The Sun.
London, England, 1865-02-08 00:00:00

ST. LIZ HANDICAP.
The highest weight accepted being Bst 41b, it has been
.taised to Bst 121 b, and the others in proportion.

Age st lb
Aurelian a 8 12
King of Utopia ... 5 8 10
Stockinger ... 6 8 8
The Monk... • .. a 8 6
Deerfoot ... 5 8 6
Donnybrook ... 5 8 6
Principal 6 8 6
Filibustier 5 8 4
Hollyfox ... 4 8 2
Revolver ... 5 8 1
King George ... 4 8 1
Peon ... ... 4 8 0
Queen of Spain ... 6 8 0
Verbena .. '1 7 12
Merry Wife ... 1 7 12
King of Clubs ... 4 7 12
Lapidist 6 7 10
Minstrel ... 4 7 9 J

Age st lb
Flutter c. ... 4 7 8
Nebula 5 7 8
Madcap ... 4 7 6
Countersign ... 4 7 6
Quarantine ••• 4 7 6
Guardsman ... 4 7 6
Whitehall... ... 5 7 4
M. Philippe ... a 7 1
East Lynn... ... 3 6 10
Purity ... 3 6 8
Connection ... 3 6 6
Spring Gun ... 3 6 6
Nabob ••• ••• 3 6 6
Elsinore ... ••• 3 6 4
Trapeze ..• ••• 3 6 3
Swordsman ... 3 6 3
Simple Maid .•• 3 6 2
Rosette 3 6 1

SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE—This day.

LONDON, Feb. B.—Wind this day at noon—North-
Westerly; moderate breeze and fine weather, but rather
cloudy.

DAnntorrn, Feb. 7.—Wind S.W.—Sailed—Jessie, for
St. Michael's.

FALMOUTH, Feb. 7.—Wind W.—Arrived—Diadem, from
Rio Janeiro.

Mumni.Es, Feb. 7.—Wind N.N.E.--Arrived—Joseph
Thomson, from Coquimbo.
Blum', Feb. 7.—Wind S.E.—Arrived—Anne Dathie,
from Mauritius.
GREENOCK, Feb. 7.—Wind li.E,—Arrived—Seutaria,
from Sagua la Grande.

(BY MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.)
G NDI Wednesday Morning.
Arrived,
Hankow;ivd from Table Bay ; Camilla,
from
Lion,:llE,
from Foochowfoo ; Shannon,
and Sirocco, from Madras; England, from Hong Kong;
. CoeurP d ael 1 Ar
te
Ocean Bride, from St. Michael's; Falkland, from Moul-
mein; Liffey, from Moselle Bay; Sheiltiel, from Guernsey;
Annondel, from Demerara ; James Cheston, from Now
York.

Arrived, Feb. B—Cologne, from Rotterdam.
DEAL, Wednesday Morning.
Passed—Susan Vittery, for Brixham ; Brenda, for Malta;
Vittenhage, for Algoa, Bay—all from London ; Bilboa
screw steamer, from Bilboa ; James Chester, from Madras ;
Anne Dyass, from China ; Liffey, schooner, from the west ;
Clifton, from Moulmein ; Helen and Sam Slick, from St,
Michael's—all for London.
Sailed—Smyrna, steamer, for Havre.

The Archbishop of Dublin has arrived at
Maurigy's Hotel from The Palace, Dublin.

The Marchioness (Dowager) of Lothian and Lady
Alice Kerr are staying with the Duke and Duchess of Buc-
clench at Dalkeith Palace, near Edinburgh. Lord Schom-
berg Kerr has joined the family circle.
Count Davillier and Baron de Pierres have ar-
rived at the Clarendon Hotel from Paris.

Lady Molesworth has left town for Swallowfield,
Barks. -

Lady Lee, widow of the late Lieutenant-Colonel
Sir Francis Geary Gardner Lee, died at Florence on tho
25th ult., in her 88th year. The deceased lady was daugh-
ter of Mr. Thomas Healing, of Apperley Hall, Gloucester-
shire.

The Earl Cathcart has arrived at Mamigy's
Hotel from Thornton-le-street, near Think, Yorkshire.

The Prison Ministers' Act and the Middlesex

Magistrates.

(From the Tablet)
In seconding the motion of Mr. Swift, late M.P.,
on the conduct of the Chairman of the Sessions, Sir
John Scott Lillie expressed his regret that it had
been made the arena for the introduction of religi-
ous and political discussions at various meetings on
the Prison Ministers' Bill, when the only question
that ought, properly speaking, to have been con-
sidered was prison discipline, and endeavours for the
reformation of prisoners by moral religious instruc-
tion, as contemplated by the act passed for that
purpose. Instead of this, some over-zealous
religious sectarians thought proper to vituperate
and abuse the Catholic clergy as improper
characters for such duties. Ile considered it, there-
fore, his duty to attend on this occasion in order to
disclaim any participation in such indiscriminate
abuse, which was inconsistent with the duty of those
to whose care prisoners had been confided, but more
especially the magistracy of that county, which
contained a greater number of Catholic prisoners
than any other county in the kingdom, whose re-
formation from the paths of vice could not be ex-
pected without moral and religious precepts. As
the senior magistrate, he believed, on that bench,
he felt it his duty to protest against deviations
of public duty. Such confusion and dis-
order existed amongst his brother magistrates as
he had never before witnessed for upwards of forty
years that he had been in the habit of at-
tending that court, and he regretted above all see-
ing the chairman showing such an example of par-
tisanship as that adverted to in the motion before
the court, of having printed and circulated anony-
mous pamphlets to influence the decisions of the
bench in support of his views ; but he hoped an
amended bill would be brought before Parliament
in the ensuing Session to make it imperative on
those entrusted with the care of prisoners to have
them attended by clergymen of the religious per-
suasions of such prisoners. Sir J. Scott Lillie then
proceeded to read extracts from the Saturday Re-
view and other publications reprobating in the
strongest terms some of the language used at a for-
mer meeting of magistrates. The following are
the opinions which were expressed by the Saturday
Review on the discussions which took place at the
last October. Sessions on the Prison Ministers' Act :
" The Legislature has recently passed an act to
provide for the spiritual instruction of Roman Ca-
tholic prisoners. The intention of that Act was

quite plain. Its object was to do the prisoners
good in the only way in which religious good can be
presented to them, by giving them the full benefit
of their own religion. Whether that religion is
a good one or a bad one the Legislature did
not say. Parliament merely recognised the fact
that there are Roman Catholic prisoners ; and
also accepting the fact that there is such a
thing as the Roman Catholic religion, it put
the two facts together, and concluded that the
Roman Catholic religion should be presented whole
and entire to the Roman Catholic prisoners. Un-
fortunately the act is permissive. It gives to the
county magistrates powers, vague and undefined,
of deciding on many points material to the fair and
honest working of the law. It leaves it to the good
sense or good feeling of the magistrates whether
they shall appoint a paid chaplain ; and as it seems,
it also leaves it to the same good sense and good

feeling whether the chaplain so appointed shall or
shall not be allowed to have religious teaching and
religious consolation and the means of spiritual im-
provement in the only way in which, according to
the religion which chaplain and prisoners profess,
they can be offered. The consequence is, that in
every county of England this act has called out all

the latent bigotry and intolerance of the English
character, especially of those very conscientious
people who feel it to be their bounden duty to thwart
and insult the Roman Catholics and their religion and
its professors, to place every obstacle in the way of
the Act of Parliament being carried out, and to re-
duce it to a dead letter. But it has been left to the
ingenious malice of Mr. Sergeant Payne to employ
the Prison Ministers' Act most cleverly in the sacred
interests of bigotry and intolerance, and the dear
delight of insulting your neighbour. The' act pro-
vides that no prisoner shall be visited against his
will, and gives to the visiting magistrates power
to ' impose such restrictions as may guard
against the introduction of improper persons, and
prevent improper communications." Have these
provisions, inquires Mr. Sergeant Payne, been car-
ried out ? Improper persons ; there are a great
many improper persons. How are we to know that
every Roman Catholic priest is not an improper
person ? There is the priest who seduced 30 young
women in the Confessional. There is the priest who
wrote that filthy letter to a boy, &c.,—who, by the
way, was not a priest or a Roman Catholic at all.

' There is abundant reason why the visiting justices

should look to the moral character of those who

come to the prison to give religious instruction.'

And then Mr. Sergeant Payne smacks his lips, and
of course did not mean to say a single word about
the particular priest who at present visits at the pri-
son. He confined himself, of course, to the general
and notorious character of Roman Catholic clergy-

men as a class ; and, having delivered himself of the
sweeping doctrine that all priests are suspicious per-

sons, there was no occasion to slander any one
priest in particular. And then, as to the duty im-
posed on the magistrates of preventing improper
communications, was that provision carried out ?

Did the magistrates take care that the pries
should not teach the duty of exterminating Protes.

tants ? Did the magistrates take care that a]

Roman Catholic teaching should be given in public?
He moved that the visiting magistrates should
be instructed to attend to these points ; and the
whole Bench unanimously accepted the resolution.
That is, the Middlesex magistrates (only they had
not the courage to say so) are agreed that the
Roman Catholic religion is idolatrous, and that it is
their duty to discourage it ; and they are resolved,
as far as in them lies, not only to oppose the inten-
tions of the Legislature, but to make the Prison
Ministers' Act either wholly inoperative, or a means
of insulting and vilifying the Roman Catholics and
their clergy. We hear a good deal about non-
natural interpretations and the wickedness of
casuistry ; but all the doctors of ambiguity and
teachers of ainphibology might be defied to invent
such a comment upon plain words as that which
tells us, with Sergeant Payne, that restrictions
against improper persons meant to give the magis-
trates the right to consider and treat every priest as

an immoral man, and that restrictions against impro

per communications meant that the visiting justices
might prohibit the Mass, Auricular Confession, and
every doctrine inconsistent with the Confession of
Faith sanctioned by Messrs. Pownall and Payne."
If a bench of magistrates follow in the paths of
the gentlemen thus named by the Saturday. Review,
we cannot consider them to have great reason to be
proud of their leaders.

THE PRICE OF A TOE.—What would the reader
think is the money value of a toe ? The conserva-
tors wore the defendants in an action " to recover damages
for an injury to the toe of Jane Miller, by the negligent
shifting of the landing-board on a steamboat by a pierman
in the defendant's employ, on their floating-pier at London-
bridge." The injury to Jane Miller's too was settled by a
jury as equivalent to fifteen pounds sterling ; Jane Miller's
law expenses were thirty-seven pounds, and those of the
conservators forty-nine ; so the Kings of the Thames had
to pay about one hundred pounds altogether for a single
toe.—Dickens's " All the Year Round."

THE NEW FRENCH TURF CONFEDERACY.—The
dissolution of the confederacy between Count La-
grange and Baron Niviere has been announced, and Count
Lagrange has received into partnership Mr. Charles Lafitte,
the well-known Paris banker, and a steward of the French
Jockey Club. His assumed name on the turf is Major Frido-
lin, in which name Gentille-Dame is entered for the e Criterion
Stakes at Newmarket, and Fleur :de Bois and Stilton
for the Althorp Park Stakes at Northampton. M.
Charles Lafitte was formerly an owner of racehorses in
France, but withdrew from the Turf some years back.
His return to it was in the spring of 1864, when he pur-
chased of Count Lagrange the French Derby horse Torti-
colis, by Royal-Quand-Meme, out of Defiance. Torticohs
was not placed in the Derby, but started several times since,
his only win being the Prix de la Societe, at Amiens,after
a dead heat with Royal Navarre. He was purchased2Bma
jor
re-
cently for the Government breeding studs for 0
Fridolin's colours are light blue jacket and black cap.—
Sporting Life.

LAW INTELLIGENCE—(This Day)

COURT OF BANKRUPTCY.
(Before Registrar Winslow.)
ItE JOHN LEIGH.---FAILURE OF A LATE POLICE-COrRT

MAGISTRATE.

In this matter the bankrupt was described as a barrister
and was lately one of the magistrates at the Worship-street
Police-court, but resigned in consequence of his failure
To-day was appointed for the order of discharge, and the
accounts show—Debtor to unsecured creditors, £33,417
13s. 11d. ; secured do., £423 10s. ; total, £33,841 3s. 11d.
Cr.—By property with assignees, £936 12s. 4d. ; do. in
hands of assignees, £223 10s. ; deficiency, £32,681 ls. 7d.
The creditors are chiefly stockbrokers, to whom the bank-
rupt owes large sums of money upon transactions.
Mr. Reed appeared for the assignees; Mr. Sargood op-
posed ; and Mr. Linklater supported.
Mr. Linklater asked that the Bankrupt might receive his
order of discharge.

Mr. Reed, on behalf of the assignees, said that the
conduct of the bankrupt was open to censure, both
from the creditors and the court. Considering the position
of the bankrupt at the time he speculated so largely in the
Stock Exchange, he had acted very unjustifiably, and he
had been compelled to surrender his post as a Metropolitan
Police magistrate. The assignee was not going to offer
any opposition to the order of discharge, but would leave
the matter. in the hands of the court and those who did
oppose.

His Honour—ls there any case against the bankrupt
beyond contracting debts ?

Mr. Griffiths said there was.
Mr. Linklater said there were extenuating circumstances
in the case.

Mr. Griffiths called Mr. Thomas Beard, the well-known
solicitor, who said he knew the bankrupt in 1863. Bank-
rupt solicited an interview, and asked witness if he could
obtain an advance of £3OO for an emergency until his
next quarter's salary was due. Witness introduced him to
Mr. Cole, the opposing creditor, and bankrupt said he re-
quired £3OO till his next quarter's salary was due. Finally
Mr. Cole gave him a cheque for ..£275. Mr. Leigh never
said he was in debt or that his salary was encumbered, or
that he had made any assignment for the benefit of his
creditors.

Mr. Cole said—He was an auctioneer and estate agent,
and in consequence of what Mr. Beard said he went to the
Worship-street Police-court, whero he was taken into the
bankrupt's private room. Bankrupt said he wanted £3OO,
which he would repay out of his next quarter's salary. Had
witness known that he owed £32,000 he would never have
lent the money, but he thought, from his position as metro-
politan police-court magistrate, that he was safe for any
amount. The bill became due, was dishonoured, and pro-
cess was taken, shortly after which the bankrupt presented
his petition. It was upon the faith of his paying witness
out of his first quarter's salary that the money was ad-
vanced.

Cross-examined—What I have stated is perfectly correct
Mr. Griffiths then called the bankrupt.

Mr. Leigh said—He remembered the month of November,
1863, and a conversation he had at that time with Mr.
Beard. He (witness) had executed a deed of arrangement
with his creditors in 1862 to pay £BOO per annum out of
his salary of £1,200. When Cole made the advance there
was a very large Stock Exchange speculation, and witness
thought Coles would have been paid out of that. The
debts without the speculative account were not large. In
November, 1863, I have not much doubt that my debts
were £33,000.

His Honour—The debts do not appear to be materially
increased between the date of the deed in 1862 and the date
of the entry.

Mr. Sargood—Practically they are not, though they do
by the figures.
Mr. Leigh—l cannot say that I borrowed from any one
after Cole. I was anxious to make myself safe in case of
any fall in the Mexican Consols. I borrowed money of
Mr. Cook, but cannot say if that was before Cole's loan.
By Mr. Sargood—l first became a Metropolitan Police
magistrate in November, 1860. I was removed from Staf-
ford here at my own application. My salary in the country
was £l,OOO per annum. My salary has never been larger
than £1,200. When I left the country, where I was a sti-
pendary magistrate, I owed money, but I cannot say how
much. I owed as much as £25,000 when I came up to London,
including the losses I sustained b y the failure of a joint-
stock bank and other liabilities. I have a doubt as to this,
though. This is quite a new question. I would say a very
large sum when I came to London, over £25,000. Ido not
think I had any Stock Exchange accounts open when I
came to London. I had lost a considerable sum of money
on the Stock Exchange before I came to London—l should
say £5,000.

Mr. Sargood then proceeded to question the bankrupt as
to his various speculations.

The case was going on when this report left, and is likely
to last the whole day.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE, This Day.

WESTMINSTER.

AN IMPUDENT YOUNG THIEF.---JOhD Mocroft, an impu-
dent-looking little urchin, about 12 years of age, was
charged with stealing a bird trap, value ls.
William Purchase, 255, Kings-road, wire worker, said
his shop was regularly besieged in his absence by a lot of
boys, who carried off everything they could lay their hands
on. About 8 o'clock last night he saw the bird trap safe
outside his shop, and about a quarter-past eight it was gone
His brother came in and gave him information, and the pri-
soner was taken outside the shop. He believed he had
caught him before and given him a good hiding.
John James Purchase, brother to last witness, said he
was in his shop, four doors off, when his attention was
called to the prisoner, who had the bird trap in his hand.
Upon seeing witness he threw the trap over into Oakley-
square and ran away, pursued by witness. He had a cane
in his hand, and finding witness closing up to him, he re-
peatedly struck h:m in the face with this cane, until wit-
ness secured him and took him back to the shop. The
trap he afterwards found in the square.
Prisoner had nothing to say, and Mr. Arnold remanded
him for a week.