The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-09 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 9, 1867.

Constable Kenna, one of the constables who was
shot on Wellington-quay, died at 3 o'clock yester-
day in Mercer's Hospital. Ile did not appear to
suffer much at the last. Sergeant Kelly, his coin-
p:.nion, is still alive.
A man named William Supple, who had been cm-
ployed as a keeper iu the Zoological-gardens,
Phee lix-park, w,:s bitten on Tuesday afternoon by
a python while he was engaged in repairing the
reptile 1.10t130. Violent vomiting ensued, which was
supposed to be causes by fear, and he was removed
to Stevens's Hospital, where he died on the same
evening. The resident surgeon of the hospital was
examined at the inquest yesterday, and deposed to
his belief that the deceased died of congestion of
the lungs, from which he had been suffering for
some time, and the jury adopted his opinion.
The Daily Express advocates the election of Lord
Cairns as Chanetlior of the University of Dublin,

in the place of the late Lord Rosse. A meeting a
the Senate has been convened to consider the sub.

ject.
John Heyburne, a Fenian prisoner, who was re-
cently liberated, after undergoing two years' im-
prisonment, has been re-arrested and committed to

The Money Market Review last Saturday gave
circulation to a strange story connected with the
Accidental and Marine Insurance Corporation, the
particulars of which are according to this authority
as follows :—The corporation was composed of
different companies, who amalgamated with the
Accidental Death Insurance Company. That com-
pany was founded in 1849 under a Special Act of
Parliament, and till 1862 carried on what appeared to
be a prosperous and increasing business. In that
year it commenced underwriting, but it found its
marine insurance business was retarded by its in-
appropriate name. It was therefore in 1865 re-
organised ; its name changed to its present desig-
nation, its constitution remodelled, and its capital
enlarged. The prospectus proposed to raise a
capital of £2,000,000 in 80,000 shares of £25 each ;
of which there was to be an immediate issue of
40,000. "At the head of the directors appeared
the name of a Mr. STEPHEN CAVE, of the firm of
PRESCOTT, GROTE, CAVE and CAVE, the bankers,
of Threadneedle-street; then follow the names of
Mr. ALFRED SMEE, F.R.S., Mr. EDWARD SOLI.;
F.R.S., and two others, as the chairman and direc-
tors of the Accidental Death Insurance Company.
Then follow Mr. WILLIAM TABOR and two others
as the chairman and directors of the Gresham Life
Assurance Society. Mr. TABOR is also described as
a director of the Imperial Bank, and one of his
colleagues is also another F.R.S. The next is Mr.
FREDERICK DOULTON, M.P., and a member of the
Metropolitan Board of Works, and he is followed
by Mr. GEORGE SMITH, of Tower-street, and Mr.
J. G. TOLLEMACHE SINCLAIR, of Thurso Castle,
the most intimate and particular friend' of the
Right Honourable BENJAMIN DISRAELI, according
to the recent testimony of that right honourable
gentleman at Edinburgh." Ten thousand shares
were to be allotted to the proprietors of the Accidental
Deat► Insurance. Company, the new corporation
taking all the assets and assuming all the liabilities
of the old undertaking. The public only subscribed
for 4,752 shares, which, with the 10,300 allotted
to the shareholders of the Accidental Death
Company, might well have been considered in-
sufficient, though the directors judged otherwise,
and the company proceeled till, on the 16th
October, 1867, the failure became apparent, and
it passed into the Winding-up Court, where it
now remains. The creditors at Liverpool ap-
pointed a committee, placing Mr. ARTHUR FOR-
WOOD at its head, to investigate its affairs, and
from their report the extraordinary transactions
of the directors came to light. About the 16th
March, 1866, six members of the board of directors
transferred 2,712 shares standing in their respective
names, principally to a clerk of the company, leav-
ing each of those directors the holder of 250
shares, the lowest holding, we presume, allowed
by the articles of association to qualify a direc-
tor. On the 21st, five days after, the company
made a call of £5 per share. On the 3d October
following at a board meeting, when four out of
those six directors were present, 5,014 shares were
forfeited for the benefit of the company, including
the shares above referred to as having been trans-
ferred by the six directors. Of the forfeited shares
3,213 stood in the name of the clerk. On the 16th
of the same month of October the company passed
into liquidation. The committee allege that, apart
from the shares so forfeited, 3,353 other shares had
been transferred from time to time within twelve
months prior to the winding up of the company, the
larger proportion being transfers from the directors
and officials of the company, and upon the greater
portion of which the calls still rem tin unpaid. The
committee estimate at over £lOO,OOO the liability
of which the holders thus at empted to rid them-
selves. This report comes from the cre litors,
who would naturally feel sore at being involved
in considerable loss, and may be susceptible of ex-
planation. But the transactions thus recorded are
simple facts, the truth of which cannot, we pre-
sume, be disputed. At this moment England is
suffering from a financial collapse without prece-
dent in her annals. So complete has been the loss
of credit that men begin to despair of ever reviving
that confidence which is the very essence of com-
mercial dealings. More especially have the pro-
ceedings of those entrusted with the management
of Joint-Stock concerns annihilated the belief
of man in the honesty of his fellow-►nan. Those
connected with a company seldom realise the full
results of a breach of the confidence placed in them
by the body for whom they are employed. The suf-
fering that men sea they can easily understand and
appreciate, but many have not the reflection nor
the imagination to realise in its force the unseen
misery they may spread over the land when they fail
in their duties to a corporation. The trusted ser-
vant who deliberately ruins his master may repent
when he sees the agony he has caused, in the wreck
of the family who reposed confidence in him ; and
many are restrained by conscience in a course of
dishonesty, the result of which their minds may
readily depict. But the case is different when acting
for a body. It is only the " Company" that suffers
says the shepherd in the wastes of New South Wales
when he helps himself to a sheep of the Australian
Agricultural Company, to him a mere English myth.
1" It is only the Company," says an overseer of an
Assam tea plantation when he plunders in a way
his conscience would not allow were he dealing for
an individual. This feeling may be understood
in those whose honesty is less a fixed principle
than the result of an innate sense .of that right
and wrong which forbids them to injure their em-
ployers whom they see and know. But when
the directors are chosen for the confidence inspired
by their social position and the antecedents which
havemarked them as men of honour, it is not easy to
comprehend how they"can reconcile themselves to
such acts as those described by the committee of
which Mr. FORWOOD is chairman. On their
belief in the just dealings of an undertaking
directed by such the shareholders assume the legal
responsibility attached to their holdings. In the same
belief others are induced to trust the concern, fully
assured that their contracts will be faithfully per-
formed. If this Report be true both have been
betrayed. The directors, knowing the state of
the affairs transacted by themselves, first proceed
to get rid of the liability they had incurred in
hopes of gain, by transferring their shares to a
dummy, then make a call, when no other share-
holder can follow their example without first paying
the amount. On their fellow shareholders the
further liability is then cast of a responsibility for
the debts contracted by their directors to the
extent of the shares thus got rid off. The
law decrees that holders who have transferred
shares shall be liable for all debts to the date of the
transfer and for a year after the transfer, if the
holders at the time of liquidation are unable to
discharge the liabilities of the company, or that
debts remain after they had paid up to the sum
they had subscribed. This clause would have
made the directors of the Accidental and Marine
Insurance Corporation still liable for the amount
unpaid on the shares transferred to the clerk, if
the remaining proprietors had paid up their full
liability, or, failing from want of menus, had left the
creditors unsatisfied. It was necessary therefore to
take a further step to guard themselves, and that
was taken on the 3d October, a fortnight before the
company passed into liquidation. By a resolution
of the board the shares which the members of the
board had transferred were forfeited in the words
of the resolution, " for the benefit of the company."
Thus they were extinguished, and the terms of the
law having been complied with which freed them
from liability, they threw the failed concern into
the Wiuding-up Court. It is said that six only out
of the eleven directors were implicated in these
transactions, and the Money Market Review calla
upon the remaining five to clear themselves from
the imputations which must otherwise attach to
their names. The worst effect of the story is the
feeling of insecurity it conveys. The late crisis is said
to have proved that none, whatever the standing and

character, can safely be trusted with the unchecked
disposal of large sums of money. It is a painful
and humiliating conviction to be forced on the
minds of all. Everywhere we see men announcing
that their honour is dearer to them than life, ready
to jeopardise that life rather than any should dare
to hint that they were capable even of implying a
falsehood. We see religious principles so loudly
proclaimed that it appears impossible for us to
associate such professions with dishonesty. Yet
it is by 'the acts of such men -- trusted so im-
plicity and wholly—that a ruin has been spread over
this kingdom more disastrous than that caused by
any war in which the nation has been engaged
since the time when the forces of Parliament met

those of the monarch, and deluged the green fields
of England with blood. Let those who have been
instrumental in wrecking the hopes of so many
thousand families picture the results to which their
acts have led. All over the realm are families who

but two short years ago [lived in comfort, even in
affluence, who now know not where to turn for
bread. Those carefully and delicately nurtured
have been hurled from their positions to seek the
means of existence in walks of life for which their
training has wholly unfitted them, or to starve
miserably in garrets or cellars almost uncon-
scious to whom they owe the horrible reverse
that has overtaken them. Hundreds have died un-
able to endure the agony of the change. The in-
tellects of scores have become deranged under the
pressure. Many—far more than we can ever know
have sought relief in suicide ; and hosts may yet
beg for coppers from the hands of men who have
been thus wickedly instrumental in their ruin. And
many who have piled up these unholy gains will flaunt
their finery and wealth in the fashionable drives and
drawing-rooms of this metropolis. Some will spout
of patriotism and honour on the floor of England's
Parliament, and there are men who will carry on
their breasts the decorations conferred by foreign
potentates with smiles and thanks of approval, for
services in renewing Italian cities, building French
docks, draining Belgian towns, or constructing
Turkish railoads, achieved by extracting the very
life blood from their deluded countrymen. It is

indeed an ill wind that blows nobody good, and
doubtless some have benefited by the hideous
ruin they have spread abroad. Even the mur-
derers of MAXIMILIAN obtained a profit by rend-
ing his garments and selling clippings of his
beard. Not long ago a New Zealand chief sold
well-tatooed heads while carried erect on the
shoulders of those to whom they belonged, and

BURKE was ready to supply from among the living
any style of subject for a dissecting-room. The
mass of mankind may not deem such gains worth
the cost. But there are a few who think differently,
and until the advent of the millenium we may be
well assured Bunss's couplet will remain true, that
" Man's inhumanity to man,
Makes countless thousands mourn."
—Anglo-American Times.

THE CONDEMNED MANCHESTER

FENIANS.

None can suspect good Catholics, who repu-
diate the principles of the Revolution everywhere,
in Ireland as well as in Italy, of any sympathy
with Fenianism ; but all must feel pity for the un-
happy men now under sentence of death, misled
by revolutionary principles to engage in lawless
designs which have resulted in the shedding of
blood. Fenianism in Manchester is guilty of the
death of a man who was simply doing his duty in
obedience to the law of the land and to his own
conscience. It is the bounden duty of Govern-
ment to uphold the law and to punish crime. It
is the will of God plainly expressed in the constitu-
tion of society. Blood has been shed in the streets
of Manchester ; a crime has been committed con-
jointly by the unhappy Fenians, now under sen-
tence of death, iu their lawless attempt to set two
political prisoners free from the hands of justice.
They are all of them legally guilty of murder, as
having been engaged in an illegal enterprise
from which death resulted. None can dispute
the fairness of their trial nor the strict justtice of
their sentence. We only hope that justice may
be tempered with mercy. To those who urge that
it is necessary to strike terror into the hearts of
the Fenians in our English cities, may we not
say that mercy is often a remedy more efficacious
than terror ?

nationalities to rise and achieve their deliverance
by the bullet and the dagger, have been without
effect upon the excitable and disaffected section of
the Irish people, in whose minds the memory of
past wrongs still rankles? That England's conduct
towards foreign revolutionists was present to the
minds and had its influence on the Fenian pri-
soners in Manchester was evident from the de-
claration of one of them, who said, after his con-
demnation to death for the rescue of the Fenian
chiefs, that had such an act been done on Italian
soil for the rescue of Garibaldi, not.a city in Eng-
land but would have rung with applause of the

daring deed. The force of this reproof is but too
just. England, who erected triumphal arches to a
far greater political criminal than these Fenians,
who kissed the hand of Garibaldi, dyed redder
than his shirt in innocent blood, cannot without a
qualm of conscience and deep self reproach lead
the Fenians of Manchester to the scaffold, or
adjust the halter round their necks. Of course,

the crimes of Garibaldi are no justification for the
Fenians ; revolution and bloodshed are crimes in
Ireland or Manchester, as well as in Italy, but the
public approval which the English nation, the Go-
vernment as well as the people, have bestowed on
such crimes when committed in Italy is a strong
reason why England, in the case of the Manchester
Fenians, should temper justice with mercy.— West-
minster Gazette.

was done in self-defence. lie need not detain them
with reading over the whole of the evidence; the
case was a very simple one, and he prayed them not
to allow anything that had occurred in another
place to prejudice their verdict.
The jury, after a short deliberation, returned a
verdict of Guilty.
The Assistant-Judge and the other magistrates
on the bench then retired to consider their sentence.
On the return of the learned Judge,
Mr. W. Sleigh hoped the Court would take into
consideration the long imprisonment Groves had
already undergone as some mitigation of sentence.
The Assistant-Judge said the learned counsel
knew very well he could not do that, as the magis-
trate was quite justified in detaining Groves in
custody. The prisoner had now been found
guilty of a charge of inflicting actual bodily
pain, for which he could not be sen-
tenced to penal servitude. However, they had
considered his case very anxiously, and without
being influenced by the practices he had in con-
templation or the persons with whom he associated,
the sentence of the Court was that he be imprisoned
and kept to hard labour for six months, and at the
expiration of the sentence he should find good sure-
ties that he would keep the peace for six months

Longer.
The prisoner was then removed from the dock.

ROME AND THE REVOLUTION.

Rome is not taken, nor is Garibaldi dead. The

Temporal Power is not overthrown, nor have the
subjects of the Pope risen in rebellion against
him. Prussia, mindful of its Catholic subjects,

as not supported revolutionary Italy in its attack

- -
upon the Papacy. The Government of England

has not interfered on behalf of the Revolution,

nor has Napoleon succumbed to the threats of
European Liberalism. The English newspapers
have not had to sing in chorus a song of triumph
over the downfall of the Temporal Papacy. Yet
all these events were predicted by the Times as on
the eve of their accomplishment, and the knell of

the Temporal Power was declared, by almost all the
Leading papers in London, to have been sounded.