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THE EXAMINER.

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the line, and troop of 50 men of a cavalry regiment. At nine o'clock at night a detachment, composed of four compinies, takes its station in the centre of the

lace, and remains all night with loaded arms ; 80 sentinels with loaded arms, keep watch in and around the palace during the night; besides which patrols and detachments visit every part of the palace and the gardens every half hour; 55 of the attendants in the gardens, and of the domestics of the royal household, mount guard in the royal apartments during every night arined with double-barrelled guns. In addition to all this multitude, there isa number of police agents, aids de camp, adjutants, &c, continually on duty. A secret passage leads from the palace to one of the nearest barracks, and some of the guard houses are provided with ladders to enable the soldiers to enter the palace and gardens at any moment.—French Cor- respondent of the Edinburgh Register.

A Marve tous Srory is told in one of our ex- changes which we think cannot well be beaten. The truth of it is vouched for:

‘It isstated ofa man in Illinois, named William Corey, while cutting down a large oak, a flash of lightning came down the tree, and made a hole in the earth five feet deep, and buried him in it upto his neck, so fast as to make it impossible for him to get out. He was res- cued by his friends next morning. It is added, as strange, that four panthers had been in the :ree which Mr. C. was cutting down, but gave no intimation of

their presence, which was discovered only by their be-|

ing found dead in the upper branches where they had been concealed, and were killed by the lightning,’

PONS Al) ass,

News by the last English Mail.

{From the European Times.] COMMERCIAL AFFAIRS.—MORE FAILURES. It is satisfactory to state that the interval which has assed since the departure of the Steam Ship Acadia, CS been one of far less excitement than we have had to describe for some time. Numerous failures of mer- cantile houses, and a heavy list of bankrupts both in England and Scotland, still attest the deep-seated inis- chief which has crept into our commercial system ; but upon the whole, a very marked improvement in public feeling has prevailed. The great discount houses in London have reduced the rate of interest allowed on money at call by one per cent., and money for commer- cial purposes can now be produced ‘ata price; but whilst the minimum rate of the Bank of England is still kept upateight per cent. it would be delusive to say that our difficulues are removed. Large importations of bullion are pouring in from all quarters of Europe, the result of our high exchange, and of the vast number of unpaid acceptances which have been returned to the drawers. ‘I'he accounts of the Bank of England inprove accordingly, and indicate that the reserve of notes and the bullion areon the increase. The improvement is slow, and we earnestly trust that we may have no re- lapse, At the same time, it would be wrong to conceal that in the highest quarters, especially in the banking circles of London, and among the consigners of goods in Manchester, that the nextand succeeding accounts from India are looked for with a deep and secret an- xiety. The effect, also, of the overthrow of many long- established West India houses in London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, must inevitably spread extensive ruin in our transatlantic colonies; and until we are enabled to appreciate the full extent of the mischief, which must in a greater or less degree reach every quarter ofthe globe with which we have commercial relations, a certain degree of apprehension must prevail, which will tend to check large transactions in trade. ‘The immense imports of produce which are still pouring in, are also the cause of much anxiety, inasmuch as a fearful re- action is anticipated; and if cur requirements of grain should be again, this seasou, to any extent, the ex- changes must eneviatably turn against us, and with- draw the bullion which is now steadily returning to the coffers of the Bank. Another feature of a most un- favourable character for our, future prospects is, that whilst the returns of the Board of Trade continue to exhibit an enormous increase of consumption of all the chief articles which contribute to the necessaries of life, or luxuries of the people, a very considerable diminution continues to prevail in all those imports upon which the success of our future manufacturing industry depends. These considerations must weigh with every reflecting merchant, and will doubtless form the grounds for serious deliberation in the new Parlia- ment about to meet. We refer to the list, in another column, of failures - which have occured since the departure of the packet, which, although containing a number of names, does not exhibit such a serious aspect as those previously published. In London the failure of the old and respect- able West India house of Judah Cohen and Sons, occa- sioned deep regret Their liabilities are about £52,- 000. Thurburn and Co. (formerly Briggs, Thurburn and Co.), in the East India and Egyptian trade, have also stopped payment. Their liabilities are estimated .at £120,000. They were for many years agents for =the Viceroy of Egypt. The failure of Johnson, Vole,

and Co., East India merchants, has beenalso announced. with liabilities to the extent of £200,000, and Ryder, Wienholt and Co., in the same trade, with obligations to the amount of 60,000/. On Monday last the exten- sive coloniel brokers, Trueman & Cook, of Mincing- lane, whose transactions have been of late years second tonone in London, suspended payment. ‘Their liabili- ties are conjectured at about 350,000!. Within these few months they have curtailed their business to a great extent. Ifthe failure had oeeurred a few weeks ago, their liabilities would not have been much less than one million sterling. This feilure is greatly to be deplored, as it must inevitably bring down other houses with which the house is connected, and it proves but too plainly that the mischief is not all over.

Mr. Robert Farrand, an old respectable corn factor in Mmark-lane, has also suspended payment. His business was considered very safe, and was at one time very extensive. He sat in the House of Commons during the two first Parliaments after passing the Re- form Act, and was much respected.

Messrs. J. Thomas, Son and Lefevre, are making arrangements for the payment of an immediate dividend of 2s. 6d. inthe pound; and the representations made to their creditors of the state of their affuirs are con- sidered satisfactory. A dividend of 6s. 8d. in the pound, payable on the 2Yth instant, has been declared under the estate of W. and J. Woodley, of the Corn Exchange, whose failure took place in August. A further meet- ing ,of the creditors of Messrs, Sanderson and Co, has been held, and out of 1,.725,000/ of liabilities at the date of suspension, 1,100,000/ is understood to have run off, so that the outstanding total, which at the date of the last meeting was 1,000,0001, is now reduced to 625,0001. The amount of bills held by Mr. Sanderson upon houses which have failed since his suspension, and which have fallen due up to the present time, is stated at about 35,000/. The affairs of Messrs. Higgins and Deane (Barton, Irlam, and Co.) and those of M‘ Tear, Hadfield, and Co., of Liverpool, whose failures we have before announced, are to be administered under a fiat of bankruptey issued against them.

In Manchester the chief failures have been Kershaw, Holland, and Co.,and Marsland, Veltmann, and Co. The liabilities of the latter have not yet been ascer- tained,

In Glasgow failures continue to take place. Ogilvie. Clarke, and Co., Cowans, Smith, and Co., and Campbell and Batty are the principal. ‘The celebrated Campbell of Islay, the great landowner of Argyleshire, has sunk, under difficulties to the extent of 600,000/; and the Right Honourable Adam Gordon, Viscount Kenmare, figures in the Scotch Gazette as a bankrupt.

The following provincial banks have stopped pay- ment since the 4th :—The Honiton Bank, (Flood and Lott,) and Bridport Bank, (Gundry’s;) they were both banks of issue, but not to agreatamount. Great endea- vours are being made tu resuscitate the Royal Bank of Liv erpool, and .tis confidently expected that the insti- tution will resume business on the Ist December next. The London Joint Stock Bank has undertaken the agency in the metropolis; and by an issue of new shares, anda general remodeiling of the deed of settle- ment, it is hoped that the Bank will be reinstated in public opinion, withan ample capital for the transaction of its future business. Measures are in further pro- cress for the re-establishment of the North and South Wales Bank, and the Liverpool Banking Company, and we trust these institutions will also be enabled to re- commence business.

We regret to state that the serious decline in the prices of Sugar is now producing in Amsterdam, the seat of great Sugar refineries of Europe, considerable embarrassment. Besides the failure of the house N. Brabaart recorded in our list, which is connected with Drake and Co., of Havannah, and J. H. Rupe and Son, other houses, whose names we forbear to mention, have been in urgent difficulties. A Sugar house, beyond all comparison the most extensive in the world, whose transactions are immense with Germany and the Medi- terranean, and, indeed with every spot where Sugar is consumed, has been compelled to seek assistance from the Government, which has been accorded to a great amount.

The old-established house of Palengat and Co., of Bayonne, has stopped payment. ‘Their engagements are estimated at about 32,000. ‘I'he cause is attributed to extensive speculations in corn.

Dr. Bowrine, M. P., Rossen or £1,000 By Hicu- WAYMEN.—Late on Friday nigh t the metropolitan police force received intelligence from Wales of the following daring case of highway robbery, perpetrated in noonday on Thursday last, on the public road a few miles from Bridgend. Early onthatday Dr. Bowring and his bro- ther, who is the chief manager of the Llynvi Ironworks, at Maesteg, proceeded from that place to Bridgend, to procure from the company’s bankers money to pay the workmen their wages. The cheque was for 1,000/., and they received for the same 600/. in sovereigns, 1501. in silver, and 250/. in bank notes. On their return they were attacked by two men, with fire-arms, and robbed of the whole sum. The parties have been taken, and most of the property has been recovered.

Mvrper.—A man was on Friday brutally beaten to

death by a party of ruffians at Cardiff, in Wales.

Poisontnc or a Famtty.—On Monday morning a labouring man named Newland, together with his whole family, consisting of his wife, mother, and three children, residing in Ratcliff-highway, were affected with most dangerous sickness after partaking of some chickory for breakfast. By prompt measures in the application of an- tidotes and ‘stomach pumps, their lives were saved. It was supposed that the chickory of which they had par- taken was mixed with some poison, but what the delete- rious drug consisted of not being ascertained, an analysis for the purpose was commenced.

_ Another case of poisoning has occurred at Hackney, in = ason is charged with having poisoned his mother.

American RepupIATION.—T wenty-seven states com- pose that incorporation or confederacy which is called the American Union. Nine of these, being mainly the old north-eastern settlements, together with the western- most province of Missouri, have no public debt such as we now speak of. Of the remaining eighteen nine have honestly meet their liabilities without suspension, viz., Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Virginia, South Caro- lina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama; and nine have been proclaiuned defaulters—Pennsylyania, Mississippi, Indiana, Ilinois, Florida, Michigan, Mary- jand, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It may be observed that the tirst of these, which in common conversation has al- most monopolised the obloquy of the whole, is the state which is really the least obnoxious to censure. Penn- sylvania never denied any particle of her obligations, By gross mismanagement in the construction of those works for which she had contracted the debt, she fell into considerable financial difficulties, but, even before her declaration of insolvency, she imposed a property- tax to meet the coming pressure, This, however, proved ineffective, and in August, 1842, she suspended pay- ment. Since then she redoubled her efforts to levy taxes on an unwilling population, and at length so far succeed- ed as to resume payments in February, 1845. Of the eight remaining states in this black list, four plume them- selves upon the fact of having stopped short of repudia- tion, that is, of having never positively declared their resolution to pay nobody. These are Maryland, Louvisi- ana, Indiana, and [llinois. The letter of their boast is certainly not otherwise than correct, and we should be loth to deprive them of the credit due for at Jeast taking their public debt into public consideration, although the national acuteness was exercised with very equivocal taste in the arrangements proposed for meeting it. Our City correspondence, from time to time, will have infor- med the reader of the devices approved by the two latter states for simultaneously saving their pockets and their credit, according to which the public creditor was com- pelled to sink entirely a postion of his claim, and acqui- esce in the transfer of the remainder to such a security as he would never have originally accepted, in order to save the whole from extinction. Maryland is entitled to greater praise. She did impose taxes shortly after her failure, hrs acknowledged the durability of her obliga- tion, and has even made a beginning towards the liqui- dation of her arrears. The four states which remain-— Michigan, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas—have ‘as yet met all claims of principal, interest, and arrears, by em- phatic repudiation; the only hint ever thrown out of bet- ter prospects being an unauthenticated report, that the’ first of them aims to take rank eventually ‘among the’ solvent states, but upon what terms, or at what period, has not been disclosed. Such isa plain statement of

ican Union, from which any reader may draw his own conclusion as to the average culpability ofa republic’ in' which one-half of the debtors are defaulters, and otie-’ half of the defaulters repudiators, aes

Tue Inrenpep Execution or a Motrnern.—A memorial on behalf of Mary Ann Hunt, of which the fol- lowing is a copy, has been forwarded from Bridgewater to Sir George Grey, Secretary of State for the Home Department :—‘ The undersigned memorialists, inhabi- tants of the borough of Bridgewater, beg respectfully and earnestly to call your attention to the case of Mary Ann Hunt, who is now in Newgate under sentence of death, and whose execution is stayed until she has given birth to an expected infant. In this professedly Christian country there is something so peculiarly unnatural, re- volting, and horrifying, even to those who are not pre- pared to do away with the punishment of death, in the idea of making an orphan of a new-born babe, by inten- tional and violent means, that your memorialists feel bound by every consideration of duty, mercy, to pray that the sentence of death may be commuted for some punishment more in accordance with the claims of hu- manity.’

An Italian newspaper asserts that Napoleon’s widow, the Archduchess Maria Louisa of Parma, has been form- ally married at Vienna to the Count de Tombelles, one of her ministers.

It is said that Victor Cousin, hitherto one of the Pari- sian arch-priests of infidelity, has embraced Christianity, and is about to become a monk of La Trappe.

The Postmaster-General, the Marquis of Clanricarde, has gone over to Paris to arrange the details of improved postal commucications between this country and France.

It is stated that scarcely a single new railway scheme will be brought before Parliament next session. Whe

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