The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-12-14 00:00:00

of Saxony

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S PIPER.—Among the latest vic-
tims of the fever at present raging in Edinburgh is J.
Bruce, or " John of Syke," for some years -he Highland
piper at Abbotsford.

- In 1813 Robert Duncan was wounded in the American
war, at Chippeway by a musket-ball in the left knee. It
could no:, then be extracted, and it remained in his
knee bone until last week, when Dr. Guthrie of Montrose
took it out, as it caused the old pensioner great pain, in
consequence of shifting out of the bone into the flesh.

JOSEPH ADY CAUGHT.-At Bow-street police-office
on Wednesday, Joseph Arty appeared to a summons issued
at the instance of the Post-office authorities, for the
recovery of 14s. Rd. being the amount due for postage
on 208 unpaid letters which had been returned to the
Dead Letter office, and which purported to have been
written and sent by the defendant. He will have to pay
the amount.

The suspension. of railway works has caused a great fall
in iron, and in consequence, ruin amongst the iron mas-
ters. Scotch pig, which, during the late mania, went up
to £6, can now he bought at £2 is. ! The article cannot
be produced under £3. Considerable orders from America

1, like all other trades,
munch of commerce will survive.
DISTRESSING OCCURRENCE.—White the fishing boa*
of LN

this important

aster ws

at sea recently
,i

a gale sprung up with

such- fury that the men were ouoged to quit their lines,
and make for the nearest haven. One boat was dashed to
pieces, but the men were saved by a rope cast from the
shore. Another boat was totally lost, and her crew of
eight men drowned. By this calamity six widows and
twenty children have been left destitute.—Bristol Mirror.
The annual meeting of the Central Agricultural Protec-
tion Society was held at 17, Old Bond-street, on Thurs-
day, when an admirable report, to which we shall do jus-
tice next week, was presented by the committee. A long
discussion took place on the subject of tenant-right, ori-
ginating in a suggestion in the report, that a sub-com-
mittee should be appointed to consider the subject, which
was confirmed on the motion of the Duke of Richmond

io made some strong observations on the subject

The ropewalks of the Gourock Ropework Company, at
Greenock, were destroyed by fire last week. The pro-
perty destroyed is valued at £20,000, and about 100 hands
are thrown out of employment. Some idea of the intensity
of the flames may be formed when we mention, that in
some quarters as many as 200 barrels of tar were in flames
at one time, and that in others 20 to 50 tons of hemp,
probably more, were closely packed, and these for many
hours emitted brilliant flames.

The Duke of Cleveland has presented the munificent
sum of £5OO in aid of the building of a new infirmary for
the minty of Durham. The Dean of Durham has given
a simibir donation ; the Earl of Eldon £3OO, and the
Bishop of Durham £250; the Marquis of Londonderry,
Lord Ravensworth, Lord Harry Vane, Sir William Eden,
Bart., and Sir Thos. Clavering, Bart., have respectively
given donations of £lOO in furtherance of the same de-
sirable object.
In 1845, the tonnage of vessels entered inwards was
4,114,532 tons; in 1847 it was 5,189,220. Of vessels
cleared outwards in 1845 the tonnage was 3,723,185 tons;
in 1847 it was 4,066,134 tons. The increased tonnage is
to he traced to the enlarged demand for foreign provisions,
and to the suspension of the navigation laws. It is some
satisfaction to observe, that the increase of the ships and
tonnage of the United Kingdom keeps a primary place in
the advance.

A meeting of the shareholders of the Northumberland
and Durham District Bank, which recently suspended
payments, was held at Newcastle, on Monday, when a
resolution was unanimously passed, confirming the pro-
ceedings of the recent meeting for increasing the ca-
pital of the company from £600,000 to £1,200,000.—
Mr. B. W. Ogden, who presided, explicitly stated that it
is not the intention of the directors to make any calls upon
the old shares, whether the new shares be taken or not.

THE CHOLERA.—The Globe tells us that we may now
expect an immediate visit of the Asiatic destroyer; that
it has taken possession of some provinces of Austria, and
is ly:und westward,—adding, that it is proved to be non-
contagious. It is universally reputed to travel inland, by
river waters; if it land at the Humber, it will come from
the north on us ; if at the Thames, it will first strike on
London ; if at Bristol, it will advance up the Severn.
But these may be all vain predictions.
A SINGULAR ENCOUNTER.—The fishermen of Cadg-
with have lately been bringing ashore some good catches
of fish. Recently, one of the fishermen caught a large
conger ; and, as soon as the monster was on board, he
seized his captor firmly by the throat, and coiled himself
tightly round the poor fellow's body, as if he would be at

once avenged. The fisherman was unable to free himself
until be took his knife, and drew it across the conger'S
head. Its jaws then became unlocked, and its victim
liberated.—Cornwall Gazette.
ENTICING BOYS TO BE SWEEPS.—At Doncaster, on
Wednesday, a chimney-sweep, named Hatfield, was fined
£5 for detaining two boys and using them as sweeps.
Hatfield was applied to by an elder brother of the boys to
give them up, and refused, stating that he had given £1
each for them, and had also paid a person named Holland'
of Manchester, something for his trouble in procuring
them. The boys had been made to ascend chimneys

sadly against their will, and in one instance when the
older could not get up a flue he was severely thrashed by
the defendant.

On Monday week two boys, named Gabriel Harris and
Thomas Howlett, were sentenced by the Mayor of Glou-
Cester to ten days imprisonment for placing scraps of paper
in the pews of St. Michael's Church, in that city, contain-
ing filthy language and doggrel rhyme of an indecent
character. They had pursued their disgraceful proceed-
ings for six Sundays, dropping the papers from the galleries
into the seats below as they left the church. The church-
wardens had watched some time before they discovered the
perpetrators of the crime, which has been justly punished,
as a warning to others. _ _

ROMANISM.—It appears from the Roman Catholic Di-
rectory for 1848, that the total number of Roman Catholic
churches and chapels in England and Wales is 545; in.
Scotland 85, besides 22 stations where divine service is
performed ,• making a grand total of 630 churches and
chapels. Of Catholic colleges, there are in England 10;
and in Scotland, 1. Convents, 38, of which 12 are in the
London district. Monasteries, 4. Of Missionary priests
in England and Wales, there are 707, including priests
without any fixed mission ; in Scotland, 99 ; making a
grand total of 806 missionary priests in Great Britain, in-
cluding the Bishops. This is a goodly. staff, and well
calculated to extend and uphold the interests of. the
Church of Rome.
POST-OFFICE SABBATH DESECRATION.—OB reference
to the Post-office Directory, page 1689, the following
statistics will be found. In England and Wales alone
there are 4250 post-towns and sub-towns, in Scotland
715, and in Ireland 750, making a total of 5715 towns
and villages which make up a letter-bag on Sunday. Al-
lowing two officers only to each of these places—viz., a
postmaster and letter-carrier—and to 800 post-towns a
clerk each additional, we arrive at a numerical result of
twelve thousand two hundred and thirty persons who are
compelled, by a government which supports a religious
, establishment, to break the fourth commandment. Truly
an army of Sabbath-breakers under the patronage of the
Crown !
Ti Nc Cr 1 Be As
that Su
there THE
,iu
AvnmbeY:
ere I t
ma
a further augmentation of the army. is
n r
The last in de,
about eighteen months since, amounted to 10,000 men.
—r
moounrtehd s eiln in-
fluentialaapse
,
Our readers may recollect that the late Secretary at War
(the Right Hon. Sir Sidney Herbert) contemplated the
formation of a voluntary militia force, and that the in-
tention was abandoned by the present Government. The
staffs of several of the regiments had, nevertheless, been
filled up, so that very little additional expense will be in-
curred should the militia be re-embodied. It would,
perhaps, be well to inform the public, particularly those
in the habit of writing to the Duke of Wellington on the
subject of the militia, that his grace has no more to do
with that body than he Prince de Joinville, nor has he
the control over the army which some are led to imagine.
His grace is the Commander-in-chief, but, nevertheless,
has no power to make the slightest alteration in the con-
stitution of the service without the consent of the Go-
vernment.

POTATOES FROM SPROUTS.—The Rev. George Brown,
of Egglestone, Durham, gives the following account of
an experiment he made of raising potatoes from sprouts :
—About the end of April I broke off some sprouts from,
some potatoes, both ash-leaf kidneys and a rough round
sort. I had the sprouts (a good handful) planted in a
box and raised a little, till they had got about five inches
above the ground, and had a nice little leaf at the top.
I then planted them out on the 26th of May, and they
looked rather weak for some time in the top ,• however
they began to look better, and near the end of July I ex-
amined some of the tubers, which looked remarkably well
and were considerably larger than any one expected. I
had them taken up on the,2nd of October. They proved
to be an excellent crop, and larger in size than those
raised from the potato, and remarkably fine in quality.
had three pecks of fine potatoes from that handful of
sprouts, and the potatoes I took them from I had cut and
planted. This way of proceeding is a great saving of
seed, as a great many potatoes might be raised from a
small quantity. There was one thing very remarkable ;
the potatoes were nearly all a good size, and there were
much fewer small than there are in the common way of
growing them.
THE FLOODING OF THE MlNES.—Since Wednesday
morning, up to which time the river continued to flow
into the mines, the most active exertions have been made
to secure the embankment of the river Douglas
against
the encroachments of the, water, and an apparently sub-
stantial barrier is now erected. The water still oozes a
little underneath the pudding, but there is every hope.that
it will be stopped in a day or two. On Wednesday night
the rains fell again so heavily, that the barrier was very
strongly tested, and had the current, which was level with
the top of the banks on Thursday morning been a few
inches higher, it was feared that all would have been
washed away. After that time, the stream abated a little,
and the works progressed as before. The coal proprietors
have, we understand, determined to work together simul-
taneously until the waters are cleared from the mines ; at
present they are, of course, in the same state as on Wed-
nesday, the first attention of the owners being directed to
the stopping the current of the river entering them. The
wife of Rutter, one of the unfortunate men in the mines,
is very ill, and in an almost distracted state at the loss of
her husband and son. Until the second flooding of the
mines on Sunday morning, she indulged in a fituit ]lope
that they might be got out give,