The Press. — London, England, 1857-10-24 00:00:00

4 Language, Literature, Geography, and History of 5. Vitto, ditto, ditto, of Germany .. „ 750 The examination iu French and German will be both written and viva voce. - _ _ 6. Experimental Sciences—i.e., Chymistry, Heat, Elec. tricky, including Magnetism „ „ 1 , 00 0 T. Natural Sciences, Mineralogy, and Geology 750 Drawiug—i e., Elementary Geometrical Drawing, in cluding the use of Drawing Distruineuta, and either Machinery, Architectural, Engineering, or Landscape - - IV. No candidate will be allowed to be examined in more than five subjects, of which one must be mathe- matics ; and no one who does not obtain at least 1,000 marks in mathematics, of which at least 700 must be in pure mathema'ics, will be eligible for au appointment.• From the other subjects of examination each candidate may select any, not exceeding four in number, in which he desires to be examined ; but no one will be allowed to count the marks gained in any such subject unless those marks shall at least amount to one-sixth of the total number of marks allotted to that subject. Any candidate who shall not select French and geo metrical drawing among the subjects of examination will be required to satisfy the examiners that he has such knowledge at least of the elements of those two subjects as shall afford reasonable expectation that he will perfect himself in both during his residence at the academy. V. No candidate will be admitted into the Royal Military Academy unless he obtain an aggregate of 3,000 marks at least. VI. The following papers will he required to be trans. rained by each gentleman to the \Var•otlice before the Ist of January, with his application to be noted as a candidate, unless he shall notify that he has been a candidate at a previous examination, in which case the statement of sub- jects only need accompany the application :- 1. An extract from the register of his baptism, or in default of that a certificate verified by affidavit. tl. A certificate of good moral character, signed by a clergyman of the parish to which he belongs, and by the tutor or head of the school or college at which he has received his education for at least two years ; or such other proof of good moral character as will be satisfactory to the Secretary of State. :3. A statement of the subjects of examination in which (in addition to mathematics) he may desire to be examined. _ VII. All candidates will be required to present them selves at the place of examination. hereafter to be deter mined, in order to be inspected by military surgeons, tb it it may be ascertained that they are free from any bodily defects or ailments calculated to interfere with the per formance of military duties. Notice will be given a month previously in the public papers of the place and days appointed for holding the examination. B. HAWES. N.B.—No more direct appointments will be made to the provisional commissions in the Royal Artillery. WEST KENT AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. TIIE annual meeting of this society was held at Bromley last week, under the presidency of Colonel Cator, supported by Mr. George Norman, Mr. Caird, M.P., Mr. Wilkinson, late M.P. for Lambeth, and the leading gentry of the neighbourhood. After the usual proceedings in the held, the members and their friends dined together, Colonel Cator in the chair. In proposing "The House of Commons," the CHAIRMAN coupled with it the name of Mr. Caird, a member of that house and a distinguished agricul turist. Mr. CaruD, M.P., who was received with much cheering, in acknowledging the toast, referred in the course of his speech to the rebellion in India : There were two things connected with this outbreak which were wonderful indeed. First, the utter unpre paredness of the Indian Government for a blow that must have been long in contemplation ; and secondly, the heroic constancy and courage of a small body of English men, scattered by handfuls over a line of 1;200 miles in length, surrounded, not by an open enemy, but by tens of thousands of mutinous soldiers, whom they had been taught to look upon as their comrades in arms. If we lost some of our ancient prestige by taking only the second part in the campaign in the Crimea, England had in India reasserted her position by the calm heroism of her Anglo- Saxon sons, not picked men, but ordinary Englishmen. It was dreadful to think of the atrocities that had been committed, and the fearful retribution which must follow, but truly it needed some such sum rebuke to rouse Eng land to inquiry and exertion. What did the people or Parliament of England know of India? Literally nothing. We had treated it as an outlying farm, which, if it left no great profit to ourselves, yet gave profitable employment and wealth to some junior members of the family who were sent out to manage it. But the welfare of Itto,otX),oo of people was not so to be treated. For the talent we had received we were now called to render an account, and if we had hid it in the ground, actuated by uo higher motives than halfyearly dividends, the time seemed to have come when it must be taken from the hand that had failed to use it with advantage, and be intrusted to better keeping. For 100 years we had borne sway over the richest territory in the world, and bad been conten'ed not only to witness but to encourage the grossest idolatry and superstition, without in all that time impressing upon the native popu lation a rarticle of the spirit of our religion or our pun• ciples of truth, justice, and humanity. It was but a year e N.B.—The examination in Arithmetic, Algebra, Plane Geometry, Logarithms, and Plane Trigonometry will be close and aearching. 'F RE PRE SS, OCTOBER 24,1857. ago that the Government in India admitted the truth of the statements in a memorial presented to them, which alleged that the rural population of Bengal, many millions of people, were suffering from a native magistracy who were corrupt, oppressive, and incompetent, who encou raged the concealment and commission of crime, while the people were reduced to beggary and pitiable servitude. The time had not come, nor was this the place, for dis cussing our future Indian policy; but the light was now bursting in, and the people of England would not permit its fair fame to be tarnished by the continuance of a policy which bore no better fruits than these. We must have due precedence given in our Indian empire to Eng lish ideas, language, and religion, not intolerant of the religion of others so long as it was not offensive to morals, but giving no public countenance or encouragement to idolatry, and selecting for special reward in the service of the State those, whether natives or English, who best approved themselves our friends by similarity of religion, language, and spirit. He begged to offer one word in conclusion on the vengeance to be taken on the ruthless murderers of English women and children. There was surely no need to encourage such a spirit. Tt might be safely left in the hands of those who were on the spot, who could best appreciate the crime and mete out its punish. ment. He had no fear but that the generous and merciful character of the English soldier would at the proper time temper justice with mercy. An interesting discussion followed, in which the chairman, Mr. Norman, and Mr. Caird, M.P., took part, on the relative expense of farm labour in Eng land and Scotland, and the condition of the agricul tural labourer in the two countries. Mr. Norman, who had lately visited a border county and had specially investigated this subject, contended that the lower wages of labour in Scotland and the mode in which they were paid in kind enabled the farmer, at the expense of the labourer, to pay a higher rent for his land. He deprecated such a system, and should not wish to see it introduced into this country. Mr. Caird, on the other hand, showed, by taking Mr. Norman's figures, that at the prices of the last three years the payment of the Scotch labourer in kind gave him a much greater supply of the comforts and necessaries of life than could be procured by the money wages of the English labourer, who had to pay out of his wages a weekly house rent, while the Scotch farm labourer lived rent free. He also pointed to the fact that such a thing as an agricul tural labourer seeking parish relief was unknown in Scotland, while here they gave prizes to the labourer who could bring up his family without parish aid. He agreed with Mr. Norman that a certain expendi ture on labour was more productive on a Scotch than an English farm, and thus left a larger balance for rent. But that arose from the individual labourer being better fed, better educated, and thus more intelligent, while his labour was more economically and effectively applied on farms laid out with a spe cial referenze to the production of crops. THE LAST SAVED FROM THE CENTRAL AMERICA.— After a lapse of sixteen days since the first party of those saved from the Central America were landed at Norfolk from the gallant little brig Marine, and when every hope of seeing any more of the unfortu nate passengers and crew of the lost steamer had been almost extinguished, three more have returned to their homes. After enduring the most terrible suf ferings on the open sea for nine days—they were with out food or water—drenched with the waves, exhausted from exposure and reduced to skeletons from starvation, they were mercifully snatched from death in the darkest hour of despair. The account of their long agony is harrowing. One of them, Mr. Tice, the second engineer, was drifting on a plank for seventy-two hours, when, espying one of the damaged lifeboats, he fortunately succeeded in reaching her, and soon after fell in with the other two, Grant and Dawson, clinging to the hurricane deck of the steamer, and took them off. There is a sad episode in the story of these two men. It appears that at one time there were twelve in all on the hurricane deck, of whom ten perished miserably from exposure and star vation a slow, lingering, and painful death. While drifting about at the mercy of the paves they saw several others clinging to portions of the wreck, but were unable to aid them ; and, as there is no account of any of them having been taken off by any other vessel, the painful con clusion is forced upon us that they are lost—that we shall never hear more of the brave Herndon end the hundreds of unfortunates who went down with him on the deck of the Central America. It is a remark able fact that the men last rescued had drifted on their frail support nearly 600 miles from the spot where the steamer sunk before they were picked up —a dreary voyage, the terrors of which, with a pro tracted and agonising death staring them in the face, no one but themselves can realise. There are few 4i; instances, if any on record of men enduring so much front the disaste f shipwreck, yet coming so bravely through it. Thou h there is little cause for hope that any more will be or have been saved, still there is a bare possibility that some of those seen clinging to the captain's cabin or the wheel-house may have been picked up by some vessel not yet heard from. We sincely trust, though we hardly dare \lope i that it may be so.—New York Herald. 1045 Doug glarkt anb gttg ]itttiligentr. FRIDAY EVENING. THE return of the Bank of England for the week ending the 17th inst. shows the following changes compared with that for the week preced ing : Increase in Circulation Decrease in Public Deposits Increase in Other Deposits Decrease in Public Securities Decrease in Other Securities Decrease in Bullion 599,409 Decrease in Rest Decrease in Reserve 778,600 Bullion in Both Departments Circulation, including Bank Post Bills 21,052,315 The most important points in this comparison are the falling off in the Bullion and in the Reserve. By the diminution in the former the stock is reduced to little more than nine and a half millions, and by that in the latter the notes have fallen to 3,217,000/. The Bank's resources, therefore, are evidently weaker than they have been for a long time past, although with a view to sustain the Reserve a con siderable amount of securities were sold. As to the Bullien,the falling off is the more important inasmuch as there are no stocks of gold in the market, while the demand from the Continent and the United States is very active. Under these circumstances it may be doubted whether further measures may not he required to protect the remaining stock from further reduction. rhe decrease in the Public Deposits is owing to the payment of the dividends ; and the reduced amount of Rest is caused by the payment of the Bank dividend to the proprietors, Out of these items the Private Deposits have been temporarily increased. The contingency of a further advance in the rates of discount, of which we spoke in our last, has been realised—not in London only, but in the chief com mercial cities of Europe. The Bank Directors, late in the afternoon of Monday, after giving full con sideration to the American advices received bv the Arid and the Canada, advanced the rate from seven per cent., at which it was fixed only the Monday previous, to eight per cent., thus making a rise of two and a half per cent. within a period of ten days—a circumstance without parallel in financial history. The next day the Bank of France advanced from six and a half to seven and a half per cent., and the charge at Hamburg was raised to nine and a half per cent. The Bank of Belgium advanced its rate to-day from four and a half to five and a half per cent. These rates are the highest known in modern times. As far as we are concerned, the enhanced terms are solely due to the state of things in the United States. If matters go worse there, as is probable, we may expect a nine or even a ten per cent. rate; if they mend, as we can scarcely expect they will very speedily, eight per cent. may be found adequate to the emergency. On these points great anxiety is naturally felt, and the advices by the Atlantic, which is due at Liverpool to-morrow, are looked for with an intense degree of interest. The movements of specie during the week have been important. The arrivals, part ly from Australia and partly from South America, have amounted to about 300,0001.; the exports to no less than 1,033,9211. Of this sum, 778,7681. has gone to India and China, and 225,156/. to the United States. Out of the stocks inthand and the sums arrived, about 128,0001. has been obtained by the Bank; but, on the other hand, it has parted with nearly an equal amount for the Continent, from whence the demand is heavy. We are also drawing thence large amounts of silver for transmission to the East. Owing to the advance in the rate of interest, the Continental Exchanges are still in our favour, but they are not very firm. Consols left off last Friday at 881 to ; on Mon day the advanced price of money caused them to fall as low as Eri, but afterwards, owing to the in vestments of the public and the good supply of money in the " house," they gradually improved, until yesterday they closed at 89 exactly. To-day they opened and closed at 881 to 89 for account, and at self to j for money. The East India Company gave notice on Wednes day of a further rise of tour per cent. in their rate for bills on India. On Bengal and Madras it is now 2s. 2d. and on Bombay 2s. 21d. per rupee. These terms will totally preclude all applications for bills, and so far the financial resources of the local Go vernments will be protected. The movement is an unquestionable sign that those resources are falling, and it will stimulate the export of silver. The Trade Reports froui the provinces are very unfavourable. It is feared that employment will be scarce during the winter, as the resumption of short time in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire has become almost imperative. „amid