and Sir Frederick Thesiger objected that this put an
end to the case—the purpose for which the committee
had been formed was at an end, and the defendant was
not under examination by any particular tribunal. The
Recorder overruled the objection. Mr. Mackinnon was
called to prove the payment of £230 by him for the
dinner; he stated, that he put a bundle of notes behind
a cushion on a sofa at the Red Lion inn; he did not
know who took it away; he did not see any one take
it; it was taken; he did not know what it was wanted
for, but he had been told to put it on the sofa. Mr.
Reeves, a farmer, deposed that he took up the bundle
of notes and handed them to Smith; Smith was not
surprised at all. Mr. Curteis stated that he had a
running account with Smith; he meant to pay for the
dinner. "The prosecutor in this case is some sneaking
coward afraid to show his face; the government don't
prosecute." It was proved that defendant ordered the
dinner and paid for it; he said it was for Mr. Curteis.
Sir Frederick Thesiger urged for the defence, that it
was not at all clear that Smith knew where the money
came from; Mr. Curteis gave authority for the dinner;
Smith might yet be unpaid. There was no corrupt
motive for the first statement by Smith as the inquiry
was over. In summing up the Recorder pointed out
the importance of the inquiry, and observed that persons
elected to high office should be without taint. The jury
soon pronounced a verdict of guilty. Sir Frederick
Thesiger moved in arrest of judgment, and wished the
defendant to be admitted to bail. The Recorder said he
should pursue the usual course; he had not reserved
any point for another court. Smith was ordered into
custody; sentence twelve months imprisonment.

Mr. William Ashley, brother to Lord Shaftesbury,
summoned John Castles, a Cabman, before the Lambeth
magistrates on the 4th. Mr. Ashley's complaint was,
that he had hired the cab on arriving at the London-
bridge terminus; and while he went to fetch two ladies
who had been with him to the Crystal Palace, Castles
had engaged himself to another fare. He was insolent,
and refused to show his badge. The officer at the
station said that Castles should not enter the yard again,
but that promise had not been kept. The defence was,
that while Mr. Ashley was away, a railway porter had
put a trunk in the cab, and the driver thought he was
bound to take that fare. The inspector of cabs said he
did not think Castles was to blame. The magistrate,
however, said it was clear Mr. Ashley had hired the
cab; and he fined the driver a guinea for not showing
his badge.

At Birmingham, on the 13th inst., an attempted
Murder was followed by Suicide. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor
and their son were the weekly tenants of Mr. Walton,
a respectable tradesman, carrying on business in Moore-
street, and it was the custom of Miss Walton, by the
direction of her father, to collect this and other rents
every Monday. Between ten and eleven o'clock on
Monday morning Miss Walton called at the house, and
as usual, Mrs. Taylor discharged the rest. Miss Walton,
knowing Mrs. Taylor's son had been labouring under a
severe indisposition, asked if he was any better? The
inquiry was no sooner made than Taylor, armed with a
razor, darted upon her, seized her round the neck, and
inflicted several severe wounds on the face, arms, and
body, one of which, a large gash, no doubt intended for
the throat, extended across the lower part of the face.
He then inflicted a long and deep wound upon his own
throat, which caused his death in a few minutes. Taylor
was a steady industrious-going man, but it appeared
that his mind for some time past, had been considerably
impaired.

The Sudden Death of Mr. Justice Talfourd, while in
the act of charging the grand jury at the Stafford
Assizes on the 13th inst., has made a deep impression
on the public mind. The judge appeared in good health,
and had that morning taken his customary early walk.
He took his seat about ten o'clock, and at once proceeded
to deliver the usual charge, commenting on the moral
indications of the district afforded by the calendar. The
offences were of a very painful character. There were
few cases of offences against property; but there were
seven cases of rape, seven or eight cases of stabbing;
and no fewer than thirteen cases of manslaughter; not,
however, entirely from lawless violence, for some deduction
must be made of cases showing a different species
of criminality arising from the neglect in the management
of machinery. "But," he continued, "that which
points to the deepest moral degradation—which shows
what brutal passion, when aroused and stimulated by
strong liquor, will produce—is the fact that there are no
less than eighteen cases of highway robbery, which
include about thirty persons not charged with that guilt.
These crimes come—I will not say exclusively, but in
the far greater majority—from that district of this
county which is most rich in mineral treasure, where
wages are high, and where no temptation of want can
for a moment be suggested to palliate or account for the
crime: on the contrary, I have observed in the experience
which I have had of the calendars of Staffordshire,
and which, as many of you are aware, extends far beyond
the period of my judicial experience—I have observed
that in times of comparative privation, crime has diminished;
and at those periods when wages were high, and
work plentiful, and when the wages were earned with a
less degree of work, and when there was strong temptation
to vicious indulgence, that then crime has increased
almost in proportion to the state of prosperity by which
the criminals have been surrounded. This is a
consideration which should awaken all our minds, and
especially the minds of those gentlemen connected with those
districts, to ascertain whence it proceeds, and seek a
remedy for so great an evil. It is also not to be denied,
gentlemen, that the state of education—that is, such
education as can be provided by Sunday schools and
other schools—in this district is not below the average
of that to be found in agricultural districts. One must,
therefore, search for other causes of the peculiar aspect
of crime presented by these places; and I cannot help
thinking that it may in no small degree be attributed to
that separation between class and class which is the
great curse of British society, and for which we all, in
our respective spheres, are in some degree more or less
responsible. This separation is more complete in this
district, by its very necessities and condition, than in
agricultural districts, where there is a resident gentry
who are enabled to shower around them not only the
blessings of their beneficence and active kindness, but
to stimulate by their example. It is so much a part of
our English character, that I fear we all of us keep too
much aloof from those dependent upon us, and they are
thus too much encouraged to look upon us with suspicion.
Even to our servants we think that we have done
our duty in our sphere when we have performed our
contracts with them—when we have paid them the
wages that we contracted to pay them—when we have
treated them with that civility which our habits and
feelings induce us to render, and when we curb our
temper and refrain from any violent expression towards
them. And yet how painful the thought, that we have
men and women growing up around us, ministering to
our comforts, supplying our wants, and continual
inmates of our dwellings, with whose affections and
tempers we are as little acquainted as if they were the
inhabitants of some other sphere. This feeling arises
from a kind of reserve, which is perhaps peculiar to the
English character, and which greatly tends to prevent
that mingling of class with class—that reciprocation of
kind words and gentle affections—those gracious
admonitions and kind enquiries which, often more than any
book education, tend to the cultivation of the affections
of the heart, and the elevation of the character of those
of whom we are the trustees. And if I were asked what
is the great want of English society, I would say that it
is the mingling of class with class; I would say, in one
word, that that want is the want of sympathy. * * * *
No doubt that the exciting cause in the far larger
number of these cases—the exciting cause that every judge
has to deplore in every county of this land—is that
which was justly called in the admirable discourse to
which I listened yesterday from the sheriff's chaplain,
'the greatest English vice,' which makes us a bye-word
and a reproach amongst nations who in other respects
are inferior to us, and have not the same noble
principles of Christianity to guide and direct them—I mean
the vice of drunkenness. One great evil of this circumstance
is, I think you will find, looking at the depositions