The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1863-04-21 00:00:00

DORSET COUNTY EXPRESS

DORCHESTER. TUESDAY. APRIL 21. 1863.

THE FIRST MEETING OF THE
DORCHESTER DISTRICT HIGHWAY
BOARD.
One modern philospber has declared that, in
the earliest stage of develpment, there is very
little difference between a philosopher and a
frog. Another, less cynical but more homourous,
has called the monkey tribe "our poor relatioos."
Many sages have believed in the existence of a
race of men with tail.; others still place
credence in the troglodytes or pigmies, to say
nothing of the suithropophagi and " men whom
heeds do grow beneath their shoulders."
Worthy Sir John Mandeville once declared
that he travelled through a valley which was
" all full of devils." In fact there is no end to
the strange people on whom ethnologist* ham
descanted, or to whose existence travellers make
the strongest asseverations. We have heard
that, even in our own smiling England, thereat..
sections of society so unmotivated, nay, so
brutish, as to be iti the habit of heaving half •
brick at any passing stranger they may see. Some-
where in the North, they say, there isa town whose
inhabitants continue to speak the purest Danish.
In some remote corner of the Midland counties
there is a village, we hear, where the people
speak Saxon, and believe in Odin and the other
Norse deities; while in some far-off fishing
village of the West the aborigines are reported
to be totally unacquainted with the value of
money, and to perform all their commercial
transactions on that principle of barter adopted
by the natives of the Gulf of Bothnia, who pay
their pastors in pickled salmon. The strangest
spectacle, however, which we could well
witness in a civilised country, is that of
• number of gentlemen, supposed to have cut
their "eye-teeth ' soon after they were born,
and to be well versed in the mystery and value
of pounds, shillings, and pence, sitting and
voting that, although it was offered them, they
would not receive • farthing interest on any
amount of m.ney, however large, they might
have togplace in the bank. Were Baron Roils-
child informed of such a circumstance having
taken place, he would at once set it down as
being a "tale of the middle ages," and merchants
of the City of London would subscribe for •
glass cam to preserve such antiquated speci-
mens of humantty in the British Museum. Yet
sock an event has actually occurred—not among
the barbarous tribes of Africa or the aborigines
of New Zealand—they would have known better
—but in the County town of Dorset, at the first
meeting of the District Highway Board. The
chief objection urged at the various meetings
got up to petition against the application of the
New Highway Act to this county was that the
expense would be increased; but now expense,
or rather we might say, the study of mammy,
is not thought of when a particular party has to
be served. This is a sort of Irish ides enter-
lathed by 11101330 men who would claim to be
regarded as sterlintottlishmeo—as issispeasima
members of the as conscissitions repre-
sentatives of their several parishes, viligant in
the fulfilmeit of their duty, and incorveirdibly
Win el. In, sealing with other people's mousy
they have imbibed the notions of Lord Dun-
dreary. who "never mold thee any foath in
plash Wielased's imethini "That &penny thawed
m • penny earned." Perhaps they were equally

dull of oconpfebension when they appointed—
one se eitalrman, and the other as trbasurer to
the Hoard— two men of au mute family, carry-
ing on the same besieges, and whose interests
musk therefore, of necessity, be identical.
Had Mr. Herbert Williams been appointed clerk
OP surveyor, or even gaffer to the Board, it would
be clearly illegal for his cousin Reheat to have
been appointed treasurer. The letter of the
Act, however, the noird has decided war not
infrliirrd by the former holding the more jut-
patent office of chairman. And as for the Spirit
of the Act ! why should they care &bunt that
so long as party—net ptinelple—unlews indeed
in their eye, plinciple moms party—is
concerned t We don't mean to insinuate,
nor do we believe that anyone for a moment
supposes that the appointments will be abused.
But it is not what will be dons, but what there
is a possibility of being done, that should be
Cod against ; for, Si a ctintitinportrY has
ugly put it: " It eau easily he conceived that a
ei.si be lb such a position that its interests
anil those of the treasurer are antagonistic."
But the majority, like Lord Dundreary, "Can't
thee it," neither in their prejudiced eyes can
they "thee" that throughout the whole district
any other men than these Siamese twins are
competent to fill the two thief appointments
Of course the affair. being so glaringly partial
i and one-sided, will receive a thorough over-
hauling from the Dorset Chronicle, which is
always so sensitive about Government family
appointments of tke tillloes, and Orey's, and
Russell's. As too, the thing is, more glaring
than the appointment off tbe °minty Courts
Treasurer, by Lord Palmerston to his
nephew, so will the board receive
a more severe castigation at the hands of the
Old Lady than she bestowed upon the Prime
Minister. So immaculate a print—so hawk-eyed
a critic respecting everything done by Whigs or
Radicals—cannot pats Over so glaring an evil as
this without lifting up her voice against it. Hay-
ing turned political and social reformer for the
last three or four years, she surely cannot now,
mamas, walk backwards, eat her own words,
and belie her previous conduct