of the largest class.  These Docks are far from perfect in their landing arrangements.  Cargo is discharged in all but one, into open sheds.  The damage and losses by pilferage of certain descriptions of goods are enormous.  Attempts have been repeatedly made to establish warehouses round the docks into which goods might be discharged without the risk or expense of intermediate cartage.  But the influence of parties possessed of warehouse property is too great to allow the execution of so advantageous a reform.  Whigs and Radicals are, in this instance, as determined conservators of abuses which are not time-honoured as any Member for Lincoln City or Oxford University.

In 1764 more than half the African slave trade was carried on by Liverpool merchants.  The canal system commenced by the Duke of Bridgewater next gave Liverpool an improved inland communication.  After Arkwright’s manufactures stimulated the trade of America, cotton imports into Liverpool soon began to rival the sugar and tobacco imports into Bristol.  The Irish trade was rising at the same time, and the comparatively short distance between the midland counties, where Irish livestock was chiefly consumed, soon brought the Irish traders to Liverpool.