The Express.
London, England, 1866-10-25 00:00:00

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

(TIID3 DAY.)

MR MORTON rxro'd DUZZICIL
Attaching little weight to the resolutions of an
audience who were ready to give something better than an
impartial hewing, the Times looks into the deliberate
statement by Sir M. Peto himself for an explanation of his
transactions in the matter of the London, Chatham, and
Dover Railway Company, and the result is to find the
questions at issue obscured rather than elucidated by the
involved and prolix exposition. When money was raised
to pay off a million and a quarter due on Lloyd's bonds,
the company still owed the money by means of which
those securities had been called in. The company In their
next step want into the market and issued debentures on
the strength of stook not one penny of which had been
paid up, and at this critical point of the COMP, when
we want to know how it happened that deponents could
be found to go before a magistrate and make the requisite
oath that half the capital bad been actually paid up, so
that debentures could be raised, Sir Morton's explanation
fails us. Although he had been lust/Med as financial
counsel to the company and bad advised the creation of
this stock, avowedly with the clew to the issue of
debentures, he says be had nothing whatever to do
with the issue of those debentures, and that the
remarks on the transaction should be applied to the
firm of solicitors under whose advice the company acted.
He say' the same thing as to the transaction inlB6l, when,
at the time when an issue of debentures wail contemplated,
he gave the company a receipt for 429,7001., as payment
for work under contract, and the company returned to Sir
Morton Peto and Co. a receipt for precisely the same sum
as payment for share capital. This transaction was cer-
tainly looked upon as collusive—as representing a forma-
tion of capital which bad never been formed, for the pur-
pose of pledging it in the money market. As to the
over issue of debentures, his explanation now is that these
documents were so informal, so imperfect, or so defective,
that they are not to be regarded as genuine debentures at
at On this the Times asks what, then, was the nature
of the security whioh they conveyed to the financial com-
pany ? Somebody must have come off poorly in such& trans-
action. If he wishes to obtains favourable opinion, it can only
be canted by different arguments from those which he here
employs. It is no justification of a transaction to say that
solicitors allowed it ; still lees, to say that other people
have done the same, or that nothing under the circum-
danoes could have been done better.
The &or condemns more than one transaction, but adds
that nothing was done for the purpose of making extrava-
gant profit for the firm of Peto and Co., but all went to
keep up the railway company with which he was use-
elated. Beating this in view, it is at least unjust to hold
Sir Morton Febo and his partners up to pub'io obloquy, if
the railway company and its officials, including its solici-
tors, are to be regarded as tictims.

111111BERS OUT OT PARLIAMUft._

The Daily News describes Sir Stafford Northeote, who
has just been addressing an agricultural audience in North
Devon, as precisely the man for a ministry which, like the
present, is simply a Ministire pear affaires—which prac-
tically holds office in order to carry on the business of the
country until its successors shall be appointed. Like
Lord Stanley, he concerns himself rather with social and
administrative than with directly political subjects, and
like him also, though wanting in the mental habit and
complexion which would make the word liberal
applicable to him, has neither the temper of
a partisan nor the prejudices of a tory. His
remedies for the unsatisfactory condition of agri-
cultural industry, amounting to the intimation that the
peasants of England must be subjected to a judicious
system of patronage and benevolence, are very triviaL
Agricultural labourers in England can never hope to own
a rood of the soil they cultivate ; and the conversion of
land under tillage into pasture lend further tends to dimi-
nish their numbers. The economic laws which are making I
England a " pleasure ground " for the wealthy must of
necessity evict its peasants to other countries or dismiss
them to other pursuits. In his proposals for neutralising
the joint action of these causes, Sir Stafford Northoote
trifles with a great subject. Still if his suggestions are
carried out to peasants who remain they will be better
labourers for being better treated, and when they go they
will carry away a better feeling towards us. In the
economic and patriotic sense, kindness, like honesty, is
the best policy.
The Herald accepts the spit it in which Mr. Forster and
Mr. Hugessen have approached the subject as a happy
augury for the future of reform. It is important to notice
the fact that there is one section of the liberals who are
prepared to justify their denomination, and to accept a
reform measure even from the hands of Lord Derby. That
such is the general feeling among the mass, even of the I
working classes, the Herald has no doubt whatever ; and
it trusts the event may show that the confidence which
has been placed in the present government was not un-
deserved.
For the first time for many a year, observes the Star, the
liberal party is beginning to know what real union is, and
how priceless is the boon of an honest leadership founded
upon mutual trust, and upon a thorough appreciation of
the difficulties to be overcome and the duties to be per-
formed. The Guildford banquet is the latest illustration
of the truth of the proposition we have laid down. The
' somewhat discordant notes which were sounded by Mr.
Charles Buxton only made the general agreement more con-
spicuous.