The Press. — London, England, 1853-08-06 00:00:00

AUGUST 6, 1853. the internal currency of those possessions, will be absolutely nugatory and nil, as regards their trade with the East India Company's territories, so long as the system which has been abolished in our Eastern colonies is tolerated without alteration there. What relief will it be to Australia to draw her supplies from Madras or Calcutta if she can only pay for them in a metal which she cannot command, whilst her own boundless supplies of gold are rejected as a legal tender? Or what benefit will Mauritius and Ceylon derive from an arrangement the object of which is to facilitate the circulation of gold in these islands, whilst they are still to remain under the compulsion to pay for their supplies of labour and rice in the costly rupees of the East India Company? So obvious is the evil of the present system, so urgent the necessity of doing justice to the commerce of Great Britain and our colonies by its redress, that, whatever may be the im policy of delay, we repeat our conviction that the proposal of Mr. DISRAELI fin• making gold a legal tender in India is one whose ultimate adoption is inevitable. The measure now in progress for reconstructing the Government of India seems to present an opportunity in every respect suitable for conducing to this change; and, should it be neglected by her Alajesty's Ministers, Parliament cannot fail to be early urged by the country to take the necessary steps for correcting the omission. DEFACING THE COIN. Ma. FITZROY'S very successful piece of legisla tion on the cab question bids fair to be ri valled by the proposed Govemment bill for preventing the defacing of the Queen's coin. The offence complained of is, in the present case, not a political, but a commercial, one. The English people are not naturally prone to treat with disrespect anything that has the sign of royalty about it. The Queen's head, therefore, whether on postage-stamp or penny piece, is with us as safe from insult as the Queen's person. We have, thank Heaven ! no rival dynasties whose disappointed ad herents think it worth their while to exaggerate the royal nose, or shorten the royal forehead, or indulge in any of those tricks with the effigies of the Executive which disturb the repose of Ministers and Prefects across the Channel. But we are a trading people—a nation of political economists—who claim the right to avail ourselves of whatever our indi vidual ingenuity may devise for our own material benefit. In pursuance of this noble principle, certain cunning persons have dis covered that the coin of the realm, circulating among all classes throughout the length and breadth of the land, affords an advantageous vehicle for advertising their wares to the world. From an historical view of our own experience, we suspect that one RomssoN, a provincial cutler, was the first who had the keenness to discover this expedient, and, by the simple stamping of his name, profession, and address on heavy penny-pieces of the last century, elliptically to induce mankind to send to him for their knives and razors. We pre sume that he has since made a fortune, and set up in business as a scientific farmer. We can imagine Romssos (who was, we pre sume, an exparte Free•trader) learnedly demon strating that no check ought to be applied to his advertising propensities, beyond the natural one arising from the deterioration (if any) in the exchangeable value of the coins in ques tion. The cutler has had many imitators ; insomuch that, if any one dips his hand at random into a heap of coppers, he will pro bably find at least one coin there with some body's name and address, or somebody's inquiry whether you have read some magazine or newspaper, indelibly engraved upon both sides. This is the nuisance which—allowed to flourish under all previous Ministries from the time of ROBINSON downwards—is now pro• posed to be remedied by Mr. GLADSTONE'S Let us see how this is to be done. The bill is especially directed against this system of advertising. It is proposed (for we leave out of the question already existing acts confess- THE PRESS. edly in abeyance) that any person defacing any of the Queen's current coin shall be held to be guilty of a misdemeanour, and shall be liable to tine or imprisonment, or tine and imprisonmont, at the discretion of the court. This is reasonable ; and, considering that every offender must necessarily proclaim his or his employer's Millie and address to the world, we should have thought quite sufficient to check the practices referred to. But the penal clause in the bill, which declares that any person uttering or tendering coin so stamped shall, on summary conviction before two jus tices, incur a penalty of 405., renders valueless (except as old metal) the entire amount. of defaced coin at present in circulation—a loss which will be felt the most severely by the poorer classes, this method of advertising being in great part confined to the copper coinage. It will, indeed, behove us all t 4 be watchful. Copper screwed up in paper for delicate hands must especially be viewed with suspicion. " Examine your change" will be an admoni tion not to be disregarded, for otherwise the receiver who, in a dark night, unconsciously tenders a defaced coin, may find himself some fine morning at the" nearest police office " ris-a-ris to his cabman, the question at issue for him being a penalty of forty shillings, and for others the vindication of the sage vigilance of Mr. GLADSTONE. OTTOMAN SQUADRON OF THE BOSPHORUS. WE have just received the following 'wilt'''. lurs, important at this moment, respecting the present state of the Turkish fleet, which is described to us as being, generally speaking, in capital order, and animated with the best spirit. We can vouch for the authenticity of the information we give, in all its details, ex eepting as to the names of sonic of the Turkish vessels, which we are doubtful whether we have rendered quite correctly : IN BuYI•B SEUVAN : Navik i bakri 54 guns.. 500 men Mirate safer Fartli flak Messed Ferak IN BrYuxDERE BAY : Faizi Marbout Mahmondieh 124 " ..1220 " Mookbiri sourour (s.) 20 " " ..550 h.p. Mezhoudiek llB " —ll4O " Nesimi safer Peiki Messerit Shee all i bakri 54 " 500 " Nuzretiek Kaidi safer 4O " .. 450 " AT ANADOLU K.tvAtc: Avni ilak 'lO " 350 " Sheaf numar CRUISING IN THE OFFING : sefiL 2O " .. 150 " INSIDE THE BANKS: Gni refls 22 " INO I)jai ferah OFF SEIXE 13OUROITS Nizamieh Nedjat i fer Netball feshan AT BESRIK TANI : Sttragh a bakri 22 " 150 " Fetid Latent STEAMERE (PADDLE): Metbitlieh Ja'eef Faizi bakri Saiki rhatle Esseri Dgedit lireghli Tair bakri Messeri bakri Several small steamers, from 40 h.p. to 100 h.p. FITTING OUT AT THE ARSENAL : Meneilouieh Sourieh With the exception of the guns on some of the upper decks, the line-of-battle ships and frigates' armaments are chiefly composed of guns of 2- pounder calibre and above. Excepting the " Falai marbout," the corvettes and brigs are feebly armed in respect of calibre and quality of guiw. 315 We have not received such precise details respecting the state of the Turkish land forces, but the following. we are informed, are sub stantially to be relied on :—Sixty thousand men, regulars and Redif (Landwehrl, are as sembling in the fortresses on the line of the Danube. and at Saturnia and Varna and ten thousand irregular Albanians are marching to occupy the ►asses of the Balkan. All these are under the (!onnuantl of OMEn l'AgnA, Croatian by birth, a renegade, who ran away from the Austrian army twenty-five years ago. He is the only general in Turkey. He has been successful in civil war with the Kurds and the Albanians, but has never had regular troops opposed to him. Ho has the merit. of looking well after his men, by whom he is much beloved. In Asia forty thousand men are being assembled, in the direction of Kars. The weak points of the Turkish army are want of good officers and the absence of a commissariat. In the capital there are about twenty-five thousand men. THE DISSOLUTION OF "A SOLUTION OF THE TURKISH. QUESTION." Fiona a letter in reply to our correspondent Damien, which we are unable to insert, at length, the writer, whose views are more in unison with Our own, after deprecating the proposal " to carve up the Sultan's territory like a rook-pie," observes as follows on the pr o posed surrender of Constantinople to tho Grand Duke Constantine : " Let Constantinople he but once in the powerful clutch of the great Alai° Bear, and where, W wee ask, is the power or powers that shall wrest it out of that iron grapple? Constantinople in the grasp of Russia, the Sea of Azov and the Euxine would im mediately be rendered unassailable enormous Rua sian harbours, where an immense navy might, and no doubt would, be collected, which beti►re many years should have elapsed would not only command the whole Mediterranean, but defy the collective fleets of the world. The resources of Russia would then become inexhaustible; the way to the East would be ready paved for her; India would soon be hers; nor could any single power, or any two powers, successfully cope with her. Round the whole globe no position for the occupation of a naval empire is presented at all comparable to that of Constanti nople, with the possession of the Sea of Azov and the Euxine. And who can question that the mind of the Czar is prompt to perceive, as well as capable to make due avail of, such advantages? And let me ask, not Lime*xus, but the British public, if the Ministers of these realms who should connive at such a seizure, nay, who should not oppose such a seizure, on the part of Russia, with all their milted energies, and with the whole force which Britain might be willing to place at their disposal, would not be guilty of the deepest treachery and the highest treason against their country ? " I remain, sir, your obedient servant, " Aug. 1, 1553. " ANTI-LIDANIUS." THE OSINIBII4 INTEREsT" AND THE HAckNET CARRIAtiE At:T.—The metropolitan ointlibuti proprie tors have petitioned for an amendment of tile new Hackney Carriages Act. They ask tor a right of appeal against the decisions of police magistrates, and they put birth the case of Phillips, the cabman con demned by Mr. Henry, as a just►fication of their de mand. But the very notoriety of that ease argues for its having been exceptional : and an individual case of hardship scarcely afibrds ground for th• abrogation of a general law. The petitioners also urge that whereas the six thousand persons em ployed by them, and "the many thousand persons in the London cab trade," are left without an appeal, the Dublin Carriages Act grants such appeal ; and, in a placard emanating from the same source, the out goings of the London omnibus proprietors are assessed at something like a million a year in wages and keep of horses, while the Dublin ditto are set down as nit. Not only is the last assumption untrue, Dublin being provided with certain regular lines of omni buses, but we can intbrm the London malcontents that the service in Dublin is distinguished by the superior accommodation tbr the public and the exem plary civility of the employed persons. It may not he strictly logical that an appeal should lie in the one case and not in the other; but sense says that where an "interest" is on its own showing so powerful, and where experience recall such re cords of successful evasion or defiance of the law, what the public require is a summary and effectual cheek on abuses that had become intolerable, from the uselessness of individual struggles against organ ised impunity. The more the petitioners have dis played their strength, in numbers and wealth, by comparison with their Dublin compeers, the less is the weight of a plea in support of which weakness would be the best argument. I common