The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1866-09-18 00:00:00

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

PHTICICLI. rows has been the rough
and ready instrument by which Prussia has won
her present position, it is something to see her
seeking • sort of moral sanction to her late
proceedings. The recent labours of the Prus-
sian Parliament have been almost confined to
legalizing, so to speak, the consequences of the
war, and the unconstitutional sots of their
Government which we now know to have been
part of the preparations long ago made for it.
But the most curious proceeding of the Prue-
elan Legislature has not been their granting an
indemnity for the past, and adopting the
fruits of • policy they formerly condemned.
This is what many legislative assemblies have
dons before them ; but it is not often that a
Parliament is called upon to create • greater
and more important body than itself. 'Yet all
the necessary preliminaries for calling a Ger-
man Parliament together, have been legalised in
an Act pared by the Prussian Legislature, and
the constitution and powers of the new body
have been to a great extent defined by that
which it is virtually about to supersede. Till
this Parliament meets we can have little
news of interest from Germany : but when it
does its earlier proceedings will be watched with
greet attention. To turn from Prussia to her
Fate antagonist, can anybody tell what progress
is being made in the negocistions for peace
between Austria and Italy? For two or three
weeks past we have been assured every other
day that all the preliminaries were arranged,
and that the treaty would be signed in a few
days, but on the morrow a contradiction has
invariably come, asserting that a "difficulty had
arisen." Italians and Auatrians, with their
Machiavellis and Metterniche's, are perhaps the
keenest diplomats on the face of the earth, and
now that Greek has met Greek upon something
like equal terms, the tug of wordy war has
apparently come. But still peace is considered
certain, now that both Austria and Italy have
reduced their armaments. People are begin-
ning to turn their eyes from Western to Eastern
Europe, for it is not an uncemmon opinion that
Turkey is already in estremia. The sick man"
can be bolstered up no longer by his friends.
In addition to the revolt in Epirus, which has
followed upon that in Candia, and to the agita-
tion in the Kingdom of Greece, we have now
another Grua and Maronite conflict. How can
a tottering bankrupt empire stand, with such
convulsions going on in its midst, and which
it is proving itself perfectly unable to suppress

IL-BRIBERY AND CORRCPTION, those fasci-
nating features of the electoral franchise, are
absolutely treated with levity, their disclosures
hailed with laughter, and their telling points re-
capitulated like those of a new and screaming
farce I We cannot imagine what this is for, or
why the Bribery Commissioners should go down
to the country, possessed, apparently, with the
belief that they are commissioned to play a series
of amusing interludes at Lancaster, Yarmouth,
Reigate, and Totnes, in place of performing the
solemn and serious task of unmasking the hideous-
ness of • great national sin. Yet so it is that,
as in some ill-regulated courts of justice, the
least provocation is found to incite • laugh to
relieve the dull sobriety of the procedure, so
likewise, judging from the reports in the papers,
shriek after shriek of laughter would appear to
attend the disgusting, ahamsless, and scandalous
revelations of political venality in the places we
have mentioned. One excuse for this may be
that were these things treated less lightly, many
of the disclosures now heedlessly made, might be
withheld. But if so, much as we condemn the
practices in question, we must say that such a
mode of eliciting the facts is un-English and un-
fair. A policeman who should attempt to ex-
tract from an offender a confession by means of
throwing him off his guard would meet with well-
deserved censure from the first magistrate before
whom he came; and difficult as may be the pro-
cess of inducing bribed voters to make a clean
breast of their iniquities, we certainly think that
unless the same ordeal is reserved for them as
for others, they cannot be awarded • condign
punishment. We chiefly regret then the
miserable levity which attends these investiga-
tions as a sort of indication that the crimes con-
fessed are not to be visited with adequate
penalties. It is entirely counter to the spirit of
our law to require men to criminate themselves
as the bribery witnesses have done; and with
facts so astounding and abundant as those now
in evidence, we, for one, refuse to believe that
these offences could not have been brought home
to the guilty parties without compromise of their
punishment as the price of their confession. And,
by the way, wbat is the punishment going to be I
The please must inevitably be disfranchised ; and
in that view Mr. Alfred Seymour's renunciation
of Totnes in disgust, would simply be a case of
"sour grapes." But in regard to larger places
like Lancaster, the ban could hardly be imposed
for cier. Besides, how are the actual offenders,
bribers and bribed, to be reached 1 That some
example should be made of them, the country
will insist. But how is it to be done when the
wit of man appears bewildered in trying
to prescribe a remedy for even the future
repression of the evil 1 In fact • too facetious
correspondent hints his ability, were bribery
abolished to-morrow, to accomplish the same
object by means of betting on the event—t so or
twenty to one, or any odds to be paid in the event
of a certain candidate winning, so that according
to the "sum he stood to Jose" would be his
chance of success.

11•IlVidr of 1860 would not upon
the whole have been so bad had it not been for
the weather. Originally the yield was reported
one-third below the average. That is the yield,
say of wheat, individually. But then we seldom
remember such a breadth of the cereals having
been sown, and the return in grain would cec.
tainly have been plentiful could the crops have
been favourably secured. Within the last
month we have been over a large section of the
South-Western and Midiand District.; and
although we must say that as we advanced
northwards the appearance of the crop*
improved, never did we see finer harvests than
those were, especially of Oxford, Bedford,
Leicester, and Notts—enhanced as these appear-
ances probably were by the slow progress of the
,%arvest from the sheer scarcity of labour and the
v, sat extent of standing corn. We blame the
ytt iyal Agricultural Society of England very
mu ch for not holding at all events an implement
meo ting this year, as we have invariably found
the upply of reaping machines quite inadequate
to the demand when these shows were held, and
this ye sr we have reason to think it must have
been ' its otherwise. Even if the rain had not
overtake n us, the scarcity of harvest labour and
the defic emel in machinery for want of the
ordinarye, 'imolai of the show yard, were likely
to have 000 k
slotted serious loss from the shaking
of the „ee.e. Timed corn before it could have
been saved. .I.'lnt Mr. Plant,. of. Birmingham,
predicted twent) 'me days' rem m September,
and three-fourths f them dere have been conse-
cutive from the eee. menoement of this month.
Tha prophecy has es.% religiously fulfilled during
the first sixteen days on end, and we may fully
expect the accomplishou
mt of all the rest I
Thus, wheat harn risen at
Ann'
once four shillings a
quarter in Mark-Lane.
the tendency must
still be upward* unless there be an improvement
in the weather, for we observe •ith regret that
much of the harvest remains nneek'ered, and in
outlying spots more especially it ;EOM be so.
'rho farmer delights, perhaps, in goon* Pie",
but no price can compensate for the koe ot Crop.
A low price and an abundant harvest are mOch
more in his favour, because speculators are clia-
oonraged from bringing in core so long as then
is plenty in the country. Not eo when the crop'