The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-01-04 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.—During the week just ended! we
have had a pretty seasonable crop of rains, chilling south-
easterly winds, &c., with occasional hard frosts, slight'
falls of sleet and snow, also hoar frosts on a few morning
thinly covering the ground, but all disappearing shortly
after their birth. Gardening and field operations are of
course nearly at a stand-still. Wednesday was a severe
winter day with a biting wind from the south-east in the
early part of the day, succeeded by heavy rain and sleet in
the evening. The following morning was comparatively
fine, and the wind had veered to the northward. Many
parties have been afflicted more or less with colds in va-
rious forms, but so far as we can learn, influenza and fever
have not been so prevalent as before. On Saturday and
Sunday the wind was again from the south-east, and the
latter day we had some heavy showers. No severe frost
has yet been experienced, and the thickest ice we have yet
seen (on Saturday morning) was in altitudes exposed to
the action of the east wind. Yesterday morning, early,
the atmosphere became mild and agreeable, with a briskish
breeze from the southward, and the day was on the whole
fine, though rather cloudy.

NEW COTTON COUNTRY.—The Manchester Guardian
says—" We have seen a letter from a gentleman at
Liverpool, to the secretary of the Manchester Commer-
cial Association, enclosing a sample of wild cotton,
gathered on the uncultivated island of Rodriguez (near
the Mauritius), on which the writer had suffered ship-
wreck, and- had been compelled to remain for 58 days.
He states that the island, which is about fifteen miles
long by six broad, spontaneously produces a considerable
quantity of cotton, and he could easily have gathered four
or five hundred pounds weight. The shrubs, which
appear to have been those of the perennial flock-seeded
cotton, grow abundantly on the low lands at the mouths
of the rivulets with which the island is intersected ; and
they might, no doubt, be cultivated in other localities.
The sample of cotton sent to the Commercial Association
is very fine in staple, resembling the fine Bourbon cotton
formerly imported to some extent into this country ; but,
apparently, a little stronger. The writer states that the
island of Rodriguez is uninhabited, except by a few black
fishermen, though the land is fertile, the climate excel-
lent, and the natural productions valuable, including the
sugar cane, oranges, lemons, plantains, bananas, &C. -
and it would, no doubt, yield all the usual tropical
productions in abundance ; but labourers would have to
be procured from India."

TOWN CouNcu..-:—Tlie first monthly meeting for the
present year will take place to-morrow, (Wednesday.)
The Finance Committee will present their annual report
on the state of the income, and surplus or no surplus will
become apparent. The other business will comprise a
report on the Town-clerk's establishment, recommending
the addition of £lOO to the salaries of Mr. Driffield and
Mr. Topping, and the appointment of an additional clerk ;
a recommendation to appoint Mr. Wightman surveyor to
the Corporation, at a salary of £l,OOO per annum ; the
laying of a watch-rate ; and the proceedings of the
Ni.rkets' Committee. The minutes of the Health Com-
mittee include a recommendation to accept the tender of
Mr. Rose to cleanse the ashpits and middens within the
borough for five years, for £10,400 per annum ; that it is
not advisable or expedient to admit reporters to the meet-
ings of the committee; and a recommendation to adopt
the public act for establishing baths and washhouses, and
to raise a sum not exceeding £25,000, for the purposes of
the act, it being competent to pay the interest on such
sum annually out of the surplus income; to remove by
certiorari into the Queen's Bench the Recorder's decisions
on the compensation due to Mr. Deane and the others ;
and that Dr. Duncan be requested to devote himself ex-
clusively to the duties of his office, his salary to be ZOO
per annum. Mr. Parker will move that £5OOO be voted
for baths, &c., at the south end of the town; and Mr.
Bramley-Moore that the resolution come to by the Coun-
cil on the New Dock Bill be varied or rescinded, and that
a clause be added to the bill giving powers to purchase
land north of the north docks. The business concludrs
with a motion by Mr. Samuel Holme, that Mr. Rushton's
salary be raised to £1,600.

LOCAL

MEETINGS.

TOWN COUNCIL MEETING.
On Saturday a meeting of the Town Council was held
for the transaction of formal business. The re-election
of the trustees of last year of Mrs. Ann Molyneux's
Charity, and of St. James's Cemetry was carried. Mr.
Mr. James Aikin was elected in the room of Mr. Turner
as one of the trustees of the School for the Blind, and
Mr. Bennett was re-elected.

After the appointment of forty-one members of the
Council, as Commissioners to carry out the act for the
better regulation of the pilots of the port,
Mr. HENDERSON said it might be well to state that the
commissioners of pilots, in compliance with a recom-
mendation which they had received, appointed a board
for the examination of masters and mates. That board
began its duties in November, 1845, and from that time
to the present there had been a total of fifty-five appli-
cants, forty-eight of whom were masters, and seven mates.
Certificates had bcen granted to forty-two masters, and
four mates. Then, as to finances ; the receipts were,
£97 15s. ; the expenditure, £9l 125.; so that it had
just paid itself.—Applause.) It would require some little
aid from the Council in future. It was a good establish-
ment, serving to stimulate in seamen the desire for a bet-
ter education; and he trusted that, when the proper time
came, the council would give it the encouragement which
it required and deserved.

Sit: Thomas Brancket:, Mr. Littledale, and Mr. Mann
were appointed Commissioners for the embankment at
Leasowes.

THE LATE OUTRAGES: MEASURES BY THE MAGISTRACY.
In reply to a question from Mr. S. Holme as to what
measures had been taken to suppress the continuance of
the outrages at the outskirts of the town the Mayor said :
—Some days ago, when the roberies became frequent,
with the concurrence of my brother magistrates, I issued
orders to the head constable to arm a hundred policemen
and place them throughout the outskirts of the town, and
I have the satsfac: :on to say that the town was never better
provided than at the present moment. A communication
has also been made to the county magistrates, suggesting
the propriety of having an armed horse patrol for the
outer boundary. The borough magistrates of course have
jurisdiction only in the borough ; the most ample arrange-
ments have been made by them, and I have no doubt but
the county magistrates will also do their duty.

PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY.—On Tuesday, the annual
meeting of this Fooiety was bell. In the absence of the
chairman, the chair was taken by the vice-chairman, Mr.
Todd. The treasurer's account was passed, and those
members of the committ!.,e who retired by rotation, were
unanimoueb,

port to the variot

re-elected. Allusion was made ni
- nerformances of the past year, espe-

try way. So also was the perfm
The report laid much stress upon
he music which had been present
The financial affairs of the soviet

in a pectin
`• Elijah."
character of t
subscribers_

!d to th

open to t
band won

„ tut tne °rennin- of the
new hall in Hope-strcat. There would; in fact, be no
subscription for 1848, and for that year the public and
subscribers would be considered/Anal, but on the opening
of the new bail the subscribers fsr 1847 would merely have
to pay the annual subscription, whereas new subscribers
for that rear would be charged the usual entr.---

vui
The new hall was re resented
to esented as going on rance guinea,
satisftorily,
and Mr. A. F. Jones referred especially the truacss frame
for carrying the roof as a work of great artistic skill. It
also apncared from Ibe report that the society had endea-
4to r -.age Jenny Lind, but could not succeed. in
consequence ,ler pre-engagements.

voured to er

Docx COA

THURSDAY.—The plan f

boat house,
mitted and de.
~.e Rev
Morgan Morgan, vicar of Conway, staging that the magis-
tratesinto
charges neighbourhood had been inquiring
charges of stealing from the vessel wrecked in Llandudno
bay, and the committee might depend the magistrates
would make full inquiries into the matter.—Walter Stokes
was appointed landing foreman, at a salary of 30s. a week.
It was stated he had been brought from the West India
Dock, London, to be head man at the Birkenhead docks.
—Mr. Thomas Cbamley, master of the George's Dock,
was appointed master of the King's Dock, at a salary of
£250 a year and a house. A medical certificate was pro-
duced as to the state of the health of Mr. M'Bride, mas-
ter of the Salthouse and Canning Docks, and it was agreed
to superannuate him at £2OO a year, he having been seven-
teen years in the £ CTN.' ice of the trust.--Mr. Thomas Her-
bert, assistant master, was appointed to be head master
of the Salthouse and Albert Docks, at a salary of £250,
and a house, and Mr. Joseph Curry was appointed assis-
tant master, at a salary of £2OO a year. A letter from
Richard Wooley, jun., stating that he had been discharged
from the Albert Docks because being once a Protestant he
had turned Catholic, was referred to the Warehouse Sub-
committee, the chairman stating that if the contents of the
letter were true, some of the officers of the Albert Dock
would be implicated. Mr. Royden : We have nothing to
do with re'igion here. Mr. Molyneux said the appli
was only an extra man, and had never been on the staff.
In all the appointments made they never asked what a
man's religion or politics were.—The committee were
about to elect a printer and a stationer to the trust. when,
after some little conversation, a committee, consisting of
the Chairman, Messrs. Nicol, Molyneux, Gladstone,
Henderson, and Mann was appointed to report whether a
more satisfactory mode could not be devised of appointing
parties to provide the printing and stationery.

re Island, at a cost of £BOO, w
M.—A letter was read from ti

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.
BASE COIN.—The quantity of bad money still in cir-
culation is very great. A .woman named Sarah Jenkins
was brought before Mr. Rushton on Friday, charged b' a
woman named Benson, the keeper of a public-house, with
attempting to pass a bad shilling. The prisoner was re-
manded in the usual way.

CELLAR INFORMATION.—On Tuesday, a woman, Ellen
M`Garrathy, residing in Crosbie-street, was summoned at
the Police-office by Mr. Fresh, for over-crowding her
lodging-house. She had not registered her house under
the provisions of the act. An officer proved that acting
under the instructions of Mr. Fresh, he visited the house
of the defendant on the 25th instant, at ten o'clock in the
evening, and found five beds in the cellar containing 14
persons, and in the rooms above 56, in the whole 70 per-
sons under the one roof. She was fined 20s. and costs.
CHARGE OF EMBEZZLEMENT.—On Wednesday, at the
Police-court, a respectable-looking young man, named
George Henry Blount, was charged by Mr, P. elamere,
a clerk to Messrs. Tayleur and Co., coal merchants, with
having embezzled about £9O, the property of that firm.
Proof was given of two cases where the prisoner, who was
a collecting clerk to Messrs. Tayleur and Co., had received
meney for his employers, and had not accounted for it.
When called upon for his defence, he said that his aunt
and grandfather had compromised the matter with Mr.
Tayleur, by giving him a bond for the payment of the de-
ficiencieS by instalmcats.. Re was committed for trial.