amount of duty; and no trustee, executor, or administrator shall, after the expiration of such six years, be liable to such duty if it is proved to the satisfaction of the Commissioners that the account rendered was correct to the best of his knowledge, information, and belief. 15. Every notice referred to in this part of this Act shall be in writing, and in such form as the Commissioners of Inland Revenue shall prescribe, and shall be delivered or sent in duplicate; and an acknowledgment of the receipt thereof, by or on behalf of the Commissioners, upon the duplicate shall be forthwith returned to the person by whom the notice was delivered or sent. Miscellaneous. 16. Whereas doubts have arisen as to the construction of the expression "amount of nominal capital to be raised by shares of any company to be registered with limited liability," in section eleven of the Customs and Inland Revenue Act, 1888, be it enacted that such expression shall be construed as meaning and including the entire amount which is to form the nominal share capital of the company. 17. (1.) Where by virtue of any letters patent to be hereafter granted by Her Majesty, her heirs or successors, or any Act of Parliament to be hereafter passed, the liability of the holders of shares in the capital of any corporation or company is limited otherwise than by registration with limited liability under the law in that behalf, a statement of the amount of nominal share capital of the corporation or company shall be delivered by the corporation or company to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue within one calendar month after the date of the letters patent or the passing of the Act; and in case of any increase of the amount of nominal share capital of any corporation or company, whether now existing or to be hereafter formed, being authorised by any letters patent or Act of Parliament to be hereafter granted or passed, a statement of the amount of such increase shall be delivered by the corporation or company to the said Commissioners within the like period. (2.) The statement shall be charged with an ad valorem stamp duty of two shillings for every one hundred pounds, and any fraction of one hundred pounds over any multiple of one hundred pounds of the amount of such capital or increase of capital as the case may be, and shall be duly stamped accordingly when the same is delivered to the said Commissioners. (3.) In the case of neglect to deliver such a statement as is hereby required to be delivered, the corporation or company shall be liable to pay to Her Majesty a sum equal to ten pounds per centum upon the amount of duty payable, and a like penalty for every month after the first month during which such neglect shall continue. 18. (1.) Every instrument containing a contract, whether executed or executory, for the sale or purchase of any property, save such as passes by delivery, or must be conveyed by deed, shall, so far as relates to stamp duty thereon, be deemed to be a conveyance on sale of such property; provided that the ad valorem duty paid upon any instrument in respect of any executory contract shall be returned by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, if, within twelve months from the date of the first execution of the instrument, the executory contract shall have been rescinded, or shall have become null and void by reason of any notice given according to the terms of the instrument, or the default of any party thereto to perform any condition precedent specified in the instrument, and declared to be essential to the completion of the contract. (2.) Any instrument made subsequently to the instrument containing the contract for the purchase of vesting in the purchaser the property contracted to be sold shall not be charged with any higher duty than ten shillings. PART III. INCOME-TAX. 19. There shall be charged, collected, and paid for the year which commenced on the sixth day of April one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine, in respect of all property, profits, and gains mentioned or described as chargeable in the Act of the sixteenth and seventeenth years of Her Majesty's reign, chapter thirty-four, the following duties of income-tax; (that is to say): For every twenty shillings of the annual value or amount of property, profits, and gains chargeable under Schedules (A), (C), (D), or (E), of the said Act, the duty of sixpence. And for every twenty shillings of the annual value of the occupation of lands, tenements, hereditaments, and heritages chargeable under Schedule (B) of the said ActIn England, the duty of threepence; In Scotland and Ireland respectively, the duty of twopence farthing 20. All such provisions contained in any Act relating to income-tax as were in force on the fifth day of April, one thousand eight hundred and eighty nine, shall have full force and effect with respect to the duties of income-tax granted by this Act, so far as the same shall be consistent with the provisions of this Act. hereby granted under Schedules (A) and (B) in respect of pro21. With respect to the assessment of the duties of income-tax perty elsewhere than in the metropolis, as defined by the Valuation (Metropolis) Act, 1869, and of the duties on inhabited commencing, as respects England, on the sixth day of April, and, houses elsewhere than in the said metropolis, for the year as respects Scotland, on the twenty-fourth day of May, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine, the following provisions shall have full effect: (a.) The inspectors or surveyors of taxes shall be the (c.) The Commissioners executing the said Acts shall for 22. In order to insure the collection in due time of any duties of income-tax which may be granted for the year commencing on the sixth day of April one thousand eight hundred and ninety, all such provisions contained in any Act relating to the duties of income-tax as are in force on the fifth day of April one thousand eight hundred and ninety shall have full force and effect with respect to the duties of income-tax which may be so granted in the same manner as if the said duties had been actually granted, and the said provisions had been applied thereto by an Act of Parliament passed on that day. LEGAL HONOURS. Information intended for publication under the above heading should reach us not later than Tuesday morning in each week. :0: Mr. George Drink water, barrister, has been appointed Crown Receiver and Seneschal of the Isle of Man. Mr. Drinkwater is the eldest son of Sir William Lucius Drinkwater, First Deemster of the Isle of Man, and was born in 1852. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called to the Bar at Lincoln's-inn in 1887, and he has practised in the Chancery Division. Mr. Evelyn Brooksbank Tattershall, solicitor, has been appointed Deputy-Registrar of the City of London Court. Mr. Arthur Cuthbert Langham, solicitor, has been appointed Deputy-Coroner for the City of London. Mr. Langham is the son of Mr. Samuel Frederick Langham, solicitor, Coroner for the City of London and the Duchy of Lancaster. Mr. Alfred Ewen, solicitor, has been appointed Official Receiver in Bankruptcy for the districts of Chelmsford and Colchester, in succession to Mr. Charles Godfrey, resigned. Mr. John Borough, solicitor, has been appointed Joint Secretary to the Bishop of Southwell. Mr. Borough is Registrar of the Diocese of Southwell, and Registrar of the Belper and Ilkeston County Courts. Mr. Doyley Scott Ransom, solicitor, has been appointed Joint Secretary to the Bishop of Southwell. BOOKS RECEIVED. Receipt is acknowledged of "The Law and Practice Appertaining to Originating Summons," with forms, by George Nichols Marcy and J. Theodore Dodd (Hora Cox). "Little Haud and Muckle Gold," by X. L., 3 vols. ; and "Margaret Maliphant," by Mrs. Comyns Carr, 3 vols. (William Blackwood and Sons). VOL. IX. Pump Court LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1889. PUMP COURT. The Temple Newspaper and Review. SPECIAL NOTICE.-PUMP COURT will in future be conducted at the City Offices, 37, Walbrook, E. C., where all letters for the Editor, the Publisher, or the Manager must be addressed. No. 154. piler, and for the omission we forgive him. There is the "English Club" in Constitution-square, and in the open space of "Avenue Eighteenth of July" the English play lawn tennis, football, hockey, and cricket. On English gala occasions it is further suggested by the compiler that the handsome black-eyed native and imported beauties vie with each other in being the first to place a wreath of laurel on the brow of the victor. Civilisation of an advanced type has obviously succeeded to the cold-blooded shooting régime of the gancho period. By the way, we must enter a protest against the gancho print of J. M. Blane's Uruguayan artist. It is not the thing. Why has he not given us the gancho in a steel pen evening coat, a white waistcoat, and patent leather shoes with steel buckles? The gancho of our recollection of Uruguay wore a shawl or poncho, with his head sticking out from a hole in the centre, and over his head there was a second shawl, after the manner of the headdress of a Manchester mill girl, only a little less refined. We presume the real gancho would not have proved an attractive character, and therefore we repeat the question, Why not have given him even more toned down from nature? His horse is tethered as it should be, but he himself is not typical of his class: he is a caricature. THE hotel for immigrants, we are told, is a large, wellventilated building, the old one in Calle Patagones "being CURRENTE CALAMO Considered too small for the purpose.' As a matter of De Lege; de Omnibus Rebus et Quibusdam Aliis. -:0: THE bulky pamphlet issued by the authority of the London Consulate-General of the Republic of Uruguay is not of a controversial but of a business character. One can neither make use of it for the writing up nor for the writing down of the Banda Oriental. The matter is neutral, and as such it is creditable to its compiler, and should prove serviceable to the interests of the struggling young republic. In some essential respects Uruguay is to be preferred to Argentine or Brazil; it is without the jungle and the fierce overhead sun of Brazil, and it possesses the rolling blue grass prairie land and the crystal water courses which Argentine does not have. It, however, has what Argentine has in has in common with it, a history of violence, which has the misfortune to be fresh, while violence in other lands has been softened down by the gentle touch and besides had its best side ennobled on the page of of time, poesy. In the far-off future there may be like treatment for such outrages as the taking from his bed of the President of Uruguay, and shooting him in cold blood in the Plaza of Monte Video, and the like cold-blooded treatment by Rosas in the Plaza of Buenos Ayres of a Catholic priest and his mistress, she at the time being about to become a mother. No doubt the mistress was as goodlooking as Queen Mary, and may well deserve the sonnets yet to be written in her praise; and, for aught we know to the contrary, the Catholic priest may have had as many good points as Calvin or Luther. As for the President of Uruguay, the short description of him still current is that he was a brick, and that he died game. Mr. Rider Haggard, on using up Africa for what it suggests in sensationalism, should cross over to the River Plate, where the harvest is plentiful and the labourers are few. THE British community, we are told in the pamphlet, is not very numerous in Monte Video, but it is very select. This would follow, but the sequence has escaped the com fact, was it too small? The position, we are further told, is all that can be desired, as its northern frontage takes in the Bay of Monte Video. Of the Bay of Monte Video there can only be words of praise, as over its great bosom there is borne the soft fragrance of the orange, the pomegranate, and the peach vineyard. But is not the northern frontage reserved for the apartments of the staff, and does not the rear take in near and distant glimpses of the cattle-killing saladeros? This is only tion hook with descriptions a la Claude Melnotte in the natural; our objection is to the baiting of the immigra"Lady of Lyons." At the same time we thank Uruguay for the provision which it makes for immigrants before it makes them over to the rough but well-fed life which lies before them. Under the head of physical geography, we have somewhat oddly, it must be confessed-the population facts that Monte Video has now 180,000 souls, and Uruguay 700,000, or less than Liverpool or Glasgow. Further, under the same head we are told that the five partly clouded, and thirty-six rainy days. Such facts Uruguayan year is made up of 244 bright sunny, eightyare new to physical geography, but they are none the less welcome. Since the 27th June, 1859, Uruguay has borrowed 195,479,342 dollars, and paid 112,089,398 dollars, which gives a balance to the bad (no matter what the purpose) of 83,389,944 dollars. of which is not stated, and exclusive also of the prior This is exclusive of the municipal loan, the sum public debt, which foots up to 78,647,550 dollars, which is a respectable sum for a small community. George Francis Train used to say that he who was not in debt was a contemptible human being; that no one had an interest in him, and that no one cared for him; whereas the man in debt was the ceaseless object of kind inquiry from as many persons as had him on their books. We should be sorry if one word we have used were construed to the prejudice of Uruguay, Argentine, or Brazil. They severally and collectively are the future homes of the overflow population of the modern world. Weighted in that balance, what they have done or what they have been are as nothing in comparison with what they are certain to become. We shall be delighted to help forward their onward progress, the more so because it is beset with difficulty, but we cannot subscribe the prophecy of M. Egisto Rossi of millions of persons and not a dollar of public debt. Uruguay has borrowed so much and so easily that the bad habit has got well down into the bone, whence, according to the teaching of heredity, it will be propagated until the crack of doom. THE Attorney-General has made the following award in reference to a question which had been submitted to him for his decision by members of the Bar practising at the Sessions for the county of London :-"I determine that the Courts of Quarter Sessions for the administrative county of London as created by the Local Government Act, 1888, shall be one Sessions, and that barristers practising at the Sessions in and for the county of London, whether sitting at Clerkenwell, Newington, or elsewhere in the said county, are to be at liberty to attend and practise at any of the said Sessions for the said county, without special fee or a junior." SIR WILLIAM CHARLEY, the Common Serjeant, has invited the official and practising members of the Bar at the Central Criminal Court to meet the Lord Mayor Elect at dinner on October 28th. BOOKS RECEIVED FOR REVIEW. "My Mistress, the Empress Eugénie." By Madame Carette. (Dean and Son. 1 vol.) "Bourne's Handy Assurance Manual." By William Bourne, Esq., Associate of the Institute of Actuaries. (Published by the author at Liverpool and London.) "Greifenstein." By F. Marion Crawford, author of "Mr. Isaacs," etc., etc. 3 vols. (Macmillan.) "A London Life." By Henry James. (Macmillan.) INSURANCE. :0: THIS popular American company distriNew York butes, at its pavilion in the Paris ExhibiLife Insurance tion, a coloured diagram, showing the Company. working of its paid-up accumulative policy. The paper is covered with a mass of red and blue circles, a careful study of which results in temporary insanity and execrations on the ancestors of Messrs. Pears, the soap manufacturers. Insurance RATHER a curious point is raised in the Accountant. A correspondent puts the folCompanies and lowing case :-A. B. is an agent for a life Agents. insurance company, and is also insured himself for £100. The company send him the renewal receipt, which he signs and retains, representing the payment of the premium of A. B., the insured, to A. B., the agent. He does not remit the premium to the company, and afterwards makes an arrangement of composition with his creditors. He does not make an entry of the premium, received and paid, in his cash-book. Can the company say that the policy is lapsed, or is the policy still in force? Is the company an ordinary unsecured creditor for the premium due from A. B. as agent? If the agent had made an entry in his cash-book for the premium received and paid, would that have made any difference. The editor, in the current issue of that journal, expresses the opinion (1) That it is not open to the company to say that the policy had lapsed. They expressly constituted A. B. their agent, to collect the premium, and to give a receipt for it. Provided that the receipt was bona fide filled up at the time represented, it would bind the company. (2) The fact that no entry had been made in A. B.'s cash-book, would not per se invalidate the receipt, but it is clear that the company could fairly urge that it went to show that the receipt had not been bona fide filled up. On the other hand, it could be urged that, as between A. B., the agent as such, and the company, the premium he received from himself in another capacity (namely, as an insurer) would, in the ordinary way, not cause any cash to actually pass, but would be purely a matter of account. If the receipt had been used by A. B. in any way to gain credit, or to gain time from his creditors, or in any similar way, the case in favour of the validity of the receipt would be greatly strengthened. We believe that some companies require the receipts to be forwarded to them to be filled up, but obviously the better plan, which is adopted by other offices, is to have the receipts of agents duly signed and dated, and marked specially as being arranged in the agent's account. Thus no question of liability can be raised. A French Insurance Journal and the English Press. In a recent issue, Le Moniteur des Assurances says:-"Some time ago the Journal des Assurances published an article on assurance in France and England, which produced some sharp ripostes from the English press. Maybe the article attributed to prets viagers (loans on life interest) an importance that is unusual to English companies in general, although they have made in one year advances of £1,000,000 on personal guarantees; but we think that the English journalists would have done better to show less indignation, and abstain from the epithets with which they have favoured the French insurance press in general, and our estimable and sympathetic confrère in particular. Is the English press then so impeccable? Cannot one often read in the English journals most incorrect statements on the subject of French insurance? And cannot one find seriously reproduced the manifest errors advanced by certain fighting papers? The English speak wrongly of French affairs, which are usually little known to them, and they appear astounded that their affairs are less well-known in Paris than in London, while they freely criticise the methods of our companies. They might often be reminded of Villemain's saying, 'Nothing enables one to speak of a book so much as not having read it.'" Industrial Insurance and Child Murder. THE question of infantile assurance has been for some time attracting considerable attention. We referred last week in our insurance columns to the report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, which has been laid before Parliament, showing the results of the inquiry into the working of friendly societies and industrial companies, with a view to discover some means of removing defects in the existing law, and especially to place the matter of child insurance under more stringent supervision. There have been undoubtedly mistaken apprehensions arising from ignorance of the results of this department of assurance, but it will be well for managers of these companies to bear in mind the perils which beset them. There is just now a sensitiveness in the public mind which makes every suspicious death of the insured juvenile life a good reason for prohibiting such insurance, and this should be a potent reason for the managers of companies to stamp out moral hazard by the most severe and decisive steps, even apart from the inducement so to act for the prevention of fraud. There is, perhaps, some cultivation of managerial remissness in the suggestion that, as frauds are detectable, the moral hazard is restricted; but when managers on the other hand adopt the better expedient, as was done the other day by the managing director of a company whose affairs we noticed last week, of appealing to their agents to act circumspectly in this respect, we are not disposed to object to his contention that to prohibit infant assurance would in its degree be equivalent to punishing ten thousand persons for the fault of a single individual. The legal position of industrial assurance companies differs from that of the collecting friendly societies, but there is no material difference in the character of the people they deal with, or the class of business transacted. That the question is one of vast importance will be evident when it is stated that upwards of five millions annually are collected from the working classes, apart altogether from subscriptions to burial and other clubs, so numerous in Lancashire and elsewhere. It is a matter affecting hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of people, and therefore it is remarkable that there are few subjects on which so little is generally known. The feeling, however, that something was wrong in the matter of infantile assurance led to the appointment of the Select Committee-and which will probably result in the further appointment of a Commission-to inquire into the whole subject. Many persons have been astonished to find, in inquiries touching the death of children under circumstances which made an inquest necessary, that 50 per cent. of such children have been insured. Public interest is apparently excited in a proportion according to the number of instances of child murder which can be cited where the life was insured. Details of horror have far more effect upon the average mind than statistics and other data, and legislation is more the outcome of temporary excitements and vague impressions than the product of accurate know.. ledge. An inquest was recently held on the exhumed body of a lad of eleven years, who had lived with Mrs. Winter, a relative of his father. The medical evidence was to the effect that death was probably caused by arsenic, administered in small doses at frequent intervals, which bears some resemblance to the evidence in the case of Mrs. Maybrick, which has attracted so much attention and popular interest, not only in Liverpool but throughout the country. A doctor had attended the boy, and prescribed for pain in the stomach and diarrhoea. Suspicion was aroused by the discovery that the woman with whom the lad lived had received £20 12s. as insurance money from the Liverpool Victoria Legal Friendly Society. The local manager of the society proved that this woman had effected twenty-seven policies on the lives of twentytwo persons, and that five of them died since June, 1886. We may cite another recent case. At the Derby Assizes on the 29th ult., George Horton, aged thirty-seven, a collier, of Swanwick, near Alfreton, was found guilty of the murder of his daughter Kate, on May 8th, by administering poison to her. The prisoner's wife died in October last, and the daughter in question was one of five children. On the morning of May 8th the prisoner got up to go to work at the usual time, but did not, as usual, have breakfast before going. It was proved that he was in the deceased's room before he went out. He did not go to work, but returned home about half-past eight. Meantime the child had been seized with twitchings and other alarming symptoms, and had died at seven o'clock, an hour after her father left her. She made a statement to the effect that the prisoner had given her something of a bluish colour to drink. A post mortem examination disclosed the presence of sufficient strychnine in her body to kill a child of her age in an hour. There was no proof of the actual possession of strychnine by the prisoner, and no traces of it were found in the house, but it appeared that before his return a neighbour had washed some cups, one of which contained a blue stain. When the prisoner came back and found the child dead, he shed tears over the body. The only motive assigned for the crime was the fact that the child was insured, and the prisoner was entitled to £7 on her death. The premium on the policy was a penny a week, and the prisoner had paid up eighteenpence arrears a few days before the child's death. Mr. Justice Hawkins passed sentence of death upon the prisoner. Now the practices of the man and woman we have instanced in these two cases ought to have been simply impossible. If the full record were made up, it might be possible to show that industrial assurance, by its moral influence, is rather preservative than destructive of human life, but as yet this cannot be proved. However, the investigation of insurance of children by the Select Commitee of the House of Commons has been fruitful of some suggestions in this respect which should not be disregarded. Edinburgh THIS office has attained the respectable age of sixty-six years, and enjoys a high repuLife Assurance. tation among its contemporaries. The progress, which in recent years has been rapid and noteworthy, is combined with careful and economical management, and the star of the Edinburgh office is undoubtedly in the ascendant. The financial year closes on March 31, and the report for the last twelve months chronicles the largest, we believe, amount of new assurances completed in the satisfactory history of the company. No less than 1,038 new policies were issued, assuring the capital sum of £650,802, and producing in new premiums £24,078, including £3,211 by single payments. Even after making allowance for the large amount of £186,400 reassured with other offices, the net sum assured retained was £464,402, being much above the average of the last seven years. By the purchase of 67 annuities, securing in all £2,703 per annum, the revenue was increased by the purchase-money of £28,480, and by the death of 24 annuitants the company was relieved of the annual pay ment of £2,175. The premium income, after deducting reassurance premiums, was £210,490 and the total income, inclusive of interest and dividend receipts, but exclusive of annuity purchase-money, was £304,213. The securities are well invested, and are all of the highest order, and we observe an amount of £1,283, being profit on investments for the year, which should also be added to the total income we have mentioned. The claims by death were particularly light in amount, being £141,557. The sum of £15,872 was paid for surrender of policies, which are calculated on a liberal scale, and the shareholders received £9,000 by way of dividend. The funds were increased by the substantial sum of £115,220, the largest addition for many years, and amount to £2,337,527. The company thus possesses the ample and indeed unusually large proportion of eleven years' premium income in hand. The commission and expenses of management were in the moderate ratio of 13-98 of the premiums; and assuming by a modern method of computation that the new premiums are expended in obtaining the new business-a method sanctioned by the best and most competent authorities in the insurance world-the ratio on renewals, instead of being 7 per cent., is, in the case of the Edinburgh, but 2.87 per cent. By an alternative method, assuming that the renewals cost 7 per cent., a reasonable and fair assumption in the case of offices generally, the Edinburgh office, it will be found, secures its new business at a cost of only 64.21 per cent., as contrasted with the rate of 100 per cent. actually allowed. We need hardly dwell on the great importance of these facts to policyholders, and will only say that the results of this frugal although not parsimonious management will be more fully seen in the bonus specimens, which are high above the average. The illustrations of the company's system, appended as usual to the report, are of really so striking and favourable a nature that we cannot do better than recommend those of our readers who are contemplating assurance to write the secretary for a copy of the report and illustrations of bonus, which will bear comparison with those of the best offices. To the many special features offered, the company grants interim bonuses, the policies are non-forfeitable, and we may again mention that the Edinburgh is one of the Scotch offices that can be sued in English courts of law. Altogether the exhibit for the past year is pleasant reading, and the company is unquestionably in a healthy and financially strong condition. 1. Exemption from provisions of s. 30 of 38 & 39 Vict. c. 60 in certain cases.] Where any friendly society, by reason of its being constituted so as to receive contributions by means of collectors at a greater distance than ten miles from its registered office, is subject to the provisions of section thirty of the Friendly Societies Act, 1875, hereinafter called the principal Act, the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies, on the application of the Society, may, with the approval in each case of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, grant to such society a certificate of exemption from the provisions of the said section of the principal Act in any case in which he is of opinion that the society is not one to which the provisions of section thirty of the principal Act ought to apply, and he may grant such certificate whether the society applying for the same has been registered before or subsequent to the passing of this Act. Such certificate shall be subject to revocation by the Chief Registrar with the approval in each case of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, but shall remain in force until so revoked, and until notice of such revocation shall have been advertised in the "London Gazette" and in some newspaper in general circulation in the county in which the registered office is situate, and also transmitted by a registered letter to the society at such registered office; and so long as the certificate is in force the society shall be subject to all the provisions and entitled to all the privileges of the Friendly Societies Acts, as if it were a society within the definitions of section eight of the principal Act not receiving contributions by means of collectors at a greater distance than ten miles from the registered office. 2. Repeal of 51 & 52 Vict c. 66.] The Friendly Societies Act, 1888, is hereby repealed, but this repeal shall not affect any right acquired or act done under that Act. 3. Construction and short title.-This Act shall be construed as one with the Friendly Societies Acts, and may be cited together with them as the Friendly Societies Acts, and may be cited separately as the Friendly Societies Act, 1889. PUMP COURT. not a single redeeming feature? The subject should at once commend itself to the great army of promoters who, if rumour speaks truthfully, are individually to make October ring The Temple Newspaper and Solicitors' Review with their handiwork. The material is at hand, not for OF LAW-FINANCE-INSURANCE. 37, WALBROOK, E.C. SEPTEMBER 25, 1889. Pro Lege. THE DOCK PROPERTIES. แ THE strike, happily ended, has given prominence to dock properties; and Lloyd's Register of Shipping" gives much useful information on the subject. We turn to that source to find that the London dock system, even with its latest developments, is not a thing to brag about. It is unworthy of London-unfit for London; practically, it is a disgrace to London. These, we have not to be told, are strong expressions, but we are prepared to justify them. Here are the names of some of the least familiar docks; as unfamiliar they are as the streets wherein have been perpetrated the East-end atrocities. Who ever heard before of Lavender Dock, whose length is 1,530 feet; of Lady Dock, of 770 feet; of Norway Dock, of 580 feet; of Stave Dock, of 1,000 feet; of Greenland Dock, of 970 feet; of South Dock, of 800 feet; of Island Dock, of 950 feet; of Albion Dock, of 1,180 feet; of Canada Dock, of 1,530 feet; of Acorn Pond, of 1,530 feet? Then we have Surrey Lock, Surrey Basin, South Lock, Greenland Lock, Communication Lock, and Lavender Lock. We select these as the unfamiliars of the list, and pass by the presumably familiar names of which, it goes without saying, there are many. Of least known of the familiars we have the Royal Victoria Docks, the Royal Albert Dock, and the Millwall Dock, each given in feet-the feet so few that to convert them to acres would be to libel these presumably great public works. Last, turning to the older docks, we have feet still in the different dock areas of St. Katharine Dock and in the London Dock, while we get to only moderate areas in acres in the East and West India Docks, in Tilbury Main Dock, Tilbury Central Branch Dock, Tilbury East Branch Dock, Tilbury West Branch Deck, and Tilbury Tidal Basin. Our only docks deserving of the name are those at Tilbury; and we will not put London to the blush by an acreage comparison of the Tilbury Docks with those of Liverpool and Birkenhead. The Liverpool dock and basin area is 379 acres; that of Birkenhead is 164 acres. London, as the money and commercial centre of the world, and also as the chief population centre, may, as a sequel to the strike, be asked to deal with its dock system as St. Giles and Saffron-hill have been dealt with in the matter of human habitations. Shaftesbury-avenue has become a great traffic thoroughfare, and presently it will possess the attraction of high-class shopping; Saffron-hill also goes in for shops, and it is now furnishing a street of them with art facings in terra-cotta. As in these districts, a past of shreds and patches in house property dilapidation has been parted with. why not also a past of makeshift docks and basins along the Thames, which possess one dock trust, but for half a dozen on each side of the river; and were а common understanding reached, whereby each dock assumed a distinctive character, as for deals only, tea only, or tobacco only, and so on through the list, the rock ahead of competition with cutting rates would vanish; whereas under a single trust the whole seaborne trade of London would pass under the foot of a monopoly which, as now, would be unaccommodating to shippers and shipowners and unjust to workmen. Towards the financing of a number of minor dock trusts, the owners of the minor docks will just now be well disposed. Burns and his peripatetic colleagues are believed to have thoroughly sickened them with their dock possessions, and while their workmen are again at their tasks, they are decidedly less docile than before. Indeed, they are not now missing an opportunity to impress on their employers that a victory has been scored, and that unless the employers behave themselves in future there will be a second turn out and a second victory. We mention these fresh facts as an incentive to promoters. In minor dock trusts the opportunity of their lives lies before them, and commercial London would accord to them in their work its best wishes. Burns is represented as much changed in manner and appearance since the close of the September campaign. We all remember the story of the fumes of whisky making a certain person drunk, and within the Wade Arms it was the misfortune of teetotal Burns to continue in such an atmosphere not only throughout the day, but oftentimes throughout the night. Change in his appearance first became apparent in the nose, which, as most persons are aware, possesses a distinct barometric property; and later on the hair developed a tendency to iron grey. As to manner, it is less composed and more aggressive. He is thus presumably unequal to the racket of a second dockers' fight, and as we are all conscious of our own ailments, he necessarily is of his. Indeed, he now is in the market for lighter work and a drier atmosphere than that of the Wade Arms, and he has already made bids to the London cabmen and the London bakers. Later on, he may even take in hand the shoeblacks. Without reflection these may appear to be frivolous remarks, but they have a close bearing on the subject of dock properties. The dockers hereafter will be left very much to themselves. The Hellespont is not a place to swim across every day; neither is the horseshoe falls of Niagara a place to go over more than once. Burns has performed a great feat, and he has cleared the air of the dock properties. He has licked the dock directors and the dock proprietors into a plastic state, for which service he deserves the public thanks. He has, moreover, knocked the dock properties into a cocked hat, which therefore now invite the attention and the renovating hand of the promoter. So step forward, young man, and win. The dock properties may be had on your own terms, the dockers will give no further trouble, and upon commercial London you will confer a worthy service. THE CORNER IN COTTON. Ir is matter of common repute that the samples of a Liverpool cotton broker are worth in cash to him £2,000 per annum, the lavishness of the American slave-owning period having outlived the so-called peculiar institution. But what is £2,000 a year for nothing to a man who requires £5,000 a year-for nothing? He cannot get about well with a beggarly £2,000; indeed, £5,000 is not enough, but it must be put up with, if it cannot be increased. Men in the professions will sympathise with the unfortunates in Liverpool who are in such straits for ready money, especially as the unfortunates are called upon daily to put in an hour, or at most an hour and a half, of solid office work. Soon after eleven o'clock the Liverpool cotton broker steps down jauntily from Tithebarn Station to Dale-street, and then, having nothing particular to attend to until two o'clock, when he should put in an appearance on the flags of the Exchange, he walks on to the Alexandra, with a friend or two, for gin and Angostura, and by-and-by, after a smoke and |