The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-29 00:00:00

The report of the directors stated that the arbi-
trator had made his award in the action brought
against the company by Messrs. Porter, the contrac-
tors for building the bridge. The sum claimed was
£8,466. The amount awarded as due was £3,914,
with £3OO for costs and £219 for half the expenses
of the award, making in all £4,433. The directors
had required payment of an amount of unpaid calls
on the shares on which £1 only had been received,
sufficient to meet this sum. As Mr. Davis's lease
was now drawing to a close, the directors recom-
mended that the dividend fer the last half-year be
made at the rate of £5 per cent. per annum only,
as they were at present not aware of the actual
amount, of traffic. This would leave £l,OOO in
hand. The directors believed that £5 per cent.
would be the lowest dividend paid by the company
in future. The capital account showed that £45,749
had been expended, leaving a balance against the
company of £1,789.

Birmingham Working Men's Exhibition.

-, 11. -

The working men's industrial exhibition for Bir-
mingham and the Midland Counties was inaugu-
rated yesterday. At half-past one o'clock yester-
day a procession—in which the exhibitors were
joined by the magistrates, the members of the Town
Council, the local clergy, the volunteer rifle corps,
the fire brigades, &c.—started from the Bull-ring,
Birmingham, to Bingley Hall, where the exhibition
is held. At Bingley Hall, the different bodies form-
ing the procession were received by a committee of
working men, and conducted to seats. The Rev.
J. C. Miller, D.D., rector of St. Martin's, Birming-
ham, presided. He was supported by Lord Leigh,
Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire ; Lord Lyttelton,
Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire ; the Mayor of
Birmingham (Mr. Henry Wiggin), the Ven. Arch-
deacon Sandford, the Ven. Archdeacon Hone, Mr.
C. N. Newdegate, M.P., Mr. W. D. Bromley,
M.P., and a large number of gentlemen of local in-
fluence and position.
The 100th Psalm having been sung, the Chair-
man offered up an appropriate prayer, and then
made some observations introducing the business
part of the proceedings.

An inauguration ode, composed by a working
man, Mr. Coombes Davies, and set to music by
Mr. Thomas Anderton, a promising young musi-
cian and composer, was then performed, under the
direction of Mr. Anderton.

Lord Lyttelton then delivered the inaugural ad-
dress. He said it would be unbecoming of him to
take up the time of the meeting by any professions
of his ability to perform adequately the function
which he was about to attempt, though he could not
but remember with some uneasiness that in other
parts of the country a similar function had been
discharged by several of our most distinguished
public men. By discharging that function they
had shown their sense of the importance of those
exhibitions, and therein of that larger subject of
which those exhibitions might be looked upon as a
part—the voluntary and intelligent intercourse be-
ween different classes of the community. He
observed that it was, he thought, too much the
fashion to speak of it as being an obligation resting
peculiarly upon the rich to promote that intercourse ;
whereas the great middle class were really just as
much called upon as either of the other two classes
to promote intercourse with those above and below
them. He thought that intelligent and voluntary
intercourse between the different classes of society,
for purposes of good, might be looked upon as a
new feature in our times. He did not say it never
existed to the same extent before. He put on one
side
the question whether in the middle ages and in
earlier times there was that greater amount of kindly
intercourse between the several clasies which some
persons supposed there was. But looking to com-
paratively recent times, Daniel. Defoe wrote, 150
years ago, that although the rich necessarilyt knew
something of the doings of the poor, still h
suffer-
ings and the vices of the poor were confined to theme
e
selves, and were carried on, so to speak, by them-
selves. Twenty years ago a remarkable book was
written by one of those distinguished men of whom
there had been but too few in history, who combined
literary with political eminence. lle meant Mr.
Disraeli, and the title of the book was " The Two
Nations." If he was not misinformed the purport
of it was that the working classes, and especially the
manufacturing working population, were as little
known to the upper classes as if they were a separate
and distinct nation living within the borders of
England. He doubted whether that assertion could
with truth be made now in as broad a sense as it was
then. There were persons of a cynical and satirical
disposition who complained somewhat of the many
attempts to draw the different classes more closely
together. " Why dont you let the Rorking classes j