General News.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4897, 19 September 1884, Page 3

General News.

The luiury of law is well known to be ,cry costly. An illustration of this is shown by. the recent litigation of the London Financial Association with Sir John Kelk and others. The costs of the defendants, es ' taxed, amount to about £40,000. VY hat the fawyers' bill of the Association is remains to be seen. Particulars are published of the project for conducting a ship wdbl across Ireland. The proposed canal would be 127 miles in length, and would contain 30 locks. For ships of 1500 tons the cost woild.be £8,000,000; for ships of 2000 ions £12,000,000; and for ships of 5000 S'atdupward^OOOOOO KbujU «« this case scale the canal would be iUO feet wide on the surface and 100 feet at Tbe^ passage through the csnal would be effected by a system of Swaee and it is estimated that the SZiMe of a Bhip from Galwayßay to Cgstown would occupy between 24 and 36TbTcap<5 colonists, jealous of the 1 „ wh i o h has attended ostrich farm- ? ttCwh in Australian Colonies and the ?* nt L Eepublio, and fearful lest the Ar/^^mav at no distant date be taken ffiS^T******* deter.

i.iiji-tl lo tiike otrong measures to protect themselves, and have induced the Cqlonia! Parliament to pass a Bill imposing a t*x of £100 on all ostriches exported. Seldom, if ever, in the whole history of banking has anoney been so cheap as at present, says the Kconomist. A quarter of one per cent, per annum (l|d a day interest on £1000, or only 13s 8d a day for a ioan of £100,000) is so strange—we had written impossible—a condition of affairs that it will tend all the sooner to work its own cure. County bankers cannot afford to have bankers eating their beads off in London at even -| per cent., and their London agents who receive money on such terms «nd re lend it at J. or, in default of a better price, let the money lie idle, are equally desirous of being rid of it. That the " official minimum " is not now below 2 per cent, is owing to the circumstance that the "Bank of England never has published a quotation below that figure, but under present conditions, they must accommodate their private customevs below that rate, or practically for the time surrender their discount business. Ho other State bank, except the Bark of France, has ever lowered its rate to 2 per cent., and the Bank of France has only done so on two occasions, in 1877 and 1879. But the present is the tenth occasion on which the Bank of England has reduced its rate to a 2 per cent, level.