The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-14 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, APRIL 14, 1866.

THE MURDER IN CANNON-STREET.

The police have not, up to this afternoon, dis-
covered anything in connection with this atrocious
murder calculated to dispel the mystery which at
present surrounds it. A rumour was rife that a
man had been captured by the police, from certain
matters which had come to light from the papers
and letters found in the box of the deceased ;
but such unfortunately is not the case at present,
although the police are not without hope that they
will succeed in their endeavours. The utmost
caution is necessary in order that the slender thread
the officers have been fortunate enough to secure
may not b 9 broken before the whole of the mystery
is unravelled.

The Government reward of £lOO for the appre-
iension of the murderer has been issued.

CRIMINAL COURT— This Day.

OLD COURT.

Two men, named Alderman and Priestley, were
ndicted for obtaining money under false pretences.

It appeared from the evidence that the prisoners
went into the shop of the prosecutor in the Mino-
ries and offered 16 watch chains for sale, repre-
senting that they were gold. The prosecutor in-
spected one of the chains given as a specimen, and
proceeded to apply the usual test of aquafortis to
it. While he was so engaged the prisoners con-
trived to put some water in the bottle which con-
tained the aquafortis, so that its strength and
poWer was much reduced. The chain which the
prisoners had given the prosecutor to test was a
gold one, and of course it withstood the action of the
liquid, but the others were merely strongly gilt, and
were those denominated as " duffers." When the
diluted acid was applied to them it gave no result,
which appeared to prove that the chains were gold,
but the movement of the prisoner's hand attracted
the notice of the police, and before the purchase
was effected they were in custody, and the attempted
fraud discovered.

The jury found both prisoners guilty.
The learned Judge sentenced Alderman to six
months' and Priestley to nine months' imprison-
ment, with hard labour.
This case terminated the business of the Court,
and the sessions were adjourned until Monday, the
7th of May.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.—This Day.

MARLBOROUGH-STREET.

ROBBERY AT THE WESTERN BRANCH OF THE.
BANK OF ENGLAND.—Emma Woodhouse, a char-
woman employed at the Western Branch of the
Bank of England, Burlington-gardens, was charged
before Mr. Knox with stealing money at the bank.
Police-constable Henry Dawson, 301 A, said
that in consequence of information he received from
Mr. Pym, the manager of the bank, he went to
Hart-street, Grosvenor-square, saw the prisoner,
told her that he was an officer, and that things had
been stolen from the bank where she was employed.
The, prisoner said she had not taken anything, and
offered to have her place searched. He then asked
her what money she had, and she took from her
pocket a penny and a farthing, whi▪
ch she said she
must have received in changing ss. given to her by
Mr. Wright, the messenger to the bank. He then
told her that two five-shilling packages of. copper
had been taken from a drawer in the bank, and
then searched the place but found only some sealing
wax and a pocket-book. He then put some. ques-
tions to her as to whether she had made any
purchases, and on her stating that she had at the
shop of Mr. Gadstone, in Oxford-street, he went
there, and found that two penny pi▪
eces had been
taken which bore similar marks to those on the
penny given up by the prisoner, the marks having
been put on them by a gentleman connected with
the bank. He then took the prisoner into custody.
Mr. James Lost, cashier at the bank, said that a
roll of pence were marked by him, and, with
others, done up in ss. packets, placed in a drawer
which was locked. He afterwards missed two
packets.
In answer to Mr. Knox the witness said the pri-
soner must have opened the drawer with a key on
a bunch in a desk which was not locked. Altogether
seven ss. packets had been stolen.
Mr. Pym, the manager of the bank, said the seal-
ing wax and the pocket-book were similar to those
used in the bank.
Remanded.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

HEBALD.—Mr. Lowe bas entitled himself to the
thanks of the house and the country by his prompt
and indignant protest against the mode of waging
political warfare which has come in with the new
Reform Bill. Subtle philosophers and casuistic
theologians have, it is true, taken a wonderful deal
of pains to settle the boundaries of the border-
land which lies between truth and falsehood ; to
distinguish the relative culpability of the suppressio
ceri and the suggestio falsi, and to make verbal ac-
curacy do I duty for substantial unvcracity. But,
though the lucubrations of these ingenious writers
have cost them a great deal of labour, we doubt
whether they ever gained many converts, except
among those who had their own reasons for wishing
to find, in mental reservation or partial quotation, a
somewhat euphemistical expression for deliberate
falsification. The notion that language was made
to conceal and not to disclose ideas may have
seemed very attractive to the statesman who ex-
pressed it, but it has never found favour among
Englishmen, who rather pride themselves on calling
a spade a spade, and saying what they mean with
an outspoken frankness which implies a belief that
others will deal with them in an equally candid
fashion. But on Thursday night Mr. Lowe com-
plained, with great justice, of a departure from
this principle by the three members of the Legis-
lature who are generally supposed to have had
most to do with the concoction of the Reform
Bill. Earl Russell, who suggested it ; Mr. Glad-
stone, who introduced it; and Mr. Bright, who
inspired it, have alike endeavoured to damage the
reputation of its most vigorous assailant by an
artifice at once un-English and unparliamentary.
Still, it would be unfair to deny to the Gover-
ment the credit of adoptingmeansattractive for their
simplicity, and for the readiness with which a cheap
and temporary triumph may thereby be assured.
They had only to select a passage from the middle
of their adversary's speech, and by quoting it
without its context to alter its effect as completely
as if they had supplied the words from their own
imaginations. Our readers may remember a
passage in the Psalms in which David,
by an ingenious device of this kind
may be made to profess the most unqualified
atheism, and as everybody knows you need only
drop a word from a negation to make it express the
very opposite of what its author intended. That
any English politician should adopt this kind of
strategy is somewhat surprising ; but that three
persons, each in a prominent position in his peculiar
party, should have stooped to it, is as remarkable
as it is humiliating. Of course the original sin of
the misrepresentation of which Mr. Lowe com-
plained lies at the door of Mr. Bishop, and the 60
free, independent, and advanced Liberal electors of
Caine, who memorialised their erring representative
on the freedom with which he had spoken. " You
were sent to Parliament," they say,- " to represent
this borough as a Liberal, and now you are found
'running from your allegiance to the Liberal cause."
You charged the working man with venality, igno-
rance, drunkenness, and intimidation •, with being
unreflecting, impulsive, and violent. Terrible Mr.
Lowe ! We, the selected sixty and one in whom
are centred the public spirit and pure patriotism of
the borough of Caine, feel bound to protest against
your reactionary utterances, lest the wicked world
should think that we countenance you in your ca-
lumniations of those whom the Cabinet has chosen
for admission " within the portals of the constitu-
tion." To this remonstrance Mr. Lowe replied by
pointing out the error into which his accusers had
fallen. He showed that they had cut off the begin-
ning and end of the sentence they had quoted, and
thus had converted a well-merited censure on a
certain portion of the borough voters into a sweep-
ing and indiscriminating condemnation of the
working classes. Without getting at all angry it
was easy for Mr. Lowe to refute the reasoning of
Mr. Bishop by a reference to the words of his
speech, and to rebut the imputation of unfaithful-
ness to the trust the electors had reposed in him
by reminding his accusers of the election address
he had issued, and the hustings speech he had
delivered when he last stood before them as a can-
didate for their suffrages. But it was more difficult
for him to speak temperately of those who adopted
Mr. Bishop's tactics without Mr. Bishop's excuse.
The local Liberal may be forgiven for embracing
his first and probably his only opportunity of
beyondac-
quiring the boundaries of his own
also plead that criticising
borough,
and notoriety
he
may
parliamentary speeches, and calling members to
account, are not very much in his way. But his
imitators have no right to shelter themselves under
these excuses. Mr. Bright knew what he was
doing when, in his speech at Rochdale, he substi-
tuted the words, " the unrepresented classes," for
those in which Mr. Love had described the lowest
portion of the existing constituencies; and so did
Earl Russell, when perfectly well aware of the
purport et the published reply to the memorial, his
lordship chose to garble Mr. Lowe's speech exactly
as it had been previously garbled by Mr. Bishop.
But Mr. Gladstone's offence was the most serious.
Into a debate on a gravo organic change in the
Constitution he was the first to introduce the ele-
ment of personality, and he immensely aggravated
his offence against gpod feeling and good taste by
the time and manner of its commission. Selecting
the same sentence as his chief, he deliberately im-
puted to it a sense which the honourable member
who used it had already distinctly disavowed, and
thus brought upon himself a richly merited rebuke '
for the " gross, systematic, and wilful perversion of
language" to which he had resorted.

ANGLO-AMERICAN TIMES.—The United States
Congress has been asked, and the Lower House has
agreed, to appropriate one hundred thousand dollars
for the purpose of enabling the American people to
put in an appearance at the French Exposition of
1867, but.this proposal has been "met in Congress
by a very powerful opposition. The jealousy of the
agricultural Western States crops out and says,
with a spasm of economy, that the country cannot
afford this extravagance; that she has enough to
do to pay her debts, without incurring new and un-
necessary ones, and that the Western States have
no interest in this show business, and will not con-
sent to an investment of the national funds in it.
Economy is always a powerful argument. As
there are no people on the face of the earth
more careless of money and more extravagant than
the Americans, so there are none more ready to
Open their ears and draw down their faces at the
merest suggestion of economy. But there is a
homely adage about " the spiggot and the bung-
hole," which has frequent application among nations
as well as individuals. We shall certainly not be
accused of prejudice against the American people ;
on the contrary, we are too often charged with the
disposition to cloak their shortcomings ; but we
must utter our protest against the penny-wise-and-
pound-foolish economy which has always been one
of their most unfortunate characteristics. Th e
President of the United States receives a salary
scarcely adequate to the respectable maintenance of
a London police magistrate ; and the Ambassadors
sent from America to represent the Great Republic
at foreign Courts are provided with a new suit of
clothes and a miserable allowance of pocket-
money, scarcely adequate to purchase the necessaries
of life. It is this short-sighted " economy" that in
times past scattered a dozen American vessels of
war over the whole watery face of the globe, and
left the American flag unprotected in seven-tenths
of its foreign stations ; it is this that would refuse
to the industrial interests of that great and growing
country the opportunity of honourable display in
comparison and competition with those of European
nations. It is urged by the opponents of the grant of
one hundred thousand dollars for the purposes of the
Paris Exposition that it is better for Americans to
stay at home, repair the damages of war,' and
achieve new triumphs of industrial skill, rather
than to fritter away the public money in an exhibition
aalaornmged at their national growth.
sosuadurd among
that if they go to Paris
a people who are jealous of
Bo
theirf
But
t theirtph reoyg inventionssrhe
next year, they will carry with them, not the fruits
of a cycle of peace and prosperity, but crops
gathered from the broken and desolated fields of
war. They will manifest the power and fertility of
the American people tested at the most unfavourable
time. They will show France and England that,
powerful as the Americans have proved themselves
in war, they have not forgotten the genius of the
inventor or the cunning of the artisan. They will
tender to Europe the gauge of friendly rivalry, and
tell them, through their fabrics and their machinery,
that they intend to dissolve the bond of dependence
which has made them so long the servants of manu-
facturing nations, and that thenceforth they are de-
termined to produce all the fruits of intelligent in-
dustry that the physical conditions in which they
live render possible and expedient. Civilisation
has taught the American people that contact
' strikes out knowledge as the flint strikes out
fire ; that the interchange of thought and its pro-
ducts is as profitable as the interchange of articles
of trade. Almost every civilised country on the
globe will have an official agent at Paris next year,
and will add its contribution to the Exhibition of
the tiponsiigtteridoann, Y
announces that he has
dl
Human Industry. But we feel sure that the Great
Republic will be represented there—not meanly and
and nobly. Mr. J. C.
States Agent at New York
Derby,af already ead the
niggardly,
e thE but
received more than fourteen hundred
articles for exhibition, and the number is rapidly
increasing. The entries are of things in which
Americans feel a national pride, and which will be
creditable to them as a nation. The New England
States, with the shrewdness that has been the
secret of their industrial success, make the largest

number of entries ; but the Western States are by
no means unrepresented, and we expect to see
the superabundant wealth of the great Western
prairies and mines and manufactories, indicated
by thousands of articles of growth and manufac-
ture, occupying an honourable place among the
treasures of the world which will be congregated
next year at Paris. Yes, the West—the great,
mighty, teeming 'West—that feeds the American
nation; and could feed the world, that welcomes to
its broad and fertile bosom the surplus population
of the globe, that enfolds in its vast expanse of
field and forest, in its mines of coal and lead and
copper and silver and gold, in its mighty rivers,
its great lakes, its cities that grow up as it were in
a day, that glorious inheritance that shall make-the
United States within a century more populous and
more prosperous than the whole of Europe—let the
West display her young, lusty, vigorous and intel-
ligent face to the curious millions who will gather
at the Paris Exposition. Remembering that Peace
also has its victories, let the American people, now
that they have achieved those victories,in war
which have covered them with imperishable honour,
seek for those Peaceful Victories which are not
won by the sword, but by the invincible might
of industry, and intelligence, and a high civilisation.

Pisciculture in Oxfordshire.

(Front Land and Water.)

Some years ago the arrival of a number of very
tiny trout,which, in piscicultural language, had just
absorbed the umbilical vesicle, or, according to the
untutored fish-hatoher, had just consumed their
jelly-bags, and had been hatched in London under
the parental care of Frank Buckland, gave the
science of pisciculture a footing on the banks of a
muddy river in this county. Cockney fish though
they were, they bore their journey well, and com-
fortably harboured in a large pickle-bottle, were
refreshed with change of water at the different
stations on the Great Western. Not that the
prospect before them was encouraging, for they
were bound to an inhospitable country, and the
river and lakes they were intended to colonise
seemed anything but fit waters for their reception.
Through the meadows rolled the sluggish river over
a muddy bottom, telling not of trout, but of coarse
vulgar fish, though here and there, on the shallows
an odd trout would now and then reward the very
patient fisherman. Pike, perch, eels, and great
clumsy chub, tenanted the deep holes. The lakes
were beautifully clear, and were fed by numerous
springs, while a strong stream ran from one to
another, and so on to the river. The mud, however,
was deep, and pike and perch held undisputed
sway. By fencing off parts off the stream between
the lakes, as nurseries for the young trout, hopes
were entertained of being able to rear them up to
such a size and age as would ensure them, when
turned out in the lake and river, against the attacks
of perch and small pike. The little Lon-
doners were forthwith placed in one of those
asyhims, and were fed with pounded liver and
biscuit. All appeared to go well with them till
the rats, which swarm in the neighbourhood, at-
tracted either by the waste particles of food or by
the fish, tunnelled under the banks, made holes
round the posts which held the fence of perforated
zinc, and away went the little trout into the
main stream or into the lakes, and probably not one
escaped the open mouths that were ready to swal-
low them up. The following season an attempt was
made to hatch about 1,000 trout ova in two long
wooden boxes placed in the same stream. A small
bank of stones and gravel, up-stream of each box,
stood by way of apology for a filter; perforated
zinc at either end of the box kept enemies out, while
the lid acted as a protection above, and sheltered the
ova from the glare of the light. In spite of the
immense accumulation of dirt and sediment, the
hatching out was successful, but though as gentle a
current as possible was made to flow through the
boxes, the poor little fish, clogged and helpless with
their hugh vesicles, got fixed in the holes of the
zinc, and there ended their brief existence. Between •
100 and 200 lived to absorb the umbilical bag, and
instantly, on emerging into activity, were cast loose
into the stream, there to take their chance, and run
the gauntlet of perch and pike, kingfisher and dab-
chick, as the rats had willed that their London
cousins should do before them.

Meanwhile an indoor apparatus was being pre-
pared, and bricks and mortar were fast raising up a
small house to contain it. The close of 1863 found
the establishment complete in every respect. Built
against the embankment, at the foot of one of the
lakes, where there was a steep fall, the roof of the
house was below the level of the surface of the lake.
A shallow well, sunk a few feet from the waterside,
received the water which found its way through the
intervening gravel bed, thus acting as a filter, and
from thence a leaden pips supplied the building.
Entering close under the roof, the mouth of the pipe
was directly over a filter barrel, about as high as a
nine gallon cask, but more capacious. A horse hair
sieve at the top, and layers of charcoal, sand, fine
and coarse gravel, were quite enough, one would have
imagined, to guard against the inroads of all hostile
matter, animal as wel as vegetable, or sediment of
any kind. Ready filled for use a spare filter barrel
was at hand, in case of anything going wrong through
foulness or choking. Fifteen slate troughs, on Mr.
Ponder's principle, ranged the length of the house,
and, thanks to that gentleman's kindness and cour-
tesy, they were made precisely to hispattern. Care-
fully cleaned and scalded was the gravel, bright and
clear it glistened in the troughs, and pure and limped
ran the filtered water over it, and the star of fish-
culture was in the ascendent. By the end of January,
1864, eleven thousand ova had been collected, nearly
half of which were of the great lake trout, and the
rest of common trout and char. Remarkably healthy
and sound they were, and for a time everything went
well, but soon a curious scum made its appearance in
the troughs, and rust-coloured matter adhered to
the zinc guards at the outlets. Day by day the
nuisance grew worse, but still the water flowed tran-
sparent as crystal, and the ova did not suffer. The
presence of iron, and in no small quantity, in the
water, was no longer to be doubted, but whence and
how could it get there ? The lake above was free
from it, and no iron-water spring was known to be
in the immediate vicinity. Various, but futile at-
tempts were made to cleanse the troughs. The scum
was continually skimmed off, a stronger stream was
turned on, and the paint-brush vainly essayed to
relieve the ova of their noxious integument. Though
the iron had apparently no effect upon the ova, it
told very differently when the hatching commenced.
The little fish just bursting into life were quite
overcome by it ; numbers at the first glance of the
outer world gave up the struggle, and the troughs
were soon full of defunct victims of an iron despo-
tism. At this crisis, half a dozen small earthenware
troughs were hastily rigged out, a supply of water
was obtained from the reservoir tanks on the roof of
the mansion house, and all that could be saved,
hatched, hatching, and about to hatch, were removed
from the piscicultural house to a temporary structure
on the lawn.

Out of eleven thousand ova origanally deposited in
the troughs, only five thousand were rescued from
the poisoned gravel beds ; and many of these were
weak and sickly, and about three thousand five hun-
dred lived to absorb the umbilicle visicle and shift
for themselves. In the hurry and confusion of moving
them from what appeared to be certain death, great
lake trout, common trout, and char had all got
mixed up together, and many a lake trout was to
be seen swimming about with the tail of a wretched
char protruding from his mouth. A nursery in the
stream, carefully fenced against all enemies, and
supposed to be rat proof, again received the rising
hopes of the piscicultural family; but one old enemy
was not to be baffled, and a fat, complacent, self-
satisfied old rat, who had just dined off the young
trout, was ever to be seen sitting on the top of some
slate, tile, or stone, placed as a hide, or shelter, for
the fish, looking exactly like some old gentleman at
Greenwich under very similar circumstances. With
the exception of a very few hundreds turned into the
river, and one or two small streams in the neigh-
bourhood, the results of the fish hatching of 1861
had, like their predecessors, the rats to thank for an
early introduction to a host of enemies in the open
water. Steps were taken to ascertain the source
from whence the iron made its way into the hatch-
ing house, and iron-stone, in considerable quantities,
was found in the embankment through which the
water Mtved into the well, and the magnary of the

well itself was fall of it. This was easily remedied
by carrying the leaden pipe out into the deep water
of the lake, and since that operation not a vestige
of iron has presented itself.

The stock of ova for 1865 numbered 4,500, from
which 2,470 great lake trout, common trout, and
char were turned out after the absorption of the
vesicle, and strong healthy fish they were, though
the unnaturally hot weather at the end of April oc-
casioned heavy losses. Among them were 800 char,
the produce of 900 ova. Again they were set free
in the river stream and lakes to take their chance.
The present year must bear a black mark in the
annals of pisciculture, for owing to the prevalence
of floods during the spawning months, the troughs
are all but empty. Only 2,000 ova prop up the
hopes of the disconsolate fish-hatcher ; but they
promise well, and when they arrive at the days of
discretion they will find a nursery prepared for
them bricked in, and wired over so as to defy our
old foe the rat, as well as any other intruder. An
opportunity hitherto much missed, will then be
offered, of watching the growth of the fish, and
also of keeping them in safety till only very large
pike will attack them. Disheartening though this
story of pisciculture under difficulties may appear
to be, still great was the pleasure last summer, in
eating
just one nice dish of trout, caught iirthe
stream connecting the lakes, where trout were never
known before, but whether they were Frank Buck-
land'st
cockney ele'hv ees ,o'
p'
eonr theair,
it producewas not o
f the
hatched in boxes in possible
to determine.