The Express.
London, England, 1863-02-17 00:00:00

TIM WINCHAUSOZ COLLISION.

EDINBURGH, llocroca Moen
At the High Court of Justiciary to-day, Mr.
Latham, general manager, and Mr. Thomson. traftic super-
intmident of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, were
charged with culpable homicide and esipable neglect of
duty. To the defeat* of • special order, dated the 12th of
September, issued by the accimed, was attributed the catas-
trophe of the 13th of October. It was, however, shown in
muse-examination that the seder was in the usual form,
had hitherto worked well, mad been deemed sulioient ; that
the line under relay Irma in the engineer's department, es
also the selection of the suberdiastes, b 7 whose blunder
the accident was directly caused. After eight hours' trial,
the Lord-Advocate intimated he could not press for • ore-
victioo. Ile court concurred, and • verdict of "not
guilty" wee returned.

Ti. FIRE IN LIIIII2OOI. AND Lou. or L1M...-.
MONDAT.—To4Iay the inquest as the bodies of
seven peewee, who met their deaths at the Ire is Oriel.
street " Saturday was °Pomo& The mums of the deemed
were gives as uoder :—/dar=aciaaistrlatlerintaciatyre,
Patrick llacintyre. Julia e, Julia
Thomas, and &lila Walsh. The 111 forma were found
enffocated in the home, and the latter died at the Northam
Hospital from the offsets of severe barna. The depositions
proved no am Sesta, emeept that the water in the district
was " abut d" on the might of the fire, for the purpose of
repairs and to prevent waste. The jury returned a verdict
of " gesidentaßy eaffonated.*
BANK Rosins: ai Magnum& Between
Saturday sight and paterday rases* an entrance wan
effected by thieves tote the new premises erected in Pell-
s sll, Mascliwiter, and oempied be the Bank of Manchester.
who abeheeted frees an di safe a quantity of gold laid
salver, asiowaties to 1.000(. 4s. The principal safe had re-
sisted aS attempts to form ft open. The thtsves appear to
bare pitied seems through a waif from an adjoiniog
tag. is which they had secreted themselves before it was
locked op cm Saturday.
TN. TILAMIPOSTATION QUVITION. —The Social
Moses Amenities will bold a special meeting at Burling,
ton-honse at eight o'clock this evening, to discuss the asps.
diets°, of reisewing a system of transportation.
We learn from the Scorstnati that Mrs. Yelverton
lee raised as mace Wore the Court of Sessim,
burgh. *goats& Mrs. Forties, in respect at the hosier from
that lad to the editor of the Erassierv, part of which
ia that paw on the 10th alt. The damages are
Mtl-,0601.
Bourn HIUMINOTOIr Muszon.—Daring the week
riding Feb. 14, the visitors have bees as follows :—On
Moodily, Tuesday, and Saturday, free days, open from
10 a.m. to 10 p.m., 10,328 Wedeasday. Thessgiy, sad
Friday, stedsete day* Wooed= te the gablis ILL epia
from 10 s.m. till 1 p.m., 1,225 ; total, 31,2511 rum the
eine* el the smorom. 3,711,2;15.

the erprelso.

TO 0011.111EIPONDLNTS.
Ifinttleemeata intended for " The Express
moat be at the office, 10, Boma,
o dock oa the de: of publication.

Lond Events'
rie-street.oa by Two

taIVINT GARDEN.
Twin Erman, THZ ARUM/I= OF /ANTICS. Yews.
Weiss, Matter, H. Corr', and W. Harrison Wanes L Prue and
A. Hiles.— And BKAUTY AND THY MAST. Concluding with
the Transformation scene.--Commence at 7.

RAYMARIRr.
FM EVENING. OCR AItERICAIt C01760f. Nam Bothers
and Bucketone : rs. R InimRABSELAS OF
ABYSSINLL Mr.M Wm L. Compton sad Wm Konkiy.—AndMUMS MFR.
WRIT& Mr. Compton and MlMlllortionr.

PHINCHINIS.
Tau Emilie, TEN WINNING KIM Mewl. H. Manton,
Veal% and Cathcart. Win Amy &Minion and Mrs. H. Wanim
—And HIQUNT WITH TEI Ton or, Harlequin and Mother
fililpton. Mows. Milano, Power, and Raiford. Min Colflason.

• LYCIUM.
Tine EVI3TING, ♦ SUDDEN ATTACK. Mesas. Widdieentb,
Garden, and Shore ; Mies Mem& and Mn. Lee. And THE
DUKE'S mono. Messrs. Pie Mgr, O. Wain rugham, •na
Raymond ; Muss C. lading. IL Tam end .

BRITANNIA.
Tins Seism the Pantomime, AVOW HASSAN. Mrs. Lee ;
Madam Krum Louis, Newham, sad Xtille.Btephtn : Tan Sams
and his two Mules.—THE CIICLIT 01 GOLD. KW Sophie
Mlles.—And MARY RDMONSTORM—Oommence at hall-pot I

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
TR DAT Month& It Ilm.....Aftenkoma. lb. 37m.
TOMosaoM—Mmaing. Mi. tm.....Altoromm. IL 230.

LONDON, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17.

LORD Nourairev, Minister of Foreign Affairs in
pas-fiber, is announced to open his annual cam-
paign this evening. Few people, we daresay, give
the noble Lord credit for the labour of love he un-
dergoes, and the heaps of correspondence he noires
as the representative in the English Parliament of
four vacant Italian thrones, of the clerical party in
France, and of the Court of Rome. The name of
our venerable enthusiast turned up a little unex-
pectedly the other day in a report of the Neapoli-
tan police. On the person of the Princess Rue-
BIMINI, who was arrested on the Roman frontier
as the bearer of despatches to the Bourbon
Committee at Naples, was found a letter, in which
the name of Lord NORMANDY figured in company
with TRINTANY and other marauding champions
of the legitimate cause. It was intimated in that
letter theta relation of Lord NORM-LIMY was coining
to Naples. How could so innocent a bit of news
be considered of sufficient importance to be smuggled
across the frontier on the person of • Roman
Princess ? Is Lord NORMANBY% name become a
passport to the respect of the Neapolitan brigands I
Is it an authority among the conspirators at Rome
who furnish cbuidestine arms and orders to the sub-
jects of Fusarrns 11. i Is this the noble Lord's pecu-
liar qualification to speak on the affairs of Rome and
Italy—his special claim to the respectful attentionof
the House of Lords I Not that Lord NORMANDY'S
sources of inspiration are confined to Rome and
Naples. Some years ago he served with sprightly
grace as her bfarxerv's Minister at the Grand
Ducal Court of Tuscany. There can be no doubt
that be is well aware of the sentiments of
the Tuscans upon the loss of their court ; aware
how bitterly they feel their bereavement, and how
seriously their well-being is affected by this
reduction of their capital to the rank of • provincial
city. We can fancy the noble Lord's core-
spondents at Florence (their names and faces are
familiar to every reader of the Lanvpione) assuring
him that all looks darker and gloomier than ever ;
that the Florentines see with dismay their
capital deserted, their streets empty, their
fins palace untenanted, their shops in idle-
ness, their trade paralysed ; barkruptcy gene-
ral, taxation tripled, and a sense of insecurity
pervading all minds. Such, we know, is the
burden of the song of some old women of bosh
sexes, who feebly pine for the old state of things,
and impotently cabal against the new. Lord'
NORMANRY, let us acknowledge, has one rare merit
which in these days is worthy of all respect. He
is the disinterested advocate of a fallen cause.
But his letter-writers cannot be expected to pardon
a great country for desiring a nobler destiny than
that of a group of petty States, preserved for the
recreation of diplomatic idlers and tourists, and
secluded from a national existence. Against
their harmless libels and lamentations let us set
off the letter from Florence, which appeared in
our columns yesterday. That account of
the present condition of Florence was, we make
bold to affirm, founded on indisputable facts,
and gathered from unimpeachable sources. It was
the letter of a gentleman whose opportunities of
ascertaining the truth below the surface as well
as the realities upon the surface command our
perfect confidence. The writer's long and large
experience of Italian We, his calm clear judgment,
and his discerning sympathy, make him an unan-
swerable witness. And we challenge any one of
Lord Nozwev's informants to disprove his
statistics. To deny is the only resource left to those
who are unable to refute.

A nw more actiona like that of Collingusood
T. Berkeley and Others, ending in a similar verdict,
will help to put an end to a nuisance which has
long been protested against, but which there is reason
to believe is at this moment more rank than ever.
Why should a man say he is a Director of a Joint-
Stock Company, or knowingly permit others to
say it of him, when he is not t A Director is, by
the nature of his aloe, one who knows the or-
ganization and resources of a Company, and
guides its operations to their avowed end.
Why should anyone say, by taking the name of a
director, that he is a person who does all this,
when the fact is that he knows nothing of the
composition, capabilities, and obligations of the
association recommended to the public by his

name? We know what is the vulgar answer
generally given to this question. Busy, common-
place people, who in the hurry of active life some-
times forget the respect due to birth and station,
find in the guinea paid for attendance at the board
the reason of this false aesumptiont and do not
scruple to designate even the son of a lord or a
lord himself who thus sells his time and presence
a guinea pig. This explanation, however, fails to
account for the conduct of those nominal direeton
who never attend the meetings of the board.
The British Columbia Overland Transit Com-
pany (Limited) announced itself in April last, just
as the glowing descriptions of the Special Corre-

lift..

~~

'pendent of a contemporary had awakened in hun-
dreds of British youth an irrepressible desire
to develop the resources and share in the rising
greatness of that magnificent possession. The
Company promised to save the enterprising emi-
grant the delays and vexations of the long sea
Chic and to take him by way of Quebec and
Chicago to St. Paul's, Minnesota, from which
point he was to be conveyed in covered carriages,
drawn by four horses, through a country rich in all
the freshness of nature, pastures sufficient for
any number of cattle, rivers quite full of flab, and
buffaloes and game in abundance. The plaintiff
in the action under notice, attracted by this ad-
vertisement, repaired to the offices of the Company,
paid 421. for his passage, embarked with a
number of like-minded travellers at Glasgow, and
was actually carried safe and sound as far as St
Paul's. Here however the money and credit of the
Company failed. The party being thus unable to
proceed bad plenty of time for consideration on its
hands, and after due deliberation the plaintiff was
deputed to return to England and see what could be
done. Arriving in London he found that the name of
the Company had disappeared from the premises be
hadknown as its office, and all that remained was a
notice that letters concerning its business might be
left with the laundress. A communication was
opened with the Directors, when it appeared that
they repudiated the authority of the manager and
promoter of the Company, who was no other than
the well-known " Colonel" Simon. Hence the ac-
tion tried on Saturday, in which the plaintiff com-
plained that the defendants, the Hon. FRANCIS
HISBY FITZHARDINGE BERKILIT, M.P., with his
fellow-directors, named Firmest, STARKLY, JAMB,
LODKR, and NIOOLLB, had induced him by false re-
presentations to pay 421. for a passage to British
Columbia, and also that they had not fel.
filled their contract to carry him to that
place. The defence on the part of Mr.
BRUMLEY was that he never was a member of any
Company, although some persons chose to publish
his

name and transact 'maims' in it without his
authority. In the progress of the trial the impu-
tation of fraud was dropped, and the case went to
the jury on the question whether the defendants
were bound by the acts of the Manager and Secre-
tary of the Company. It appeared from the
evidence of the secretary that the Company had
never been registered, no deed bad ever been pre-
pared ; there bad been no allotment of shares, no
Imeeng of directors. In fact, there was no Com-
pany. There was an office, where &mon was
supreme, and where Mr. Ibursys, whom he had
employed, had the title of secretary, and re-
ceived between 1,4001. and 1,5001. from per-
sons intending to emigrate. There was also a

prospectus containing the names of the defendants
as directors, and there were daily advertisements
in the Times in which those names appeared.
But although thane advertisements were seen by
those who looked for them, by the hundreds who
scan the paper every morning to find an opening
in life, they were lost in the crowd of announcements
for a general reader like Mr. Mumma; who declares
believer saw them. All through April and May
these advertisements appeared, yet Mr. BERLE-

LEY, who was so much interested in them, never
encountered them, never knew that money
was being taken in his name upon a promise of
carrying people acmes the Rocky Mountains,
until he was told that notice had been given of a
question to be asked about it in the House of
Commons. Mr. BIZICILIY, speaking of the
state of his information in May, said, " I
" had heard nothing of the Company in the
" meantime, and I thought it was in abeyance.
" I had not heard of their having offices. I did
" not consider myself a director. I had never
" during this time seen my name in the Times, or
"in print at aIL I see the Times daily, and read
" the political part and the money article, and
" sometimes the ordinary intelligence, but never
" the advertisements ; indeed, my servants never
" bring me the supplement rinks I ask for it. I
" took no part in the discussion in the Howe, in
" feel I regarded the formation of the Company as
" a remote contingency. I had never heard that
" Colonel Sj.smu was receiving money and trans-
" acting buslness."
Is, then, Mr. BIRLICIAY to be considered, with
the plaintiff, one of till victims of " Colonel"
&won, and to be pitied accordingly f We wish we
could think so. But we must take the facts as
we find them. There was one of the defendant-,
Mr. Irwin, who succeeded in establishing in

court that his name had been usurped by SLziou ;
but Mr. BERKILIT could not satisfy the
jury that he was in the same case.

Mr. RIINHEN, the secretary of the " Coin.
" pany, " tells us that in the spring he waited
on Mr. BERICILLEY, and showed him a prospcevas
of the Company having the honourable member's
_ _

name in it, and that on the first day of Ap►l
be received a letter from him, in which he said : " On
"the distinct understanding that I am indemnified
" and quiaified, I have no objection to belong to
" the British Columbia Overland Transit Banking
" Corporation (Limited)." As explained by Mr.
BILM12; this meant that the honourable gentle-
man wee to have a certain number of shares witb-

out payment and the director's guinea, and the
Company was to have the benefit of his menial
standing. As it happened, SLEIGH got the best of
it, for he used Mr. Bxaxicmc's name to draw
1,500/. to his counter, whereas the hon. gentle-
man appears not to have got any advantage
whatever in return. Still we cannot say
that the large claw of persons of whom the plain-
tiff in this action was the representative have not
good ground for serious complaint age4nst the hon.
member. He told the jury on Saturday that
when everybody else's suspicion bad been excited,
and hundreds of people had been swindled, be
made inquiries which led him to infer that the
affair was "a monstrous fraud upon the public,"
and therefore he withdrew. But he should have
made these inquiries before he gave his name to
Mr. HINSEN. SLEIGH very likely exceeded the
warrant which Mr. BZWELZY bad given him to
make use of his name, but there is no reason to
suppose he would have dared to advertise
him as a director of the Company with-
out the consent given in the letter of
April 1. Lord Chief Justice Ewa directed
the jury that "it was not neaessery, in
" order to make the defendants liable to the plain-
" tiff, that they should actually have given &litho-
" rity, if they allowed Colonel SLIIOII and Mr.
" Hess= to bold them out as Directors, and to
" transact business under those circumstances."

This which is declared, on the highest authority, to
be the law, is also the dictate of oommon sense.
Were it otherwise, confusion, fraud, and ruin
would soon have all to themselves the field now 60
usefully occupied by joint-stock enterprise. The
jury gave the plaintiff a verdict against all the de-
fondants, exoept Mr. Flours, and damages to
the amount of 1601. We may reasonably hope
that, as one result of this trial, people with names
useful to promoters will, in future, qualify them-
selves by actual knowledge, and seek to secure the
indemnification of the confiding public as wall seal
themselves, before they consent to be held out to
the world as directors of public companies.

be Court.

WINDSOR CASTLE, Fn. 16.

The Queen, accompanied by the Prinoess Louis
of Hesse, drove out in a carriage and four this morning, at-
tended by Lord Alfred Paget.

A deputation from the Southwark Royal Reception Om-
conaiating of the High Bailiff of Southwark, Rev.
Hugh Allen, D.D., Dr. Challios, M.D., Dr. Evan B. Jones,
Mr. John Vickers, Captain Dresser Rogers, Mr. Eli Richards,
Mr. E. Collision, and Mr. James Robertson, had an inter.
view yesterday with the Right Honourable Sir Charge
Grey, at the Home-o Mos.

The Bishop of Tumuli had an interview with the Duke
of Newcastle yesterday. Sir Gawp Clerk also had an in.
terview with his grace at the Colonialnface.
Sir Thomas Fremantle, Chahmen of the Customs, and
Mr. Stephenson, Chairman of Inland Revenue, had an
interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday,
at his official residence in Downing-street.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council sat yesterday.
An appeal from Barbados, "Daniel v. Trotman," part heard,
was concluded. Judgment was reserved. The lords present
were Lord Kingdom and the Lord Justices Knight
Bruce and Turner.

Despatches were received yesterday at the Colonial-
office from the Lord High Commissioner of the lonian
Wanda. Despatches were mat to the Lord High Commis.
loner of the lonian Islands, and to the Governors of
British Columbia, Bermuda, and the West India Islands.