The Express.
London, England, 1861-12-31 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 31, 1861.

iron structures, called fire-proof, WM be cited as
warnings for generations to wow The deaths
by fire, and by other accident* caused by Or per-
verse folly of female dress, lyre been unanally
numerous. We have had solemn warnings in
the form of tremendous pit accidents, and
the fall of old houses—particularly that at Edin-

burgh, last month. Still, it appears by the
Census that the conditions of life and health
are greatly improved, and steadily improving,
in the country at large ; and there is per-
haps no respect in which our people have not
advanced within the ten years which the Census
sums up. The increase of numbers is great,
though partial ; and the agricultural portions are
pot in the way of improvement by science
and zeal, as the manufacturing districts were before
them. On the whole, the people live longer, live
better, and bequeath more favourable lives to their
children ; and the year which is passing away has
confirmed these favourable tendencies.
There have been faint revivals of some old
anxieties—some confused echoes of old discontenta,
as must be expected in the midst of all prosperity.
Some efforts have been made to resuscitate the
Repeal agitation in Ireland ; bet with no effect.
The 3l'Maxes funeral was frowned upon by the
priests ; Mr. SMITH O'Dell :en offer of himself as
mediator in the American civil war, as the heartiest
reviler of England, brought no response ; and the
latest demonstration in Dublin, on occasion of the

Trent affair, only disclosed the anarchical state of
the party, and procured the dismissal of the
chairman from the magistracy. There is enough
of mischief done in Ireland by the rains to
have reminded us to set to work in time
to avert all danger of famine. We have
been suddenly checked in our complacency about
the advance made in the education of our youth
by the disclosures occasioned at Woolwich, where
young men have been treated as young Englishmen
will never bear to be treated. This, again, has I
brought out facts about the despotism and bad
manners of the Horse Guards, which remind us
painfully of former days, when the army was
infested with ruffians below and jobbers in the
high places. The carrying on of Lord Hasszwr's
work of Army Reform to a point far beyond what
Lord Mama could have reached is one of the
most pressing of our duties---whether war or peace
is before us.

Our colonies have been calling to us again. New
Zealand has once more been a battlefield of races,
and a mew of strife among the higher race as to
the claims of the lower. We have seen the wisest
step taken M the return of Sir G. Ga' to the
colony ; but the mischief of the minding months
is every way irreparable. We have witnessed the
ordinary phenomena of free government in young
countries, in our vigorous and prosperous Australian
colonies ; and we have heard strong calla from the
Pacific coast for aids and appliances to the needs
of our rich and healthy colony of British Columbia.
Many good people and things have been sent out ;
but more are wanted to make that new home for
Englishmen as safe, enlightened, and progressive
as it ought to be.

Death has made great havoc this year within
the limits both of our political interests and sym-
pathies, and of our own realm. Besides the four
Sovereigns whose departure has been referred to,
there have been deaths in several royal houses since
that of the Duchess of KIST was mourned in this
country. The royal family of PORTUGAL has been
sorely smitten ; an infant of the Queen of Simla
has died ; and the Count and Countess of MoNvo-
1101.1'S in the other branch of the family. The
mournful record closes with our own great loss,
by which our Queue is widowed, and millions of
us became mourners in an hour. The world's great
calamity by death was when CAVOUR dep►rted in
Juno, just after he had seen the gathering of the
first Italian Parliament. Poland lost her aged
representative, Prince Croarozeszi ; and Russia
her well-known spokesman, Prince GORTCHAKOI,7.
We have to mourn our best War Minister in Lord
HIABKRT ; and in Sir Joins °SAMAR a statesman
whose place in Partiamentannot be filled. Several
members of both Houses have disappeared, of
whom Lord CAMPSILL, the Dukes of Morose,
BUCKINGHAM, and Scruszime, and the Earls
Foarsecus and Etaueroe, have been and will bo
missed in the one, and Mr. DoNeostes and Mr.
BMASMAN CRAWFORD in the other. Lord CANT-
sioa.'s death moreover removed the ablest lawyer
we have from the one House to the other, con-
verting Sir RIIMARD BRIMISLL into Lord Wen-
n-ie. An aged General and Admiral were taken
from us in Sir HOWARD Dovotos and Admiral
DUNDAIL The Bishops of BUSMAN and KILLALOR
died here, and the Bishop of MADRAS in India ;
and others have gone from the clerical ranks—as
Dr. Coneisonox, eminent in the Free Church
movement in Scotland; and another CUNNINGHAM,
of Harrow, a leader of the Evangelical movement
in its early days. We might add the name of the
Ree.PATRICK BROST', thefatherof that melancholy
group of doomed geniuses whose works and fate have
interested all the world. Literature has had
a mourning year, if it were only by the loss of
Mrs. BROWNING; but there is also Taos. Plows'
Immix (Mocaume's aid and friend), and Mrs.
Ooze, and Amass Bonus, the sister of JOANNA ;
and Sir Fzonete Pommies, whom position as
Keeper of the Public Records was both cause and
effect of his value as a literary antiquarian. The
Russian traveller, T. W. Aramsow, is gone ; and
from the company of means Professor Heneww,
Bismor, the astronomer, and Professor Quairrr,
the microscopist. Of physicians, Sir Jour( Foasm
and Dr. Sot/Timone Serve died full of years ;
and the lamented Dr. BALT was snatched away
untimely. Among our engineers and architects
there hes been a great sweep. We have lost
JOSRaII MAMMA; and Sir Paris FAIRSAIRN, and
Sir C. W. P AWAY, and Sir We. Cuzzer, and
Itteaoze °LIMIER, the pride of his native New •
castle. In art, meek has lest //MURRY Noesmo,
and the great STAUDIGL, and CATS/RIDS HATES;
painting has lost DAISY, LINDSAY, and Pressss-
GILL sculpture, Joni FiLixets ; and the drama
our old favourites, Yawn and VADDRICROFF.
Old Sir Perm LAMM will be remembered in his
own way.

The changes wrought by time have been very
visible this year. We have seen the spirited
reforming Commoner, the Joni( Rl:sena. of our
younger days, transformed into the elderly peer, I
and eminent now in the Foreign-office rather than
in Parliament. We have seen the royal children
growing up to manhood and womanhood ; and the
Prince of WALI34, especially, summoned to attend
to the real business of life, as soon as he had left
the University and gone through some military
training in the camp. The ripening of events which
will make the departing year most memorable is in
America. If one result be to plunge us in war,
which we still trust will not happen, the event will
be referred in history to the coining year ; and we
shall remember the one which is now passing from
as chiefly by the gloom of bereavement which over-
shadows its close. Yet we must not forget that it
►es been a year of great and substantial national
happiness and true welfare, and bear it in grateful
remembrance accordingly.

Ths past year, like its predecessors, has been
stained by several great commercial scandals. Just
when the public were beginning to hope that the
stimulus given to the vigilance of directors and
auditors by the huge frauds Of RV:MATH and
Pummiosa had put joint-stock tunda in a more
secure position, a fresh shock was given to confi•
denim by the discovery announced on the 16th of
February, that DI:RDEN, a ledger clerk in the

branch of the Commercial Bank
of London, had, by very simple means, contrived
to misappropriate no less a sum than 67,000/.
With the consequent enforced transfer of the busi-
ness of the establishment to the London and
Westminster Bank, and a ith the obliteration of
the Commercial from the list of London joint-
stock banks, the public are already acquainted.
That an institution of so long standing should be
extinguished by such an event is signifi-
cant of the close connexion which sub-
sists between good credit and banking
success. Let the one be impaired, and there
is no room whatever for the other. The revela-
tions which have more recently occurred in the
case of the National Assurance and Investment
Association, misnamed the " Bank of Deposit,"
furnish a fresh illustration of the ease with which
• sum of three hundred thousand pounds, ex-
tracted for the most part from the hard-won
hoards of the poorer classes, may be dis-
sipated, or fraudulently misappropriated, through
the medium of a joint-stock company, and dust
be thrown in the eyes of the dupes and public
until the sacrifice is fully consummated. This
matter being still sub jtedice, we have only to ex-
press the public hope that it will be probed to the
bottom, and the responsibility visited on the
guilty shoulders. Developments of the kind with
which the public have' been familiarised of late
years are mapping the very foundations of
trust in public confidence, and this at
a time when, from the vast expansion
of commercial trausactions generally, the powerful
agency of associated capital is becoming increas-
ingly necessary. It is beyond the scope of even •
millionaire to construct • London and North
Western Railway, or the seventy or eighty
steamers which compose the fleet of a Peninsular
and Oriental Company. The wants of commerce are
daily expanding. Its requirements—particularly
in the form of transport, dock, and telegraph ac-
commodation—have now attained • point beyond
the conception of our forefathers. Individual
means are quite inadequate: joint-stock funds are
indispensable, and are supplied to the extent of
millions in • single purse. This is why the
frauds brought to light in joint-stock companies
involve such frightful amounts. The rogue who Can
once succeed in putting his hand, undetected, into a
public company's monies, holds the purse of For-
tunatus in his grasp. What he can do once he
can do again ; and so he goes on until some acci-
dent, humanly speaking, opens the eyes of his
easy-going superiors, or of pick-tooth," guinea-pig"
directors, to the astounding fact of a deficiency of
hundreds of thousands of pounds. We fear that
• deep satire on modern society is con-
veyed in the very fact that a person
whose ostensible means are limited to • few
hundred pounds a year may live at the rate of
many thousands, as Rossox did, or fill his house
with costly works of art, as REDPATH did, without
exciting the curious comment of those in his own
sphere of life, or the suspicion of his employers.
Is our moral atmosphere becoming akin to that of
RUM* where, " palm oil " apart, the avowed
salary of • government official amounts to
one-fifth or one-tenth of the sum required to live
upon, or commensurate to his notions of existence I
What • disgraceful commentary do the career and
opportunities of our distinguished criminals afford
upon the system of providence and superin-
tendence that prevails at the boards of public
companies ! It is only simple people, people cut out
naturally for shareholders, who imagine that it is
the province of directors really to direct the affairs
of • great public concern, and to watch over the
conduct of thousands of employds, both with their
own and with other trustworthy eyes. Nothing
of the kind : the ordinary definition of a Director
is • person who receives • certain fee for attending
in a certain room at certain intervals. The more
of such "duties," save the m►rk I he can squeeze
into the week, by " directing " • dozen public
companies at once, the better the financial result
to himself, and the greater the opportunities for
patronage, if not for favouritism and " jobbing."
There is, we fear, a close relation be-
tween this definition of a director and the defi-
nition we have heard applied to a public company
—"a thing founded in fraud." " All public
" companies are founded in fraud," is a warning
motto which, we have heard duped shareholders
urge, ought to be carved in ineffaceable letters
on every public establishment, over every door
of the Stock Exchange, and in every place of
financial resort. So general • charge be-
comes, of course, a libel, but the public
have imbibed, by experience, so painful a sense of
the fraud, deceit, or, in the cases open to less severe
objection, irregularities, which attend the incep-
tion and conduct of public companies, that they
would be scarcely disposed to condemn even this
sweeping condemnation. It would almost
seem as if, in matters of business, a dic-
tatorship were the perfection of administration,
because it alone seems to admit of the
concentration, under one supreme and actively
controlling hand, of • single power and accumu-
lated responsibility, ascending, rank by rank,
through the various grades of employ6s, each
charged with the task of supervision of the class
below him. It is just possible that, even under
the system on which the management of our public
companies is at present constituted, a perfect self-
acting plan of mutual check and countercheck
might be established in a well-ordered concern,
but there is the fatal defect that when the thread
of responsibility reaches the head of the under-
taking, it is totally lost in a board of a dozen or
twenty members.

The writers in the Km: Zeitung of Berlin
have dimmed the first Liberal on mooed in Holy Writ.
The Lisguago in whisk they de so, though more profound
Ore lateilkible, is yet suiliciently dear se to the name of
the psalm intended. After • mystic introduction, out of
titbit* ha massages to elicit the conclusion that " •
king of God's grace is at comity with this world,"
the writer unfolds the gnat truth in due gradations :
" Liberalism did not take its ries in ante-Christian

time, for it is esesetially a degeneration existing in the
kingdom by God's gram. Hentheadom was wanting is
lest iateesity of the real and is the euergies of corruption
neesseary to generate liberalism. Among God's people
et the Old Comsat, also, there was ao spot of premed
prepared for the growth et liberalism. But when the
Liegdorm of Heaven mime dews epos earth, thee famed
ep liberalism for the first time, end embodied itself far a
type in Herod, who would fain have deetroved the Babe
of Bethlehem ; sad it has held its sittings on Geed
Fridays ever sines.'
A NoVILL WAY TO MOTS • WINDMILL—The
someerbst Lovsl operation of movie; a windmill bodily, by
mesas of oxen, has been going oe during the week. The
windmill in rtneetioe. called Taylor's mill, used to steed at
the top of Hielimood.bill, near the Park House. It i. sew
a coesidweble distance to the north of its old resting s.
I aid has sot yet, we believe, reaelsial it. destiaatiee.—
Sasser Times.

trbe Court.

08B01INE, Dac. 30.

Sir Henry Holland and Dr. Watson arrived at
Osborne to-day by command of her Majesty, to receive her
Majesty's acknowledgments for their cue and attention
during their attendance upon the Prince Consort.
Sir James Clark arrived yesterday.
Dr. Jennar remains at Osborne in attendance.

Despatches were received yesterday at the Colonial-office
from the Governors of Mills, Ceylon, and Hong Kong.

O),IDOLENCE WITH HSI: MAJEITY.

OXFORD, Lcc•.:tkl.

A highly influential meeting of the nobility and
gentry of this county was held this afternoon in theCou*ty
hall, presided over by the High Sheriff (Henry Birch Bey-
minima, Fag.), when the following address of oondolsoos,
proposed by the Duke of Marlborough, and seconded W the
!tight How. Joseph Warner Henley, Esq., was carried with
great solemnity :
" To the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty,

" We, your Majesty's loyal and dutiful subjects, noble-
ram, gentlemen, and other inhabitants of the county of
Oxford, assembled in the County-ball by a notice from the
high sheriff, this 30th day of December, ls6l, desire most
humbly to approach your Majesty with the assurance of
our devoted affection for your Majesty and your royal
family.
" Deeply affected by the sudden and mournful event
which leads us with sorrow and condolence to the throne.
we humbly beg leave to addreas our heartfelt sympathy with
your Majesty in the unspeakable lose you have sustained
by the death of his late Royal Highness the Prince Con-
sort, the memory of whose exalted character will be held
in reverence by the latest pi:Moray.
" No name in Eogland has ever been more preeminently
emaciated with the most honourable distinctions, and no
loss has ever plunged the nation into grief more profound.
" It is our most earnest prayer that God in His mercy
may long spare your Majesty's life, and that the affliction
with which, in His wisdom, He has seen fit to visit your
Majesty and your royal family, may be attended with that
solace He alone sable to afford."

Amongst those on the platform were the chairman, his
Greco the Lord-Lieutenant, the Earl of Effingham, the
Lord Redeadele, Baron Camoys, Right Hon. J. W. Henley,
M.P., Sir George Henry Dashwood, Woad North, M.P. ;
Hon. J. N. Fianna, IL B. Moralism, Fop., D.C.L., Rev. P.
Winter, D.D., Messrs. Aahharet, Lane, Morrell, dtc.
The CHAIRMAN mad a letter from the Bishop of Oxford,
stating that bay* unavoidable business to attend to be
could not possibly be present.