The Press. — London, England, 1856-11-08 00:00:00

1076 him, and an hour or so afterwards saw them all safely in Newburgh. Next day M'Knight (the officer) and Charpentier crossed the river in a row boat, Charpentier still handcuffed. The same night he was handed over to the authorities at New York, and safely lodged in the city gaol. Another transaction in the same case presents some mysterious features. M. Emmanuel Tis. sandier, of the Northern Railroad Company of France, appeared before one of the New York judges the day after Charpentier's capture, and prayed for a warrant to search a certain house in New York. M. Tissandier's suspicions were aroused, it is said, by the following anonym ;us communication, sent to one of the parties interested : In the second storey of tenementliouse No. 197, West Sixteenth-street, front room, lives Frederick Couvet, house carpenter. In the sub cellar of said house, where fuel is kept, and which is divided into wood rooms to accommo date four or five families who live there, in the woodhouse apportioned to said Couvet there have recently been re ceived two tons of coal. The coal must be removed. U oiler the coal is three inches of sawdust or earth. Be• tween the coal and paving of the cellar, under the flagging of brick or stone, whatever the cellar is paved with, is a small wooden box, of about a foot square, inclosing a tin box, which is soldered, containing the valuables. The officers, on searching the house, found the box precisely as stated in the above, much to the asto nishment of the people living in the house, who did not dream that so rich a treasure was lying concealed on their premises. It was very heavy—suggesting gold coin and valuables : but they took it to the police court unopened, where it was handed over in the same condition to the agent of Mr. Belmont. CONFESSIONS OF A FILLIBUSTER. (From El Nicaraguense, Sept. 20th.) AT five o'clock on the evening of Friday, the 10th inst., Second Lieutenant Jennings Estelle suffered the extreme penalty of the law by being shot on the Plaza for the murder of Second Lieutenant Charles Gordon, in the guardhouse in the city of Granada, while acting as officer of the guard. Estelle had been previously arrested for shooting Thomas Edwards, and was, when he committed the unfortunate act for which he suffered death, a pri• goner confined to his quarters. He had a fair and impartial trial, and the gentlemen who sat in judg ment upon him gave him every opportunity to estab lish a defence, but in this he utterly failed. The deed was committed without any provocation or without any aggravating circumstance. He was sentenced to be hung, but the Commander-in-Chief caused it to be so far mitigated as to allow him to be shot. There was a large concourse gathered to witness the execution. Estelle walked with a firm step by the side of a rev. father of the Church, who prayed with him and for him from the guardhouse to the place of execution. When he arrived at the spot where he was to breathe his last, he requested that his hands might be untied, as he wished to address the crowd. This request being granted, he spoke in a firm, unfaltering voice. In his speech he asked forgiveness of the officers and soldiers of the Nicaraguan army. Voices responded from the crowd, " God forgive you!" While in prison he wrote the following address, which he requested to have publish"d Granada, Sept. 15, 1858. These a e the dying declarations of Jennings Estelle : I was born in Marshall, Tennessee, in the year 1833, and was raised from my infancy in Hinds County, Missis sippi. I started to California in 1852. On the road i had a " difficulty " with a man of the name of Howard, and shot him. I afterwards shot a loan of the name of Hays, bit the wound did not Iv - ippon to prove fatal. In the s true year I had a " difficulty" with Charles Robinson, •id stabbed him in three places. My last two " difficul ties" while in California occurred at the State prison, where I had been employed for the last two years. After getting in the last scrape, I came to Nicaragua and sht,t, Thomas Edwards. I afterwards shot Charles Gordon. I must say that in all my " difficulties" I was not once in my right mind. Twice I had been forgiven, and hope to he forgiven for them all. I think there is a God in heaven that will and can forgive, and He knows, and I know, that it was not I that killed Charles Gordon. It was whisky and my crazy mind that did it. I say that I was not in my right mind when I did the deed, and God knows it. For4t‘e me, officers and soldiers, and I can die a happy man. THE LATE LORD SCARBOROUGH has, it appears, constituted his cousin and successor to the title, Richard George Lumley, Esq. of Tickhill Castle, his hi ir, and the new earl will have the estate at Sand heck, the Lumley property in Lincolnshire, and the fan ily castle and estates in Durham. THE SOLICITORS TO EARL TALBOT have addressed a circular to the tenantry of the Shrewsbury estates, calling upon them to pay all rents which have ac. crued since the death of the Earl of Shrewsbury, or which were current at his death, to the solicitors of Earl Talbot, and offering on the part of the earl and )u son, Lord Ingestre, a full indemnity against THE PRESS. eDrrtspouDtatt. THE "MONITEUR" AND THE ENGLISH PRESS. TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PRESS." Sir, —Dispassionate and thinking men must ap prove, in the main, of your remarks on the Moni teur's recent protest against the intemperate language of a part of the English press. "It is excellent to have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." Irresponsibility to foreign nations would, in a generous mind, insure the exercise of discreet moderation ; but alas ! the anonymous writer in Printing-house-square is above the influ ence of such sentiments ; and so long as this coun try submits to the dictation of every " anonymous" and irresponsible writer who happens to be able to wield his pen glibly, so long must it be content to bear the cost of his mischievous productions, to which it gives full sanction by its voluntary and un complaining support. For many years I, for one, have withdrawn mine ; and T feel persuaded, that if all those who dislike its want of principle, and its reckless courses on so many subjects of highest importance, were to cease to give it countenance, that dangerous organ would at last have to own some degree of responsibility to those by whom it lives, but whom it now wantonly misrepresents.—Yours, faithfully, Nov. 0. T. G. ELECTORAL INEQUALITIES. [Third Letter.] Sir,—The injustice on the aggregate to the coun ties is, that they have only half so many members in proportion to their constituencies as the towns. These constituencies consist of those parties whom the Reformers said were entitled to the franchise and capable of its due exercise; the injustice is therefore clear on their own principles. But the injustice in the aggregate, amounting though it does to the practical disfranchisement of one class for the benefit of another, is as nothing to the injustice when we come to a selection of particular instances. The following is a list of twenty-four towns with their constituencies. Each of these towns returns two members : *Andover, coustituency 227 Leominster, constitueneysl2 Bodmin 382 Ludlow 427 lindport 654 Lymington 232 Chippenham 933 Peterborough 640 Cirencester 431 Poole 532 Cockermouth 300 Richmond 340 Devizes 903 Stamford 541 Dorchester 438 Tamworth 409 Evesham 991 Tewkesbury 407 Hertford 535 Tiverton 480 Huntingdon 390 Totness 930 Knaresborough 252 Wycombe 361 The sum of these twenty-four constituencies is 10,223, and the number (4 members they return is fifty. Now, the constituency of the West Riding is 37,213, returning two members, so that these towns taken in cumulo return in proportion to their constituencies between ninety and a hundred times as many members as the West Riding. Now, we ask any Whig who believes in the possi bility of any other principle of legklation than pitch and toss, to say whether in the reformed system (which we repeat has no right to fall back on prescription as a defence for its anomalies), such a state of things can be continued without stultifying the whole Whig party, their ancestors and succet,sors, from the days of Algernon Sydney, or, if you will, from the days of the first Whig, down to the epoch of history described by Mr. Macaulay's New Zealander. _. . . I am quite aware that inequalities nearly as mon strous exist in the representation of the towns, inter ae. Ido not pretend to tell why Manchester should return only two members, when Honiton—which for our readers' information we may tell them is a town somewhere in England—returns as many ; or why Caine, with a population of 5,000, should return one member equally with Dundee, whose population is 80,000. And were a free and independent elector of Manchester or Dundee to meet a tree and inde pendent elector of Honiton or Caine, I would hold the former quite justified in knocking the latter down as one who robbed him of his birthright. But this is injustice between the members of the same class : what I complain of is the injustice done by one class to another class—the one is an absurdity, an anomaly ; the other is a political disfranchisement of more than one half of the nation. It is a modified system of serfhood; a notable step backwards iu that progress of civilisation which lies hitherto tended to make all citizens equal in the eye of the law. But the extent of the injustice done to the agri• cultural population is not brought out to its full ex tent, either by the aggregate result we have deduced or the particular instances we have c►ted. The Re formers invented another ingenious contrivance for SATUUDAY, bringing the noses of the country p eop l e to the political grindstone. The qualification for a vote in the counties (independent of the 501. tenants-at will, enfranchised by the Marquis of Chandos's these s , with ifor the leading votes a town clause) is a 40s. freehold. Now, th ere are i n all counties a number of villages and sma ll towns con tcaoitiinintyg member inatly ; thesebut voters, freeholders life, are swayed by town instincts, and do nut repre sent the agricultural interest at all. In reality they are in general more radical than the voters in large towns, and, unless influence be brought to bear on them, vote to a man fur the candidate most inimical to the landed interest. Thus it is that several countiee are swamped, and return members who, in. stead of representing the demi-disfranchised class of agriculturists, swell the racks of the representa tives of the shopocracy, and in fluctuating numbers heighten the fixed injustice; so that when a demo cratieal mania comes over the nation, the real county members, arithmetically and inflexibly put to the disadvantage of two to one, find themselves outnum bered in the House by three to one. Thus, by an ingenious contrivance of fixed and fluctuating in justice, democratical measures from time to time are sure to be forced ou a nation against the will of a real majority. So far we have argued the question on the footing of constituencies, and we have fully made out our case ; but let us glance at it in two other points of view, the Democratic and the Conservative. The Democratic view we assume to he representation in proportion to population ; a principle which we be lieve, if it could be practically worked, would be found much more conservative than the present " Beautiful order." Excluding Ireland because my almanac does not give the returns, I find the county population of England, Wales, and Scotland to be 11,441,550, and the town population 8,574,801. Now the eleven million odd are represented by 189 members ; while the eight million odd are represented by 356 members ; and if we assume 350 as the normal number of representa tives for eight millions, the normal number for eleven millions will be 464. Whence it follows that the agricultural population under the Reform system have two-and-a-half times less influence in the Go vernment of this free country than the town popula tion. The Conservative view is that representation should be based on property. We have a want of hccurate statistics on this head, but we be lieve the Whigs will be rather obliged to us if we say roughly that the value of agricultural property in this country is ten times larger than all other species of property in or bdongiog to the country taken en masse. Yet so it is under the Reform Bill, that the parties interested in the tenth part of the wealth of the nation have at least twice the influence on the Government of the country to that possessed by those interested in the other nine tenths. The subject is susceptible of being placed in a great many other lights, the Reform Bill being in reality a kaleidescope of injustice; and if you give rite space for another communication, I will make another attempt to shame the Whigs, as it is only through the honesty of the best of them we can ex pect redress. Meantime my object is to rouse the Conservatives, and incite them to struggle for what they are plainly entitled to, not according to any vague opinion, but according to an equity certified by arithmetic. And to induce them to act energetically, I will tell them the real reason why the Whigs will oppose Conservative Reform ; it is this, that of that 189 members who represent the counties of England and Scotland, 140 are Conservatives, 41 are Whigs, and the balance milk and water.-1 am, sir, Sec., J. A. U. 41oneg glarhti 4itteilignuc. IeItIDAY EVENING. THE return of the Bank of England for the week ending the Ist inst. shows the following changes compared with that for the week preceding : Increase in Circulation .. Increase in Public Deposits Decrease in Other Deposits ........ 131,957 Decrease in Government Securities.. 3.003 Increase in other Securities Decrease in Bullion Increase in Rest Decrease in Reserve Bullion in Both Departments Circulation, including Bank Post 21,4X1,34 8 Bills This comparison shows that the position of the Bank is still retrograding, especially with regard to its stock of Bullion, which is now but about a million and a quarter more than it. was in the memorable week in October, IS-1 7 , when the interposition of the Government was necessary. The reserve of notes is under 3,000,0001., the recovery which took place in the previous week by the running off of securities having been partially lost iu the present. The demand for money upon the Bank appears, from the con . . _ • bre been hi 4 son, Lord Ingestre, a full indemnity against * The majority of representatives returned by these towns 1 uemana tor money upon 0 •••rr --- • I LII ether claims. belong to the Liberal eonnection.—En. atd erable increase in the Private fiecurities, to have Wel •