Star.
London, England, 1831-06-17 00:00:00

NEW BEER TRADE.

The Committee appointed at the former meeting of this
meritorious class of traders, last evening brought their
labours to a close, by dressing into firm a series of bye.
laws, to be submitted to a meeting of the whole trade on
Thursday next, the place and hour to be advertised in the
STAR and other London papers. Much animated dis.
cuuion arose on the reading of certain unwarrantable
attacks on this newly erected set of Traders, in the Sun of
yesterday, the Herald of Monday, and one or two other
daily prints, to which some individuals of the Committee had
replied—it seems—in the same columns. Resolutions were
thee entered into for the purpose of presenting petitions to
parliament, and other measures for the consolidation of a
permanent society of Licensed Retailers of Beer.

Sir Anthony Carlisle's letter on the cholera war-
bus, in another part of our paper, will be read with
the respect due to his high reputation. The College
of Physicians are a mere close corporation.
AMERICAN LAW.—Ex-Sheriff Parkins being
imposed upon at an hotel, and then robbed by a
swindler, mine host, with puritan conscience, sued
Parkins for the swindler's reckoning! The Eng-
lishman kicked the officer who served him with
process, and thereby so offended Me law, that he
was held in durance for 20 days, and what is no
discredit to him was made to pay the insolent demand.
In the starving counties, potatoes are, it seems,
but 2d. a-stone of 141 b. yet the absentee landlords,
tithe collectors, and tax gatherers, have so com-
pletely drained the district of money, that the
people have not 2d. to feed their families.
The Irish Reports describe the starving popula-
tion as 15,000 in number. This, with the wretched
supply of 4d. per day, would be 60,000 pence, or
2,5001. Now all the subscriptions do not amount
to quite 2,0001. or sufficient for 8 days, at only
4d. a day ; and wo have heard of the famine for two
or three months. Surely it was the duty of Go-
vernment not only to advance 50,0001. but to have
prohibited the export of provisions from Ireland.—
Ile public demand, with one voice, a liberal sys-
tem of Irish Poor Laws.

ORIGIN OF BIBLE SOCIETIES.—.When Messrs.
Pitt and Dundas rewarded the noted John Reeves
I for his political services in the Crown and Anchor
Association, by giving him a share of the King's
Printer's Patent, Reeves not being initiated in the
mysteries of printing, sold his interest to his part-'
ners for 30,0001. but reserved to himself the right
of printing Bibles in which they saw no advan- , '
tage. Reeves then, with his usual tact, started
the idea of Bible Societies, and by a forced sale of
his Bibles, &c. through the east amounts of pious
subscriptions realised an immense fortune. He pur-
sued
the same course in them as in his political as-
sociation,
having first established the parent so-
ciety, he then covered the country with branch
societies, and by these means and indefatigable
perseverance sold millions of his Bibles, &c. at a:
respectable profit, and without himself publicly
appearing.
We are requested by the proprietor of the Stam-
ford
News and Stamford Champion, to positively j
contradict a paragraph which was copied from one
of those papers, which stated that the Rev. Mr. I
Shield, of Preston, in Rutland, with another cler-
gyman,
had been aiding and abetting in a cockfight,
and to state, so far as regarded the Reverend Mr.
Shield, that that gentleman is in no way favorable
to such cruel and unclerical amusement. The pa-
ragraph was inserted on authority which turns out
to be utterly worthless.
The Courier says, " We have great plesure in
being able to state, from authority, that the story
about the sale of swans by our Government to
Russia is wholly without foundation." Our readers
will perceive that this is no contradiction of the re-
port to which we alluded. That report did not charge
the Government with selling arms to Russia, but
with supplying our gun-manufacturers with arms
from the Tower to send to Russia. The words em-
ployed were as follow :—" It has bean announced
that our gun manufacturers, 'with the consent of
the Government—for they could not do it without
—have engaged to supply the Russians with two
hundred thousand muskets, and that a part of
these muskets have been actually supplied from
the Tower." What we want to know is, whether
our gun-manufacturers have been allowed to export
arms to Russia ? and whether, if so, any of those
arms were taken from the Tower.- Herald.