ENGLISH CLIPPINGS.

Evening Star, Issue 2910, 17 June 1872, Page 3

ENGLISH CLIPPINGS.

A Treasury Minute has been published fixing the salary of the Law Officer Crown. The Attorney-General next after

Sir J. Coleridge is to have L7OOO a year for all non-contentious work, and the usual professional “fees” for contentious business; and the Solicitor-General, beginning with Mr Jessel, L6OOO, and the same fees. The Patent fees go to the Exchequer. The arrangement is fair enough, but it does not bind the Law officers to give up private practice, and does not fix very definitel3 r the “usual professional” allowances to be paid. Suppose Sir J. Coleridge to fight jtho Tichborne claimant for a Crown estate, would he have had 1.6,000 sent him ? The Times recommends that the Attorney-General should have a seat in the Cabinet and so be paid for the loss of his practice in honour ; but honour will not feed a peerage, and we are not ready to shut the door of the Upper House on the Bar. Besides it is certain that a man who can get L6O a day by practice would give that up for a sixteenth part of a right to settle what the House of Commons should be asked to do.

A terrible accident has occurred ou board H M.S. Ariadne. While off the const of Portugal, on March S. a man named Felix Richardson fell overboard. The ship was immediately hove to, though a stiff breeze was blowing, and the cutter lowered, with two officers (Mr Jukes aud Mr Talbot) and seven seamen ou hoard. They searched for three hours, but oould-not find the man, and began to return, and as the cutter turned head to wind she was swamped by a broadside sea and all hands perished A second cutter was immediately lowered ; two more officers—Lieut. Bromley and Mr Egerton—and another crew immediately volunteering to save their comrades; but she also was immediately swamped, and one of her seamen drowned, though Mr Ellis, boatswain, a survivor of the Captain, and Quartermaster Lorain, risked their lives by going down with slip-ropes under the port quarter of the ship in the attempt to save him. When the first boat was swamped the officers seemed to have struggled most gallantly, one of them having been noticed encouraging the men, and from first to last every man seems to have done his duty without a thought of self.

We hope all the postmasters in England are not thieves- -because if they are it will be inconvenient to the Treasury, and thieving is for them quite legal. The postmaster of Swindon, as appears from a question asked by Mr Cadogan, was a defaulter, and his sureties had to pay the money. The Post-office, however, could not prosecute, the solicitor to the department advising that a postmaster having a debtor and creditor account with the Postoffice, does not by becoming a defaulter, break any criminal law, but only owes the money, and as the man at Swindon had spent all he had, there was no use in suing him for the balance. That is quite nice for postmasters, who have only to help themselves and spend all the money, and then get off without fear even of the County Court, but it is not a pleasant state of the law. Would it not be more satisfactory if a State officer spending State money on his own account were held ipso facto guilty of a criminal breach of trust ? Prince Bismark, according to the Berlin correspondent of the Times continues his war with the Ultramontanes. Not only does he continue to pay the salaries of excommunicated chaplains and professors—as is also to be done in Austra, under a new order of Prince Auersperg—but he has required the Bishop of Ermeland to withdraw an excommunication inflicted upon a school teacher, under penalty of losing bis State salary—a distinct attempt to prohibit spiritual action by secular means. In Baden, the State, under direction from Berlin, has gone even farther, having prohibited all monks and non-German priests, from preaching in the State churches, and suspended the law of compulsory attendance at school whenever the teacher was an Infallibist. We have commented on this policy elsewhere, but may mention here that the Correspondent denies the reported existence of a treaty between Germany and Italy. There is no need, it says, of such a treaty, as Germany and Italy have now a common enemy in the Papacy—which, however, it is clear, may have peace on terms.