FROM THE ARCHIVES: JANUARY 21st, 1862:The Lord Mayor of Dublin called a public meeting in the Rotunda early in 1862 to launch a campaign for the rebuilding of Carlisle Bridge (O'Connell Bridge) in the city centre. The existing bridge had been designed by Gandon in the 1790s, was hump-backed and a lot narrower than the two streets it linked, Sackville Street (O'Connell Street) and Westmoreland Street. The project had the support of all political groupings and The Irish Timesweighed in with this editorial on this day in 1862 but it was to take some 20 years before the new bridge was opened as O'Connell Bridge. JOE JOYCE
THE CLAIM of the citizens of Dublin to a Parliamentary grant for the rebuilding of Carlisle Bridge was yesterday stated most clearly, most convincingly, and most temperately. The requisition for convening the meeting was signed by 6,000 of the merchants, traders, and professional men of the city . . . There was no distinction of sects or parties; men of all classes met together for the common object of improving their native city. They do not knock at the doors of the Treasury to beg for eleemosynary aid. They ask but for a portion of their own. They say that the Irish Parliament did its duty in this respect, and they expect that the Imperial Parliament will undertake the duties of the body to whose privileges it has succeeded.
It needs no argument to prove the inconvenience and danger of the present structure. One need only stand for five minutes on the bridge to be aware of the enormous traffic which passes over it, and the hair-breath escapes which constantly occur. The bridge was built 70 years ago on the old plans, when a flat bridge was supposed to be an unnatural thing. It was constructed for a population less than one-half the present population of Dublin, and for a traffic less than one-tenth of the present traffic of the city. The suburbs, now so thickly inhabited, did not then exist. The bridge was a handsome and capacious erection for the time when it was constructed. It is condemned now unanimously by the voices both of citizens and strangers. We commend the determination of the committee insisting upon the erection of a fine flat bridge the entire width of Westmoreland Street, so that he who stands at the College may have an unbroken view on to the Rotundo through the most magnificent esplanade in Europe.
This city pays £200,000 in the shape of local taxation this year. The rates amount to 8s. 2d. in the pound. We say that Parliament is bound, both by justice and by precedent, to build the bridge out of the Consolidated Fund. By justice, because it is heir to the duties of the Irish Parliament, and because on the average of 10 years £50,000 a year has been drawn from this country, every shilling of which ought to be expended in it. Dublin is the only city in the British Empire taxed for the maintenance of its police.
The Imperial Parliament is bound by precedent also. London is the wealthiest city in the world. It has the privilege of spending its local rates upon public improvements.
Yet, whenever a bridge is to be built in London, Parliament readily supplies the funds. Within the last three years £260,000 have been granted for the re-erection of Westminster Bridge alone! It is very well to say that the bridge of Westminster is a national erection, provided it be allowed that Carlisle Bridge is a national object to us. We do not see why revenue should be drained out of Ireland with all the scrupulousness of a needy absentee landlord, to erect bridges at Westminster, while we cannot recover our own money for the removal of an edifice unsightly, inconvenient, and dangerous.