HOP PLANTING.
Two deputations waited on the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tues- day, one of huge proportions. They were the hop-planters of Sussex,
headed by four Members and one ex-Member of Parliament. Their object was to ask for a total repeal of the duty. Mr. Disraeli bad been opportunely summoned to Windsor, and was therefore not at home—Mr. G. A. Hamilton did duty for him. The planters were amply represented by spokesmen, backed up by a memorial. Their case is that the hop- duty is an impost of uniform pressure upon articles of fluctuating value; that it is not paid by the consumer ; that the necessity of providing funds to meet the impost twice a year leads to the glutting of the market. Sussex hops, selling at from 408. to 66.T., now yield a loss. The duty and the cost of cultivation swallow up more than the selling price. In years of abundance the planters suffer most, for then the duty is heavy and the price is low. One planter showed that he was a loser at the rate of 151. per acre upon forty sores, because there had been an abundant crop and a high duty. The duty on those forty acres equalled the whole rent of a farm of 600 acres. Mr. Hamilton promised to state the facts to Mr. Disraeli. The second deputation came from Rent. Their demand was simply asked for a remission of 50 per cent on the duty leviable for the crop of 1858.
The first Court of Common Council, under the reign of Lord Mayor Wire, was held on Monday. It was a Special Court. The Corporation Reform Inquiry Committee brought up a report in which they asked for full powers to deal with the Government in the matter of corporation reform. This led to a long debate and a smart contest, a large party being unwilling to delegate the power of the Court to the Committee. The motion to adopt the report was amended by the addition of words requiring the Committee to report to the Court every arrangement before it was agreed to. This was carried by 57 to 35. At a meeting of the Court of Common Council on Thursday, it was proposed to grant 1001. in aid of the fund raised for the purpose of adapt- ting the dome area of St. Paul's Cathedral for purposes of divine . worship. This met with opposition from Mr. Connell, Mr. Deputy Lott, and others. Was it desirable that the Church of England should come to the corporation as a mendicant for money to make a cathedral like a t.i. which horsemenebip rs Perierated? The ,oppositionstalled, wthe propoga to grAptAhp rgoney Wati wriod.
small Radical reform meeting was held in Finsbury on Monday, „palliating of from four to five hundred people. Mr..Hows was chair-
; Mr. Digby Seymour and Mr. Ernest. Jones were the chief speak-
arr, Seymour disgusted his audience' by Saying that he would ex- :de from the suffrage all guilty of mime or drunkenness, and all who maid read or write. Mr. Ernest Jones made up for this by proposing that every man should have a vote—unless he were at the time under- ,oing punishment for a crime—whether he could read and write or not. Iva people must never swerve from the principles of the Charter, This charter has four points—manhood suffrage, ballot, triennial Parkiaments, less unequal electoral districts. A meeting of master-printers, Mr. John Cassell in the chair, was held at peers Coffee-house, on Thursday. Resolutions were agreed to de- scribing the tax as R. tax upon raw material, inerea.sing the coat and _de- teriorating the quality of paper, and checking the diffusion of knowledge among the poor. One master-printer only appeared in opposition to
these views.
The North-West London Preventive and Reforreatory Institute cern- kriesin ita.support the Bishop of Oxford and the Earl of Shaftesbury. It is a good institution' but it lacks funds.. Its expenditure la 3000/. a year; its debt 1700/. What is 'wanted is money to pay the debt, and to meet the expenses incurred by dealing with its 500 inmates. On Wednesday its new industrial schools were opened.
In the Court of Bankruptcy on Saturday before Mr. Commissioner, Gold- burn Daniel Mitchell Davidson and Cosmo William Gordon, colonial brokers and metal volts of Mincing Lane and elsewhere, were before the Court for their certificates. Mr. Liuklater appeared for. the assignees, and drew forth several facts in a very long examination of Mr. Gordon. He entered into the proceedings of the firm, beginning with their first existence as the firm of Sargent, Gordon, and Co., established in 1841 with a capital of 3,0001. each. The firm had very large transactions with Thomas Webb, of the West Ham distillery ; in 1848 those transactions amounted to 50,0001.; in 1852 they had amounted to 598,0001.; and for the last six months of their career they were at the rate of a million a year. Webb owed the bankrupts 184,0001. Having failed as members of the firm of Sargant and Co., the bankrupts recommenced trading on the 1st ofJanuary 1853 with an alleged surplus of 52,000/. In August of that year, Webb offered a composition with his'ereditors ; Messrs. Davidson and Gor- don paid for him 2s. ed. in the piinud, and guaranteed 2s. 611• more, and took possession of the West Ham distillery..• They had become connected with Joseph Windle Cole; and in the month of October 1853 they had cer- tain interviews with Mr. Chapman of the firm of Overend Gurney and Com- pany. Some portion.of the subjects discussed-at these interviews, in which Cole took part, related to warrants for &poker lodged by the bankrupts with Messrs. Overeud, Gurney, and Co., as security for advances to an amount which was reduced to 120,0001. It appears that Cole had subsequently dis- posed of the spelter ; but Mr. Gordon deuced that he was conscious of the fact, that he had admitted it to Mr. Chapman, or that Mr. Chapman " used any un- kind language to him." This part of the enquiry was adjourned until the at- tendance of Mr. Chapman. Another point into which the Court inquired was the debt to Messrs. John Freeman and Copper Company, to whom the firm owed, Mr. Gordon thought, 14,0001., not 18,0001. In October 1853, a war- rant for goods at Hagen's wharf was delivered to Messrs. Freeman and Com- pany, and it afterwards turned out that the goods were not there. Messrs. Freeman and Co. had continually pressed the firm to make sales of copper. 14 We did so," said Mr. Gordon, " but we made the sales to ourselves, and shipped the copper on our own account"; not telling Messrs. Freeman and Co., except in two instances. Davidson and Gordon continued trading until June 1854, when they "went away"; but they considered they were sol- vent all that time. They went away because they could not meet excise demands to the extent of 70001. They did not know that the warrants which they delivered to Freeman and Co., or to Overend, Gurney, and Co., were otherwise than genuine; they fully believed them to be so. The ease was adjourned until Friday. the 26th of November.
The Marlborough Street Magistrate, Mr. Beadon, gave judgment on Tues- day in a case arising under the new 'Building Act which excited great in- terest, as it affected a large amount of house property in the Metropolis. The outline of the case is this—The back yard of a house in Charles Street Middlesex Hospital., was roofed over with a skylight as high as the first floor. This was held to be an infringement of that clause of the Building Act which enacts that dwelling-houses shall have a certain space open be- hind, in order to furniah a due supply of air and ventilation to the house. lie decided that the room in question was not a room iu a dwelling-house within the meaning of the act. The words in the statute mean every room in the dwelling house, but this new room formed by roofing over the back yard, is intended to be a warehouse, and is no part of the dwelling-house. Farther evidence was taken on Thursday, before the Westminster Police Magistrate, in regard to the charge of conspiracy brought against the directors of the General Omnibus Company and servants in their employ. Not much progress was made. The great object of the counsel for the defendants was to shake the credit of the constable who deposed to the irregularities of the company's servants at Sloane Street. In this they failed. The characteristic of the examination was that the parties seem, under the judicious management of Mr. Paynter, nearer to some settlement. An American seaman named Brown has stabbed a policeman. Brown and a woman were making a disturbance ; constable Roebuck interfered when Brown drew his knife and drove it first into one leg and then the other. Brown was soon after arrested. At the police court ho showed great indiffer- ence and said he was drunk.
A hurricane of wind swept over London and its neighbourhood on Mon- day and Monday night, dealing out destruction in the parks and in public and private gardens. Life was lost. A Chimney stack fell upon a house in Spitalfields, burying a family under it, and killing a father and son. A Policeman was found drowned in the Surrey Canal.
The great bell at Westminster spoke on Thursday, for the firat time, It slaw struck with the clapper, Mr. Denison pulling the rope. " The first stroke was slight, but afterwards it came peal after peal in a tremendous volume of sound that was actually painful. It seemed to swell and grew "ma the air with a vibration that thrilled every bone in the listener's body Yelth a painful jar, becoming louder and louder with each gigantic clang, till one shrunk from the awful reverberations as from: something tangible heenrdtodangerous to meet. Many went upon the balustrade outside the cham-
th the waves of sound that seemed eddying round the tower ; but e escape was only a partial relief, the great din seeming almost to Pene- trate the stone-work of the battlements, and jar the very place in which one stood."
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