The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-27 00:00:00

LAW AND POLICE.

EMBEZZLEMENT.— Robert Cecil Ewen has been charged
at the Central Criminal Court upon several indictments
with embezzling money to the amount of £.3,800, which
he bad received on account of his employers, Messrs. Stead
and Co., manufacturers, of Cummersdale, near Carlisle.
It appears that the prisoner received a salary of £2BO per
annum. At the close of the yearlB67 some irregularities were
discovered in his accounts. Mr. Hodgson, a gentleman
holding a responsible position in the establishment of
the prosecutors, went to London and had an interview
with the prisoner, and in the course of that interview
he distinctly charged the prisoner with embezzlement
and falsification of his accounts. He at first denied
that this was the case, but at the same time he asked
Mr. Hodgson to give him a private interview, and they
adjourned to the Cannon-street Hotel, where the defen-
dant handed a letter . to Mr. Hodgson, in which he
admitted that he had applied different sums of money, to
the amount of £3,800, which he had received on account
of Messrs. Stead and Co., to his own purposes. In this
letter he also stated that he had felt itabsolutely necessary
to increase his income, and as the state of trade would not
permit the prosecutors to make him an additional allow-
ante he had sent goods on speculation to Beyrout,
Constantinople, and other places,lo the amount of £5,000,
and this speculation had turned out an unsuccessful one,
and he had lost nearly the whole amount. The prisoner
also expressed his deep sorrow for his conduct and the
serious wrong he had done to the prosecutors, and he pro-
fessed to give an account of certain business transactions
which, according to his statement, when they arrived
at maturity would result in providing sufficient
funds to fully recoup the prosecutors for their loss.
Messrs. Stead and Co. suspended criminal proceedings for
a time to enable the prisoner to hand in a statement of
money due to Lim. This statement proved to be a false
one, and the prisoner ultimately absconded. The defence
was that the prosecutors had treated the defalcation as a
debt. The jury found the prisoner guilty, with a recom.
mendation to mercy, and the judge sentenced him to penal
servitude for seven years.

A NOVEL FRAUD. - An extensive and ingenious system
of fraud, by falsifying post-office orders, was brought
to light on Monday at Bow-street. The accused is a
young Frenchman Earned Richard Hugo Otto de
Foucauld, and is said to have been an officer of
Huisars in the French service. In the case before
the court he obtained an order for 2s. Gd., and, having
altered the amounts on the face of the document to
2s. Gd., borrowed, by an artful pretext, £2 IQs. on
security of the fictitious order. He was committed for
trial, but it was stated that many more charges of a like
character would be brought against him.

A CURIOUS ELECTRIC CABLE PHENOMENON.—
For some weeks the trans-Mississippi telegraph cable
between Memphis and Little Rock was out of order. At
intervals no communication could be had for hours, and
all at once the cable would revive and the fluid passed
through it as usual. At length it ceased to convey mes.
sages. The cable was one of the best ever laid in America;
it was manufactured originally for the Red Sea. The
cable was taken up, and it was discovered that four inches
of the conducting wire had been completely burnt out ; it
is supposed that a shock of lightning had passed through
the cable and destroyed the four inches of wire. It is
curious that after this destruction messages were occa-
sionally conveyed by the cable, and it is conjectured that
a slight connection was formed between the burnt ends of
the conductor by moisture, which had penetrated the
cable in sufficient quantities to keep up the circuit, there
being a battery at the Memphis end strong enough to
drive the electricity through at intervals. Cannot some
mode be established whereby communications can be
passed through large bodies of water without a cable?
It is certain that messages passed to and fro across the
without a metal connection,—,Arew York Paver.