A BANKRUPT PEER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1809, 9 February 1884, Page 4

A BANKRUPT PEER.

Talking about youthful peers descended from famous men, we notice one to whom the governorship of Victoria, with £10,000 a year, would come in very handily just now. Lord St. Leonards figures conspicuously among the early victims, if we may call them so, of the new Bankruptcy Act in England. He is grandson of the celebrated lawyer who, born over the shop of his father, a poor hairdresser, in 17S1, rose to bo Lord Chancellor of England, and after a career of extraordinary brilliancy, died only the other day, as it were at the age of M. It secm<» to be the fate of great lawyers to be unhappy in their family. Lord St. Leonards had ten children, namely, three sons and seven daughters, and no man ever had better opportunities of establishing them well in the world. Yet for many years before his death, ho was left almost entirely alone, and in the end was solely dependent on the affection of one daughter. His elder son wa3 a reprobate and died abroad, leaving an heir to his vices and the family honours. This grandson was an object of hatred and fear to tiie old Lord St. Leonards, whose declining years were cmbitteied by one of the most disgiaceful domestic feuds on record. From the disclosures that subsequently came to light in the notorious St Leonards will case, there is little doubt that, the grandfather having determined to disinherit the grandson, the Litter gained access to the house of death and abstracted Lord St. Leonards' will from a box where it bad been kept for many years. At all events the Conrt of Chancery considered the proofs of this sufficient, and they accordingly declared the old lord's faithful daughter to be his beiiess, under tbe provisions of a will which was not known to be in existence, and of the contents of which they had none but circumstantial evidence. What the young Lord St. Lenords has been doing since then we do not know ; but we find that at the age of thirty-seven, being a married man with a daughter, he has been adjudicated a bankrupt " on the petition of the Atmospheric Churn Company and Messrs J. M. Abrams and Co., commission agents." Debts amounting to £2407 were proved, but there were no assets and no accounts ; from which y e gather that the noble lord has been living by his wits. Mr Registrar Hazlitt warned him, in adjourning theca&e, that if lie failed to furnish a statement of his affairs, lie would " render himself obnoxious to the law" ; which means that he would incur the penalties of fraud and make the acquaintance- of the inside of a gaol. Will not the Government step in and make Loid St. Leonards Governor of some colony, as a row ard for his father's services ? When we said that great lawyers seemed fated to be unhappy in their family, we were thinking of Lord Wcstbuiy, who, like Lord St. Leonards, rose to be Loid Chancellor, by his unaided abilities, and like him also, was at daggers diawn with his own heir. The diffeionce is that whereas Lori St. Lconaids was himself a man of exemplaiy character. Lord Weatbury had only himself to blame if his children went to the dogs. When he was on his deathbed, his worthless son was sent for from some haunt abioail, to make his peace, if possible, with hisdyingsire. "Well, sir," the old man said, "I shall soon be gone, and then the greatest blackguard in England will be Lord Westbury." "He is already ! " the hopeful son replied.— Timaiu Herald.

Is Sydney it is suggested that a mounted patiol should be established in the sin bin ban districts of well armed men, each with an appointed beat, and with power not only to arrest all evildoeis, lmfc to bienk up street cornor knots, wherein every plot, form robbing a clothsline to murdering a woman, is hatched. Sydney is in a bad way. Maori Trevtmkxt op tite Apparently DuowNfcD. — -The Rangitikei Advocate states that on the 22iid nit. a little Maoii girl, between three and four years of age, fell into a well forty or fifty feet deep, near Bulls, and the rope at the well being too slight to boar a man, and some difficulty being experienced in getting another, the child had been under water half an hour before shewas rescued. The Advocate then gives the following description of the ciuious means tried by the Maoris to restore animation :—: — " Meanwhile, a smouldering fire had been kindled, the smoke being increased by linen thiown on the embers, and the unfortunate youngster was carried to it. Thiee men then got hold of the child, one encircling his arms round the body and the other holding the ankles. The child was lifted up, and suspended perpendicularly, head clow n over the smeke. Gieat precautions were taken to give the head the full benefit of the smoke v hich was concentrated by means of blankets and shawls enveloping the ' opciators.' The&e worthies gave the child a good jerk every second or so, ' to shake the water out of it.' They had a pretty severe time of it, being nearly choked with the smoke, and in danger of being burnt from the incipient fl.unes which broke forth every now and again, but which were extinguished by a watcher stretched on the ground at full length, whose duty appeared to be to keep the smoke going. The operators were occasionally relieved by otheis. After this performance had been going on for twenty minutes, Dr Frood arrived, and ordered the men to desist and take the child into the house. Here a hasty examination convinced him that the child was dead, but he tried the European method of lesusitating the apparently diowned for about ten minutes, when the natives, in no very polite terms, told him the child would not recover by such treatment, but, if he would let them follow out their own custom, the child would soon recover. They related many wondeiful cases in which they had restored animation in their own way— in one case after a man had been under the water for 24 hours ! The doctor told them the child was dead ; but they could take it if they liked, at the same time telling them that their mode of treatment was just the way to suffocate the child instead of restoring it to life. Without more ado a Maori woman snatched up the child, and it was aoon being operated upon in the manner already described. For an hour and a half they continued this treatment, but without avail." Why Khartoum Should Not be Abandoned. —A letter published in the Times of Dec. 7 over the signature of "Ibrahim King" gives some excellent reasons why Khartoum should be held at all costs :—": — " As an Egyptian, I venture to ask permission to draw the attention of your readers to two facts connected with the all-important question of the Soudan, which have, I think, hitherto escaped observation. I do not imagine it will be contested that a knowledge of the probable height of the rising Nile is absolutely essential to the. prosperity and even to the safety of Egypt. This information alone can enable the Egyptians to make timely precautions against inundations on the one hand, or economise the water supply on the other, The only existing means of arriving beforehand at the requisite estimate of the volume of water flowing northwards, consists of two Nilometers erected for that purpose by His Highness the Khedive Ismail — at Khartoum, the conference of the White and Blue Niles, and at Berber, where the tributary Atbara enters the main stream. These instruments enable the officials at Khartoum to telegreph to Cairo with accuracy the state of the river 10 to 25 clays in advance. These precautionary measures alone enabled the Egyptian Government to wholly save the country from the calamities which the almost unprecedented rise of the Nile in 1875 would have ofcherwiao inevitably occasioned.' The abandonment of Khartoum and Berber would involve, the surrender of sources of .knowledge .Which I believe are of vital importance to ' the