Unpleasant intelligence was received on Monday from the Cape. Mr.
A. J. Van Breda, the Assistant-Treasurer-General, was arrested for the theft of 152,567, which, it is alleged, he abstracted from the Treasury, and " lent " to friends, most of them officials, and some of them in the Treasury. Defalcations are possible, of course, in England, as well as the Cape Colony, but it came out in the investigations that the defalcations extend over a period of fifteen years, that the books are so badly kept that the examining accountants appointed by Government were six months hunting out the facts, and that the Treasurer-General neverhas the keys of his own department in his possession. No kind-Of thorough audit appears to be attempted. The affair was revealed, apparently after years of silence, by an accountant in the oflt e. Mi. Van Breda was held to bail in £10,000, but is reported to be suffering from mental derangement.
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