The Sun.
London, England, 1851-09-06 00:00:00

CRICKET.

ELEVEN OF ENGLAND V. FIFTEEN OF SHEFFIELD.
—This match was brought to its conclusion on
Wednesday night, at the Hyde-park Ground, Shef-
field. As fa usual upon these occasions at Sheffield, the
town turned out nearly the whole of its inhabitants, all
of whom wended their way up the heights to Hyde-park,
which, as we have in former years stated, is the most
singularly-beautiful situated ground in the kingdom.
The Stieffielders were unsuccessful this time, or rather
they were well beaten, for the Eleven won in one innings
by 24 runs.

THE INCOME-TAX.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
Sta,—The commercial community are indebted to
you for your opposition to the continuance of that
part of the income-tax which is levied on industry.
Government no doubt are alarmed at the idea of
losing such a source of revenue ; but a substitute for
this loss seems to me so easily suggested that I am
much surprised to observe that no one has pointed
out a less objectionable tax. You know that per-
sonal property, when descending to heirs, is liable to
the legacy and probate duty, and that freehold pro-
perty, similarly situated, is not liable to legacy and
probate duty unless the property is ordered to be sold.
Now, can you assign any just reason why freehold
property should be exempt from a tax which is levied
upon personal property ? I trow not ; therefore I
would propose that this probate and legacy duty
should be levied on freehold property, to compensate
for the repeal of the income-tax on industry.
I am, Sir, &c.,
EQUUS.

Liverpool.

LONDON MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. Mr. E.
Wheeler yesterday delivered a lecture at this institution on
"The His'ory, Principles, and Construction of the Conway
and Britannia Tubular Iron Bridees." After some prelimi.
nary remarks on bridges, Mr. Wheeler addressed himself to
an elucidation of the texture and properties of iron, as wit-
nessed in its resistance to tensile strain and compression.
He as first showed the superior strength of cast-iron against
a compressing force; of wrought-iron against a tensile
strain ; and then entered into an account of the experiments
tried by Mr. Stephenson at the request of the directors of
the Chester and Holyhead Railway, in order to ascertain
whether such a bridge required might be successfully
constructed. By the aid of sketches and plans he exhi-
bited the mode of testing resorted to, and the various dif-
culties which had been encountered and overcome. On
his models he pointed out the deflections in the tubes, which
in various places, and at different times during the expe-
riments, overweighting had occasioned, reminding his hear-
ers that the result which they saw in the mass had been ar-
rived at bit by bit; and that three years ago truths which
they now recognised as simple and almost self-evident were
utterly unknown. After a careful and intelligible illustra-
tion of the respective strengths of iron bars, rods, and wires,
and much enforcement of the importance, in this respect, of
a proper disposition of the metal, he described most parti-
cularly the Conway-bridge, remarking on the apparent
thinness of its sides, made of cast iron only half an inch
thick, and then pointing out the rigidity given to them by
the iron ribs which are attached. He next told bow the
principles elicited from the success of experiments had been
applied in the construction of the Conway-bridge, and con-
cluded by promising to add some details of interest in his
next lecture on the same subject.

CHARGE AGAINST THE TURNKEYS OF THE KNUTS-
FORD HOUSE OF CORRECTION.— Joseph Leigh, Edward
Shore, John Burgess, and three other turnkeys, were en
Saturday last brought up before Trafford Trafford, Esq.,
and a bench of fourteen magistrates, on a charge of having
acted in concert to employ a prisoner in the gaol to make
shoes, &c., on their private account, under a promise to
give him 10s. each on his discharge. This promise, it was
alleged, they failed to keep, and the prisoner immediately
wrote to Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, informing
him that during his incarceration he had been employed by
the turnkeys to make shoes for their private use, and that
the leather had been supplied from the prison stores. Upon
receipt of this letter, Sir George caused an inquiry to be in-
stituted, and the result of an examination by Irwin and
Douglass, of the constabulary, was the finding of fourteen
pairs of new shoes in Shore's house. These shoes bore a
private mark of the informer, who bad previously made the
constables acquainted with it. Several other pairs of shoes
were found in the possession of the others. The testimony
of the informer, and other witnesses, decided the bench to
commit all the accused for trial, at the next assizes at
Chester. Leigh has been a turnkey for near twenty years,
and has a wife and six children. Shore has also a wife and
four children. One of the prisoners, we are informed, is a
nephew of the Governor. Other charges, we understand,
were also preferred against the officers of the prison, the
nature of which we are unable to give, owing to the exa-
minations being conducted with closed doors.—Manchester
Guardian.
DEATH OF THE REV. Mn. WILKIB.—We have to
record the painful intelligence of the death of the Reverend
David Wilkie, the respected minister of the East Free con-
gregation, Forfar, which took place at Liverpool, on Friday
evening last. Mr. Wilkie had gone to Liverpool for the pur-
pose of soliciting subscriptions to aid in the erection of the
new East Free Church. On the Thursday preceeding the
day of his death, he had been on a visit to St. George's Hall.
On passing along the interior of the building, he acciden-
tally fell down one of the many openings which are in the
corridor and passages, and in the fall he broke his leg. He
was immediately conveyed to the infirmary, where he was
promptly attended to, and during the whole of that evening
seemed to be progressing satisfactorily towards recovery. On
Friday, hewever, fever ensued, followed by alarming symp-
toms, which terminated fatally that evening. This event
has cast a great gloom over the whole town, but especially
over the little Sock of which he had been the pastor only for
a short time.—Dundee Warder.
ACCIDENT TO J. R. MULLINGS, ESQ., M.P.—On
Tuesday morning, as the Hon. Member for Cirencester was
proceeding in his gig to attend the Sheriff's Court for the
election of coroner, at Cheltenham, he met with an accident
which totally prevented his being present. He had gone but
a short distance up the street, when his horse suddenly took
fright and ran off at a furious pace, and shortly after passing
the Ram, Mr. Mullings, seeing the animal was determined to
turn the next corner, pushed him at all hazards against the
shop window in front. The horse thus controlled jumped
right through the window and doorway into the shop, over
a child sitting on the steps, who escaped unhurt, dragging
the gig with him. Mr. Mullings was thrown by the concus-
sion with considerable force on the pavement and against
the wall ; fortunately sustaining butchara a few severe bruises,
which, however, are not of a serious cter.—Cheltenham
Chronicle.
BLOWING UP A CASH SAFE WITH GUNPOWDER.'
Between twelve and two o'clock on Monday morning week,
the counting house and vaults of Alderman R. Wilson and
Co., spirit merchants, Bramley, were broken open and plun-
dered. After forcing admittance into the premises, the
robbers secured about la in cash belonging to a local insti-
tution, together with several bottles of spirits and porter.
They then proceeded to blow open the cash safe with gun-
powder, and succeeded in their object, but the explosion ap-
pears to have been greater than they bad calculated upon.
It was so terrific that not only was the safe blown up, but
the neighbourhood alarmed, and one of the robbers, it is sup-
posed, was injured. However that may be, the noise of the
explosion, or the personal injury they had themselves sus-
tained, so scared the thieves that they decamped without
plundering or even examining the safe. Information was
immediately given to the police, and a reward of ten guineas
offered by the Bramley association for the prosecution of
felons for the conviction of the robbers. Inspector Granhan pro-
ceeded to investigate the matter, and about three o'clock the
same afternoon found a young man, named John Dawson,
jacketg chnetpr.
toani
Dn
eandwi a
s oanr
thatm, s .
t fraoinme dh iD s possession,alow dasglolindn
,gasaanldl nasi
rolling about Pudsey quite drunk, with a powder flask in his
he
fingers
hi ea di nhads beenpeebt
eoernabsent de-in-
jured, and were tied up. The prisoner was remanded.—Leeds
Mercury.
THE CONSTITUENCY OF LIVEEPOOL.—It appears
from the list of persons qualified to vote for Members for
Liverpool, that the constituency now amounts to upwards of
eighteen thousand electors. The number of household
voters has about doubled itself in twenty years, but there has
been a considerable decrease in the number of freemen. The
decrease in the number of freemen would have been still
greater, if the regulations of several trades, as carpenters,
sailmakers, and shipwrights, did not require a seven years'
apprenticeship previous to working as a journeyman. In
1 point of poi ical rights there is no difference between the
ten pound householder and the freeman; and the exemption
from town dues has no influence except with the higher class
f freemen.—Liverpool Times.

SATURDAY EVENING,

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM TIJF MORNING PAPERS OF TIIIS rAy.
TIMES.—The annoyances inseparable from any
system of Customs regulations are bad enough with-
out any unnecessary aggravation. It is sufficiently
tiresome for a traveller who has been tossed about
through a long autumn's night at the mercy of winds
and waves to be detained for hours at the portals of a
kingdom, even if the amount of his luggage should
in a manner justify the detention. But to those who
travel in light marching order—to the man of busi-
ness with his carpet bag—to the tourist with his
_ _

campstool and skefching--book, the annoyance is in-
tolerable. Every minute of delay is stretched out
into an hour from a sense of absurdity and injustice
of the situation. Now, however, much we may be
in the habit of uttering complaints against the petty
extortion and wanton procrastination of foreign
&maulers, is it quite so clear that we are not
throwing stones out of glass-houses ? Are our ar-
rangements, either in London or at the various
outports, so well conducted that we are jus-
tified in holding ourselves up to the eyes of
Europe as models of fiscal arrangement and dis-
patch ? We doubt it much. Let a traveller from the
Continent land where he will on the British shore
from Harwich to Southampton, and he will find an
unhappy uniformity of delay and mismanagement.
Arrangements which should be of the simplest nature
are unnecessarily complicated, without any obvious
advantage either to the great bulk of the passengers
or to the interests of the Exchequer. Sometimes, as
at Dover and Folkestone, there is a shallow pretence
of examining a single article belonging to each pas-
senger ; but we put it to the experience of all per-
sons who may have availed themselves of this privi-
lege, if petty delays have not been so idly interposed
that in nineteen cases out of twenty they have been

compelled to take refuge for the night a some one or
other of the extortionate caravanserais with which
these ports are thickly studded ? Twenty minutes or
half an hour being allowed between the arrival of the
boat and the departure of the train, how often does
it happen that the most moderate percentage of the
passengers have succeeded in reaching the rail-
way terminus with the simplest articles of baggage?
The Custom-house at London has its own peculiar
annoyances. These are, indeed, of a different cha-
racter, but yet they are sufficiently distressing to the
patient. It does not, indeed, so frequently happen
that the scheme of his journey is so violently inter-
rupted, inasmuch as London in ordinary cases, is the
journey's end. To make up for this comparative
benefit, the period of the detention is aggravated in a
fourfold degree. The nuisance must be endured by
persons who, in all probability, are jaded and worn to
an extreme point of fatigue by the accomplishment of
a protracted journey. Their home and their friends
may be at hand, but the one they cannot reach and
the others they may not behold until they have
passed through two hours of dirty purgatory
near London-bridge. All this is aggravated
by the consciousness that their sufferings
are inflicted with no better object than to satisfy
the demands of an extortion so petty that it con-
tents itself with the amount of a beggar's alms.
The trumpery fine is nothing, but the delay is every-
thing to the over-spent traveller. Far less burden-
some would it be if a capitation tax were imposed on
all passengers who may land at the port of London
than this paltry levy of sixpence upon every article of
baggage they may clear through the Custom-house.
The head-money might be dropped in the hand of the
man who takes the tickets, and no delay ensue. The
sixpenny impost on the carpet bags and portmanteaus
leads to indefinite vexation and delay. We published
yesterday a letter from a correspondent, who calls at-
tention to this contemptible extortion in question and
to its consequences. lie, it appears, had started
from Boulogne by steamer in company with some
300 passengers. Many of these had no more than
a single article of baggage, containing the usual
tourist's equipment. Nothing could have been
more simple than that the Custom-house officer
who boarded the vessel should have examined these
trumpery packages before the vessel arrived at the
wharf. A few strips of lead and a pair of pinchers,
with the Customs' stamp, would effectually have dis-
armed all tampering with such baggage after exami-
nation. There is plenty of time between Graysend
and London for the performance of all needful solem-
nities. This may be thought too awful a violation of
the traditionary humdrum of the Custom-house. But
half
,a dozen smart searchers could certainly have
turned 150 or 200 carpet bags inside out in half an
hour after the vessel had been moored to the quay.
What was the actual course of the affair ? Every
package was twisted from the grip of its astonished
owner. The passengers were driven like a flock of
sheep into one of the dirty close waiting-rooms of the
Custom-house to wait the pleasure of the officials.
This pleasure manifested itself, after a long delay,
by a summons to ten of the expectant wretches to
fight their way through the crowd and struggle
up a narrow flight of stairs into a room where the
searchers were ready to perform their work. " A
few minutes elapsed," writes our correspondent, " ten
mote are emancipated, and at each fresh departure a
scene ensues which reminds one of what we used to
call a ' scrummage ' in our public school-days, except
that the presence of ladies adds to the excitement and
increases the confusion on this occasion." The mind
can with difficulty be brought to admit the necessity
of this hubbub and turmoil. The slightest degree of
foresight or arrangement would be sufficient to
obviate it all. It is not until we are told that the
Custom-house officials exact a fine of sixpence for
every parcel they search that we begin to understand
the object of turning the Custom-house of England's
capital city into a Black Hole, or Bartholomew Fair
such as this. Even so, and admitting the propriety of
filching sixpence on every article of baggage a tra-
veller may bring into the port of London, why cannot
the ceremony of extortion be performed a little more
expeditiously and with less annoyance to the patient ?
It is very hard if a man be throttled against a door-
post for two hours to pick his pocket of sixpence.
DAILY NEWS.—A tone of greater moderation
and forbearance on the affairs of the Deccan now
prevails in the journal connected with the East India
House. The Court of Directors and the Govern-
ment of India are no longer urged to depose the
Nizam, and to annex bis dominions; but hopes are
expressed that his new Minister, Suraj-eol-Moolk,
will be able to satisfy Lord Dalhousie's pecuniary
demands. An expectation is indulged in that the
Deccan may be allowed to remain under his High-
ness's rule and dynasty; and even excuses are made
for the precipitation with which the Governor-Gene-
ral has acted in this affair. An apology might, with
still more propriety, have been added, for the most
improper, uncourteous, insolent, and impolitic letter
addressed by Lord Dalhousie to the Nizam—a com-
munication which must have made that accomplished
gentleman, General Fraser, the greater part of whose
life has been passed at oriental courts, blush for his
superior, while presenting it to that Sovereign Prince.
And here we must, before going further, again ob-
ject to the continued absence of Lord Dalhousie
from the seat of the supreme government of India,
from the Council intended by the Imperial Legisla-
ture to inform the Governor-General, to share in his
deliberations, to partake—if they agreed with his
policy, and to record their reason if they opposed
his acts—responsibilities, and from all those archives
and records without access to and use of which, it is
impossible for an unexperienced viceroy like Lord Dal-
housie to put himself into a position to decide pro-
perly on such momentous questions as peace or war,
as the extinction or preservation of subordinate
states, as to the continuance or overthrow of rights
of native succession to vacant principalities, as to the
construction of treaties, and as to the effects of nego-
tiations spreading over a series of years. Within the
last seven or eight years the cost of these absences of
Governors- General from Calcutta has not been less
than half a million sterling, over and above their
ordinary and most liberal salaries of 25,0001. a year.
But in the cases of Lords Ellenborough and Har-
dinge, they had the very sufficient excuses of war to
carry them away. Whereas now, Lord Dalhousie
has no such apology for his continued desertion of the
Council Chamber at Calcutta ; it is in peace that he
continues away, retarding useful legislation,
lowering the character of his Council by su-
perseding its most important functions and
substituting and surrounding himself by an agree-
able family party, facile to bis will, and distin-
guished for anything but statesmanship. Nor, since
Lord Dalhousie will take such important steps as
ordering the seizure of the Nizam's choicest terri-
tories, whilst cooling himself in the mountains of
Thibet, must his friends be offended by being re-
minded that these absences are largely profitable to
him ; that they enable him to save nearly the whole
of his ordinary salary; and that his Lordship's ex-
penditure on his travels has been so profuse as to have
attracted very general attention and nearly as much
animadversion. The finances of India can ill bear
the charges of new silver howdahs. When the wives
of high functionaries in other parts of the empire
join their husbands, it is not their practice to ask for
payment of the ladies' travelling expenses from the
Treasury at Whitehall ; and people will not look
favourably on noblemen who, going out poor, come
back wealthy from the government of India. On
every ground, then, public and private, per-
sonal and national, Lord Dalhousie ought
to return where he can have the advan-
tage of the advice of his council, or Lord
Broughton de G) fford ought to ask Parliament
for power to enable the council to accompany the
Governor-General on such prolonged travels as these ;
for the present system of giving him a council to con-
sult, and then enabling him to evade the advice by
getting out of its way whenever he pleases, is too
flagrant an absurdity as displayed under the Dal-
housie regime to last, even though there is at home a
kindred anomaly in the relations between the Court
of Directors and the Board of Control. Returning,
however, to the Deccan, it is, we are told, a mistake
to suppose that the British army, maintained at the