The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-04-25 00:00:00

GROSS POLL

b$
,thAt ;um Of CVO elioutii be expended bY ""
with
lin the iMirchaso of shares j,--for what Wilt"'
Palmy view to the retrieving of its position ? Witil any
?xpectation of removing its then actual insolvency
No these 10,000 pounds were to be e;:pended,
In
,hares "to raise the market"—to give a show of val°.
to what was intrinsically of no value—to induce monied
gulls to embark their capital in a concern at that rno-
nent in a state of hopeless bankruptcy !
NOw what, we ask, would be the awkward term ap-
mlied to a private individual who thus threw out lures
Ind circulated statements, to induce another private in-
lividual to embark his capital in a bankrupt concert!.
['he plain-speaking world would call such an indisn7
lual a swindler. And justly, too ! But directors of
oint-stock affairs are " all honourable men" ! They
tre an embodied impersonality. They may dog
.ompany, acts which, as individuals, they would not.
mnly be ashamed of, but be punished for; and accoride
i
ugly we find that the attempt of Mr. Taylor, t
ilaintiff in the cause to which we have referred, to re-
-...over the money he has lost from the parties, whose
misstatements caused him to rush upon such
loss, has
ob
:ailed. Directors of joint-stock banks may
ielegally-
ain money by false pretences; may bolster up their
mmrious bubbles by every species of falsehood and chi-
.anery ; may be proved to have " put money in
their
nurse" by thus acting (on the Macardv system of
cash credit" shareholding) ; but the law affords the
njured party no redress, because directors of joint-
tock banks are—" all honourable men"
Innocent shareholders, however, ought to have some
ittle protection against the frauds with which the sYs-
em is so fatally rife. And not only for the share-
molders do we claim this protection, but for the Public
—for the honest tradesman—for the working man'
ven; for what can we expect from such mis-called
tanking, which permits men to squander thus reck-
.,,ssly the money of other men, for the purpose of
naking a plausible half-yearly balance-sheet, excePt
meriodical bubble prosperity, and too real prostranntl
mnd suffering, when the paper props of whole shoals
dventurers give way, and credit, public and private, i°f
to its
,haken to its base ? The whole system is rotten
.ore ; an& we must continue to pray for its total re.
nodification.

A practice, it is well known,—and a very improper
tractice it is !—has lately grown, of sending members
tf the police force to the houses of various publicans,
Pressed in plain clothes, in order to convict there of
rregularities in the mode of conducting their business,
a- to entrap them into such irregularities,—for sticiLe_
he operation of the practice, by which they incur P
ialties. Against this practice Mr. Proctor, as a rnerri,
ter of the Watch Committee, protested at a late Conenil o
meeting, and instanced a case which had
- Brought before the committee, in which it appeared totim that the selection of officers for this duty had been
;nproperly made by, as he concluded, the head ceil
'table, Mr. Whitty, for the practice had not been been.;
lirected by the Watch Committee, at all. In doing
his, his, unfortunately, the expression, as reported to
teen used by Mr. Procter, implied something like
been
barge against Mr. Whitty that the men had ben,
,Vairly selected, with a view rather to procuring cteire
'ictions than to procuring them on just grounds. :in
five at length the objectionable passage, as reported
he Mercury, and adopted as the ground of the outcrY
vhich has lately been raised upon the subject
" A man named Cunningham had laid 105 inf.°
ed
• ions and established them all ; another man, ham
Dutton, had laid nine and only established six. ll'
ere
.oming before the Watch ComMittee, the two men w
Le out in plain clothes, one as a carter the other (14" e
the
sailor. Cunningham reported that he saw one 61 se,
)facers, Ainsworth, go to the back door of a public hMlt
Lad heard him ask to be admitted,
t turned out that Dutton was the man who saw this, 11
rd
Cunningham. and yet Cunningham was broughtforwcw,
Dutton belhad
; 5y the head constable to establish the case,
mly brought forward to give evidence, because he Ito
'aid nine informations and failed ;o establish them heap.''
Well, what was the enormity of the misrePrese-tbe
ion contained in this passage, and seized upon bYob-
, Whig-Radical press,—famishing for the want of a.sciity
and for drink ; az'ot
,tantial grievance to growl over,—with all the avidity
r, a legion of Union Workhouse cats w°ll`" cter
play in an attack upon a butcher's tray ? Mr' Pr ring
v3l
.vas speaking, be it remembered, of a case occ- ous
Jefore the Watch Committee, and there were :1.
:acts in his statement which were either correct
cos
correct. There was the fact of Cunningbarn's,s:lnc'ed?
n establishing his 105 information. Is that u'h-11.011-
, It is admitted. There is Dutton's failure in eliti i 0
,ng the whole of his cases. Admitted also ThereLwed
:heir transformation into carter and sailor. 11'"" seen
too ! There are the facts of Cunningham having for
j for
he policeman Ainsworth ask for admittance, 80
. rink, at the door of the house, whilst Dutton saw
also
In the house, and supplied with liquor. These facts in
Whitt i.. 0
rare admitted, for we have it stated by Mr.
the Police-court, that " Cunningham's evidence; ow of
merely subordinate" and " corroborative of a Purtit°tiaoef,
Dutton's." Thus far, then, there was not a
rror ; but on the next there is a wide difference the
tween. the authorities. Mr. Procter says it cried
ormer, the " merely subordinate" witness wborePfocr be
the case; and Mr. Procter was strictly correct; be-
spoke be it still borne in mind, of a case occurringic
ifore the Watch Committe, and on the report h;°:horis
:hat committee is to be found the entry, "
:reports Ainsworth for drinking in a public-halge:oroeter
Here, then, was the ground upon which gr.l.„-rted
proceeded to remark. The successful informer rep big
;Ainsworth; and it was but natural to infer thatvial
to d°
ea irisluen ePdesirenilogeres
selection
aocnt
forin suchte task.matters
so had something
Mr.Pocter,:ro•
mwedastothreegpaurlat
c udde.d, had the regulation of these in
lira;
certainly;
ee
rptrw.eshuo thld Watch Committee, he knew, had
and
Abe
at all, in
and in mentioning that gentleman's
in connexion with the case, he did no n3c're'tan
Look
ni no more for granted as to his rerponsibility,doon.
if
men out of a hundred would have bad
eorn7igthhatnwNitihr.greater certain
"Ito such, however was not the case,—if Mr. WitittYffairs
concern in directing the mode in which' such
3 ail
are
iconducted, as would seem from his declarati°lla'ae,
ap.xhid) explanation of that fact could easily have been °after
Whitty? 1-0330
eimputation conveyed (if any can rem
word
t,l,lbeedenial by Mr. Procter of the damaging wars
of
the
could have been placed upon the sbnuatioo
would have set the whole affair at rest; enableclatoe"
he proper party. Five minutes of e11i13,14
Proctor to explain that the obnoxious word "hec f the
had not been used by him, and that he sPcdte wok'
.report against Ainsworth ; whilst that gentleman op le,
nave learnt that Mr. Whitty, and some other 2PegairiS.t
understood him to allude to an information -1;" wita
rs. Diaon, the publican, who supplied Ainsw°ll does
the liquor, and the fact besides that Mr: WhititYcases.
not superintend the getting up of this class
Asob-
the result of such
an explanation no doubt the
1i vc
mind would have been
promptly disabused ?r '
any
be
erroneous impressions which it might have imbibe
d.
ad'
Such, would, perhaps, have been the satisfaet°. and
justrnent of a matter which has caused some Paiwilever,
tshoreness to all parties concerned. It hapPens,ll° f their
stipendiary
this community possesses, in the person °;bie of
ipendiary magistrate, a gentleman himself caPaioari
.redressing every case of wrong, from the illiar'eal or
grievance of a parish pauper, to the grievance' reotlP
imaginary, of their high constable; and is, aPPa
rather too anxious to be employed in this line' oot
whitty svainode ;
..oalnlintentional injury done to Mr.
f owed to be atoned for in the ordinary Pacific light of
oohr, the judges being in town, and the lesser f
too-
r local luminary being thus placed in a statev
porarywa obscuration, the case of " wilitty v. 'rood'
Rusiuiring.
accordingly
too tempting not to be invited W hie tr`d tboo
informed
the head constable was sent for, no was
ilhormed of the dreadful grievance under which
..e Mr,
ton's version of Mr. Procter's speech with
pw/hoiycehd an officer to
given by the Mercury's re
We entreat of our readers to compare that
porter : ing enz-
" lie," (Mr. Whitty,) "was charged with hav
ase of
tuall he knew nothing,. 0) in- preference to one Lost
for
they laid the information and knew all the polo',
give false testimony CD in
wCho ac-
d
was purpose of procuring a conviction; an . _twice
We can almost imagine that
said in the speech alluded to, was done at the sn''
of Mr. Rhitty.,,
head con-
We
shaking through all his limbsi sact!ththeec°-.11-7bPelegli;
Lion of the amount of injury under which he 134Fridail
unconsciously labouring from Wednesday till