The Sun.
London, England, 1826-07-13 00:00:00

NEW BAILEY COURT.

MANCHESTER, WU 11.
William Williams Parkins, the young man who was re-
manded at the Mansion-house, for forgery upon Masterman's
and Co. was brought up here yesterday to undergo a final exa-
mination. A number of witnesses were examined, who
fully proved the forgery, and the tracing of the letter (ad-
' dressed as requested), to the hands of the prisoner. On
account of the absence of some of the clerks in our Post-
office, to prove the deli Very of the letter to our Post-
' master, Mr. Foster, the stipendiary Magistrate, ordered
' the matter to stand over until this day.
Some time before the opening of the Court this morn-
ing, a great crowd had assembled at the gates of the
' Court-house, such an interest had the case excited here,
on account f the respectability of the individual who was
implicated in so serious an affair. After some preliminary
"business of the Court had been gone through, the pri-
soner was ordered to the bar, when the evidence wanting
yesterday was adduced, and the worthy Magistrate or-
dered the prisoner to be committed to Lancaster, to take
his trial at the approaching Assizes. The case
.against
him, as it appeared in evidence, was—that, some time last
month, Masterman's received a letter, inclosing an order
upon them to pay to a Mr. Francis Eversham the sum of
175/., which was to be placed to the account of John
Wakefield and Sons, whose name or firm was signed at
the bottom, as if coming in due course from them. Master-
man's detected the forgery, the hand-writing differing very
much from that of the John Wakefield and Sons, their
correspondents at Kendal, who are also bankers. I should
have stated, that the letter inclosing the order desired
them (Masterman) to transmit the money per post, di-
rected for Mr. Francis Eversham, Hen and Chickens, Bir-
mingham. On discovering the forgery, Masterman's itn-
mediately applied to Mr. Gates, the Solicitor of the
Bankers' Association, who wrote a letter to the Post-
master at Birmingham ; and Gardner, a Bow-street
Officer, was also dispatched to Birmingham,: to apprehend
any person applying for a letter directed to Mr. F. Ever-
sham. Before, however, the arrival of the Officer at Bir-
mingham, Mr. Hermsley, the Post-master at Birmingham,
had received a letter,_ as if from F. Eversham, desiring
him to forward to the Post-office, Manchester, any letters
that might come there directed F. Evershana. The Post-
master sent the letter received from London to Man-
chester ; and the Officer also came down to MancheAter,
in the Post-office of which town he waited from the Sun-
day to the Wednesday following, in readiness to appre-
hend the person who might call for the letter. On Wed-
nesday evening, a few minutes before ten o'clock, a person
applied at the window for a letter for Francis Eversham.
Ile was taken into custody ; and, although Gardner, the
Officer, stood at his elbow when the letter was given him,
and saw him put it into his pocket, the prisoner contrived,
by some unaccountable means, to rid himself of it; so
that, up to this time, no trace has been found by which
the letter has been recovered. It is supposed he must
have dropped it on his way to the Police-office (so much
for the alertness of aBo w-s tree t Officer), though no one, that
it is known, ever found it. There is no very strong evi-
dence that impeaches the prisoner as being the person who
committed the forgery ; not even a single witness was
brought forward who could speak to the hand-writing of
either the order upon the bankers, or the different letters
signed F. Eversham. As the matter is one of vital im-
portance, any remarks upon it would at present be, to say
the least, very ill timed.

The Court was crowded by respectable persons, who
seemed to regard the prisoner with pity; he looks about
25 years of age, and of a genteel appearance; his behaviour
was not sufficiently concerned for one who stood in so cri-
tical a situation, and surrounded by faces with which he
was so familiar. Mr. Harmer and Mr. Gates, Solicitors
from London, conducted the case for the prosecution.

TUESDAY EVENING.

I am extremely sorry that I can give you no favourable
account of trade in this town and its neighbourhood.
Tuesday (which, when we had a trade, was our chief
market day), is little, if at all, different from others, except
by the more than usual number of gloomy countenances
that crowd on our Exchange. There has, to-day, been no
better prospect ; every thing which bespeaks a thriving
community has fled us ; the most sanguine of our trades-
men begin to think trade has entirely forsaken us; the
starving state of our operatives makes us regard the ap-
proach of winter with fearful apprehensions.

TEE =LONDON JOURNALS.
DAILY EXTRACTS FROM THE MORNING PAPERS.
JULY 13, 1826.

[THE NEW TIMES.]

We much fear that the continued. drouolit will
have a very unfavourable effect on the harvest. From
the whole of the information we have received, whe-
ther from public or private sources, we are led to con-
clude that the barley and oats will be exceedingly de-
ficient. These constitute, it is known, the staple
provision of the northern counties of England, and of
nearly the whole of Scotland, and the necessary con-
sequence of their falling short is- to increase the de-
mand for wheat, and, of course, to enhance its price.
This last grain will, it is believed, prove a fair ave-
rage crop. The period at whichit is usually sown
renders it capable of resisting dry weather better than
other grains, and it bloomed, this season, under the
most favourable circumstances. There is but one ag-
gravation to our general distress yet to be experienced
—dearth of bread ; and it is not easy to see how
those who can with extreme difficulty support exist-
ence at present, will be able to do so in that event.—
It is extremely fortunate, for the country, that an Act
of last Session enables his Majesty's Ministers to
introduce supplies, without waiting, as the existing
Corn Laws might otherwise compel them, until provi-
sions have arrived at a famine price. It is not our in-
tention to enter into- the discussion of the Corn Laws
at. present ; and, indeed, vie cannot help regretting
that the public discussion of them is likely to take
place at a time when commercial and manufac-
turing distress is great, or at least when the pressure
of it is but newly removed, and when, in consequence,
a cool and considerate discussion is hardly to be
looked for. There is just one remark, which the ris-
ing markets naturally press upon us. The Corn Laws
have been principally defended on the assumption that
they tended to give steadiness to prices. Now this
assumption, in the first place, is contrary to all sound
theory, which teaches us that the more the surface is
narrowed from which our supplies are drawn, the
greater is the danger of unsteadiness in our supplies.
And, in, the second place, it is unluckily as contrary
to experience, for the markets, since the passing of
the Corn Laws, have been singularly unsteady. It is
true, for a season or two past, from the harvests, -by a
very rare combination of chances, being abundant
without superfluity, prices have not risen very high,
nor fallen very low, but it is no less true that the mere
anticipation of a had harvest would have, ere this,
raised the price of wheat 10s. or 15s. a quarter higher
than it is at present, had it not been f'or fear of the
opening of that, valve, the string of which is in the
hands of Ministers. And nothing can more clearly
show the wisdom of that act, much as it was cla-
mowed against, than the slowness with which the
price of wheat has risen under circumstances pecu-
liarly favourable to a rapid rise ; the mere existence of
the Act, without, its being called into operation,Aus
working out the very purpose for which
,it was passed ;
namely, to keep the price of grain from advancing,
not, as WAS then alleged, to cause its retrogradation.

HE REPRESENTA Tim]
Mr. Brougham has the usual consolation of a beak
man—the condolence of his friends, who assure him
he ought not to have been beaten. A dozen gentle-:I
men, Messrs. Wyberg, Thornimon, and some others
of equal weight in the county of Westmoreland—some
of them being gentlemen of property, but not in
that county—some, of them gentlemen of no property
in that or any other county—some of them gentlemen
who keep grocer's shops, and make an honest liveli-
hood by vote-manufacturing—Home of them gentle-
men who would perhaps find it not inconvenient to
have one, at least, of the Parliamentary privileges—
have addressed Mr. Brougham, to tell him that he
embarked in the late contest quite against his own in-
clination, arid merely to gratify them with the exhibi-
tion of his person on their hustings. Of course, if
Mr. Brougham swallows this, we have no objection
to his delighting himself with the reflection, without
troubling ourselves as, to its truth. But when this
round dozen of gentlemen assure him that Westmor-
land is the only county in England which is engrossed
by one family as their, private property, Mr. Brougham
could if he pleased have informed them that they were
" speaking the thing which is not," for the Lowthers
have repeatedly offered to resign their pretensions to one
of the seats to any Tory gentleman of the county who
will start for it ; and perhaps if he had been nettled,
as he might well have been, with the conduct of the
Earl of 'Menet towards him, he might have reminded
them that Westmorland was the only county the High
Shrievalty of which is engrossed by one Noble family,
which so far forgets the duties of a High Sheriff as to
meddle continually in all the details of an election.--,
But Mr. Broughton was not in the humour to make
such an answer, and in its stead he tells the dozen
addressors that their approbation amply repays his
exertions (the approbation of Such illustrious names as
Crakenthorpe, Ureenhow, and Brothers, Whitwell,
Shepherd, &c. repaying a dead loss of some 12,0001.,
to say nothing of fatigue, disgrace, and waste of time I)
—.and, moreover, increases his sense of his inadequacy
to the importance of the occasion. In one sense this
is perfectly true. It is no wonder that Mr. Brougham
should find himself' inadequate to contend With the
Lowthers, when he has no more firm support than the
approbation of such a dozen as those whom he takes the
trouble of answering.—After making his arithmetical
calculationa to prove himself in a majority, he concludes
quite happily by congratulating his 12 men on the advan-
tage this contest had been to liberal principles—how
his adversaries had been very civil to popular edu-
cation (when, by the way, were they averse to it ?)
and how the clamour raised against religious liberty
(by which Mr. Brougham means popery ) had been
hurled against those who raised it. This is Very easily
said by Mr. Brougham—but not quite so easily.be-
lieved by us—who happen to know that this clamour,
as he thinks fit to call it, lost hint, at least, 100 votes
—amt that nothing more powerfully contributed to
lose him his election. But, how valuable a man Mr.
Brougham must. be, when even his being turned out
of a county in the most decided of all possible man-
ners is of so much advantage to the cause which he
and
, his
friends ev.)o,lBe ! What a benefit, in this
triode of calculation, must it not be, if he were turned
out of Parliament altogether ! In the Times it is
stated that Mr. .leffery, the Edinburgh Reviewer,
rather think that he was. At
was not at Appielor—we
all events, he, Mr. Murray, and Mr. James Stuart,
qualified as freeholders out of one petty tenement,
rather hardily sworn to as being worth 71.

The appearance of Lord Erskine's Widow in the
guise of an hurnble supplicant for charity, at the bar
of one of our Police-offices, has called, forth a great
deal of superfine sympathy from some of our 'contem.i
`Rotaries.: To those who • knew the last years of hiS

Lordship, there is nothing extraordinary In any appli-
cation of the kind. What his private 'character
was, it is now quite needless to analyze. As to his
public character, a more superficial man perhaps
never obtruded himself on the nation. Possessed
of a never-failing source of self-conceit, he had
the merit of brow beating Judges on
.points, of the
legal merit of which he knew nothing ; and pos-
sessed of what in that particular time, when spout-
ing was a matter of importance, was deemed
eloquence, and which, beyond doubt, was a facility
of speaking, he, made himself into a sort of the
most second-rate importance conceivable. The Edin-
burgh Review, and, indeed, the Scotchmen in general,
puffed his speeches ; but now, that the prestige is
utterly gone, we defy any one to produce from them
any thing which could in the smallest degree compete
with what we are in the custom of considering elo-
quence—any maxim of general truth, of universal ap-
plication—any thing beyond the mere usual noise of
barrister-oratory, garnished by a now-and-then " By
God," and recommended to an ignorant auditory by
clap-traps, on the vulgarest of all the vulgar common-
places that turned up in his time. And yet he was
called Demosthenes ! ! Well did Burke describe him
when he called his Parliamenta7 exertions as " the
oMscourings of the Courts below. ' They who would
wish to find a full account of this most over-puffed
man will see enough about him in Mr. John Cain
Hobhouse's very clever pamplet, entitled " The
; Trifling mistake." As for his widow—why, we leave
her to Lords Rosslyn and Duncannon.—Mid.