The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-31 00:00:00

A well-known character, called " Old Blanket Halt,'
lied lately at Witney, at the advanced age of 120. He lived

at the reigns of seven sovereigns. His great age may be .
oartly ascribed to letters patent granted him by Queen Anne
herself, and the old gentleman prided himself on a fine por-
trait of her majesty, given to him many years ago, by one of
iter old stewards, Earl Harcourt. He was much pressed to
join the teetotal society, but the venerable patriarch shook
his head and said, it was too late for him to begin, and that
he bad belonged to- the old school too long for any such
change to have any good effect on him. A threatened dis-
traint for poor-rates was the immediate cause of his some-
what sudden decease. To some individuals who wished him
to join the teetotallers he has left his pump and rain-water
butt.—Oxford Herald.
The Dublin Slatesnian contains a correspondence illustra-
tive of the system of papal government in her majesty's
dominions. The parties to the correspondence are Lord
Clifford and the lion. Mr. Cavendish, proprietor and editor
of a Mayo newspaper. It appears that Dr. 0' Finan, a very
amiable gentleman, known to Lord Clifford, was some years
ago titular bishOp of Killala, when he was libelled in Mr.
Cavendish's newspaper, brought an action against Mr. Ca-
vendish, and recovered £5OO damages. It was discovered in
the course of the trial that the author of the libel was a Ro-
man catholic priest. A false version of the story, in which
the libeller priest was made the defendant, instead of Mr.
Cavendish, was carried to the Pope, who, by the advice of his
cardinals, deprived Dr. 0' Finan of his titular bishopric, and
deprived the rev. gentleman has been for many years. The
fact of the misrepresentation came to Lord Clifford's know-
ledge during a late visit to Rome, and his lordship, interested
for his old friend, calls upon Mr. Cavendish to state the
trnth—a demand with which that gentleman promptly corn-
plies.—There arc two things remarkable in this affair ; first,
the extreme negligence of justice with which the See of Rome
exercises its tyranny in her majesty's dominions. Dr.
0' Finan is permitted to suffer for years under the effect of
a mistranslation, as Mr. Thomas Hood would say, the only
translation injurious to a bishop. The second and more im-
portant consideration, however, is the insult, approaching to
a declaration of war, offered to the British throne, in the
cause assigned, falsely as it happened, for Dr. 0' Finan's
punishment,—he " had brought an action against a priest
before a lay protestant tribunal." This is, we suppose,
enough to show the spirit of the papacy, even in the middle
of the nineteenth century.

STOCKTON AND DARLINGTON RAILWAY.—One of the
most singular effects of railways upon the growth of towns
is to found at Middlesborough, a shipping port, on a branch
of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. This little town
lit the terminus of the Darlington and Stockton Railway,
from which there is a branch to Middlesborough, has sprung
completely into existence in the course of about ten years,
and now numbers about 5,000 inhabitants, with a church,
market, and all the appurtenances of a town of active indus-
tri and business. Many of its houses • bear the appearance
of being occupied by persons in very comfortable circum-
stances, and the town looks more like one of settled and
matured habits than ,of recent growth. It is a good speci-
men of what trade induced by railways can do, although it
is only fair to state that prosperity is in some measure arising
from larger ships being enabled to lie there than at Stockton.
—Northern Times.
THE New MANURE.—We have received several commu-
nications during the past week, relative to the discovery of a
new manure, by Mr. Daniel, of Twerton, which we reported
fully last week in the proceedings of the Bristol Agricultural
Society. We have it asserted by himself, that upon land of
a very inferior quality—which ought not to be sown with
wheat more than once in four or five years—he raised four
successiv crops of wheat, averaging from five to six sacks
per acre, and weighing 641bs. per bushel ; and he calculates
that the crop for 1841 would be seven sacks. He further adds,
that the crop of straw in each year was exceedingly heavy,
quite equal alone in value to any one entire crop of grain or
other produce grown on the land during the uine years which
he possessed it. Moreover, we have the statement of a gen-
tleman, with a mind free froni all bias; and one fully compe-
tent to judge, that the land upon which Mr. Daniel has
tried his experiment, is in a bad situation, that it is of a bad
character, and that "according to the rules of good cultiva-
tion, wheat ought not to have been grown upon it more than
once in four or five years ;" * * * " yet upon this land,
without having the advantage of good cultivation (for Mr.
Daniel is a bad farmer), he could say the amount of wheat
grown was above the average crop of the United Kingdom on
its average soil—viz., 641 b. per bushel; and these results had
been produced with a diminution of the seed applied of two-
thirds." ** * "He has seen the ears of corn growing on
the land, and he had no more hesitation in believing all he