23 JANUARY 1932, Page 11

A Hundred Years Ago

THE "SPECTATOR," JANUARY 21ST, 1832.

Tac METROPOLIS.

A numerous meeting of the proprietors of Coffeehouses was held on Tuesday, at Marshall's Coffeehouse, in the Strand, to adopt final measures for the purpose of procuring the sanction of the Legislature to allow them to open their houses at four in the morning in summer and five in winter.

A scheme ie now under serious consideration, by whirl, a consider- able public saving may, it is supposed, be effected. The whole of the Government Funds and Exchequer Bills now held by the Bank, excluding the Bank Stock, which amounts to sixteen millions sterling, is proposed to be redeemed by an issue of Government notes, to be called Stock notes. The effect of this measure would be the saving of about four per cent. per annum on the sixteen millions (or 640,0001.), which Government now pay to the Bank

for the advances that establishment makes on Pension An 'ties and Exchequer Bills.

THE COUNTRY.

It seems that the city of Bristol claims to be exempt from the pay- ment of prosecutors' expenses in criminal cases in consequence of which, if the prosecutor declare his inability to pay his own, the prisoner is, as a matter of course, discharged. A " Crown Lawyer,' writing to the Times, says that Bristol is, by this means, • the nucleus of all the thieves in that part of the kingdom, by lessening the probability of their prosecution." This gives a clue to the riots, and an important ono,