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But how can an admitted commercial evil , however great and growing , possibly be cured , even by the very best laws , if those laws are administered by incompetent judges ? Take the whole range of the Bankruptcy Commissioners who Lave to deal with and to investigate bankruptcy cases involving in themselves , directly , many millions , and , indirectly , an amount that would appear incredible to most of our readers , and then let any qualified and impartial person say , if lie can , whether the Bankruptcy Bench is occupied by men fit by previous training , experience , or habits , who have a competent knowledge of the general bearing of commercial questions , or who
are qualified in any respect to deal fully , and with advantage to the trading public , with the intricate cases that come before them for judicial decision . The Bankruptcy Court as constituted , with its machinery of incompetent Commissioners , overpaid official assignees and messengers , is one of those acknowledged abases which afford a standing reproach to this country . For this state of things , however , ¦ we have mainly to thank our aristocratic legislators , who appear to le guided in their legislation by the principle that anything is good enough for trade and traders ; any political hacks clever enough for Customs or Excise ; any effete and briefless barrister sufficiently qualified to administer the Bankruptcy Laws .
If legislation must take place on matters that are purely commercial , let it take place only on large and general grounds . Let us have no bit-by-bit legislation on questions that may involve and peril the very first principles of commercial and political economy . Look at the difference and the effect of practical men dealing with this question . The " Bank Directors saw the mischief , aiid adopted right and ready means to check it , for
which they cannot have too much praise . By their wise determination to refuse " rediscounts , " they at once laid the axe to the root of the upas-tree of the accommodation bill system . This was operating in the right direction ;—but it was the right direction only because the parties originating it knew the trade of the country thoroughly , mid their experience and freedom Trom extraneous or interested influences led them to adopt the right means at the right time .
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HE HAS KO FBI-ENDS—' So have at him again : and if the vexed reader of the Shires be disposed to cry " ad nauseam , " let him bear in mind that we are but borrowing a leaf from our old enemy ' s book , and endeavouring , like other unfortunates , to rouse our neighbour ' s sympathy , if we may not have his company in our boat of tribulation . ^ Once more at that old Father Thames , sometime a silent pleasant highway for great folks in gilded shallops , making gay progress From palaces in the Strand to palaces about Queenhithe , whose bauks , within the limits of our present bridges , have sometimes re-echoed the shout of the gay courtier , and along whose placid bosom the unpolluted western breeze bore the pleasant chatter of aristocratic dames , soft notes of cithern , and
interwoven harmonies of madrigal . Then he was a popular jolly old river , called " Father" and" Silver " —and maybe oilier endearing names , and earned a repute which all his evil deeds may not rub out . But since , with our Parliaments and Acts , and Boards of Health and Works , and great muck vestries , we have clothed him with the function of a grand main drain , his popularity is a by-word ; he is a " ghoul , " a " Stygian Hood , " a " cloaca maxima , " a father of all unclean ness . In fact , nothing is too bad for him . His Venetian epoch is over . The grains puellee risus is hushed with the cithern and
the madrigal . The grand-children of Dibdin ' s dexterous young watermen have long since migrated up-country with the swans before the sable flood ; the salmon of the oldest inhabitant no longer tempts tho unsavoury estuary ; and the penny steamboat voyagers of to-day , who represent the squires and dames of the water poets , attempt to outvie the odours of tho stream with the short pipe , or madly dream of purir y ing them by filtration through many ( olds of cambric . b
All whose presence in the face of the enemy is optional have retreated ; but the mass , whoso life demands their presence within the pestilential circle seems doomed in this year of grace to suffer for the common-health of posterity , that the gloomy oraoleH may be justified who foretold the recoil upon our Heads , ol our incomplete sanitary measures , and tho indancholy failure of tho local double govcrntncni . llio evil has already begun to work . " Wo announced last week tie death of the iirst wituesso *
against our long inaction ; and , although the official returns present an amount of cholera below the average , and of dysentery ¦ of no more than the average , we observe an excess of twenty-five per cent , above Hie usual average of deaths from diarrhoea . The vet urn for the week after ( ending ' June 2 G ) informs us that diarrhoea was fatal last week in 54- cases , which is double the average for corresponding weeks ; its recent increase is evident , the numbers of the two previous weeks having been IS and 31 . There were also 8 deaths from cholera or " choleraic diarrhoea . " Within the last three days it is announced that the family of a clergy man in 3 ? i : nlico have been taken from him at one fell
swoop . And we may safely assume that the ground is being , day by day , prepared for tlip footstep of any epidemic the winds of heaven may send us . A fearful predisposition for disease hiust be surely engendered by the present state of the metropolitan atmosphere , and were the Angel of Pestilence to set foot among us a fatal harvest would just now be ripe for him among men of all sorts and conditions . And it is no violent hypothesis . that the quality of this possible crop of victims may do sometiling towards quickening the course of sanitary legislation , and improve our chance of speedy deliverance from that old man of the sea with whom we were saddled hi an ill-starred hour , by the late wellmeaning Minister of Public Works .
For many a hecatomb of Billiugsleys might have perished unnoticed and unknown beyond their own humble circle , and the records of the health-office without quickening the slow pulse of officialism , or loosing the bonds of red tape , half so much as the plaints of a few of such , as might be missed in the ibrum or at the council board . So wide and deep lay the roots of this " conviction out of doors , that we sliould indeed be blind hot to notice it . The S obd old wishfor a comminuted Bishop , or " a > irector on each Buffer / ' as preventives ot Railway accidents , have just now every day their parallel " ; and the course of events seems to favour the soundness of the notion . Our contemporary who proposed to immerse an engineer or an M . P . in bur' modern
StyXjjoowr encotirager les mitres , was not aware , when he so gave colour to his thought , that the High Court of Parliament would on Friday night attack the subject with a zeal and ardour worthy of a newfledged board of works . Such was the case , however , for in spite of Mr . Gurncy , and his .-infinitesimal doses oi' lime , the demon had invaded the Sanctuary of St . Stephen ; the air of the Law Courts was exorcised from the bench for contempt of court , and Committees A to Z caned their senses to witness that , if the river were not somehow cleansed , or the site of their deliberations removed , short Parliaments and frequent elections would be virtually introduced by the force majeure of plague and pestilence .
Tho proximity of the two Houses to the Lambeth bone-boilers may not liave been wholly inoperative towards the partial abatement of that nuisance i so , we may venture to hope , some such considerations as above hinted at may have recruited the number of our representatives whom higher motives have all along prompted to deal with the oft-repeated prayer of those who have their business in and about our valley of foul waters , and to treat as a nationally important subject the solution of the great Metropolitan drainage mystery .
Of the " How to do it , " we must speak in succeeding numbers , in continuation of the notice previousl y given of the deodomiug plan . Much interestmg evidence is being taken by Mr . Kendall ' s Committee on the state of the river ; from which , together with the Sewugc Commission and the last Metropolitan Drainage Reports , we may hope presently to supply our readers with some commonsense conclusions . But the case is us yet only hal f heard in committee , and the whole matter inclined is at present in joint care of the Metropolitan Board and Lord John Manners , who , if we mistake not , owns no responsibility . On this , again , as upon all occasions which oiler n prospect , however
remote , of large public expenditure , quackory will lift her head and blunder ; nor is the still small voice of jobbery unlikely to bo heard ia a corner . It would henco bccmii to us somewhat premature to decide at , a very short , notice , as some of our more autlaeious compeers have already done , upon the conflicting merits of the lust hatch of embanking , deodorizing , and intercepting plans—nearly all old friends wit It ni'w faces—whether singly or" in combinution ; mid we advise such of our readers as feel interested in the , matter , to uV . I ' iir yet , iivlrilo their adhesion to any ( > l them , however highly sponsored , however ingeniously advanced .
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QUARTER DAY . To throw away the opportunity of a brief fiscal homily upon the publication of the Quarterly National Balance Sheet , were a most irregular departure from traditional usage . If , therefore , the oracle must speak , we are bound to deliver our opinion that , all past things considered , matters look as well as could be expected , but that * , as for the future , there are breakers ahead , of which only good navigation and some good fortune may carry us clear . We have no space for a full reprint of three tables , which have been already given to the public in every daily print , and we must therefore content ourselves with an abstract from the most important . This couTse is the more excusable , because the mere tables themselves , though lengthy , are comparatively insufficient for the purposes of the analyst without reference to the last Board of Trade returns . ' It appears that after the fitful fever of 1857 and the convulsions of last winter , our finances are recovering themselves . The returned exports of the first five months of 1858 , while the dulness of trade and the dearth of speculation were household words , about equal those of the corresponding period of 1856 , when the shipment fever had not reached its culminating point 3 or when , at least , the tide had- barely . " turned . It is no unfair augury , then , that , with peace and a return of that more than skirirdeep tranquillity which is required to loose the purse-strings of capital and stimulate the energies of merchants , sueli expansion may be hoped for as shall legitimately raise the Customs branch of the revenue at least to the level of the first and largest half-year of 1857 . The Increase and Decrease in the quarter and year ended June 30 , 1858 , as compared with the corresponding periods of the year 18-57 , are as follows : —
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Ko . 432 , July 3 , 1858 . ] _ J ? JL LEADER . 639
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Quarter . i Year . _ . i i ¦ Increase . Decrease . Increase . Decrease . ' ' " £ £ ¦ ¦ i £ . '¦ ¦ ' £ , Customs 270 , 310 ... 767 , 674 . Excise ... 119 , 000 , ... 277 , 000 Stamps 233 , 879 ... 284 , 981 Taxes | 2 , 000 ... 57 , 013 Property Tax .. ... 1 , 255 , 953 ... 5 , 838 , 561 Post Office .... 90 , 000 ... 165 , 000 Crown Landa ... ... 8 , 203 Miscellaneous . 79 , 588 ... 642 , 839 Total ...... 524 , 467 ' . 1 , 526 , 263 1 , 426 , 833 6 , 614 , 438
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There is , therefore , a net decrease for the year of 5 , 118 , 105 / ., and for the quarter of 1 , 001 , 796 / ., which is more than accounted for by the decrease in the jicld of the Customs and Property-tax , the former due , we need hardly say , to the abolition of the war ninepence , and tlie second to the late commercial crisis . It becomes iw now to look forward , more especially as the last year ' s yield of the Property-tax was 10 , ^ 30 , 1 . 62 / ., which will be diminished by . two-sevenths , two-sevenths , and three-sevenths , until , according to the arrangement of 1853 , it is supposed to disappear from our assets in the year 1 SC 0 . To what resources are we to look for the maintenance of a public expenditure which shows no symptoms of decrease , cither by the quarter or by the year , bcforc that period , or , indeed , for somo time after ? The large increase in the produce of the Excise , though mainly contributed by beer and spirits , may be regarded as sound and permanent . The fulling oil' in the production of foreign vineyards , and the impulse consequently received by our wholesale wine and Bpint industries 3 warrant us in anticipating a still larger increment und-er this head in future returns . The 284 , 981 / . increase hi Stamps will be expanded when tltc recently imposed tax upon banking has begun to contribute regularly to the Exchequer , Tho increase of 57 , 015 / . upon tho Land and Assessed Taxes is , to a certain , extent , satisfactory ; but would be more so , if it could bo taken as evidence of the inauguration of a now regime at Somerset House , it is within the knowledge of ninny unofficial persons , thud tho system of collection in sundry country districts—not to say all—requires revision ; and that , were this undertaken in an uncompromising- spirit of even-handed justice , a very large additional revenue might bo collected without extra pressure upon tho humbler cluasoa oi contributor ! cs , who aro already sufficiently within the power of the uul . horif . icB . We hail the steady progress of tlio receipts from
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 3, 1858, page 639, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2249/page/15/
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