maintenance of those schools. The remainder of his
speech related chiefly to the great want of education in
this country, a theme on which he descanted with great
eloquence.

On the following day, a great meeting of the advocates
of the local or clerical scheme of education for
Manchester and Salford was held in the Free Trade Hall,
Manchester. Mr. W. Entwisle, banker, occupied the
chair. Among the speakers were—the Bishop of
Manchester, the Rev. H. Stowell, Alderman Shuttleworth,
the Rev. Canon Clifton, and many other clergymen
and dissenting ministers. The following resolutions
were unanimously adopted:—

"That this meeting gratefully concurs in the desire publicly
expressed by her Most Gracious Majesty that the youth of these
kingdoms should be religiously brought up, and that the rights
of conscience should be respected.

"That it is expedient to provide, by legislative enactment,
for the free education of all the children in this district, by
means of local rates, such rates to be administered by local
authorities.

"That the rates so levied ought to be applied in support of
existing schools affording religious and secular instruction, and
of similar schools to be hereafter erected by voluntary liberality;
and also in the erection of schoolrooms in destitute districts.

"That in the case of schools not receiving Parliamentary aid,
and not publicly recognised as affording religious instruction,
provision should be made for the daily instruction of the children
in the Holy Scriptures.

"That in all cases the right of the parent to select the place
where his children shall be educated, and to exempt them from
any distinctive religious teaching to which he shall conscientiously
object, must be sacredly maintained."

On the 4th inst., a deputation from the above meeting
waited on Lord J. Russell, to request the support of
Government to the bill; and his lordship, after attentively
listening to the several speakers, promised that
the subject should receive his fullest consideration.

A crowded meeting of the merchants of London, and
of gentlemen deputed from the great mercantile ports
of the north of England and Scotland, in favour of
Reform in the Customs, was held at the London Tavern
on the 3rd inst. Mr. Masterman was in the chair.
The following Report of a Committee of London
merchants, recommending to the consideration of the
public a most important scheme of reform, was
unanimously adopted by the meeting:—

"1. The number of Commissioners may be advantageously
reduced to four or five, whereof one should be in Parliament,
and therefore moveable with the Government, as the
Secretaries of the Treasury, Admiralty, Presidents of the Board of
Trade, Poor-law Commissioner, &c. are in other departments.

"2. One member of the Board at least should be taken from
the commercial body, and one or more drafted from the superior
practical officers of the Customs.

"3. Promotion should be not only open but certain to all
meritorious officers; nor should there be any restriction which
would prevent useful officers in one department from being
removed into another.

"4. Higher qualifications, a longer probation, and a much
more protracted and systematic training of all officers, should
be required, than are at present exacted; and a strict examination
of every permanent officer should be made by a board of
officers called for the purpose.

"5. Ad valorem duties should be abolished; and such duties
as must be retained to meet equivalent excise imposts, or fixed
duties on other articles of a like class, should be converted into
specific duties.

"6. The authorities charged with the adjudication of any
case of a merchant or trader, should in all cases be bound to
hear him personally on demand: and all questions at issue
between the merchant and the Board should be tried and
decided in open court, on requisition by the parties.

"7. No officer should be competent to seize, stop, or detain
the ship, goods, or person of a subject, until the person against
whom the act has been adopted has been served by him in
writing with a formal statement of the cause of seizure, detention,
or as the case may be.

"8. The Crown should not be exempt from costs; and every
subject should have the right to defend his person or property
against the suit of the Crown without being called upon in
limine to find security either for costs, fines or penalties.

"9. Merchants, shipowners, and others, should not be made
responsible for the crimes or offences of their servants or crews,
except where guilty knowledge or the most culpable negligence
is clearly traced home to them.

"10. The system of fines and satisfactions to the officers, and
the infliction of excessive penalties, should be entirely abolished.

"11. Prescription should run against the Crown equally as
against the private subject; and in all cases, the delivery of
goods from bond under duty certificate, should be final as to the
claims of the Crown, unless fraud on the part of the merchant
be proved.

"12. All detentions, fines, and seizures for entries, or declarations
referable only to statistical purposes, and not involving
questions of revenue, should be henceforth prohibited; the
examination, entry, and deliveries of free goods should be
simplified; and such a system should be devised in reference to
goods passing through this country in transit, as shall relieve
trade of the difficulties and loss to which the present provisions
for transshipments subject it."

The meeting also resolved to request, by a deputation
to Lord John Russell, the reappointment, next Session,
of the select committee on the Customs.—Accordingly
the deputation, consisting of a numerous body of the
most eminent merchants in the metropolis, were
received by Lord John Russell on the 9th. Mr. Travers,
as their chairman, expressed the earnest desire of the
commercial classes for the reappointment of the select
committee at the earliest period after the assembly of
parliament, and the deep and general dissatisfaction
with that department of the government which directs
the administration of the Custom House system. Lord
John Russell, did not admit the justice of the
complaints, either against the Board of Customs or the
government. With regard to the reappointment of the
select committee on Customs next session, he was not
aware of any absolute objection to it; but he would not
then pledge himself to that course. He assured the
deputation, however, that the whole subject should
receive his impartial consideration; and any measures
which, while securing the revenue, would give greater
facilities to the Dock Companies and the merchants
generally, would meet with his strenuous support.

At a court of the City Sewers Commission, on the
9th inst., the annual sanitary report of Mr. Simon, the
medical officer of the city was brought up. It contains
statements of great importance.—During the last ten
years the population of the city has increased about
3·4 per cent; but in some districts there has been a
decrease, so that the ratio of increase in other districts
has been far greater. In the whole of East London the
increase has been far above the average, and in the
St. Botolph subdistrict the increase has been more than
16 per cent. This great local increase represents the
continued influx of a poor population into localities
already unwholesome from overcrowding by a squalid
and sickly population. The mortality was 2978 persons,
or at the rate of 2·3 per cent; the average being nearly
2·44 per cent. The deaths, during the three last years
have been 9493: of these no less than 3469, or nearly
three-eighths of the whole, were children under five
years old. As children at this age are about a tenth
part of the whole population of the city, this rate proves
that they die in the city at four times the rate of their
natural proportion to the average mortality of the
district. There were 391 cases of fever, and the deaths
by cholera and kindred diseases were 292. The deaths
by smallpox were 91; of which it would not be harsh to
say that 90 were deaths due to culpable negligence in
not resorting to the public institutions for vaccination.
Of the 100 deaths by erysipelas, a large majority might
have been escaped under better sanitary circumstances.
Of the whole 9493 deaths during the past three years,
3923 were caused by acute diseases, two-thirds of which
were dependent on local and preventable causes. But
it is not by acute disease alone that "preventable death"
ravages the population: chronic ailments,—for instance,
the immense class of scrofulous diseases, including
consumption, which causes at least a quarter of our
mortality—show the vast influence which "circumstances"
exert over that mortality. "Of such circumstances,"
says the report, "some lie within your control, and
affect masses of the people; but the more special causes
of chronic disease lie rather out of your jurisdiction,
and the option of avoiding them is a matter of individual
will. Vicious habits and indiscretion, a life too indolent
or too laborious, poverty and privation, vicissitudes of
weather and temperature, intemperance in diet,
unwholesome and adulterated food, and not least,
inappropriate marriages tending to perpetuate particular
kinds of disease,—these words may suggest to you
briefly these various influences within the sphere of
private life by which the aggregate death-rate of a
population is largely enhanced, and the control of which,