Glasgow Courier. — 1848-10-31 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

ENGLAND.  New Colonial Office.—lt is the intention of the Commissioners of the Woods and Forests to erect immediately a new Colonial-office, more extensive, and better adapted to the wants of that department of Government than the buildings now used for the purpose in Downing Street. The new offices will be erected in Whitehall on the site now occupied hy Lady Dover's mansion, and will adjoin the Board of Trade, and extend as far as the canteen at the Horse Guards. The style of architecture will be Italian, and the design will be intrusted to Mi. Barry, the architect of the New Palace at Westminster.---G/obs. The failure of Messrs. William Rose & Co., shipping agents, of Liverpool, was mentioned here on Friday; their liabilities are stated at £20,000, and their assets are, it is said, equal to the payment of 15s. in the pound. We do not hear of any amount owing in Manohester.—Maschester Courier. _ .  An Account of the Duty on Hops of the growth of the year 1848, for the under-mentioned districts, distinguishing the new from the old duty :—Barnstaple, £139 39.; Bedford, £l3 ha. 5d.; Cambridge, £43 Bs. Cornwall, .£2 145. Dd.; Derby, £269 Is. 241.; Gloucester, £ll7 12s. lid.; Grantham, £62 Os. id.; Reading, £6B lire. 10d.; Salisbury, £26 184. sid.; Salop, £l2 45 71d.; Stourbride, £1,394 16.. 71d.; Suffolk, £914 15s. lOid.; Wales, Middle, £B3 2s. lid.; Worcester, £6,369 10s. 6d.; total, £9,517 16e. 61.4.—01 d duty at Id. 12-20 per lb., £5,212 4s. *I. 12-20; new duty at 18-20, £3,852 10s. Id. 8-20; additional duty of 5 per cent., per act 3 Vic. e. 17, £463 2s. 21d.; total £0,517 les. W.—Note.-The above are the only districts from which the returns have reached this office; those for the other districts will be published as soon as received.—S. S. Lyne, Assistant-General. —Excise-office, London, 27th Oct., 1848. _ . . . _ . .  Extensive Bank Forgeries.—At the Peterborough sessions on the 21st inst., Mr. Stephen Aveling, late of Elm, recently committed on several charges of extensive forgeries on the banking house of Messrs. Gurney, Peckover, and Co., was brought up for trial, and convicted on three distinct indictments; the first for uttering a forged cheque for the sum of £283; the second for forging another cheque to a large amount upon Simpson and Co. at Peterborough; and another of a similar character. The prisoner, it appeared, Is related to some of the most respectable families residing in the Isle of Ely, and his grandfather was High Sheriff of the oonnty of Cambridge. A number of witnesses spoke positively to the letters and forged cheques being in the handwriting of the prisoner. In the case of the forgery of £2BB, he was stopping at the Old Hummums Hotel, Covent Garden, under the name of William Simmons, and endeavoured to obtain that amount by sending the waiter to the banker's, who declined paying the money but to the party himself. The party was apprehended at Peterborough. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment on the second and third charges, and ten iears' transportation on the iit.  —Local Paper. Burial Clubs.—ln real life, as is but too well-establkhed, the hopes of gain from a burial club is one, at least, Iooog the motives to murder in moral England. In the rural districts where arsenic has been so freely and fatally distri the burial club system has been in full operation. By the payment of a trifling sum per quarter, ~e 8 or LIII was secured whenever death took place. Anything inoro calculated to develop the hidden wickedness of the heart, in those devoid of conscience and intelligence, and aliv,.lilly to the promptings of malignant selfishness, cannot easily be conceived. Burial clubs are in still more extensive operation in the manufacturing districts, and the horrible results are more than suspected. Parents traffic in the lives of their children, and subscribe to as many clubs as their !scans allow, in order to receive payment from each, when poison, or parental neglect, no less atrocious, has done its work. This miserable temptation to the destruction of life must no longer be suffered to exist. Either the clubs must be altogether suppressed, or surrounded with restrictions which will remove this dreadful stimulus to crime. "Death clubs" they may well be termed, when they are found to be directly productive of an organised system of revolting murder—Atlas,