THE WEEK AT HOME •

Quarters ended - -- Jane 80, Sept. 30, Dec. 31, March 31,

1861. 1861. 1861. 1862.

)ustoms .0,821,000 £5,982,000 £6,147,000 .0,724,000 3xcise 5,171,000 4,221,000 3,896,000 5,044,000 ;tamps 2,186,000 2,013,000 2,098,000 2,293,945 faxes 1,363,000 160,000 1,282,000 355,000

)roperty Tax

2,588,000 991,000 2,359,000 4,427,000 'ost-office 825,000 870,000 910,000 905,000 .1rown Lands 67,000 66,479 84,000 77,521 discellaneous 377,594 297,753 292,039 780,148 Totals £18,398,594 .04,601,232 £17,068,039 £19,606,614

Year ended Year ended

Mar. 31, 1862. Mar. 31, 1861. Increase. Decrease.

ustoms £23,674,000 £23,305,777

I £368,223

- :seise 18,832,000 19,435,000 - £1,103,000 tamps 8,590,945 8,348,412 242,533 - 'axes 3,160,000 3,127,000 33,000 - 'roperty Tax ... 10,365,000 10,023,816 ' 558,816 'ost-office 3,510,000 3,400,000 110,000 - :row. Lands 295,000 290,568 4,432 - liscellaneous 1,747,534 1,453,101 294,433 - Totals £69,674,479 £70,283,674 £1,052,621 £1,661,816 Net Decrease £609,195

PouncAL.-The election for Preston has resulted in the return of the Conservative candidate, Sir Thomas Hesketh, by a large majority. The numbers were :

Hesketh 1827 Melly . • . 1014 Majority . 513

After this the main extra-parliamentary political event of the week has been the return of the revenue for the last quarter, and also, of course, for the whole of the financial year. These returns are as follows :

The gross produce of the revenue of the United Kingdom in the undermentioned periods, ended March 31, 1862, compared with the corresponding periods of the preceding year: But these returns are comparatively uninstructive, since the taxa- tion was not the same in the two years. For example, the yield of the property-tax appears less by 558,8161.; but since the revenue sacri- fice was (a penny in the pound for three quarters of the year) about 850,0001., the yield has really been greater than in the previous year. Comparing the actual yield of the revenue with Mr. Gladstone's budget predictions we find : The Board of Trade tables just issued for February, give, as well as the exports and imports for the two months of the present year, the important table of the computed real value of our imports for the whole of 1861. They show a total annual value for our imports (from our colonies and foreign countries, including, however, it must be remembered, the imports which come here merely for transhipment and re-exportation) ot the enormous sum of 217,351,8811.,-the highest value they have yet reached,-and a fair measure of the amount of British capital engaged in the foreign and colonial trade. As compared with last year, this shows :

1860: 1861.

Imports from foreign countries . £167,571,338 £164,854,198 British possessions 42,959,535 52,497,683 2210,530,873 £217,351,881 which tells us that while our consumption of foreign goods has been somewhat diminished (especially of Russian and German), our con- sumption of British Indian goods, and still more, the cost of that consumption, has largely increased. Indeed, while we imported from British India goods, to the value of 15,106,595/. in 1860, in 1861 we imported goods to the value of 21,958,9471.-so much has India already profited by the rising price of cotton. The value of the exports for January and February is nearly the same as last year, but of course much less than in 1860, when the American troubles had not begun.

NAVAL-A discussion of much interest on iron-plated ships of war took place this day week in the Institution of Naval Architects, the chief question discussed being the value of the Warrior as a ship of war. Captain Halsted opened the debate by a vehement attack on the Warrior. He said she was "altogether unfit to go into action, and unworthy of the name of a man-of-war." His ground for this startling (and certainly unsnstained) assertion, was that she was without defensive armour, both at the bow and stern of the ship.

Promise.

£23,570,000 18,788,000 8,460,000 3,170,000 10,350,000 3,500,000 295,00 2,150,000 Performance.

£23,674,000 18,332,000 8,590,945 3,160,000 10,365,000 3,510,000 295,000 1,747,534 Excess.

004,000 130,9- 45 15,0- 00 10,000

Deficiency.

£456,0- 00 10,0- 00

403,000 Customs Excise Stamps Taxes Property Tax Post-office Crown Lands Miscellaneous Total £70,283,000 £69,674,479 £259,945 £869,000 Net deficiency £609,055

Her shape, too, was dangerously weak in the extremities, an assertion which he illustrated by the accident which lately befell the De- fence at Spithead, when a gunboat, having got foul of her, the anchor fell from the e,athead and penetrated her bow just above the plates. Captain Halsted also complained that the Admiralty were so re-

luctant to adopt the principle of sloping armour, asserting-quite

truly, we believe, but also quite irrelevantly-that iron plates 4i inches thick, inclined at an angle of 50 deg., are much more impervious to injury than upright plates 5f inches thick. The answer to Captain Halsted was given by Mr. E. J. Reed, Mr. Scott Russell, and Sir John Pakington, and on all the points seems to us as nearly satisfactory as in such cases it is possible to be. In the first place, with regard to the Warrior, it was stated that sail- ing qualities had necessarily to be considered as anxiously as defensive qualities. She was not plated in the bow:and in the stern, expressly

because this would have rendered her unseaworthy. The Confederate steam-ram (Merrimac) and the Federal cupola ship (Monitor) are incapable of weathering, an Atlantic storm, and had the Warrior been

heavily plated fore-and-aft the same result would have followed. Nevertheless, her most important fighting guns are all under protec- tive armour, and even if the enemy's shot should strike her fore-and- aft it would not injure her, unless it took away the rudder,-an event against which it is impossible in any case adequately to provide. It was stated officially that "in the unprotected portions of the Warrior there is a watertight deck 8 feet below the load water-line. Between the stem and the foremost armour bulkhead there are four

transverse bulkheads subdividing the spaces above and below the water-tight deck. There is also a fore-and-aft watertight bulkhead running through the foremost two of these divisions. So that between the stem and the foremost armour bulkhead the space below the water-line and above the watertight deck is divided into seven com- partments, the largest of which will not hold more than 138 tons of. water, and the whole of them together, supposing them all bilged, 400 tons. The corresponding space aft is divided into four compartments, the largest of which will hold 278 tons, and the whole of them together 670 tons. If, therefore, the unprotected parts of the ship were riddled at both ends, by shot striking in the' neighbourhood of the water-line, or for 8 feet below it, only 1,070 tons would be lost from the buoyancy of the ship, and she would only sink 26 inches below her present load water-line." On the other point-that of sloping armour-the answer to Captain Halsted was still more complete. There is no manner of doubt that a 55-inch upright plate is less efficient than a 44-inch sloping plate, inclined at an angle of 50 deg.; but then it is much lighter. To have a vessel covered with 44-inch plates at such an angle you must have, of course, a much greater surface of iron than with the 55-inch upright plates; and the surface is not only greater, but so much greater as to do much more than compensate the diminution of thickness. The sloping side of a triangle inclined at an angle of 45 deg. to the upright side is longer nearly in the proportion of 10 to 7; and it is found that if the thickness is less in the propor- tion of 7 to 10 exactly the same resisting power is attained. Granted, therefore, a given weight of iron, it is immaterial whether you beat it out thinner and place it at an acute angle to the side of the vessel, or whether you keep it upright and allow the difference in the form of an increased thickness. The discussion was very animared, and Sir John Pakington defended the Warrior with really paternal interest.

SOCIAL-Various large hotels have been planned to meet the influx of visitors for the approaching exhibition. The largest of them is the Grosvenor Hotel at the Victoria Station, from which the railway directors allow a direct opening into the hotel. This hotel is said to be the greatest building of the kind in this country, but by far in- ferior to the first-class American' hotels. It contains 300 rooms, some of them magnificent. The general, and the ladies' coffee- room, are both apartments of great splendour. The corridors of the various floors measure about 1500 feet. A /1ft, 8 feet square, is pro- vided for raising about ten people at each ascent, and is worked by a hydraulic apparatus. The hotel is to open on the 14th instant ; the tariff of prices is said to be moderate. The London-Bridge Hotel adjoins the Brighton terminus, but is not as yet permitted a special entrance to that terminus. It contains 250 rooms. The coffee- room is, of course, magnificent, and there is a smaller one for ladies. This hotel has a billiard-room and table. It is, like the other hotels, fire-proof, and is also provided with a powerful water supply and hoses on each floor. The Westminster Bridge Hotel-now compa- ratively old-has, it will be remembered, 300 rooms, but one-half of the hotel is let to the India Board. In the half used as an hotel there are, besides the two coffee-rooms, 13 private sitting-rooms and 130 bed-rooms. The Palace Hotel, looking into the grounds at the back of Buckingham Palace, is a smaller affair, though grand of its sort, being intended for the more aristocratic visitors. It is said that all the four taken together would not be more than equal to the first-class American hotels.

LAW AND JUSTICE.-A trial of some interest, especially with re- gard to the jury's verdict, took place at Lewes before Lord Chief Justice Erle on the 28th ultimo. A soldier of the name of Cleary, 59th Foot, was tried for the wilful murder of a student named Hough-

ton, at Chichester, on the 16th October, 1861. It was supposed that Cleary intended to kill his officer, Major Bush, and shot this young student by mistake. On the 15th October, the prisoner, who

was in barracks at Chichester, with the depot of the 59th Regiment, was told that he was to go out to exercise in drill the next morning.

The prisoner said he would not go, and uttered some vague threats. He lay down in his bed, at the head of which was a rack with his rifle, and complained of pain. At 10 o'clock he went out in his great-coat. About half an hour later the crack of a rifle was heard, and both the prisoner and his rifle were said by a brother-soldier to be absent.. But on this night no harm was done. Neither on the 15th or 16th did the prisoner return. He was seen in a public-house near Chichester on the evening of the 16th. The fatal shot was fired a few minutes before midnight on the 16th. A little before this time on the night of the 16th, a man in the prisoner's dress was seen standing under a hedge with a rifle in his hand, and a man similar in appearance had been seen to scramble across the lane in which the fatal shot took effect also a few minutes before it was heard. The prisoner was found going away from Chichester without his rifle on the next day., and the rifle was discovered in a field, near the spot at which the shot took effect. The defence was that the prisoner was only a deserter, and, had not fired the shot in question. The circum- stantial evidence against him was great ; but the Chief Justice's charge was not in any sense explicit, and the jury found a verdict of not guilty, to the scandal of public opinion. The verdict, howefer, if the evidence was fairly reported, was by no means absolutely de- cisive; and certainly, in spite of the comments which this case alone has provoked, such a verdict being much more excusable than the deliberate conviction the other day at Sheffield in the face of very strong evidence.

Filimicie.L.—The new Egyptian Loan has been contracted for by one of the leading houses in London. Messrs. Fruhling and Goshen, and Messrs. Lawrence, Son, and Pearce are the brokers. The price of issue is 824 for a 7 per Cent. Stock redeemable at par. The scrip is at 21, I prem. The official declaration gives the amount of the loan at 1,841,040/. sterling, in Bonds amounting to 2,195,2001. at 824 per cent., bearing interest at 7 per cent, per annum from the 1st of March, 1862, payable half-yearly in London, redeemed in 30 years, and paid off at 100. This loan has been contracted with the Bank of Saxe Meiningen, for the purpose of extinguishing the float- ing debt of Egypt, and is specially secured on the revenue of the Provinces of the Delta, producing an annual sum exceeding 600,000L net, while the charge for the Interest and Sinking Fund on the kiwi

will be 176,000/. per annum. The net revenue of Egypt, after is for the tribute to the Porte, exceeds 3,500,0001. There s no

Foreign Public Debt, and no Paper Currency. The terms Of the issue are as follows : 5 per cent. on Application, 10 per cent. on Allotment, 15 per cent. on 10th May, 1862, 15 per cent. on 10th June, 1862, 15 per cent. on 10th July, 1862, 15 per cent. on 10th August, 1862, and 74 per cent. on 1st September, 1862, less 3/. 10s. per cent., being one half-year's Interest on the nominal amount of the Bond. There have been rumours of other foreign loans, but nothing definite has transpired, except that the one for Peru is postponed. The Budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not of a nature to affect monetary matters. The revenue accounts are satisfactory. The tone of the money market has been firm in consequence of the appearance of so many new things and the talk of fresh loans, but has now become easier, as the surplus profits on the Turkish Loan, &c., have been set free. The whole of the India Bills of 400,0001. have been taken at and about the Government minimum. The funds have been rather unsettled by the movements of the money market, the report of changes in the French and Italian Ministry, and the movements of Garibaldi, &c. Consols have been down to 94, and are now up to 934' 94. The New and Reduced Three per Cents 92/, I. Exchequer Bills 18s., 21 prem. The Indian Securities have been flat, but are now recovering. The Five per Cent Stock is at 1084, f, but have been at 108. The Five per Cent. Rupee Paper has receded to 102/' 3. The Five-and-a- Half per Cents at 108/, 4. The Bonds 25s. 28s- prem. A large amount of speculative bnsiuess has been transacted in Turkish Bonds. The New are at 704, 71. The Old 83/ 844. Mir6s 65/, I. The Scrip of the New Loan 24, I. Mexican Bonds are down to 334, .344, in consequence of the French and Spanish Governments being dissatisfied with the arrangement of the allied forces for a settlement of all demands. Railway Shares are generally lower in value this week say from 10s. to 11. Great-Western are at 734, 74; North- Western 924, 93; South-Western, 99, 100; South-Eastern, 824, 83.