The Press. — London, England, 1856-08-09 00:00:00

AUGUST 9, 1856. tuurt aut jastion. Her Majesty the Queen and the Royal Family still continue at Osborne. The departure of the Court for Balmoral is fixed for the 28th inst. Prince Alfred spent his birthday on Wednesday at Osborne•house. The Prince returned to the Lodge pt Windsor on Thursday. The Duchess of Kent returned to town from Os borne on Wednesday. The Duchess of Gloucester has been ill during the week. Her Royal Highness was better yes terday. Her Serene Highness the Princess Amelie of Hohenlohe arrived at Clarence•house, St. James's, on Thursday, from the Continent, on a visit to her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent. Viscount Palmerston has left town, accompanied by Viscountess Palmerston, to pass a few weeks at her ladyship'. seat, Brocket•hall, Herts. The Earl of Westmorland, who went to Brussels on a mission from her Majesty, to congratulate the King of the Belgians on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ascension of the throne of Belgium, returned to town on Saturday, accompanied by Mr. H. D. Wolff, of the Foreign office. The Right Hon. B. Disraeli, and Mrs. Disraeli, have left Grosvenor-gate for the Continent. The Earl of Derby has been detained in town from a severe attack of gout. ralitttal. THE MASTERS AND OPERATIVES SELECT COMMITTEE'S report upon the expediency of establishing equitable tribunals for the amicable adjustment of differences between masters and workmen has appeared. The committee propose to establish in the various manu facturing distrilts " Courts of Conciliation," like the " Conseils de Prud'hommes " in France. The com mittee believe that the formation of such courts in this country, more especially in the large commer cial, manufacturing, and mining districts, would be beneficial, and suggest the introduction of such a measure as an amendment in the present Arbitra tion Act, by enabling masters and operatives to choose referees from their own class or calling, equal in number, and presided over by a chairman, unconnected with either party, to be elected by the referees. The tribunal would be appointed to act for a certain period. Those boards of arbitration, on being licensed by the Secretary of State, would have full power to act and decide on all questions of existing contracts. The committee, however, think it would be impossible to give these or any other tribunals any power whatever of forcibly regulating the rate of wages. THE BISHOPS OF LONDON AND DURHAM RETIRE MENT ACT contains a clause to provide for the re tirement of the Bishops of London and Durham to the effect that every bishop who shall succeed to the sees and bishoprics of London and Durham respec tively shall take and hold his see and bishopric, and all the property, patronage, and rights belonging thereto, subject to any provisions respecting any alteration of the limits of the diocese, and any ar rangement consequent thereon, which may be made by or under the authority of Parliament within the space of threa years next after the passing of the act. THE NEW MERCANTILE LAW AMENDMENT ACT has been printed. It will effect considerable alterations in mercantile transactions. The act contains seven teen sections, and enacts that persons acquiring title to goods before they have been seized or attached, under a writ against the seller, are now protected, provided the writ had been unexecuted. It is, how ever, necessary that the consideration for a guarantee should appear in writing. Guarantees to or for a firm are to cease upon a change in the firm, except in special cases. A surety who discharges his liablity is to be entitled to an assignment of all securities held by the creditors. The acceptance of a bill, in• land or foreign, is to be in writing on it, and signed by the acceptor or his agent. With regard to repair of ships, every port within the United Kingom is to be deemed a home port. Actions for merchants' account are limited to six years. Further, it is enacted that absence beyond the seas or imprison ment of a creditor is not to be a disability. Judgment recorded against joint debtors in the kingdom is to be no bar to proceeding against others beyond seas on their return. The Channel Islands are not to be deemed " beyond the seas," nor any part of the United kingdom. An acknowledgment in writing by an agent duly authorised is to have the same effect as if signed by the party. Part payment by one con tractor is not to prevent bar by certain statutes of limitation in favour of another contractor. Rules and regulations, and writs, &c., may be framed for the purposes of the new law, which is not to extend to Scotland. It is now in operation. THE PRESS. RIGGED AND REFORMATORY SCHOOLS will for the future, according to the deckion of the Committee of Council on Education, be granted by the State substantial and permanent aid. The minute by which this resolution is made known to the managers of these institutions provides that no school shall be admissible to aid " unless it be industrial in its character, and unless the scholars be taken exclu sively from the criminal and abandoned classes." These conditions being complied with, the council J. To pay half of the rent. 2. To pay one-third of the annual cost of tools and of raw material for labour. 3. To make grants towards the cost of books, maps, and appa ratus upon the same terms as to other schools. 4. To pay 351. to the treasurers of any reformatory in respect of every person qualified to teach who shall hue been boarded, lodged, and trained as a master for a year in the institution, and holding certificates of merit frout her Majesty's inspectors of schools. 5. To grant half of the salary paid to the teacher, and half of his assistant's salary ; no teacher to have more than twenty-five scholars for the master, and between twenty-five and fifty for each assistant. 6. To grant as capitation on every child (according to the number in average attendance during the year preceding the annual inspection) who is not paid for by the Lords Commissi•mers of the Treasury uuder the act the 17th and 18th of Victoria, chap. 86, the sum of 535. per annum, provided that such child be fed at the school. Reformatories and ragged schools coming within the operation of this act are to be under the special in spection of her Majesty's inspectors of schools. The instructions to the inspectors are very minute. On the subject of appointing teachers, the minute of instructions says, "You will observe that the Government leaves the choice of teachers absolutely to the managers, interposing no test whatever except the inspectors' annual reports upon certain specified points." As regards the standard of education, it is provided that the literary ability of a teacher may be regarded as sufficient if the inspector is satisfied that the boys under his charge learn to read, write, and cipher in such a manner as to acquire a practical command of those arts in earning their bread and making their way in the world. As to religious knowledge, the inspectors are " enjoined to ascertain that the doctrines and maxims of Christianity are taught in such a manner as Gi be likely to become motives and rules of conduct;" and in respect of practical duties in the workshop, the inspectors are instructed to see that the work of industrial schools is really properly done You are to bear in mind (says the council), that no oral delivery of moral lessons can be so effective as that which results from daily practice. Yon will not, therefore, allow any general professions to weigh against the evidence which a school or workshop may present in itself of a want of order, obedience, and cleanliness. A disobedient, dirty, ill-conditioned lad " is not to be talked out of •hose habits," but can only be cured by being obliged to live in daily and hourly contact with the practical opposites of them. alttrapalitan. A RAHWAY DIRECTOR, writing to the Times this week upon the subject of railway accidents, insists upon the superiority of the " affirmative over the "negative" system of signals. For instance, he would have the clearness and safety of the toads affirmed at every station as the train passed, and not negatived, as it is now, in case of danger. The superiority of this simple change is apparent, because the then permanent condition of the self acting semaphore day and night would be " Danger," and in case of neglect on the part of the signalman an arriving train would of course be stopped ; whereas under the existing system the permanent signal on the sema phore is "All safe," and the slightest neglect or forgetfulness on the part of the signalman in cases of danger or obstruction is followed, as at Church Fenton last week, with the most disastrous conse quences. The mechanical alteration in the sem_ phorea could be effected at a mere cost of five shillings each ; and the system appears so simple and efficacious that it is surprising railway com panies have not adopted it. FORTY-FOUR LETTERS OF THE POET COWPER, of which number twenty one were unpublished, being part of the correspondence of the poet with his cherished friend Mr. Samuel Rose, were sold by auction last week by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson. These interesting letters were sold singly at prices ranging from two guineas to ten pounds fifteen shillings, at which latter price the letter (published) mentioning Cowper having written some verses to assist the anti-slavery cause, was knocked down. A MIDDLE AGED MAN, last Saturday morning, walked into a barber's shop—Mr. Rose, SL Andrew's bill, City—and asked to be shaved. The barber was busy. The stranger said it did not matter—he would shave himself ; and, taking up a razor, went to a corner of the room where there was a stand con taining a basin, and with one desperate cut nearly severed his head from his body. The corpse was Iremoved to the dead-house, Holliday-yard, to await a coroner's inquest. 751 Two PERSONS have been drowned in the Serpen tine this week while bathing—one Jones, a grocer of Westminster, and Foy, a marble polisher. An inquest was held on Wednesday, and a verditt returned accordingly. Owing to the great danger to persons bathing from the north bank, Sir Richard Mayne and the police and park-keepers have received orders to prevent any one from entering the water on that side of the Serpentine. THE ODD FELLOWS appear to have behaved at the Crystal Palace, on Monday, in a manner quite appro priate to their name. An " Eye Witness," writing to the Times, gives the following description of their proceedings " after " dinner-- Soon after five the band began, as usual, to play, and played for about half an hour, when it was stopped, and an orator put forth on the part of the society made a long and tedious speech. After this had continued half an hour the band very properly began to play again, when they were assailed with yells and groans and biases, and at length attacked by several of the office-bearers of the society,their conductor being pushed or knocked down. A regular row ensued, several chairs were smashed ; and it is a wonder that none of the valuable instruments were destroyed. Of course no police were to be found; and when one did at length appear ere was evidently afraid to seize any of the guilty persons. Later in the evening several small dancing parties were made up on the grass we are so rigidly forbidden to cross. and one large circ'e, familiarly known to the frequenters of Greenwich Fair by the name of " kiss in the green," continued to wands ise decent ladies till nearly nine o'clock. The scenes in the railway station and carriages to London were perfectly in harmony with the rest of the day's amusements. THE COMMITTEE OF THE NIGHTINGALE FUND have received the sum of 1,000 mejidie (9151. 12s. Bd.) from his Imperial Majesty the Sultan, being the contribution of his Imperial Majesty to the fund. THE PATRIOTIC FUND has just received from the Legislative Council of Victoria a further sum of 20,0001. THE STATUE OF THE LATE LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR C. NAPIER is about to be placed in Trafalgar-square. The site originally fixed upon was the open space between the Athenaeum and the Senior United Ser vice Clubs, but Sir Benjamin Hall has decided in favour of the south-west angle of Trafalgar-square. MR. W. MATINS chairman of the Railway Reform Association, has a ddressed a letter to the chairman of the Great Western Railway Company, earnestly recommending the adoption of the mixed narrow gauge for the last thirty-six miles up to Padding ton : _ _ _ You have (observes Mr. Mains) 228 miles of mixed gauge, 87 of pure narrow, and 33 miles running powers over the Birkenhead, and the whole traffic over these 848 miles of narrow gauge lines cannot be brought to the main point of all your aspirations—viz., the metropolis—without a fatal break of gauge. It is obvious that as you now stand when the narrow gauge traffic is brought to Reading it will be taken off your line, and carried by those on the narrow gauge south of the Thames to the metropolis, thereby inflicting a ruinous loss upon the holders of Great Western stock. But, on the contrary, if you continue the mixed pages to your final terminus, when such prodigious prepa rations have been and are still being wade at great cost, no difficulty existing, as your engineers and officers confi dently aver, in working the mixed gauges, you will be in the advantageous potation of accommodating the stream of traffic brought by your broad gauge system from South Wales and the South• Western, and the narrow guage from the North-Western. All the narrow guage lines joining your system would immediately become tributaries, which is now impossible, and your North Wales coal, on which you rely so mach, would be brought by one plant instead of two to the metropolis. In its present position it is im possible for the Great Western to prosper. Either the broad gauge:roust be comple►e over all the lines which you own, lease, or guarantee, or all the traffic on the narrow must be brought to the terminus to which of all others you aim, and desire to bring it—viz., the metropolis—without break of gauge, since that break of gauge renders absolutely necessary a double plant and staff, loss of time, loss of money, and all those incidental disadvantages which render commercial prosperity impossible. The cost of the alteration Mr. "klalins estimates at 100,0001. THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S CIVIL SERVICE Ex- AMINATION, for July, 1856, includes the following names as successful candidates :—Mr. Sweeting, St. John's College, Cambridge, 2,845 marks ; Mr. Bou't, London University, 2,670 marks ; Mr. Young, London University, 2,511 marks; Mr. Quinton, Trinity Col lege, Dublin, 2,272 marks; Mr. Charles Robertson, Marischal College, Aberdeen, 2,213 marks ; Mr. Wal ton, Pembroke College, Cambridge, 2,191 marks ; Mr. Oldham, Trinity College, Dublin, 2,162 marks; Mr. Terrell, Emanuel College, Cambridge, 2,135 marks; Mr. Edward S. Robertson, Trinity College, Dublin, 2,077 marks ; Mr. Newnham, Balliol Col lege, Oxford, 2.065 marks ; Mr. Wyllie, Trinity Col lege, Oxford, 2,055 marks ; Mr. Wcrthington, St. John's College. Cambridge, 2,005 marks ; Mr. Worgan, Cheltenham College, 1,998 marks; Mr. Elliott, Tri nity College, Cambridge, 1,967 marks ; Mr. Wall, Queen's College, Cork, 1,955 marks; Mr. Falcon, Queen's College, Oxford, 1,882 marks ; Mr. Smith, Marischal College, Aberdeen, 1,860 marks ; Mr. Tay lor, Magdalen College, Cambridge, 1,835 marks; Mr. Richey, Exeter College, Oxford, 1,796 marks ; Mr. Carson, Trinity College, Dublin, 1,736 marks.