The Press.
London, England, 1857-12-19 00:00:00

THE PUBLIC HEALTH is in a more satisfactory
state this week. The deaths have fallen from 1,428
to 1,240. The average would be 1,237. The births
amounted to 1,803 children.

ca~rxnczal.

DR. GOULBURN, on his resignation of the Head
Mastership of Rugby, was presented on Monday
last with a magnificent silver centrepiece from the
old Rugbeians, and a handsome clock, mounted on
black marble, from the boys of the school. The
parting speeches between Dr. Goulburn and the boys
were extremely affecting, and the rev, doctor, after
thanking both old and young for their expression of
personal feeling towards him, withdrew amidst the
enthusiastic cheers of a crowded audience in the
great school.
A T.►r.L CHIMNEY, 120 feet high, attached to the
Ouse Chemical Works, at Howden Dyke, fell in
about seven o'clock on Saturday evening with a tre-
mendous crash. Happily the great body of the
workmen had left, and only a few at the moment
were about the works ; of these seven were killed on
the spot, and three or four most seriously injured.
An inquiry is pending. The loss is estimated at
5,0001., and falls entirely on Mr. G. Anderson fof
Cleckheaton.
THE MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF
THE LATE EXHIBITION IN MANCHESTER, consisting of
Mr. Thomas Fairbairn (chairman), Sir James
Watts, and Messrs. T. Ashton, J. Heron, E. Potter,
and S. J. Stern, had the honour of an interview with
his Royal Highness the Prince Consort, at Osborne,
on Wednesday, to convey the expression of their
thanks for the munificent patronage which had been
extended to the undertaking by her Majesty the
Queen and his Royal Highness. We believe it is the
intention of the committee to forward to the contri-
butors to the late Exhibition a formal acknowledg-
ment of their liberality which shall specify each work
of art, and thus prove of great value, in future times,
as an authentication of their property having passed
through the ordeal of the criticism of the connois-
seurs of Europe.

3rtlanli.

(From our own Ccrrespondent.)

DUBLIN, Dec. 17.

The protest against the Lord Chancellor's anti-
Orange letter is being most influentially and exten
sively signed. All the principal members of the
nobility and gentry have attachad their names to it,
and, before it is presented by deputation, an array
of signatures from all classes of Prctestants will be
seen—sufficient to convince the most obtuse that the
rights and liberties of Irish Protestants cannot with
impunity be made a shuttlecock for Roman Catholic
battledores. You will notice that the moral, if I may
use such an expression in such a connection, of Lord
Chancellor Brady's edict is that partisanship is a
disqualification for the magisterial office ; that it
interferes with the due administration of justice, and
gives a kind of protection to acts of violence and
illegality.
Everyone knows that Orangemen are men of
extreme opinions, but they know also that those
opinions are stri'tly legal and entirely loyal. If,
therefore, they are to be penalised by exclusion from
the magisterial office, it is clear that a new system,
and one which the Constitution does not sanction,
is introduced—viz., that when a man becomes a jus-
tice of the peace he must abjure his political senti-
ments and relinquish his party prepossessions. The
Castle officials, you might presume, have resolved
upon this novel course, and adhered to it; and in
that case you might say that, although you disap-
proved of their conduct, you admired their consis-
tency. Lord Chancellor *Brady, however, when he
ventured to palm off his new-born zeal against party
spirit upon the Irish public, forgot that by that pro-
fession he invited an investigation of his own acts as
the head of a political connection in this country.
The Protestants make common cause with the
Orangemen in resisting the injustice of which they
have been the victims, and, acting together, some
very curious and startling discoveries have been
made of the mode in which Lord Chancellor Brady,
who so abhors extreme views, has dispensed the
patronage of the Crown. I will not take up your
space with examples derived from comparatively
remote times, although a wise and instructive little
picture might be made of the Whig manner of dis-
tributing Government favours for the last ten years.
There is a good reason, too, for not impaling Lord
Chancellor Brady upon any but recent evidence.
He may have only of late altered his practice in this
respect, and it would be unfair to rake up the past
against him if he has repented of its misdeeds. I
will therefore to-day refer only to some very fresh
instarres of the animus by which the Lord Cban-
cellor is actuated in his bestowal of official rewards.