OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1218, 29 January 1878, Page 2

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[written specially fob the GLOBE, j London, December 13. It is announced that henceforth mail communication between England and New Zealand will be regular, and letters will be despatched every four weeks from this date, the mail by which this letter will he conveyed to you being the first of a new arrangement which the Postmaster-General has been enabled to make. Probably you know all about this arrangement already, for I have some sort of notion that it originated on your side of the world and not on this, where the official mind is not very open {to new or improved ideas. I only hope that in the matter Lord John Manners and his subordinates will prove more successful than they have been found in other branches of the great national undertaking. Under present management our Post-office is rapidly deteriorating. The charges are being constantly increased in the most trilling but still the most vexatious ways. For instance take the telegraph branch, respecting which you will find Sir Julius Vogel has a good deal to say, though much of it has been said before, in the current number of the “ Nineteenth Century”—a nearly new magazine of the first rank, which jumped at once into celebrity. It has frequently been demonstrated that by reducing the price of telegrams the receipts of the office would be greatly increased, far beyond any extra outlay for work and material, but still head quarters hold out against a sixpenny telegram as hardly as did the cabmen of byegone years against a sixpenny fare per mile. The latter had to give in, and have found it to be greatly to their advantage, for even last week I saw it announced in Liverpool, where the fares are higher than in London, as indeed they are in most of the provincial towns, that the cabmen hud voluntarily reduced their prices in order to encourage a diminishing traffic. I have no hope that such a step will be taken at our Post Office, which is ruled by a politician who has not an idea of commerce. I admire Lord John Manners for some things. A few years ago I was in the House of Commons when his party were in opposition, and on a Wednesday afternoon he was the sole occupant of the front bench. Nothing but the dreariest business was being done, or expected to come on, but suddenly an announcement was made to the House from the Prime Minister which needed an immediate challenge from some one opposite. Up jumped Lord John Manners and rang out a severe and very appropriate phillippic which brought forth a burst of cheering from both sides of the House. If he had half as much fire in business as he has in politics we should not now have to pay three-farthings for. a half-penrly post card or newspaper wrapper, and our telegrams would be something better than badly spelled, ill-written, and almost illegible scrawls. I mentioned in a recent letter—l think it was in my last one—that the remains of a young lady who had lived in New Zealand, but died in London while on a visit to this country, were about to be shipped to the; colony and finally interred in a church where the lady herself had expressed a wish to be buried. The order for removal was obtained from the Chancellor of the Diocese of London, but since some further proceedings have taken place which have arrested the contemplated shipment. A few days ago the case came before Dr Tristram, who was occupied for several hours in the consideration of some very unhappy family differences. It was stated that the father, Mr Smith, who had! returned to New Zealand, only gave his consent to the removal of the corpse from Kensal Green Cemetery on the mental reservation that the mother would return to him, she having before that time separated from him, and in consequence of some step he had taken before he left England to return home, the cemetery authorities would not give up the body to her. The father has a brother-in-law —a Mr Russell Roberts, a chancery barrister in London, who had heard of the first application being made to the Ecclesiastical Court, and intervened. He has been successful in staying all proceedings until Mr Smith c*a bo served with a citation, and when a return i» made to that writ the case will again come up for discussion. The long-pending trial of the detectives ha® at length come to a close. After I despatched my last letter a very speedy end was put to the case. I there stated that counsel were engaged, at the time I wrote, in trying to make out what defence was possible for clients who, had the worst imaginable case. The summing up of Mr Baron Pollock was comparatively very brief, and before he had spokes to the jury for half an hour everyone ia Court, including the men in the dock, must have felt that conviction was certain. However the jury, when it came to their turn to deliberate on the subject, took a merciful view of the matter as regarded one of the defendants —Inspector Clarke, the oldest and most trusted of all the detective force in London. He was acquitted, but was required to attend at any future time when he might be called upon, but this week counsel for the Crown have intimated their intention not to proceed further against him. All the other prisoners were convicted, including Mr Froggatt, the solicitor who had acted on behalf of some of the turf swindlers and received in payment some of the money which had been fraudulently obtained. I had at first a belief that he would have been acquitted, but at the trial some ugly evidence was given against him, including a matter about a telegram which was sent in a forged name to the police authorities at Rotterdam, with a view to try to obtain the release of one of the gang. That little trick, however, failed. All the defendants on their conviction appealed to the Judge for a merciful sentence, but he inflicted th© heaviest punishment allowed by the law* viz., imprisonment with hard labor for two years, and told them that if the Legislature could have conceived it possible for such a case to have arisen, he would probably have been armed with power to give a much heavier sentence. The consequences, however, are much greater to these defendants than they would be to ordinary criminals. The detective officers were mea who had been for very many years in responsible, though poorly paid positions. Each will be dismissed from the force with ignominy, and forfeits a pension, on which he might hare spent the evening of his life its comfort. The whole of Mr Froggatt's professional status and connection has been destroyed by his conviction, and already steps have been taken to have his name removed from the roll of solicitors to tine High Court! of Justicc.

But although aa regards the individuals the case is over, the mattar out of which it arose has aroused in the public mind a feeling of unquiet and dissatisfaction, that will not speedily be laid to rest. The Commission appointed by the Home Secretary to inquire into the constituted condition of the detective force is now sitting privately twice © week, and probably between Kew Year'# day

and the meeting of Parliament in February, we shall be in possession of their recommendations. I hear that the revelations are of such a nature that the report itself and the evidence will be left a profound secret at the Home Office, and it is most remarkable that, although the inquiry has been proceeding tor some weeks, not a scrap of information has leaked out, and that, too, at a time when the purveyors of news to the journals are most anxious to lay hold of the merest cobwebs of talk. It must not, however, be supposed that all the dissatisfaction is on one side. In the police force there are men of the most unblemished character —though the crime of a few has thrown a deep tarnish over all the department. It has long been the custom when a man was employed on what may be called an honorary duty, to allow him to receive a gratuity from the person he served. The authorities professed not to allow it, but they winked at it in such an open manner that Colonel Henderson found it impossible to ignore the existence of these donations, and has issued an order requiring every officer to whom money may be given to hand the same at head-quarters with a view to a general distribution of the sum at stated times. The men who have been in the habit of getting this pocket-money are up in arms at this order, and only a few days ago, when a noble bridegroom sent a douceur to one of the officers employed to keep order amongst the crowds of fashionables and unfashionables who flocked to his wedding the man declined to take it, and told the Duke that he had better send his Bank note to Colonel Henderson. ______