The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1861-09-10 00:00:00

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

The Select Committee to inquire into the pre-
sent mode of assessing and oollecting the Income
tee—moved by Mr. Hubbard and carried by the
House of Commons in opposition to ministers—
have made their report. The committee sat
twenty-gne days, during which time they
examined twenty-three witnesses, including the
chairman, the solicitors of the Board of Inland
Revenue, Dr. Farr, Mr. John Suart Mill, and
several eminent professional men in the city,
and so bewildered were they with the ma as of
conflicting evidence, that the only conclusion
they arrived at was that they had no opinion to
offer on the tax whatever. "Your committee
feel so strongly the dangers and the ill conse-
quences to be apprehended from an attempt to
unsettle the present basis of the tax, without •
clear perception of the mode in which it is to be
reconstructed, that they are not prepared to
offer to your honourable House any suggestions
for its amendment." We are consequently left
precisely where we were twelve months ago.
The main features of Mr. Hubbard's plan was
to make • distinction between incomes derived
from property, and precarious incomes. It is
calculated that one-third more is saved and
made capital out of industrious incomes than
out of those which are spontaneous, and Mr.
Hubbard proposed. that in assessing industrial
incomes, an abatement of one-third should be
made. It surely requires no argument to prove
that a man who receives £5OO a year from money
invested in the Consols is far better off than the
man who derives the same amount from
• source which may be lost at any moment
by the failure of his health. To tax both alike
is to tax them unjustly, and inequality or undue
pressure in any class, ought to be avoided
in the matter of taxation. The committee,
however, have no opinion on this point, and the
conclusion they have arrived at will satisfy no-
body. It admits nothing; it denies nothing;
it proves nothing; unless it be the incompetency
of the committee to deal with the subject.
"Another Fearful Railway Accident" pro-
mises to be as frequent and terribly significant a
heading in our autumnal news as "Another
Steamboat Explosion" used to be in America,
before war and its rumours supplied • newer
kind of " oonostion" paragraphs to Transatlantic
journalists. The inquest empannelled to investi-
gate the cause of the Brighton accident has not
concluded its inquiry, ere the public is startled
with • fresh horror of • similar isature. Again
the accident is to an excursion train, but in the
present instance the dismal scene at the Clayton
Tunnel has been reversed. The collision on the
North London line repeats the hideous slaughter
of that event, but in a different manner. Here
the scene is an embankment between thirty-five
and forty feet high; and the loss of life occurs,
not in the train which is run into, but in that
which came sweeping on with an impetus of •
high rate of speed,and shivering to atoms the
Wiest trucks, leaps into the field below,
carriage tumbling on the top of carriage, and
crushing the human height of those beneath
them. Nor is there in this dismal socide..t any
question about the efficiency or inefficiency of
signals. There was no mishap of the cautions to ,
prevent accident, but rather a total absence of
all caution. The excursion was one for the ser-
vants of the line, and it was in connection with
• society got up among them for securing provi-
sion for members and their families suffering
from railway accidents! "The directors," we
are told, "not wishing to throw any obstacle in
the way of the day's pleasure, especially consider-
ing its meritorious object, afforded accommoda-
tion to all who were desirous of attending the
day's festivity." They appear, h , to have
been by no means solicitous to provide against
accident, as to further schemes for the insurance
of victims ; for, at the very time they were
permitting the line to be crowded by (atilt
trains, the system was continued of running
and shunting ballast trains, for the formation
of a siding at Keutial,-town Station, where the
catastrophe occurred. According to the state-
ment of the driver of the ballast engine, the
company's arrangements was most lax. Before
the jury empannelled to inquire into the case, he
stated that he was furnished with time-tables,
showing when the regular trains would pass the
point where he had to pass with the ballast
trucks, but that he had not the slightest infor-
mation regarding excursion trains. He crossed
and re-crossed the place where the collision oc-
curred when he liked, only taking care to avoid
the regular trains ;" and it ass while he was thus
"going leisurely over that the other train came
up, at a rate of not less than forty miles an hour !"
Now, if such were the arrangements, wo can
lordly call the collision an "accident"—it seems
imore like a gross and culpable neglect of the
seat ordinary precautions.
Nothing more strongly shows the deep
interest taken in this country in everything
I Italian, than the ready admission to English
society which was obtained by one of the most
audacious, contemptible, and cowardly cheats
that ever disgraced the character of manhood.
Miss Johnstone, • lady moving in good society,
met Signor Colluoci, an artist, at the house of a
near relative of an English gentleman. lie
offered to take her portrait, and she went several
times to his house to sit to him for that purpose.
He showed her marked attention. She believed
him to be a men of honour, and several letters
Etsirdbetween them. They exchanged presents.
gave him • seal with the impression of a
"dove," and he gave her another with the im-
pression of a "heart." When he wrote to her
he callrd her his "dove," and in her replies she
sometimes signed herself "your dove." "At
one period of their correspondence the subject of
marriage was broached, but not finally settled."
In May, 1859, all idea was abandoned, says Miss
Johnstone--" by me at all events." Still they
continued to correspond "in warm friendship
and affectionate terms." In the meantime
Signor Collucci had begun to turn her acquaint-
ance to profit. On one plea and another be ob-
tained from her, np to July last, loans and gifts
to the extent of £l4OOO. On the 10th of June,
ho , he again wrote to her, proposing mos-
riage ; upon which Mies Johnstone called on him
and asked why he repeated this proposition,
when they had long ago agreed t could never
be. And then it was that the contemptible
character of the man more than ever began to
show itself. As she refused to marry him, he
demanded that she should give him enough to
live upon; and when she told him she could not
take upon herself the "responeibility" of decid-
ing upon such a step, he ..sime furious, and
defied her to repeat the word. He told her he
had compromised himself in her society, that
his honour was dear to him, and pointing to •
pair of foils in the room—that he would fight
anyone that attacked his honour. "Alarmed
bi his violent language and conduct," Mir
Johnstone, "in torment and agitation, In
addition to the 4000 he had already received
of her, agreed to ewe him £2,000 if he would
return her Wien. Whet these letters contained