The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-03-31 00:00:00

PORTUGAL

The Braganza steamer has arrived here, bringing
Lisbon dates of the 24th inst , when the following
vessels of war were anchored in the Tagus :—Her
Majesty's screw ships Exmouth, Captain Harry
Eyers ; James Watt, Captain G. Giffard ; Princess
Royal, Captain T. W. Anson ; and Colossus, Capt.
T. W. Thompson ; and Brazilian corvette Imperial,
Warruheiro.
The Colossus had arrived on the 23rd, and the
James Watt was under orders to sail home on the
20th

The French screw ships Tourville and Carole,
which had put into the Tagus, had left on the
22nd, with the Austerlitz, for Toulon.
The Sultan, steamer, with the outward Penin-
sular mails of the 17th, from Southampton, had
arrived at Lisbon on the 22nd, and left the same
day for Cadiz and Gibraltar.
The Byzantine, steamer, due from the Brazils,
had not arrived at Lisbon when the Bragauza left.
Our Lisboa correspondence does not contain
any political news of importance in addition to the
last mail. The suppression of the literary subsidy
tax, hitherto collected upon the produce of wine,
was unanimously voted by the House of Deputies,
but considerable difference of opinion prevails as
,-to the substitution of the tax, which amounts to
about 25,0001. per annum. The government plan
of distribution pro rata among the different
districts was, however, approved by a majority of
67 against 41 votes. The ox-Minister, M. Soutes,
voting with the majority.

COLLIERS AND CANDLES.—Like other men, miners have
opinions and prejudices; but, in their own calling, they
take them from their masters and their overlookers.
Masters continue year atter Year to build cottages without
due attention to the wants of health; they know, moreover,
that arms and legs are broken by the accidental fall of stones
while men descend the shaft ; nevertheless, they do not pro•
perly face and protect the pit mouth. They know that men
are burnt in the pit, and are generous to them, feel a true
eorneacsi ,n for them is their suffering ; but they do not
exert th mselves suflicierrly to strike at the root of all
such aceidents ; because, as the working of pits has been,
so it shall be. The men who talk about improvements are
mere ineov itors, meaning well and knowing little ;
persons to be looked upon as the heretics used to be looked
upon by oxthodox believers, who had on their side, as
they believed, all the traditions of the church. We
must be chary of blaming men for this. Orthodoxy
belongs not only to divinity but to law, to physic, to all
callings and all trades, If it makes improvement slew,
it perhaps makes degeneration slower. To all obstinacies
of custom we are willing to give due respect. All
that we care to assert is, that the miners themselves are
not the men to whom we must look for an abatement of the
frequency of accidents in mines. Nothing can be done
with the miner except through the master. If the master
come to the opinion that all his men ought, for their own
safety and tor the credit of his mine, to work with safety
lamps (any practical improvement necessary to the lamps
being first duly made) he he has only to say so to his
manager, explaining why he is of that opinion, and that he
has firmiy made up his mind upon it, and such lamps will
be used. A master resident on the spot has so much influence
that, if he be in earnest, he will himself speak to the charter
masters who are in authority over working companies ; or,
better still, to all the men in public, and in private to those
whom he knows to be more obstinate than their neighbours
or more influential. The men thus prompted would not be
slow to see their own advantage ; and, in a very short tune,
they themselves would extinguish any naked candle
employed by a refractory companion.—,Dielconi Household
Words.