The Sun.
London, England, 1841-12-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—Railway accidents have of late oc-
curred so frequently that it is only in cases where
the slaughter has been on a large scale that pub-
lic attention is drawn to their occurrence. In
ordinary cases, involving merely the sacrifice of
individual life, or confined to the destruction of
limb, or the suffering which saps the constitu-
tion and delivers its victim over to an early
grave, the affair is disposed of by the public
journals in a short paragraph with a side-head,
or, what is more probable, is not known beyond
the spot where the accident occurred, or the
limited social circle of which the sufferer was a
member. The public is too much taken up with
what is present to bestow much regard upon the
past; and seldom pauses to add up the amount of
slaughter and the collateral calamities produced
by these occurrences, so as to possess their ag-
gregate for a given period, so far as it can be
ascertained. Every one can remember the pain-
ful shock, the almost breathless excitement,
which two or three more than usually destructive
collisions, and running off the rails by trains on
different lines, produced on public feeling in the
course of last year. Inquests were held on
the bodies of the sufferers—heavy deodands
were given by the Jurics,in the hope that self-in-
terest would operate upon the Directors of Rail way
Companies to exercise the most active and unabat-
ed vigilance, in order to secure, as far as possible,
the safety of the passengers by their carriages.
For a short time this result was obtained. But the
public feeling recovered from the shock it had
received. The number of passengers were again
raised to the usual average. The verdicts of the
juries became inoperative against the funds of the
Companies, in consequence of the Coroner's inqui-
sitions being quashed by the Court of Queen's
Bench for technical informalities. Another, and
yet another, followed by a third catastrophe, ex-
ceeding, in the numbers of the slaughtered and
the mangled, those which preceded it, have again
roused public feeling to a painful pitch of appre-
hension as to the state of the arrangements made by
the Directors for the safety of passengers by loco-
motive carriages, which are, it is evident, loose,
imperfect, and exceedingly unsatisfactory. It
will be seen whether the unprecedentedly large
sacrifice of life and limb by the accident which
occurred on the Great Western Railway on
Friday last, will prove as inoperative as those
which preceded it ; or whether it will induce
the Directors of the several lines to establish a
perfect system of inspection both of the car-
riages and rails, and of the state of the cuttings, on
their lines, with every other precaution calcu-
kited to give" all possible security to a mode of
travelling which involves dangers so tremen-
dous, and destruction no extensive and inevi-
table. It is obvious, beyond controversy, that it
by tl:e slightest obstruction in its course, or by
a deviation from the prescribed and well-ascer-
tained laws of locomotion, the train be forced
from the line of rails, and the carriages, impelled
with their accustomed velocity, be, as they
necessarily must be, overturned, and engines,
boilers, carriages laden with passengers, with the
mighty masses of ponderous machines and lug-
gage, be, crushed and commingled together—that
Iu such a case a miraculous interposition can alone
prevent fearful destruction. The verdict of the
Jury in the case of the eight unfortunate beings
who were deprived of life by the accident on
the. Great Western on Friday last (another is
since dead), will produce a salutary effect on the
most vulnerable point of the Directors of public
Companies--that of their pecuniary interests. That
verdict is unencumbered with any matter ofdoubt-
to I legal validity. It is plain and powerfully ex-
plicit; setting the acumen of lawyers at defiance
to discover a point on which to • hang an applicas
tion to the Supreme Court to set it aside. It im-
putes gross incaution to the servants of the Com-
pany, and therefore fixes a deodand of 1,0001. on
the engine and tender attached to the train ; but,
avoiding the error of formerjuriesimpannelledon
inquiries of a similar kind, it does not impute
criminal negligence to the Directors or any per-
sons in their employ : this would have stultified
their verdict, and rendered the inquiry practi-
cally inoperative against purse or person, in a
vain attempt to reach both.
STANDARD.—This morning we find the
authority of the late Mr. Ricardo quoted, to
prove what it would seem scarcely necessary to
prove, the flea namely, that the sellers of corn
like good prices. This, as we have hinted, ap-
pears to bean unnecessary proof; but we find it in-
troduced for the purpose of a contrast with the
sellers' of cotton goods, who, we are assured,
like bad prices. This seems to be a riddle.
We cannot tell why the sellers of cotton
like bad prices; and we, for ourselves,
never met with one of the liberal dealers in
calicos and muslins who manifested the inclina-
tion said to be characteristic of their order. Bad
prices and good prices, high prices and low
In ices," are relaeive terms, marking a difference,
to be measured by the degrees of profit and loss;
the pike which yields much profit is a
good or high price, whatever its absolute
amount; and the price which yields, a small
profit, or no profit, or involves a loss, is a bad
or low price, independently of all other consider-
ations. Why, then, should landowners only wish
for high prices, and millowners desire low prices ?
There is the riddle. The Morning Chronicle,
which has resuscitated the ingenious conundrum,
explains :—The landowners wish to sell at good
prices; the mil/owners wish to buy, or, which is
the same thing, to produce, at bad prices. Prices,
in reference to the landowners, are spoken of
as verified by market notes, but the mill-
owners' prices are collected from the mill-
bdoks, and are adroitly styled " natural prices."
Thus the riddle is solvedeand we learn from its
solution the not very novel truth, that land-
owners and millowners, like all other persons
who trade, like to buy cheap, and sell dear. We
know not whether the Morning Chronicle or Mr.
Ricardo has the merit of this profound dis-
covery, and it does not matter much; for of
stuff like this—of the abuse of words, employ-
ing them now in one sense, now in another—
all the books of political economy— Mr. Ricardo's
annolg the rest—are made up. Is there, however,
no contrast between landowners and millowners iu
respect to prices, using the word in its plain com-
mon sense meaning of market prices ? Yes there is.
It must be always the landlord's interest, that the
manufacturer's pricco should be high, because the
high prices of manufactures give him more and
more richer customers; but it need not be always
the interest of the manufacturer that the
landowner should obtain high prices, but the
reverse must be the case were it not for
the Corn-laws ; because
the impoverishment
of the landowner, and of_ all classes tde-
pendent upon him, that is, of five-sixths of the
nation, would diminish the _
cost of production to
the millowner, by giving him more labourers, in
the first instance,
at a cheaper rate, and in a con-
dition so miserable as to enable him to reduce
wages fr lower than any reduction in the price
of food could warrant.

and elTy NEWS.
MONEY MARKET
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS or YRIITERDAy.
POST.—It is a somewhat remarkable coincidence
that the great Exchequer bill fraud of 1803, and the
one
which has lately engaged public attention should have
involved amounts that
may be said to be identical witheach other. The total, in Smith's case, so far as it has
been ascertained, would appear to be 316,0001. At
the Bank meeting, held for the purpose of declaring a
dividend subsequently to the trial of Robert Astlett, of
the Cashier's Office, it became necessary for the Chair-
man of the Court of Directors to state the loss tire
Company had sustained by that person. The actual
loss, be said, was :320,000/e or thereabouts. Some
78,0001., he added, bad been employed in sources
from which the DirectorS thought they should be able
to recover, and they were determined to prosecute for
the purpose. In the meanwhile so prosperous was
the condition of the Bank, that no alteration
was made in the dividends. The property em-
bezzled amounted to nearly the sum payable for the
half year, but it was considered that the Board was in
no way answerable for the mal-practices of Astlett.
He succeeded in melting away with the effects of the
corporation by interlining sums, and other artful con-
trivances, a very detailed explanation of which was
afforded. We shall give an outline of the trial, from
which it will be seen that the Bank was denied the
prompt and full satisfaction at the hands of public jus-
tice which the case scenic(' to Call for. Astlett was, in
the fir:t instauce, acquitted, on the ground that there
was some irregulirity in the signature of the Exche-
quer bills abstracted, a point that it may be as well
to kccp in v.ew, the more particularly as, in the
report of the proceedings, we do not find that a
syllable Urged on the score of
:rtanipings or :ta-
tionerY• was put to the bar of the ():d Bidry,
on the milittment that be, a survaet employed by the
Governor and Company of the Bank of Eagland, wai
entrusted with a certain paper writing, called an Ex-
chequer bill, of the value of 1,000/,another of the same
value, and a third of the same value ; and that on the
28th of Fabruary, he being such servant, &e., did felo_
niously secrete and-embezzle the sail Exchequer bills,
and did run away with them so belonging to the slid
Governor and Company. There were no less than ten
different counts 'to the same effect. Mr. Garrow was
counsel for the prosecution, and Mr. Erskine
for the prisoner. The former stated that the
Bank being in the customary habit of purcha-
sing Exchequer bills on account' .of Govern-
meet, such bills were either brought to the Bank
by one particular house or by the Bank broker, who
purchased the bills in the market. On the delivery of
these to the cashier, Mr. Astlett, he gave an order for