The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-08-23 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN TIMES.---LIVERPOOL, SATURDAY.

late fatal colliery explosion in South Wales on
Thursday evening, with the following important
statement made by the foreman :—" Seventeen of
" the jury are of opinion that the explosion in the
" coal pit at Cymmer, which occurred on the 15th
" July, whereby Thomas Lewis and 113 other men
" lost their lives, was caused by the negligenee of
" Jabez Thomas, the manager, Rowland Rowlands,
" the overman, and Morgan Rowlands, David
" Jones, and William Thomas, the firemen. They,
" therefore, find a verdict against those persons of
" Manslaughter.' " It will be remembered that
114 persons perished by this " negligence."

The Times gives a long account of the ascent of
Mount Ararat, . the sacred mountain, by five
Englishmen, The natives expressed their wonder-
ment at the foreigners, doing what had never

before been done by man. The prospect which the
summit commanded, over a boundless raßge of
territories, under a magnificent sunrise, is described
as glorious.

A very important convocation, called the Native
Reformatory Union, formed on the model of the
Association of Science, has been held the last
three days, at Bristol, under the general chairman•
ship of Lord Stanley. The whole question of
penal reform and punishment won a thorough con .
sideration in the various sections of the union,
and the information already given, and the sugges-
tions made form an almost unequalled contribu_
tion to social well being. Among many statements
peculiarly important, the following extract from a
letter of Mr. Dunne, the chief constable of
Newcastle-on-Tyne, is still a thing of mark :
" Perhaps I may be permitted to say that I know,
" from my own personal knowledge and observa-
" tion, that since parental responsibility has been
" enforced in this district, under the directions of
" the Secretary of State, the number of juvenile
" criminals in the custody of the police have
" decreased by one half. I know that many of the
" parents who heretofore were in the habit of
" sending their children into the streets for the
" purposes of stealing, begging, and plunder, have
" quite discontinued that practice, and several of
" the children so used and brought up as thieves
" and mendicants, are now at some of the free
" schools of the town; other's of them are at work,
" and thereby obtain an honest livelihood ; and so
" far as I can ascertain, they seem to be thoroughly
" altered, and appear likely to become good and
" honest members of society."
It appears, from the published correspondence,
that the Governors of our North American and
West India colonies have been proposing to the
Government, but in vain, the entire abolition of
Customs duties upon the products of Canada and
the West Indies. The objections are of the usual
red-tape character.
The determination expressed by the American
government, through Mr. Marcy, to maintain the

system of privateering in all its integrity, in oppo-
sition to the propositions made by the conference
of Paris, is producing much discussion. It is,
however, alleged that there is this much reason in
Mr. Marcy's position—that either all the non-
contraband merchandise of a belligerent nation
should be exempt from seizure; or all should be
open to it, from all parties—the private citizen, no
less than the government ; for otherwise, nations
that are but governments, would have in their
extensive organisations, an enormous advantage
over nations that are little more than popular

aggregations.
An Trish journal maliciously affirms, that the
argument which finally determined Lord Palmer-
ston—at the risk of a rather menacing election—to
give Mr. John O'Connel the appointment of the
Hanaper clerkship was—the latter's well-timed,
assurance that " no man could be better fitted for
a place in which there was nothing to do than
" himself." His lordship laughed, and, laughing,
found his powers of resistance gone.
Nine houses in the County of Meath were
entered the other day, and about sixty persons
turned out on the road. The eviction was a matter
of landlord convenience, the tenants not being in
arrears, and having offered, indeed, to continuo
their tenancies at increased rents. Such are the
preludes of those tales of assassination which, in the
tenant's answer with the indiscriminating echo—
" duties," the landlord's not less indisseminating
cry of " rights."

The appeal of Prussia to England for the sup.
pression of the Riff Pirates will, of course, meet
with a favourable response—France probably con-
tributing a ship or two for so wholesome a
work. English forbearance must indeed be
little short of miraculous, so long to have per.
mitted the existence of a piratical community,
almost under the very guns of Gibraltar.

The sub-committee of the Birkenhead Commis -
sioners are said to have resolved on permitting no
Sunday bands in their park.

The Wellington memorial is to be inaugurated
at Manchester on or about the 30th inst. Sir
Harry Smith and the Bishop of Manchester are
among the celebrities who will be present.
A person named Vere Dawson Hunt, lately an
officer in the County Dublin Militia, is before the
Dublin Police Court, under charges of pledging
his landlady's property, and obtaining monies
under false pretences.

Our Foreign News to-day is of little interest.
The details from Lisbon show forty or fifty pri-
soners to have been taken. In Paris, arrests con
tinue, the grounds of which are sinister statements
as to the health of the Emperor. On Wednesday
a magnificent international dinner was given by the
medical profession of Paris, to the English, French,
Turkish, and Sardinian Legion, engaged in the
late war. The other items will be found in an-
other column,

IT is difficult to understand how the practices of
the Superior Courts of Law, of these realms, could
have brought them into the universal disrepute
which is now attached to their names. Chancery,
once the seat of godly conscience, envolves all who
approach it, in search of justice, in want and
beggary, and those men who undertake the
administration of its affairs in a most censurable
notoriety. The consistorial tribunals of the land
are declaimed against with equal vehemence, and
strange things are broadly cited by those who have
been injured in reputation and fortune by some
of their latest decisions. The House of Lords, as
a Court of Appeal, participates in the general out-
cry against Star Chamber proceedings and Carna-
rilla decisions.
The
tribunal, from whicih n
public
ajuryotin
have,of i truth, lost all
faith in the wisdom,
every legal
honest and true
men are excluded. It
is of
freely admitted that there
are many instances in which
precedence of law, and that the useages of must take
of Chancery
require years of study, and profound judgment,
in order to give them the force of law, :andt to
render them strictly just to all parties.
answer to this, it is urged that a jury of twelve
reasonable and disinterested man are quite as
capable of arriving at a sound and just
verdict, in matters relating to the disposal
of the property of widows, orphans, and
lunatics, and to make decrees affecting personal
and real estate, and the character of those whose

conduct is impugned in an Ecclesiastical Court,
under the direction of a judge, as they are in a
case where the life of a fellow creature is placed
in their hands.

The present system of dealing with the property
interests of society is based on a palpable and
contemptible fiction, for which we are indebted to
the craft of lawyers, and the past ignorance of the
community. It is perfectly monstrous to think
that the property of the citizen can be swept into
the Court of Chancery by any set of desperate
knaves, for an indefinite number of years, while
all the parties beneficially interested in the issue
are left to starve, and find a premature grave in
misery and degradation. No want of knowledge of
the principles of equity can justify the possibility
of such things occurring in this age. Chancery

victims are to be found in far greater numbers
in 1856 than they were in 17:"25, a period well
deserving of being remembered by those
who are responsible for the administration
of justice. Thus far the glaring acts of cruelty
and oppression which have been perpetrated
on equity suitors, and persons who have been
openly robbed of their estates behind their backs,
have been mixed up with politics and faction
interests. But such questions have no connection
whatever with politics, except, indeed, that our
Chancellors and Ecclesiastical Judges are all the
devotees of some particular party ; but beyond this
they cannot be given a shade even of a political
complexion. The man who would tolerate an
abuse of justice in any Court, would be a law-
less Conservative, a dangerous Whig, and a vile
Radical.

We have, therefore, to look at the workings of
the, closed or non-jury Courts purely in a social
light, and to ask ourselves how much longer the
complaints brought before the public by those
who have been wronged in these Halls of Justice
can pass unnoticed ? We will not give any man
who sits behind a curtain to decide in the absence
of the public—i e , a jury—credit for being wholly
above worldly influences, until it is proved that he
is so. We will swallow nothing which is not made
as savory as the records of truth and justice
can make it, when we know there are many
million's worth of property between a judge's
finger and thumb. It is a wonder that JOHN
SADLEIR was not high in equity, and that
JAMES SADLEIR was not an ecclesiastical judge. If
one had presided over the cause of STUBBER V.
WOLFE, and TOMMEY V. WHITE, and the other over
the TALBOT divorce trial, the fiction we are asked
to accept as common sense, would have suited
their purposes admirably. But these three
notorious oases are quite sufficient to show that
there is no safety for the peace, happiness, respec-
tablility, and property of any family or individual
in the three kingdoms, while juries are not suffered
to hear and give a final decision where the rights
and interests of the subject are concerned. For
upwards of forty long years was one unfortunate
Chancery victim imprisoned in the Queen's Bench,
where he died a short time since—for nearly thirty
years have the heirs to the STUBBER estates been
falsely personated and robbed in Chancery, and
they are still without redress. The Misses
ELIZABETH and ANN SIIEARWOOD, of Sheffield, have
just been released from prison, after fourteen
years' confinement, which they were doomed to
endure because they would not give up the title
deeds to their property, that the Court of
Chancery might deal with them as it liked. Mr.
HENRY TOIIIIEY, who claims property worth
150,0001., and who obtained a decree in the House
of Lords in his favour, but which has since been
illegally and unconstitutionally reversed, is
inmate in a model lodging-house.
Poor MI'S. TALBOT, in the bloom of life, is pining
away in Bedlam, after having been treated with the
most brutal personal violence in her own house,
and has been divorced. from her husband and
child upon the evidence of a convicted felon, on
whose testimony the Ecclesiastical Court gave its
decree, but who was not produced at the bar of the
House of Lords. A thousand other cases might
be added to this list, but how long, we ask, will
the veil of politics be able to cover the mass of
iniquity which these un•English and arbitary
Courts are inflicting on the country? Mrs.
TALBOT'S case is an outrage against public law
and morality, which never can be forgotten or
pardoned. If the wretched woman had been an
Hindoo, she could not have been treated worse
than she has been by those around her hearth,
and the authorities who ought to have pro-
tected her when she was brought before
them as a raving maniac. This was not done.
The cruelties she had met with seemed to
call forth the worst enormities of injustice. And
we should very much like to know what our law
reformers propose to demand as a safeguard to
society in similar cases, and with regard to Chancery
and Ecclesiastical suits and the highest Court of
Appeal? The TALBOT divorce business we hold in
reserve as one of the most complete illustrations
of the frightful law, affecting chastity, under which
we live. The other causes we have cited belong to
a different category, which we shall refer to when-
ever the Legislature may make further futile
attempts to stifle popular discontent, by merely
making changes in the practice instead of reform-
ing the constitution of our superior seats of
corruption or ignorance, one or other of which
they assuredly are, if we are to judge by their
decisions.

Royal Charter. It proved so on her last return from Mel-
bourne, when she brought home all the gold which was
then in the colony for shipment, being the largest amount
that any single ship has hitherto conveyed ; while, at the
same time, she was so entirely full of passengers, that her
berths might all have been let twice over. The success of
the Liverpool and Australian traders is now, we repeat it,
certain, and we heartily congratulate thew on the favourable
issue of an undertaking so vast and so pregnant with good
to the colonies of Australia.

THE COURT.

OSBORNE, AUGUST 21.—His Royal Highness the Duke of
Cambridge will arrive, to day, on a visit to her Majesty.

Her Majesty held a Privy Council at half past one o'clock,
which was attended by his Royal Highness the Prince
Consort, Mr. Secretary Labouchere (officiating as Lord
President in the absence of Earl Granville), the Lord
Chancellor, the Earl of Harrowby, Lord Privy Seal
Viscount Palmerston, First Lord of the Treasury ; the
Duke of Wellington, Master of the Horse ; and Lord
Ernest Bruce, Vice-Chamberlain .

At the Council, Parliament was ordered to be further
prorogued from the 7th of October to, it was understood,
the 13th of November.

Mr. C. Greville was the Clerk of the Council in
Waiting.
General Sir John Burgoyne arrived yesterday, on a visit.

After the Council, the Ministers returned to London, with
the exception of Viscount Palmerston, who remains at
Osborne.

GENERAL SIR WILLIAM OODRINGTON is spoken of as
likely to succeed to the command of the 54th Regiment.

MISS NIGHTINGALE has declined a proposed public
demonstration by the people of Birmingham. She is still
at her home in Derbyshire, and it is said that the first
visit she will make will be paid to Her Majesty.

GEN. SIR COLIN CAMPBELL will most probably be
appointed Inspector-General of Infantry, as successor to
the Duke of Cambridge, who was placed in this newly
created office a short time ago.

S-cmparr DEATH.—Yesterday morning, about haif-past
nine, a man, named John Ellison, a labourer, aged 62 years,
who was a patient in the sick ward of the West Derby
Union, was found dead in bed.
THE WEATHER still continues most favourable for the
country. Yesterday was very fine, with a brisk bracing
wind, so much desired for harvest purposes, and there is
every appearance of fine weather, which for another fort-
night will see the harvest completely gathered in.

WHERE WAS THE SCHOOLMASTER ?-At what college was
Mr. —, of road, educated ? The question is asked
for the following reason : A certificate, of which the under-
written is a verbatim copy, was received yesterday by Mr.
Blake, the active and intelligent beadle of the Coroner's
Court—" This is to cartify that Mrs. Cook received from
me Sum medicine for her child Emma Cook aged nine
Mouth She died this morning august 21 1856 Efect of
Teathing." What College of Examiners passed this gen-
tleman ?

ILLEGAL PLEDGING.—A day or two ago, there appeared
in onr police reports, the case of a wretched female named
M'Gonikle, who was committed for pledging some slop
trowsers which were given her to make. On that occasion
Mr. Clough made a statement to the effect, that the poor
woman got only threepence a pair for making the trowsers;
and this statement being proved correct, some benevolent
gentlemen have spoken to Mr. Clough, and expressed their
intention to do something for the wretched creature, who is
at present in jail on the charge of illegal pledging.

TERRIFIC BOILER EXPLOSION.—NINE LIVES LOST.—
Yesterday, an inquest took place at the Red Lien Inn,
Blackford Bridge, on the bodies of the nine unfortunate
persons killed by the dreadful explosion which occurred
at Hampson-mill, near Bury. Several others of the
sufferers are dangerously injured, and one was not
expected to survive the previous night ; but, at the time
when the inquest took place, no deaths had occurred later
than the previous Wednesday. The jury, after viewing
the bodies, visited the scene of the accident, accompanied
by the corcncr, and an engineer, John Holker, Esq,.
instructed by Mr. Thomas Baldwin, civil engineer, Bury, to
make an inspection of the premises. One of the victims,
John Whittaker, aged 24, was proceeding on the public
footpath near the premises, along with two other persons,
when the accident happened, and all three were buried
amidst the falling ruins. The manner in which the
discovery of the bodies was made was most singular.
The other bodies of the sufferers having been identified, the
inquest was adjourned.
THE. LAWFULNESS OF DANCING.—At the last sitting of
the Conference the Rev. Isaac Keeling brought forward a
resolution of the London district meeting respecting the
growing custom of dancing, and other worldly amusement
closely allied to it. Mr. Keeling proposed that the rule
prohibiting dancing should he made clearer and more
stringent. Dr. Bunting said it was high time for the
Methodist Conference to give a certain sound on the
matter. In London there were dancing parties in the
houses of some of their members. Be remembered how
20 years ago in Manchester, they had to exercise disci-
pline on dancing Methodists, and they lost some of them
in consequence, but such members who patronised dancing
were better lost than found. The Rev. T. Pugh said he
lamented to say that the evil was a growing one. Card-
playing, too, was practised as well as dancing in some
Methodist families. The Rev. P• 31'0watt said they
❑eeded no discussion—they were all of one mind—the
practice of dancing was not in harmony with religion.
The Rev. J. Scott said that as the evil was chiefly among
the younger members of Methodist families, he hoped they
would, with great affection as well as firmness, enforce
the rule, so as not to lose their hold on young people. The
Conference finally resolved to improve the wording of the
rule in question.

THE REMAINS OF THE LATE EARL OF SHREWSBURY.—
The remains of this young nobleman, who died at Lisbon,
an account of which appeared in our paper a day or two
since, arrived in Liverpool on Thursday, having been
brought from Lisbon in the Minho steamer. The case
containing the body was conveyed to Radley's Hotel, and
thence to Alton Towers, the family seat of the ancient
family of Shrewsbury, previous to interment in the vaults
where so many of the noble name repose. Messrs. Wool-
right and Chidson, of Bold-street, are the undertakers
engaged to arrange the funeral, and workmen, from London,
sent by the Duke of Norfolk, are actively engaged in
putting the chapel in mourning for the reception of the
body on its arrival. The Enke of Norfolk arrived at the
Towers on Tuesday evening. On Monday afternoon Lord
Talbot, of Ingegre Hall, proceeded to Alton Towers, ac-
companied by two solicitors, and formally demanded
possession, alleging that he (Lord Talbot) is the legal heir
to the titles and estates. His lordship was informed that
the trustees under the will of the late earl had taken pos-
session, and he was accordingly refused permission into the
house.

THE NEW LINE OF STEAMERS TO AMERICA.--Every day
adds to the enterprise of Liverpool industry and exertion.
To-day, the splendid steamer Khersonese, the precursor of
a new line of steamers to Canada and the United States,
sails for St. John's, N.F., Halifax, and Portland. This
fine and commodious steamer has every berth filled, and the
passengers are all most respectable. She has caused con-
siderable attraction for some days past, and the managers,
Messrs. Sabel and Cortis, were obliged to refuse a number
of passengers who wished to go out with her, but who came
too late to be accommodated. Besides having all her berths
full, she has an ample cargo of valuable goods. It is
intended, by the company, to sail vessels on this line every
fortnight, and there can be no doubt the line will prove a
very valuable one, as it is in connection with the Grand
Trunk Railway, and will carry passengers to St. John's,
Halifax, Portland, Boston, New York, Montreal, Quebec,
&c. The importance of this line with Liverpool is therefore
obvious. We have seen the bill of fare for steerage pas-
sengers in this magnificent vessel, and it cannot be
surpassed. Messrs. Sabel and Cortis have shown every
attention in this, as in their other American vessels, and
no doubt, as observed; the line will be productive to all
concerned, at the same time it will be of great advantage to
the public.
HIGHWAY ROBBERY.--TlO neighbourhood of Barnsley
has obtained an unenviable notoriety for the number of
highway robberies and other outrages committed therein.
The most recent event of the kind, was investigated on
Tuesday last before two of the West Riding magistrates
(Mr. T. Taylor, and the Rev. W. Wordsworth), at the
courthouse, Barnsley, when two men, named Benjamin
Batty and William Brown, both of Dodworth, near
Barnsley, were charged with stopping John Beaumont on
the highway, near the Stafford colliery, and robbing him
of a 450 promissory note, and *1 103 in cash. The prose.
cutor is a cattle dealer at Saddleworth, in the West
Riding, and is 83 years of age. According to his state-
ment, he was proceeding, about half-past nine o'clock, on
the night of the 12th inst., along a road leading from
Dodworth to Stainborough, and he was attacked by two
men, who rushed out of the hedgebottom at the side of the
road, threw him down, filled his mouth and eyes with
dirt, and after using him in a rough manner, robbed him
of the promissory note, and the money mentioned above.
He was positive as to the identity of the prisoners, the
moonlight at the time of the robbery having enabled him
to see them. Some witnesses gave evidence to show that
the prisoners were near the place shortly before the
robbery and outrage were perpetrated. The magistrates
committed both the prisoners 'for trial at' the next gaol
delivery for the county of York.