The Express.
London, England, 1866-11-03 00:00:00

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(THIS MY.)
The extraordinary revelations in connexion with
the North British Railway Company are commented upon
by most of our contemporaries this morning. We tell the
dory elsewhere. It is a case, the Times remark., not of
trading without capital, nor of simple extraysgacce, but
of mismanagement combined with false accounts and
manufactured dividends. The amounts which the North
British has divided were, according to the committee's
report, but counterfeits of profit, instead of real surplus
of receipts over outgoings. The shareholders, under the
misguidance of their director., have been pocketing profits
when there were no profits to pocket, and allowing ex-
penses to remain unpaid and liabilities to accumulate
until they owe about a couple of millions, and have not
the wherewithal to pay. The committee describe
the method of " cooking" practised by the exe-
cutive as something quite unique in its perfection.
The only consolation the committee can find is that nothing
has occurred to effect the intrinsic or prospective value of
the property. The share capital has not been ruinously
increased, nor have loans been illegally contracted. The
characteristic as well as the moral of the story is to be
found in that uncertainty and mystification of returns
which has been the destruction of railway property in the
market. Nobody likes to buy when he cannot tell whet
he is buying, but a new era in these affairs, observes tie
Times, seems to be opening at last. These catastrophes
bring out the truth, and in the truth of accounts, however
black they may be, lies the secret of improvement and
prosperity for railway shareholders.
The Tdegrapli says • good deal about Mr. Hodgson, who
is charged by the committee with the responsibility, and
who the Telegraph says appears to have aped the railway
sooountant as • mere tool. Whatever this genliensit's
defence may be, two things are abundantly evident. Some
check on the fierce competition of rival lines is required in
the public interest ; and a searching andit by official ex-
aminers, independent of the smiles ce frowns of any direc-
tors, is an urgent necessity.
It is remarked by the Star that the condition of the
company seems to have been first brought to light by the
exertions of the secretary, Mr. Walker, who, after in
vain applying to Mr. Hodgson to alter his policy, dis-
closed the state of affairs to two of the directors, • step
which ultimately led to the appointment of the committee.
The extraordinary state of facts is exposed that none of
the directors, with the exception of the chairman, knew
anything about the real state of the line ; that the Finance
Committee knew nothing of the finances; and that the
auditors knew nothing of the amounts. The chairman,
the manager, and the accountant seemed to have arranged
the accounts, the latter hiding obligingly made them
whatever his superiors wanted them to be.
The Daily News, besides the article on the North
British Railway, which we give in another column, replies
to an Oxford correspondent who had presented the argu-
ment in favour of the government scheme of Irish univer-
sity education. It can see no force in the reasoning that
because we are cautiously liberalising education in Eng-
land by conscience clauses and the abolition of university
and college tests, we are cautiously to de-liberalise it in
Ireland. The mixed system, to which we are slowly tend-
ing here, was fully established and working well there. It
enjoyed the confidence of the people, and if the Irish go-
vernment had only let it alone, and had not fallen into
the trap set for them by the ultramontane hierarchy, the
catholic laity would have been well disposed and perfectly
able to maintain it. Other articles in the Daily News deal
with the melancholy condition of Spain, and the last
quarterly report of the Registrar-General.
The Times also discusses the health of the country
apropos of the last-named document, and discovers in the
current numbers of the Edinburgh Review and of the North
American Review further subjects for comment. The first
relates to the military growth of Prussia, and the second
narrates the extraordinary history of the New York
corporation.

THE WEEKLY PRESS.

Of Englishmen now living no one, the Examiner
says, is perhaps so popular as Mr. Bright, and the natural
consequence is that no Englishman is so heartily detested
by the Orange garrison, and by all who on this side of the
Channel rely upon them for the retention of that country
in subjection. The planter interest is in Ireland un-
changed in spirit and in purpose, end it is the system of
insolent and soreid tyranny with which it is identified that
the advanced liberal party in Ireland invite men of kindred
spirit amongst us to help them to destroy. Mr. Bright is
naturally sought as their champion, and a more ardent or
abler one they cannot final. Giving full credit to the hon.
member for the temper and forbearance he displayed, the
Examiner cannot help thinking that he was too guarded
and vague in stating his remee'es. Thus, on the church
question, he would have advanced more effectually the
cause if he had proclaimed more clearly the inevitable
truth that the church property ,n Ireland when
taken from the grasp of the spoiler cannot be used
in the endowment of Roman catholicism. On the
land question, if the proposed measure of direct
government intei:erence stab the absentee ownership
should be compulsory, we may readily imagine the opposi-
tion it will encounter ; and were even this overcome, the
Examiner is at a loss to imag.ne by what means, short of
the creation of crown tenancies in perpetuity, the estates
thus purchased could be prevented from passing again into
the hands of an absentee proprietor. Then there is the
difficulty which stares one in the face in every county of
Ireland that the worst managed estates are those of
resident landlords, and that some of the beat belong to
absentees. No doubt all these difficulties have been well
considered by Mr. Bright, and when his plan is produced
we shall be better able to judge of the 'Lauber in which he
seeks to deal with them. Till then the Examiner cannot
see how good shall come of his suggestions.
The Duke of Somerset's examination before the Totnes
Commission cone simply to this, mays the Spectator, that
the duke was pretty well aware of the sort of intimida-
tion, the sort of influence exerted over his tenants and
wielded by his agent at Totnes, but has taken care not to
inquire too closely about it and to ignore it as much us
possible. In other words, the Duke of Somerset, and other
aristocratic leaders of opinion, do not really wish to put
an end to intimidation, which is worse than bribery, at
all. They claim to lead us politically, and are below
us, or amongst the most selfish of us, morally.
The Duke of Somerset cares more to wield ille-
gitimate political power through his land, than to im-
prove the political morality of England. And, of course,
all landowners, great and small, follow in his track. If
the leaders cam nothing for the ends for which the Houses
of Parliament profess to legislate, how is it possible even
that any legislation shall be effectual? An aristocracy
that wishes to lead, and has not the virtue to take the
lead in political morality, is not worth much to the nation.
Is it not a clear farce for governments to introduce measures
against corruption, when their principal members admit
that they prefer to ignore is when they could extirpate it
—on their own property
The Spectator thinks it an omen of good for Ireland to
find Mr. Bright taking for a moment the place which was
once filled by Mr. O'Connell. The contrast between the
two orators is not greater than the contrast between their
political treatment of Ireland. Mr. Bright makes no
attempt to adapt himself to the Irish, and carefully with-
holds even a shadow of encouragement to the separationist
feeling ; but he holds out a few practical measures, the
carrying of which would go far, he thinks, to assuage the
evils and discontent from which Ireland suffers, if she
would only accept them. With what he said of the pro-
testant establishment the Spectator entirely concurs, and
also with his proposal to secure a compensation for
farmers' improvements, but though this would he still
Insufficient, the Spectator does not see how the proposi-
tion of a mission to buy up the great landed estates
would identify the people with the soiL To make such
purchase compulsory would only be justifiable in the last
resort. Then it is to be feared that to buy, the people
must mortgage, and an begin their experiment loaded with
debt—a very disastrous condition for success. A far more
radical measure would be to apply the Cornwallis settle-
ment—whisik is such a magnificent moans is Bengal
under difficulties of a very similar nature—to Ireland,
with compensation to the landlords for the loss in the
value of their property—that is, to secure his property for
ever to every tenant in Ireland at its present rent so
long as he continues to pay that rent regu-
larly, the slabs reimbursing the landlord, and charging
the lutenist cm the capital sem so paid, as an addi-
tional rentseheage on the tenant's property—perhaps at a
higher rats of interest than that paid by the state, so as to
produce a sinking fund. By this means all tenants would
le mewed for ever, so long as they paid the ip mat, in