At a meeting of the Middlesex Magistrates on Thursday, the
Chairman read a letter from Mr. Samuel March Phillips, which accompanied the new Wills Bill, to the effect that the bill being of great and Feneral importance, Lord John Russell would recommend the Magistrates to take every means of giving it publicity. The worshipful gentlemen were quite indignant at the application. The Chairman declared that he did not see how the Court was to give the Act pub. licity ; and Mr. Rotch could not understand why Government should expect the Chairman of the Middlesex Sessions to act as the medium for publishing their laws. The Chairman apologized for reading the letter, and the subject was dropped. [This incident must remind everybody of the neglect on the part of the Government and Legisla. ture of this country to take any efficient means of diffusing a necessary knowledge of the laws. Intelligible abstracts of every act which requires to be generally known, ought to be published by authority, and sold at a nominal price. Then ignorant persons would only have themselves to blame for the consequences of their ignorance.1
The embankment and river foundations of the new Houses of Par. liament have been contracted to be made by Messrs. John and Henry Lee, for 73,373/. The estimate was 40,0001. If other parts of the works exceed the estimate in a like proportion, the total expense will not be trifling. Of course there will be a prodigious quantity of jobbing in making out the contracts.
For some time past, workmen have been employed in the erection of a spacious building near the north entrance of the British Museum, in Montagu Place, containing a library and reading-rooms, and several painters were engaged there. On Monday, after they had erected a scaffolding about twenty feet high, seven men mounted it, and proceeded to their work ; when, in consequence of one of the quarterings having a fault in it, it broke in two, and the whole of them were preci. pitated to the floor. Four were severely hurt, and taken to the North London Hospital; where one of them soon died.
The open space in front of the National Gallery is, it seems, to be enclosed by an iron railing, planted with shrubs, and laid out in walks. In the course of a few years the shrubs will overtop the magnificent portico ; as it is, the building is lower than the shops adjoining it in Pall Mull. Would it not be as well to convert it into mews or barracks ?
At a Court of the Directors of the Thames Tunnel Company, on Thursday, Mr. Brunel gave a detailed report of the late irruption. He stated that the aperture in the bed of the river had been closed, and that the water had been successfully cleared out of the tunnel. The shield has been approached, and all found in good order. The quantity of mud which had run into the tunnel from the bed of the river is much less than was expected. The clearing out of the shield will be imme. diately commenced, and the works will then be resumed.
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