Unlimited denial of The Times. in the secret of adventu rers. unsupported aphorisms of any one, however competent to judge and to give expression to his judgment. Lord Overstone states that the measure for limited liability of last session was brought forward in the teeth of the evidence taken before the commission. This we emphatically deny. We have not taken the trouble to count the numbers on each side, but in weight of The Times. An empha argument and power of reasoning there is really no comparison tic denial of at all between them. Again we must deny that Lord Overstone truth by has any right to stigmatize the present legislation on the subject of limited liability as hasty. The bill was introduced on the first working day of the session, it has passed its second reading, and will be committed after Easter; so that there is no great. probability of its reaching the House of Lords before the beginning of May-a period of full three months-sufficient, we should presume, to bring to maturity the judgment of the most deliberate capitalist. Neither can we admit that Lord Overstone has a right to say that he speaks on behalf of the commercial interest of this country. The opinions of the great Th. Times mass of commercial men are, as nobody knows better than ourselves, strongly in favour of the introduction of a system of swindling limited liability, and a peer who denounces that system, and at the same time assumes to represent the commercial interest of England, is either no representative at all, or misinterprets the message which he was instructed to convey. What reason has Lord Overstone for thinking that the measures of the government were not well considered? Their principle-all with which Lord Overstone attempts to deal-was affirmed by the House of Commons without a division, and has been received with unanimous and almost unexampled favour by the press and by the country. Lord Overstone states that, had limited liability existed in 1825 even barter would have been brought to stagnation. He does not favour us with the proof of this assertion, and perhaps it would not be very easy to do so. Had limited liability existed in 1825, we may confidently presume that the following, among many others, would have been the results:First, joint-stock companies would have been less trusted if Untenable people had known the exact amount with which they were arguments trading. This would have operated by way of prevention. of The Secondly, when joint-stock companies failed, the loss to the shareholders would have been ascertained and limited, and those scenes of unmerited distress which we are just now witnessing in the case of the Tipperary bank would have been spared; the increantile Times. to The Times cre ditors may be swindled by bubblemongers. According creditors would have suffered, but, having trusted less, they would have lost less. This would have been by way of cure. What there would have been in such a state of things to bring us to barter, or make barter impossible, Lord Overstone does not tell us; but, as the main effect of the crash of 1825 was the temporary annihilation of credit, and as barter is a species of contract in which credit is neither asked nor given, the connexion between the crash of 1825 and the stagnation of barter is by no means obvious. professed of The Times. Lord Overstone next launches into a disquisition on currency and on credit. He asserts that, notwithstanding the recent drain of the precious metals, commerce is in a sound condition, because, we presume, from the context of what he says, coinmerce is now only in a slight degree based on credit. The inevitable tendency, he says, of limited liability is to extend and intensify the principle of credit, and therefore, we presume, to render us more liable to be affected by the exportation of the precious metals. Surely such reasoning is neither specious nor Mercantile solid. Supposing a trader under the present law to require knowledge additional capital without wishing to take in a new acting partner, he has no alternative but to borrow money at the current rate of interest in the market. This places him to the greatest possible extent at the mercy of those causes which lead to the exportation of the precious metals, and the consequent contraction of the currency. He may find, without any fault of his own, that the interest demanded from him is doubled or tripled, or that it is impossible to obtain discount even for the most approved bills. A system which leaves the trader no resource except to go to the money-lender for accommodation places him as much as possible at the mercy of the moneymarket. Suppose, on the other hand, some system of limited liability introduced, the trader has then another resource. He may obtain capital on terms of receiving a share of the profits of his business, because the receipt of those profits will no longer be attended by the terrible liability to utter ruin, in case of the failure of the borrower. So far as this change in the law has any effect it will take the trader out of the hands of the mere bill-discounter, and place him in those of persons bound to him in a much closer tie of association, and whose interests are therefore much more identical with his own, and much less regulated by the fluctuations of the money-market. Lord Overstone thinks that limited liability must extend and intensify stone's in limited criticised by The of The urge common sense. the principle of credit. We apprehend directly the reverse, for Lord Overthe plain reason that creditors will be less likely to give credit telligible to firms that pledge a part than to those which pledge the whole opinion on of the property of the partners, and in confirmation of this view liability we cite the evidence of Lord Overstone himself, given before the commissioners, which concludes with the following words :- Times. "If limited liability is an arrangement for the special benefit of the parties constituting the concern, but to the detriment of the public, and if the public still give credit to such concerns, it can only be because the peculiar form of such legislation leaves them practically no other alternative;" and we commend to Lord Overstone's attention his own observation in the same paper, that the amount of confidence which can properly be placed in any concern is a question the decision of which should rest with the public, and not with the Legislature. The popular Dexterity objection to limited liability is, that it will destroy credit; Times in au but few of its opponents have had the dexterity, like Lord attempt to Overstone, to urge against it-first, that it will destroy, and against then that it will increase, credit. Lord Overstone threatens us with a giant and a demon, to be evoked by this law, whose name is Speculation. Again we will answer him out of his own mouth :-" All attempts in such matters to substitute legal provisions in the place of individual prudence or of the public judgment have proved proverbial failures. Confidence will be meted out to concerns not exclusively in reference to the amount of capital ultimately responsible for their engagements." From these principles it would seem to follow that speculation cannot be created by limited nor checked by unlimited liability, but must depend, not on the amount of capital, but, on individual prudence and private judgment. Limited liability does not, as Lord Overstone says, allow people to borrow without from being obliged to repay, but to borrow on special terms, limiting the right to receive repayment to a particular fund, terms which if found onerous to the lender are sure to be considered and provided for in the contract by an extra charge in the nature of insurance. Lord Overstone appears as the advocate of concerns anxious to carry on their business on honest principles; but the one principle is just as honest as the other, as it is quite as honest to insure a bad life at a high as a good one at a low premium, the only principle in either case being that enough should be demanded to protect against the risk and leave a reasonably high rate of profit. Had Lord Overstone said that The Times John Bull's gullibility considers requires no protection knaves. an advocate for unserupulous usurers. The Times under the name of extended credit he was really denouncing increased commercial activity, and under that of speculation a closer and more severe competition, that he appeared as the advocate of those commercial concerns which disliked the introduction of new houses into the trades they monopolize, his speech would have been more intelligible, though probably less persuasive, and would have given, we apprehend, a more faithful picture of the views of those who regard with dismay and apprehension the effort to remove existing trammels from the association of capital in commercial enterprises -Times, 22nd March, 1856. Useless increase of Customs Unpaid THE LORDS OF THE TREASURY QUIET NOISY Mr. W. S. LINDSAY, M.P., AND THE CIVIL SERVICE.- In consequence of the great increase in the trade of the Tyne, the officers at a Board of Customs have considerably added to the staff in the coal port. Custom House of Shields. A portion of the appointments were members of given by the Treasury to Mr. Lindsay, M.P., who, instead of parliament using them for party purposes, has intrusted them to a comfavourable mittee, consisting of merchants and tradesmen of all parties in the town interested in the trade of the port. Several deserving persons have thus been placed in respectable situations.-Manchester Guardian, April, 1856. traffe in speeches for a patronage consideration. W. S. Lind- THE HANGMAN'S LETTER TO THE QUEEN. WHEN the first edition of the Grouns of the Gallows was published in 1816-since issued with additional information-Mr. Calcraft, our indefatigable public servant (so we were informed • TREATY OF PEACE, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 6TH MAY, 1856.-Mr. W. S. Lindsay said, the Treaty contained more than he, for one, expected it would do, and he was therefore agreeably surprised upon reading it, for he had feared that the Tynemouth war would not end except in a peace dishonourable to England. But, feeling full of joy and not in want of a place. both joy and satisfaction on reading the Treaty, he felt it to be his duty to express his satisfaction at the conclusion come to. (Hear, and cheers.) He expected nothing from the noble lord, he wanted no place, but he considered it his right to render praise where praise was due.-Hear, hear.) The lowest officer of the State to by a close friend of his), thought he would send a memorial to the Queen, in reply to many of the observations contained therein. The late disgusting "Bousfield tragedy" having proved beyond doubt, the truth of the revelations long before given in that work, of the agonised feelings he has endured in the performance of his horrible office, and in addition to the demoralization attending the exhibition of the gallows, that it is in its old age as decrepit in the art of neatly strangling as the aged nervous hangman himself, we thought that now was the most propitious time for the lowest "officer of state" to make known to the highest his thoughts on the result of his twenty-seven years' experience of public neckstretching for terror and example comuni sake, to men and women, and babes of both sexes. Especially when so serious a climax as shooting him on the platform of the gibbet was threatened that he was compelled to run away, we did more than hope, we felt positive, Calcraft would discharge assassinate himself, demand a pension, and show good practical reasons why an importhe gallows and its hideous paraphernalia, and even black New- of State. gate itself, should give way to the advanced civilisation of the age. This course, we have heard, he was inclined to at first; but old habits were hard to shake off, therefore his motto for a little longer must be "He that hangs and runs away, Lives to hang another day." Besides, his half-formed resolution to drop the "DROP," and retire upon his dingy laurels, to moralize in obscurity upon the many arduous struggles he has been engaged in, and to let his country, from the Queen downwards, know the exact number of murders his performance on the national platform has prevented, was totally reversed by the interview with closed doors which he had afterwards with the pure-minded and enlightened directors of "NEWGATE FAIR," who, doubtless, thought that the old hangman's tottering nerves could be propped up by the strength of a young assistant for a little while, until he had served sufficient apprenticeship at the stretching business; and thus prevent the failure of the muscum they so delight in, and the necessity of the sheriff's soiling their hands with the dirty work of their deputy. To a brother snob Calcraft expressed a strong wish to memorialize the Queen against the "Groans of the Gallows," but he was sorry that he could not write well enough, or else, as there are "sermons" even in "stones," a hangman could probably preach an eloquent sermon to the Queen. cate his thoughts to the highest. The late atrocious attempt to tant officer |