The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-04-27 00:00:00

Scotlanb.
..

THE FREE CHURCH ON DANCING.- The Free Church
ministers of Stornoway have denffunced dancing to their
congregations, as being an amusement of a sinful nature,
oiling for Church censure even to exclusion from the
Sacrament, and a denial of marriage.
THR SCOTTISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM.—The joint win-
ner of the Simpson mathematical £6O prise at King's
College, Aberdeen, was Mr. Donald Robertson. Mr.
Robertson (says the Bang' Journal) has, up to the last
six months, worked all the summer at farm labour, earn-
ing thereby sufficient to enable him to attend the college
class during the winter.
THE WESTERN BANK OF SCOTLAND.—The discus.
sion started by Mr. Brady in the House of Commons on
Friday, though not immediately productive, will in the
end, probably, produce good fruit. It looks like the
first step towards inquiry. In pleading that there
should be inquiry we (Scotsman) have heretofore stir
gested that it should be general, embracing the conduct
of the directors of all banks in Scotland which have
lately involved shareholders in serious losses. We
cannot forget that these seine directors of the Western
Bank, who are subjeot to so much obloquy, had they
succeeded in their desperate scheme would have received
the applause of the shareholders, just as the agent of a
mercantile house who sends on a cargo to catch a rise
in the market in an unseaworthy vessel is all the inure
honoured by his constituents for his pluck and energy
that he risked the loss of • crew of seamen having wives
and families at home. We believe, at the same time,
that there have been other bank directors whose conduct
went muoli further in the direction of criminality than
that of the directors of the Western Bank. Hence,
without suggesting criminal prosecution against any one,
we have been in favour of an inquiry embracing all late
calamities through banking operations in Scotland. It
so happens, however, that late events seem to point to
the Western Bank as the only immediate object, and if
inquiry be limited to that establishment it will still, we
doubt not, be of great service. But the inquiry, to be
of any use, should not be limited to general principles,
or even to methods of conducting business—it should go
into the actual business concluded, with names trans-
actions, accounts, and, above all, full statements of the
security on which advances, whether by discount or in
ony other shape, were made, all tending, of course, to
the one great questien how far the dividends were paid
out of profits, if any, and how far out of capital. Mr.
Hope Johnstone, as well u other speakers, referred to
the probability that the affairs of the Western Bank
would come_ within the scope of the inquiries of the
committee Ott the Bank Acts. But if this committee,
according to the too common method of committees,
only asks a select number of eminent practical men what
they think of this method of transacting business, and
what they think of that other, with some exceptional
I queries for the purpose of extracting opinions on the
method pursued by the Western Bank, we do not think
, such an inquiry worth conducting.