The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-08-31 00:00:00

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TUESDAY 31ORNING, AUGUST 31, 1552.

THE

WEEK

WE can most heartily pity all " London Correspond-
ents," who, in these dull and uneventful times, are
compelled to make an effort to amuse and edify
with their daily or weekly lucubrations. Our con-
temporary, the London 7 imes, we observe, has had,
during the past week, to fish up for matter, and to
" fudge up" rather odd subjects for comment in his
columns. A letter, as usual, furnished him, on
Friday, with the material for a column of twaddle
anent what he calls the "subsidizing" of the Rival
Cunard and Collins Lines of Steamers, by the go-
vernments of Great Britain and the United States.
Tne Times says :

Between Liver P 0

there are running
An

cro lines of

rican, en

couraged in each c

large grants of money from their
to perform the voyage in the

governmei

And he contends that these steamers having thus

far run a neck and neck race, and the difference
between their respective performances being very
small, though in favour of the American boats, the
allowances made by both governments ought to
cease, and the public be left in the enjoyment of
such benefits only as are likely to be derived from
" the stimulus of free competition." Our contem-
porary forgets that the allowance which he calls a

s received by the
the reward for
vessels at the
Without

subsidy" and " a bounty,
Cunard Company, at all events, as
carrying the mails, and placing the
disposal of the Post-office authorities.
some such " subsidy," we should probably be con-
demned to have our correspondence with the United
States carried by some slow Admiralty steamers, at
six times the cost nationally, and at a hundred times
the cost to the mercantile community. Has the
Times ever considered what is the saving of interest

of money to that community, arising from remit-
tances between the two countries being facilitated
by fast sailing steamers ? or has he ever thought of
the advantage to the British manufacturer of being
kept regularly advised of the demand in the Ame-
rican market for the goods which he produces ?
Independently of these considerations, however, it
is certain that, on national grounds, America will
do her utmost to protect the enterprize of her own
citizens, and will certainly not allow a rival nation
to engross the postal and passenger traffic between
Great Britain and her vast continent. _

When the fat knight of Shakespeare, Sir John
Falstaff, hacked his rapier, in the hope of proving
that he had been engaged in a terrific conflict with
the men in buckram suits, at Gadshill, he little ex-
pected that the example would be followed, from
similar motives, by a Priest of the Church of
Rome. Such, however, appears to have been the
course of Father Clune, one of the heroes of the
Six-mile-bridge affair, if we may believe the fol-
lowing letter which appeared in the columns of a
London contemporary last week :

SIR,—I see, by the proceedings at the Six-mile-bridge
inquest on last Saturday, that mention was made of the
wounds in Priest Clune's hat, and I therefore beg to
communicate to you, for the edification of the English
public, a description of the hole which he alleges was
made in his hat by a bullet. The hole is immediately
above the hatband ; it leads directly inwards, and is
formed of three flaps, which meet at the centre. No
part of the substance of the hat has been carried away.
There is an opening in the lining of the hat corres-
ponding to the outer one, but of quite a different cha-
racter, being long and partly torn.
The most wonderful part, however, of the affair is, that
there is no hole at the opposite side of the hat for the
exit of the ball, thus rendering it certain that if the ball
did penetrate the hat, it must be still somewhere in the
wearer's brain. A CLARE MAN.
With respect to the conclusion arrived at by the
writer, as conveyed in the paragraph given in
italics, we would suggest a different version.
There has been a miracle here, infinitely more
striking than that of the winking picture, the ad-
dolorata, or the ecxtatica, so devoutly believed in
by the Earl of Shrewsbury. We rather fancy that
the bullet, unable to penetrate to the rev. gentle-
man's brains, must have returned by the way it
came, or that the rev. gentleman has been abusing his
own hat, after Falstaff's fashion, with the point of a
walking stick or a poker.
It is singular to observe with what anxiety some
of our free trade organs seize hold of every little
rumour likely to create alarm, and to advance the
price of the very crop which it has been the object
of their legislation to depreciate. The following is
a specimen, culled from the columns of the Man-
chester Guardian of Wednesday last :

" It is very generally believed that throughout the
south and west of the island the wheat in particular is ex-
tremely defective in quality and short in quantity ; many
examples hare occurred where the crop has been sold for
the value of little more than the straw ! These facts,
added to other considerations, such as the exhausted state
of the home stocks of wheat, the failure of the potato
crops, and the empty state of the bonded warehouses, are
even now calculated to create some alarm with respect to
the future."

Had the writer been hired by the "bulls" of all the
Corn Exchanges in the kingdom, he could not have
perpetrated more preposterous rubbish. We should
like to be informed of one of the "many examples"
where " the crop has been sold for little more than
the straw." As for " the empty state of the bonded
warehouses," our contemporary ought to know
that a single moderate-sized warehouse would
contain all the bonded grain that there has been in
this country at any period during the last two years.
Whilst railway directors are devising more strin-
gent monopolies, they appear bent upon outraging
public feeling by the gross carelessness with which
they manage their business. Formerly most striking
statements used to be made with respect to the
superior safety of railway over stage-coach travelling.
But at present the case is altered. Collisions are
everyday affairs. Luggage trains run into excursion
trains ; engines run into wrong sidings ; and when
some score or two of unfortunate passengers are
crushed, and probably maimed for life, all the satis-
faction which the public receives is to hear that a
pointsman or an engine driver has been found guilty
of manslaughter, or, as in the instance recorded by
us this week, has hung himself in order to escape
the penalties resulting from such a verdict. Yet the
public have a lively impression that the directors
themselves, in most cases, and not their servants,
ought to be arraigned at the bar of justice to answer
for the casualties daily occurring. We ought to
know what these gentlemen, whilst looking for
increased dividends,allow to such servants as points-
men, to whose vigilance the lives of thousands are en-
trusted, for their 18 or 20 hours of duty each day.
We ought to know also of what class they are. The
result of an inquiry into the matter would be, that
whilst a few head officials are overpaid, and whilst
members of boards of directors themselves are not
above pocketing handsome allowances, the rank-
and-file in their employ are of a very inferior class,
and miserably underpaid. Another fact, we sus-
pect, would transpire from a searching investigation,
viz., that sufficient attention is not paid to the
condition of engines and carriages. The system of
contracting for keeping " rolling stock" in order is
an extremely dangerous one. Probably the remedy
will ultimately have to be adopted of a periodical
inspection either by Government officers or some
other authorised parties. A great number of the
recent accidents by railways appear to have occurred
through trains not keeping their proper time. The
public ought to be able to remedy this mismanage-
ment. When companies announce the times of
departure and arrival of their trains, parties who
are inconvenienced by the non-fulfilment of this
virtual contract ought to have a civil remedy. Per-
haps forfeiture of the fare would have some effect.