24 MARCH 1866, Page 2

The cattle-plague returns are worse than' useless, Every week playeekdaring

service time with some °thee children at some game we have the returns of the previous week—then admitted, au& with pennies A child missed a penny, and Willard, after count- indeed inserted, to be defective—repeated without any alteration. ing her pennies, found she had one too much, and returned it. Each Saturday we are told that 200 or 300 inspectors have made The vicar, who is also a magistrate, actually sent her to the lock- no report, and yet the next Saturday, after their reports, have been :upon: a, charge of theft, and there she remained from. Monday to or ought to have been received, the old return is repeated,—sa Friday. When brought before_the. petty sea:liens, Mr. Grey, the.. thnt for no single week have we ever got any accurate returns at real prosecutor, sat as magistrate, and, the locality being much all. Why is any return ever given before it is complete? We excited, graciously said he had only imprisoned the child as a can afford to wait, but we cannot afford to have no trustworthy warning, and did not intend to go on with the case. He added means at all of comparing the seizures in one week- with the seizures that she had stolen a penknife befoie, a_stateineut instantly denied. of the previous weeks. The whole value of these figures is their. The child's friends, indignant at this treatment, refused to accept relative exactness. There is a sad want of head about the Council her discharge, and the case was adjourned for further evidence, Office somewhere, or these Melees and uncorrected accounts would

the little mite being.this time admitted to bail, Imagine a magis-

rot come out as they do week after week. trate sending a child to the lock-up for an offence so slight that he, at once prosecutor, judge, jury, and pastor; did not even The second reading of the Oxford Test Abolition Bill was intend to pursue it ! It is odd, but it is true, that in a case of this moved and seconded on, Wednesday in the House of Commons in kind, that is, of downright cruelty on the highest moral Fla- two maiden speeches--moved by Mr. Coleridge in a speech of ciples, the magistrate is sure to be in orders.