The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-26 00:00:00

THE WICKLOW PEERAGE.

The death of the Earl of Wicklow is likely to give
rise to an interesting and romantic law suit. All the
papers and the peerages have said that the heir to
the earldom is a Mr. Arnold. But " Ellen Howard"
(Howard was Lord Wicklow's family name) writes
to the Times that she is the widow of William George
Howard, having been married to him in February
1803. Ile died in October 1864, and left a son born
in February of that year. On his death the papers
and the peerages publishel statements which Mrs.
Iloward declares to be untrue, but which they
refused to correct without the authority of
the late Earl. " Ile," says Mrs. I toward,
" was a total stranger to my late husband
and myself," but she does not explain how it was
the Earl was so entirely unacquainted with his heir.
She adds: "With respect to the estates, and in justice
to his creditors,l beg to observe that my husband was
tenant-in-tail in remainder, and was at the time of
his death preparing to set aside a most unjust re-
rPttlement of the estates forced upon him. Ilis will,
niLde f,r the purpose, will, I hope, enable me to
c-,tabl:sh my ahsoluto claim on the property and
::11 just claims due by

lIFZTONSIBILITY OF DANIi-ERS.

A gr)cd deal of uneasiness exists among capitalists
au l deal:rs in consequence of a recent decinion of
the Privy iounol. The cascrwAs an appeal from a
jud3lalent in the colony of Victoria, where the
plaintiff had deposited certain debentures with a
bank, which were subsequently stolen by one of
the clerks of the establishment. The plaintiff
was a customer of the bank, and the custody of the
debentures was undertaken by them in the
usual way, without any special charge for the
service. Under these circumstances the court laid
,awn that Qf the
.bank were not

bound to more than orcanary earc, -
sidered that reasonable care had been exercised, they
decided that the defendants were not liable for the
loss of the plaintiff's debentures. Thus the greater
part of the fancied safety of securities deposited at
a bank is swept away. Hitherto it has always been
held that this responsibility was one of the ad-
vantages which bankers offered to their customers
as an acknowledgment for the advantage which
the first received in holding the money of the second.
But all our merchants, capitalists, and stockbrokers,
of whom there are thousands, who daily use the
banks as the depositories of their securities for heavy
amounts, now find the safety of their property
dependent on the exercise of what the courts may
construe to be reasonable care on the part of banks,
who employ scores of clerks with more or less oppor-
tunities of access to it, and for the correctness of
whose conduct the " reasonable care" does not seem
to be expected to include any guarantee. Some
time ngo one of the bankers employed as a clerk
a man known to be given to betting and gambling ;
he stole the money of one of the bank's customers,
and the bank had to make good the loss. Had he
stolen the customer's securities and converted them
into cash, the customer would, according to this
decision, have been the loser. The Tinier, in its
money article, declares that this state of things can-
not be allowed to continue, and advises that -the
banks should be require 1 to accept proper respon-
sibility, making such a charge for it as they may
calculate to be necessary. Ey a mutual guarantee
system among themselves all danger of individual
ruinous loss might easily be averted.