The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1874-09-08 00:00:00

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

Her Majesty and the Court are at Balmoral,
the Princess of Wales remains in Denmark, and
the Prince is going through a round of sight-
seeing in Germany. His Royal Highness will
attend the special races held in his honour at
Baden-Baden, and the Prince's stay in
Germany is likely to be of some little duration.
At the same time it is said that the Prince and
Princess of Wales are expected to visit Sir Ivor
and Lady Cornelia Guest at Canford Manor
next month, that their Royal Highnesses will
stay three days, and that a shooting party will
meet on the occsaion.
It was a great surprise to learn that the
Marquis of Ripon had rskped the Grand
Mastership of the English Freemasons. It
seems that it was in consequence of the Marquis
having gone over to the Romish Church, which
is determinedly averse from "secret societies."
The Times says it is not every dacintthe
Roman Catholics find so good a ship • • as
the Marquis of Ripon. It is a melancholy
spectacle; but it indicates a weakness which is
not an English characteristic, and, though we
may grudge to the Roman Catholic clergy Lord
Ripon's wealth and such social influence as he
may attain, we may be sure that the material
advantages he may bring to them will be their
only acquisition. Fountains Abbey passes once
more into Roman Catholic hands, but it is not
the defection of a stray peer which /rill under-
mine the steady devotion of the English mind
to a free and independent career of religious and
political development. Lord Ripon has held
high office in the State. As Viscount Goderich,
he entered Parliament more than twenty years
ago as a pronounced Liberal. After serving as
Under-Secretary for the War Department and
for India under the late Lord Herbert and Sir
George Lewis, he was in 1863, as Lord de Grey,
appointed Secretary of State for War, holding
the office nearly three years; and in 1866, on
the retirement of Lord Halifax, he became
Secretary of State for India. In Mr. Gladstone's
Ministry of 1868 he held the dignified office of
Lord President of the Council, which office, it
may be remembered, he resigned "for urgent
private reasons," now apparent. The Marquisate
was conferred in 1871, by Mr. Gladstone, in con-
sideration of the success of the Joint trinlit.:onn-
mission for arranging the Treaty of W • n,
of which Commission the (then) Earl of Ripon
was chief. The Marquis is 47 years of age, and
has only one child, Earl de Grey, 22 years of
age, who, of course, is heir to the title and
estates.

It is rumoured that a Royal Commission on
the subject of retirement in the army will shortly
be issued.

The projected journey of Mr. Disraeli to
Ireland is now said to be doubtful; but the
right hon. gentleman's visit to Doncaster seems
assured. The gentleman with whom he pro-
poses to stay lean eccentric country squire, of
no political influence, and who for many years
has lived a very secluded life. The country
side is full of stories of his generosity and
eccentricity.
The scheme for the Channel submarine tunnel
is rapidly assuming a tangible shape. A corres-
pondence has commenced between the English
and French Cabinets, and when Parliament
re-assembles an important communique may be

expected.
The Times gives an authoritative contradiction
to the rumour that a Commission had been
appointed to inquire into the efficiency of the
Martini. Henry rifle. So satisfactory have been
the reports furnished to the War Department,
that the troops at home will be furnished with
the arm in a few weeks.

is to say,

Spain has a new
anew ministry has been formed at Madrid, biz
how brief its life will be it is hard to say, as
Marshal Zabala, who provoked the crisis, remits
in Madrid instead of returning to the Army of
the North. Marshal Serrano is to be made
General-in-Chief, and will have the absolute
power of nominating his subordinates. The
Carlists have been driven from before Puycerda,
but the Republican army is not following up its
success. Letters from the frontier show that the
French authorities are zealously preventing hl
reaching the Carlists from French sources, tho
the French Government is annoyed at
espionage of the Germans. Marshal Macldahon
has promptly followed the example of Germany
in receiving the Spanish Ambassador—a course
which the Marquis of Lorne has declared in a
speech to his constituents not to be a legitimate
proceeding, as the Republic has not yet shown
any real power to maintain its authority.
How it has come to pass that there should not
be an appointed public prosecutor in England,
as in Scotland, is a mystery ; but the fact
remains; and again and again the need is felt,
and has pressed so formidably, that the Judica-
ture Commissioners have at length recommended
that the clerks of the justices should be the
public prosecutors in the country districts. They
are already recognised authorities, men of trust;
and for a small addition to their stipend they
would, the Commissioners think, undertake the
duties. The Lord Chief Justice, however, takes
quite another view. He despises the idea that
economy instead of efficiency is to be the principal
consideration in effecting so considerable a
reform in our present system of criminal prose-
cutions. If responsibility is to be centered in
any one he would have it in thoroughly influen-
tial hailds, and properly paid for. Deputy
public prosecuton should be, the Lord Chief
Justice thinks, lawyers of standing who will
relinquish all other occupation and address them-
selves to this, receiving payment in salary, not
in fees. The proposal is a large and expensive
one. It has been long coming to a definite
shape. The Government will not, we should
suppose, have much hesitation in adpoting the
advice of the Lord Chief Justice. His plan will
of course require very careful adjustment, but
it is one of the reforms which the law advisers
of the Government may adopt with good grace,
and be awarded praise for developing.
The bond fife traveller, even under the
amended provisions of Mr. Cross's Act, seems
likely to give the Court of Queen's Bench as
much trouble as ever. It DI considered neces-
sary, on the ODO hand, in the interests of public
order, to close all places of refreshment during
certain hours, and more especially during Sun-
day morning and a considerable part of Sunday
afternoon- On the other hand, it is felt to be
clearly impossible to deny a Juan who is
genuinely travelling from One place to another
such refreshment as he may require. The diffi-
culty, of course, is to determine when people
are and when they are not genuinely travelling.
The question has been raised at a metropolitan
police-court A publican at Highbury was sum-
moned for keeping his house open during pro-
hibited hours, and it was proved by a police
constable, who had stood opposite the door with
a note-book, that between ten and one o'clock
on Sunday morning 1,320 customers had entered
the premises and been served with liquor. The
defence set up, of course, was that all these
persons were bend fide travellers within the
meaning of the Act, or, at any rate, that the
landlord believed them to be such. It IMAM
that the 10th section of the Act, while it throws
upon the publican the burden of proving the
bond Ales of a customer during prohibited hours,
yet provides that the magistrates "shall" dis-
-111111 the came as against him if they are satisfied
that he "truly believed that the purchaser was
a bowi fide traveller, tuid further, that he took
all reasonable precautions to ascertain whether
or not he was such." Of course, the publican
swore that he had "truly believed" that inch
of his 1,320 customers was a bond fide traveller,
and that he had taken all reasonable precautions
Ii y putting the question directly to each of them.
This being so, the magistrate had either to
declare that he did not believe the defendant on
his oath, or else to dismiss the case; and he
chose the latter alternative. At the same time
he pointed out that, if every public-house in
London was to serve some fifteen hundred bond
fide travellers every Sunday morning, there
might as well be no close hours at all, and
intunated that, in future, he should require
somewhat stricter proof of the publican's true
belief," and something more stringent in the
way of "reasonable precantions." To this the
attorney for the defence replied by sts9!ing the
worthy gentleman what he considered reason-
able precautions" to be, but only got in answer
that the duty of a magistrate is to administer
the law and not to make it, and the matter was
one on which licensed victuallers must use their
own discretion. Anything more helplessly
impracticable and inconsistent than the existing
state of the law it is really difficult to conceive.
The only attempt we have at any definition Of
the bond fide traveller is that he is not to be
deemed such unless he is at least three mike
latent by the nearest public thoroughfare from
de place where he slept the night before. It
is 'evident to any one who considers the 10th
ae&ion of Mr. Croat's Act, that one of the fast

questions which the Court of Queen's Bench will ,
have to settle will be whether, according to the
true interpretation of the section, a man who
has walked three miles from home and returned
a mile being so distant exactly two miles from
the place where he last slept, can claim to be
considered a bond fide traveller, on the ground
that the place where he lodged the preceding
night is at least three miles distant from the
place where he demands to be supplied with
liquor. The metaphysical discrimination which
this question involves between positive and
relative distances is not the least of the difficul-
ties which the bond fide question involves. A
man who has ridden four miles on horseback,
or in a cab, or by railway, has obviously less
moral claim to rank as a bond Me than has the
luckless pedestrian who has walked two miles
and three-quarters. The truth of the matter is
that the ideal bond fide traveller of Mr. Cruse's
Act represents an impossible compromise. If
we are to have close hours at all—and the point
is one upon which with reference to the question
at issue it is not necessary to °apron any opinion
—they can only be kept close by admitting no
exception whatever to the hard and fast rule.
A genuine traveller ought, no doubt, to be able
to obtain neoessary meat and drink, close hours
notwithstanding. But his claim is morally
based upon the old maxim that necessity over-
rides law, and when a thousand such claims
beset a single public-house in the course of a
' single morning, we cannot but ask ourselves
whether a law is worth the keeping that has to
' suffer so much breaking. The five sound
topers' reasons are—
Good wine, • friend, or being dry,
Or lest you should be by and by,
Or any other reason why.
j But it has remained for Mr. Cross, with his new
definition of the bona fide traveller, to trans-
form this good old joke into an actual English
statute.