The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1861-02-26 00:00:00

HON ESTE AUD4 X.

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

THE latest intelligence from India received
by the Overland Mail is of a gratifying
nature. Wars and rumours of wars had
ceased, and the people are described as being
occupied in the arts of peace. Lord Canning
was holding durbars in Central India, to
which the Rajahs and other chiefs repaired,
thus promoting mutual acquaintance and
confidence between the dominant and sub-
ordinate powers. The Governor of Bombay
was on a tour through his presidency, in
order to make himself acquainted with its
condition and wants. The opposition to
the income-tax was dying out, and it was
being paid with scarcely an instance of
resort to the power of distraint. There is,
however, one dark shadow in the picture—
famine was raging in several of the districts
of the North-West Provinces and the
Punjaub. Every blade of grass had been
dried up, and four millions of people were
totally dependent on the hand of charity
to save them from starvation. The Govern-
ment as exerting itself by undertaking
several public works to lessen the calamity.

Another "mammoth robbery," as our
American cousins would call it, has been
cJintnitted by a clerk in the service of a
trading association. The amount of the
theft is roundly estimated at £66,000, and
the unfortunate company that has suffered
is the Commercial Bank of London. The
bank has collapsed, or ceased to exist; the
Directors, to save further loss to the share-
holders, having amalgamated into the
London and Westminster. The depositors
and customers of the bank will sutler no
loss, nor would they, had the defalcations
been treble the amount. Durdan, the
dishonest servant, stricken with paralysis
before the discovery took place, is reported
to have since died. The directors of the
late Commercial Bank, if not more than
commonly negligent, appear to have been
more than commonly blind and self-conceited.
Startled, as we are told, by the frauds com-
mitted by Pullinger on the Union Bank,l
they held a meeting, overhauled their
accounts, investigated the mode in which
they were kept in each department of
their business, and departed with a triumph-
ant chuckle of satisfaction that no robbery
of that kind or any other was possible in
their establishment, without the immediate
detection and punishment of the offender.
And during all this time, and for eight or
ten years previously, the ledger clerk,
assiduous at his post, never absent for one
day either for pleasure or from indisposition,
had been defrauding them of thousands of
pounds at a time, overworking his unhappy
brain to escape discovery, and planting in
it the seeds of paralysis. Another clerk
being temporarily appointed to his post.
led to the detection of the fraud. Were
the case not so horrible, the self-satisfaction
of the directors would be positively comic.
But such a story is not one for laughter,
but for pity or indignation ; and we earnestly
trust that there is not one among the
Directors, who does not feel that lie is
morally, if not legally, guilty of participation
in the wrong that has been committed upon
the shareholders, of whose interest he is alike
the trustee and the guardian. Had such
an extensive fraud been committed on a
private bank, the unfortunate depositors and
customers would have had to suffer the loss,
if it could not be sustained by the firm.
On Saturday week Lord Herbert of Lea
resigned the Presidency of the National
Rifle Association. His Lordship, in his
address, gave a statement signally illustrative
of the rapidity and vigour by which the
growth of our Volunteer Army has been
characterised. A year and a half ago, there
were in existence but 13 corps of Volunteer
Riflemen, with an aggregate strength of
1,500 men. More than one of the newly-
formed companies was in difficulties, and the
movement presented a doubtful and heiguish.
jug appearance. Eighteen months only have
elapsed, and we have a force of 140,000
excellent soldiers, fully equipped. and tit to
take the field. This volunteer army has
acquired a solid and compact organization,
' having its own Cavalry, its own Artillery,
and its own Engineers, as well as its bat-
talions of Infantry. It has been reviewed
in divisions of 20,000 each, and 10.000 at a
time have been mustered in a mere county
pantile. When we recollect that all this
is the work of little more than a year, we
may indeed look with gratification on the
result, and acknowledge that our battalions,
like the legions in the fable, seem to have
sprung in full panopoly from the ground.

The wholesale reformers having retired
from business for the present, the retail re-
formers are driving a little trade of their
own. First of all there is Mr. Locke King
with his Bill for extending the County Fran-
chiae of England and Wales to ten pound
householders. He was opposed on Tuesday
night by Mr. Warner, who thought the whole
subject should be referred to a Select Com-
mittee, and so shelved for the present; and
Mr. Darby Griffith, who denied the expe-
diency of assimilating the borough and county

franchise. and thought it contrary to the
spirit of our Parliamentary Constitution that
the county franchise should be loaer than :
twenty pounds. Lord Palmerston thought
the measure might be brought in, yet he
deemed it inexpedient to revive the question
of Parliamentary Reform at the present time.
The real objection to the Bill of his nobla
friend last year was our invincible dislike to
a general election so soon after the last, nor
had that objection become less intense during
the short interval that had since elapsed.
Happily quoting the King of Sardinia's
speech to his chambers," it is as wise to wait
at the right time as to dare at the right
time," the noble Viscount concluded that
this was the time for waiting. He thought
that great and important measures of this
sort "ought to originate ‘v.ith the responsible
Government," a sentiment that was loudly
cheered by the Opposition. Still if his hon.
friend chose to bring in his measure. he
should not object. Mr. Disraeli. who of late
has taken to praising the noble Viscount,
was in happy vein, and took to lauding the
Premier's very sensible remarks. The great
wholesale firms had announced that Reform
was a transaction beyond their capital and
enterprise, and what sueress therefore could
attend these hucksters The ready laugh
having shewn that he had the House with
him. Mr. Disraeli went on to draw a mirth-
ful picture of the scenes during the Reform
Bill debates of last year, when he saw men
: representing capital, cities, and large con-
stituencies. "whose teeth were chattering in
their heads" whenever the order of the day
was read. "Their pallid visages could not
be concealed from the commonest observers,
anti in the lobbies you saw them shaking in
their shoes at the dread invasion of a£6 con-
stituency."—Secondly there is a Bill by Mr.
Edward Baines, leaving the counties alone,
but proposing a six pound franchise for the
boroughs. Mr. Baines replied to Lord Pal-
merston's speech, delivered on Mr. Locke
King's motion, against the Bills of indepen-
dent members, but was called to order by
Mr. Hardy and sustained by the Speaker.
The noble Viscount, as in the former ease,
could not promise his hon. friend any Govern-
ment days. and if he holds to that determina-
tion, notwithstanding the affected indigna-
tion of members of metropolitan constituen-
cies, who are as glad as any to stave off a
general election, we shall, say, about the be-
ginning of June. see an end to the retail
measures of Reform which the Premier per-
mitted Mr. Locke King and Mr. Baines to
introduce on Tuesday night. There seems.
however, to be breakers ahead, and the leaders
of both parties may yet find that it is unwise
to court popular agitation on the question of
Reform.

Mr. Gladstone, the hitherto triumphant
Chancellor of the Exchequer, has received a
check in his career of victory. The financial
Achilles has been wounded in his vulnerable
heel. The combatant who threw down his
glove is a knight of considerable prowess
—nn ex-Governor of the Bank of En-
laud. Mr. Hubbard, who came in
for Buckingham in 1850 is a city merchant.
well known for his writings on currency and
taxation. He is the author of" How shall
the income tax be levied ?" and "Reform or
Repeal the Income Tax ;" and has devoted
a great deal of attention to the matter. He
was greatly encouraged in his motion by the
scheme for assessing the income-tax found
among the papers of Mr. Wilson. which also
gave hopes to many popular representatives
that a more equitable assessment of tem-
porary and precarious incomes was possible.
Mr. Hubbard's scheme of abatement seemed
fissihle; at all events, there could be no
great harm, mewbers were disposed to
think, in appointing a Committee of the
House of Commons to consider the subject
to examine witnesses, and to report to the
house. Mr. Gladstone, who always rises
with the occasion, was armed with figures
authorities. and precedents. He declared
that the injustice of the income-tax belonged
essentially and inseparably to the tax itself.
Nothing could be more triumphant than the
right lion. gentleman's refutation of Mr.
Hubbard. Ile was never more convincing
and unanswerable. Mr. Disraeli left the
house, and his lieutenant, Sir Stafford North-
cote, got up to implore the ex-Governor of
the Bank not to divide and put his friends to
the pain of going into the lobby against him.
It was then Lombard-street to a china orange.
Would the ca-Governor be so presumptuous
as to divide after such an appeal, or, if he did.
would he get 20 men to vote for his motion
lie was indeed smitten hip and thigh from
both sides of the house, and if it had not been
for tlw dogged determination of one
hundred and thirty-one members, for
the most part sitting below the gangway,
Mr. Hubbard would no doubt have been
offered up as a holocaust to the just indigna-
tion of our Finance Minister. We have no
very sanguine hopes of any beneficial result
from the appointment of the Select Com-
mittee. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
will, of course, be a member of the committee,
and it will devolve upon him or his successor
to carry into effect any recommendation the
I Committee may come to.