The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-25 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 25.

THE LATEST HOAX.

THE age of chivalry is past. But the age of
hoaxes is come. With a feeling of disappointment
which we doubt not has come home to the
booms and the purses of a large number of
people in all parts of the country, we read in this
morning's Times the following brief but eloquent
paragraph :—" THE CREDIT Formizit OF ENO-
" LAND.—The Bight Hon. J. STUART WORTLEY
" has telegraphed to us, stating that the letter
" which appeared in our columns yesterday, par-
" porting to be signed by him, is a forgery."
How many poor widows and half-pay officers
and country clergymen and others of that inno-
cent and confiding class of investors who are to
the financing anglers in the City what roach and
dace are to the cockney fisherman at Teddington,
will read this concise but sufficient contradiction
with all the anguish of a TANTALUS! To ourselves/
it is but one more lost illusion ; to many why.
during one live-long day had the Right Hoer
/Swear WORTIEY'S 18,00 W. dangled before their
mouths it must be the torture of a mirage to the
maddening thirst of a pilgrim in the desert. For our
own part we have no apology to offer for having
acoepted the letter which is now declared to be a
forgery as a genuine production. Assuredly such
an act of restitution was a little startling—
off the stage. It was more like the &moil-
meut of a high flown French senti-
mental comedy than real life. We should
have been justified in feeling, and even in
showing, at least a momentary hesitation, if not
in waiting twenty-four hours for the silence of
the Right Hon. J. STUART WORTLEY. But the
letter was dated from Lowestoft, and we
have a lively faith in the tonic virtue of sea air.
It might be that the wild waves had been saying
something to the supposed writer of the letter from
" The Royal Hotel, Lowestoft," about those
beggared, despairing, and broken-hearted investors
in the Credit Foncier of England, who, with that
honest faith in a title which is peculiar to
the true Englishman, had trusted their money to a
company once presided over by a Right Honourable?
Does not the Cuarrera.tort of the EXCHEQUER re-
ceive some thousands of pounds every year from in-
genuous fanatics who have " kept back" inco me-
tax, and who, having committed the sin, are
stricken, perhaps, with a sudden fear of the fate
of Azarnas ; or, shall we say, are suffering from a
fatty degeneration of the conscience ?
We hear some captious cynics say—"Ah ! if the
,‘ letter bad been signed ALBERT GRANT you

" would at once have pronounced it -a hoax.
" It was the signature of J. STUART WORTLEY
" that convinced you." This Is cruel. But we will
make a clean breast of it. and confess that had
the letter purporting to be written and signed by
" J. STUART WORTLEY " professed to be written
and signed by " ALBERT GRANT." w 0 should have
consigned it instantly to the waste-paper basket,
as one of those hoaxes which have not even themerit
of probability. We can only now express our regret
at having taken Mr. RV:TART WORTLEY'S name in
vain. The writer of the letter from the Royal Hotel,
Lowestoft, must have followed the right hon.
gentleman's movements rather closely, and may
possibly have caught some unguarded remark
on the morality of public companies. and made
it the text for an impertinent mystification. We
are not ashamed of having, somewhat precipi-
tately as it now appears, improved an occasion too
rare to be neglected. Yet, much as we regret
having done so much unintentional injustice to
Mr. STUART WORTLEY, we regret infinitely more
having assisted in exciting the false and, alas !
ephemeral hopes of the innumerable victims of the
Credit Fonder of England. Public journalists
may be excused for not dwelling on the sad truth
that there is nothing new under the sun. The
letter from Lowestoft might have been written
in the Augustan age—of Rome, and a poet might
have noted this morning's contradiction in the

Populus me sibit, at raihi plaudo
Ipse domi, simul ac uummos coutemplor in arch.

110 W SCIENCE FARES IN NORFOLK.

WE are sorry to hear that the distinguished men
of science who have honoured Norwich with their
presence during the last few days have very little
reason to congratulate themselves on the
choice of that ancient cathedral city for this
year's visit of the British Association. In-
stead of finding themselves the objects of
an eager and solicitous hospitality, and of a
flattering welcome, the favoured guests of all
the country round, as many pleasant reminiscences
of other meetings in other places might have
taught them to expect, they have been with very
few exceptions obliged to depend on that
" warmest welcome" which an English poet found
at an inn—but not at an inn of the nineteenth
century, unless, in our latest dictionaries, a
" warm welcome " means a heavy bill—or on
the colder, but not less costly, comfort of lodg-
ings in a small provincial capital. Now, Nor-
folk is a county abounding in large estates,
and in " seats" of wealthy nobles and commoners.
At an easy distance from Norwich there are country
houses enough to board and lodge in the plea-
santest manner all those eminent and world-
famous men of science who have been condemned
for several nights to go to bed over the shops of
butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.
One would suppose that the LORD LIEUTENANT
of the county, who entertains royalty, would
have set the example to his neighbours of doing
honour to men whose genius and labours will
be remembered by the grateful posterity whose
material civilisation they created, when all the
Lord-Lientenants and Deputy-Lieutenants of
the period in which the British Association
met at Norwich are forgotten even by the
heirs to their estates. If great houses do
not entertain angels unawares these days, they
have the opportunity occasionally of entertaining
men whose names and services to humanity will
outlive political and territorial aristocracies, whe-
ther of Whig or of Tory descent. The only expla-
nation that has reached us of this singular neg-
ligence on the part of the noblemen and
gentlemen of the county of Norfolk to
the British Association is that it is due
to a jealousy between town and county; that
the invitation to the British Association to visit
Norwich came from local professional inhabitants
of that city without the consent or authority of
the great houses in the neighbourhoed, and that
these townspeople were in no respect qualified
to entertain the distinguishes? guests they
had the courage to invite " for the good
" of the town," which, being 'interpreted, means,
we suppose, for the good of the innkeepers and
the lodging-houses. So, between town and county,
Science has fared ill at Norwich ; and by way
of a further &clumsiest to the British Asso-
ciation to give Notwich a wide berth in
future, a portion of the local press has been
engaged during the visit of the Association
in levelling the shafts of its light Flemish
wit at Science in general, and the President of the
year in particulex, and with that peculiar vanity
of ignorance which is the true " note of provin-
" ciality," has been asking its readers " Who is Dr.
" Room 14" We believe this is the first visit of
the British ,sssociation to Norwich, although the
original Sqfretary of the Association, whose ener-
getic devution to its interests would entitle him to
the ranlrfof a founder, was a Norwich man. Unless
we are viiistaken the first visit is not unlikely to
be the last.