frimintto.

Nottingham now possesses a " General Exchange and Commercial As- sociation." It was publicly opened on Wednesday, by the Mayor and Corporation ; speeches were made ; and there was a dinner in the new Exchange.

At a meeting of the Governors of the Royal Manchester Institution, on Wednesday, it was resolved to permit the School of Arts to have the use of some of its rooms; and further, to make the institution, as far as possible, the centre, of the art, literary, and scientific institutions in the city.

There are still• serious disputes about wages in the mineral districts of South Wales, For some time past the colliers and iron-workers have had repeated advances made in their wages, but they still demanded more. In some 'cases the employers agreed to make the advance. But at Dowlais, Lady Charlotte Guest having declined to comply with the demands of the men, the Workers are " at play ": 'fifteen furnaces have been "'blown out "; 15,000 men, women, and children, were dependent for support on these great works. The Red Ash colliery-proprietors have held a meeting and resolved that they cannot give the men twopence a ton additional which they have asked for, unless the price to the consumer be raised ; which they think inexpedient.

The master spinners of Stockport have succumbed, rather than allow their large capital to lie idle, and have consented to give, in effect, the 10 per cent demanded by the workmen. To the weavers the manufacturers have offered 5 per cent increase; which has been refused; but there is a hope of compromise. The loss to all parties by the strike has been very serious.

Some of the manufacturers of Blackburn have advanced the wages of their operatives, but not to the extent of 10 per cent which was some time since demanded.

It is announced that " the weavers of Kidderminster are now again all out. Of seventeen firms, it is understood that the men of fourteen re- turned to work ; but, as it was understood that the men would support the turn-outs, the masters have determined to suspend work altogether, until the whole of the weavers consent to return to their looms."

The joiners of Leeds ask for more pay; some of the masters have ac- ceded to their demand ; others resisted it, and the men have struck. The men also desire to leave work one hour earlier on Saturday, " to ob- tain more time for recreation, and to avail themselves of going to the moor to hear the band play, and of other opportunities now afforded for intellectual and social improvement."

The poor-house for the Winslow Union was erected for 250 inmates. It has contained 270 residents ; but now, for the seventeen parishes in the union, there are but 40 inmates, and there has not since March been an ablebodied pauper in the house. The expenses have decreased to a similar extent. Some of the parishes formerly paid upwards of twenty shillings in the pound on the assessment, and now the average of the union is about ninepence in the pound.

The inhabitants of Kingston have brought an action against the Duke of Cambridge, for stopping up a road across Coombe Warren, long used by them and others, not only as a path but as a road to a farm, and to the warren itself for picnic parties. The Crown prosecuted, and the case was tried at the Croydon Assizes, for the purpose of determining whether the Duke had right to stop the road. It was argued, that the road originated in a grant of land to the Government in 1821, for a telegraph station ; that conse- quently many persons had used it, some who had a legal right and some who had not.; and that it had never been repaired by the parish. The Jury found that there was no iiight of earn i4e-oay, but a right of foot-way.

An action for seduction was tried b d'ore the Chief Baron and a Special Jurrat the same Assizes. The plaintiff was Mr. Atkinsonssolicitor, of Pe- terborough; the defendant, Mr. Barry Baldwin, formerly Member for Tot- nes. The allegations were, that Mr. Baldwin had taken advantage of a friendly intimacy with the family of Mr. Atkinson to seduce his wife. The evidence for the prosecution.showed Mr. Baldwin was about sixty-five years of age, the lady under forty; that they lived together in the same house at Ramsgate, where Mrs. Atkinson was stay in" for the benefit of her health, with the consent of Mr. Atkinson, who had not the least suspicion of the intentions of Mr. Baldwin. Something, however, excited his attention; and when he was called away to Totztes on the election business of Mr. Baldwin,

he left orders that all letters addressed to Mrs. Atkinson, in the handwriting of Mr. Baldwin, should be forwarded to him. One letter was intercepted; it led to inquiries ; and the landlady and servants of the boarding-house at Ramsgate supplied direct evidence of improper intimacy.

The defence was' that Mr. Atkinson had exposed his wife to temptation, and in other ways had behaved in a disgusting manner. The Jury found a verdict for the plaintiff; damages 40e.

There was an important decision at Croydon Assizes on Monday. The Honourable Francis Scott and Mr. Joseph Beattie surrendered to take their trial for the " manslaughter " of Charles Cannon. The Grand Jury had ignored the bill, and the gentlemen were arraigned on the Coroner's Inqui- sition. They pleaded " Not guilty." Mr. Bodkin opened the case against them. Cannon was a porter at Farnham ; he heard a train approaching, and evidently thought it was one that stopped at the station ; but it was a " survey " train, containing Mr. Scott the Chairman of the Company and Mr. Beattie the Locomotive Superintendent. Cannon tried to cross the line, but before he could mount a low wall on the further side the train struck him. The railway from Ash to Alton is merely a single line ; it was per- mitted to be opened by the Government Inspector on the understanding that not more than one engine should be upon it at the same moment. But on the evening when Cannon was killed there was a passenger-train closely fol- lowing the survey-train. No notice had been sent forward that the survey- train was coming ; and the passenger-train would have stopped short of the spot where Cannon was killed. The conclusion which the Coroner's Jury drew from these facts was, that Mr. Scott and Mr. Beattie, for whose use the survey-train proceeded from Guildford before the passenger-train, were an- swerable for the death of the unfortunate porter.

The Chief Baron, in a conversation with Mr. Bodkin, intimated that he did not consider that the accused were responsible for matters which were not under their personal control : in his opinion, a railway chairman or di- rector who engaged a special train was in exactly the same position as an ordinary traveller ; he might reasonably suppose that all that was necessary to be done would be done by the persons in the employ of the railway upon whom that duty devolved; and he would not be responsible unless it was shown that he had done some personal act or given some directions which led to the accident. Mr. Bodkin intimated that it would be useless for him to call witnesses if the Judge ruled thus upon the point of law. Chief Baron Pollock then addressed the Jury at some length. He said —"I intend to state distinctly the grounds on which it appears to me that that which the learned counsel opened to you cannot be made a crime, It is very true, as is stated, that one of these defendants is the Chairman of the Board in London, and the other of them, as is said, is the Superin- tendent of the Traffic Department in London : but when these gentlemen are remote, as we may call it, from the scene of their usual seat of business, that is, from London, I think it is a great deal too much to make it a matter either of presumption—certainly it is not legal presumption (I think it ought to be proved from evidence)—of any negligence on their part that this accident occurred ; and I think if they, at Guildford, twenty or thirty miles from London, ordered a special train, they were just as little responsible as any entire stranger. It appears to me to be hardly justice to expect that the chairman, because he is chairman, and the superintendent of the traffic, (if

the other defendant is so,) should personally acquainted with the starting of every train—with the times at which it stops at this place, and where it stops, and with all the details of the railway from one end of it to the other. If these gentlemen could be made responsible, on this sort of evidence, for an accident which occurred between Guildford and Ash, or wherever the place was, the persons connected with a railway to Edinburgh, or persons connected with an entire system of travelling from London to Paris, or from London to much more remote places—if the extension of railways should open conveniences to more distant parts of the globe in one journey—would be also responsible. How monstrous it would be to make a man, because be is the chairman of a board in London, respon- sible for any accident that may happen at Edinburgh, or it were the means of making a criminal inquiry necessary on such a matter, and the party respon- sible for an accident happening some hundred miles off on the other side of the Channel! A man who orders a special train at a particular station ex- pects that he is there merely as a passenger ; expects those whose duty Rig to take care that the traffic is there safely carried on, and that due attention be paid to the manner in which arrangements are made for the starting and the safe travelling of the special train. These are matters which are con- ducted by the men of business; and, as I understood from the counsel, there is no mode of bringing home to either of these gentlemen any personal knowledge upon the subject of any individual carelessness. But the argu- ment seems to be this—because you, as the chairman, because you were connected with the concern in London, you ought to have known every- thing about the station at Guildford, and to have taken care that everything was safe. I must say thst it appears to me that the two persons inquestion, who at Guildford order this special train, would have no more to do with the arrangements than a mere stranger."

The Attorney-General, who appeared for the defence, made a few expla- natory remarks. The train was employed entirely for the purposes of the railway. Signals were exhibited at the station, which, had he attended to them, would have informed the deceased that this was not the ordinary train. Cannon had more than once neglected to pay attention to signals, and had been reprimanded. His death was the result of his own negligence and inattention to orders.

The Jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty."

Two days have been occupied at the Warwick Assizes, before Mr. Justice Manic anda Special Jury. in hearing the case of Constant Derra de Morals. versus George Dawson and others, known as the " Von Beck affair." The trial arose out of the arrest of the soi-disant Baroness Von Beck and Constant Derra, at Birmingham, in 1851, on the charge of obtaining money under false pretences. The " Baroness" died in prison, and Derra was discharged. He brought an action against Mr. Dawson and three other gentlemen, and was defeated on technical grounds. In the present case the technicalities were surmounted, and the same evidence was tendered as before. The legal question was, who made the charge ? Mr. Justice Manic thought it was clear that Mr. Dawson and the other defendants did snake the charge. Then, was it made maliciously ? That might be inferred from the absence of a reasonable or probable cause. For instance, if persons made a charge, not for the purpose of having an offender tried, but to make the charge public, or for the purpose of vindicating their characters, that was an improper motive. Upon the question of damages, the Judge said, the suffering of the plain- tiff would have to be mainly considered, and the condition of the defend- ants. If " they were very poor, very ignorant, or very stupid, that might be ground for mitigating damages." The Jury found for the plaintiff; damages 8001. • The Reverend John Birkett brought an action at the Gloucester Assizes to recover damages for slanderous words spoken by the Reverend Thomas Bibby, charging the plaintiff with stealing a book. The whole evidence of the stealing rested on the assertion of a little boy, that he " saw Mr. Bir- kett take one of papa's books." On this ground Mr. Bibby and Mrs. Bibby publicly charged Mr. Birkett with theft. The only defence set up was, that Mr. Birkett had mistaken the charge—it was for " taking," not " stealing " the book. Damages for the plaintiff, 801. At Warwick, Hunt, a Leamington Policeman, has been convicted of in- citing two men to rob a draper's shop. When the men had effected the robbery, Hunt arrested them ; they were tried and convicted. Hunt's mo- tive was to get extra pay for appearing at the committal' and trial of the prisoners. Two other cases of inciting boys to thieve mould have been brought against him. Ho was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Ann Brooks, the woman who killed her two little children by giving them laudanum and then swallowed some herself, was tried for the murder. But it appeared probable that the prisoner had given the narcotic merely to quiet the children, not to injure them : she had recently nursed them through a severe illness. She was acquitted.

At Durham Assizes, last week, John Smith was put on his trial for the "murder" of his wife, at Bishopwearmouth. It was alleged that the prisoner had wilfully killed his wife by keeping her without food and proper assist- ance : but as the case proceeded the charge of murder was reduced by the prosecuting counsel to that of manslaughter; and in the end he declined to trouble the Judge to sum up, but consented to a verdict of "Not guilty" ; the evidence for the defence having shown that the prisoner was kind to his wife, who had been ill for years, and that he had sold or pawned every article of furniture to buy the necessaries of life. It seemed that his poverty, not his will, led him to provide so badly for his wife.

William Flack, a youth of only eighteen, has been tried at Ipswich for the murder of Maria Stegglcs, the housekeeper of the Reverend Mr. Barker, at Becton. The evidence was similar to that formerly reported. It was en- tirely circumstantial, but conclusive. While in custody, Flack accused a man named Moore as the murderer, and pretended that Moore gave hint money not to betray him ; but at the trial Moore clearly refuted the prison- er's statements. The motive of the murderer was to pillage the house ; and the plunder thus obtained was very instrumental in bringing home the crime to Flack. Ho was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. He behaved with great indifference during the trial, and left the dock smiling.

At Coventry, Danks, Lacey, and Stanley, were tried for burglary at Coles- hill. This was the notable case where an old couple named Perkins made so gallant a defence against a band of robbers ; who when they had at length broken into the house were fired upon by Perkins as they were ascending the stairs. Lacey was badly wounded, and his companions retreated, carry- ing him off. Next day, Lacey applied to the Birmingham Hospital.to be ad- mitted for a wound in the shoulder ; and this led to his detection. Stanley was acquitted; but the others were found guilty, and received sentence of twenty years' transportation. The Judge complimented the brave old couple, and ordered a reward of 101. to be paid to Mr. Perkins.

In another case, Mr. Holder, keeper of a beer-house at Aston, was also rewarded with 101. for seizing Johnson, a burglar, who was attempting to run out of Holder's house when be was disturbed in an upper room, which he had entered in the evening. Johnson beat Mr. Holder with a life-pre- server, but a neighbour came in and the ruffian was secured. Sentence, fifteen years' transportation.

Two of the men accused of the outrage and murder at Barnet have been liberated, but Cunningham has been remanded. It is believed that another of the culprits, known as "Sailor," has been arrested at Winchester.

The turn-out of the dyers and finishers of fustians at Manchester has been attended by a disgraceful outrage at Pendleton. Messrs. Crompton and Co. had obtained some fresh hands to replace those on strike ; " pickets" of turn-outs watched the premises, harangued the new men, and eventually quarrelled with them. On Tuesday evening, some sixty or seventy malcon- tents, after throwing stones on the buildings and into the yard, at length broke into the place, and with sticks and pieces of logwood violently assailed Mr. Crompton senior, an old gentleman, his nephew, and the new workmen. Two Policemen came, but they could do little against so large a body of ruf- fians. When a larger force of constables was known to be approaching, the turn-outs fled. One of them, Boyle, was taken prisoner : he is recognized as one of those who beat Mr. Crompton. The prisoner was brought before the Magistrates on Wednesday, and remanded : at the earliest, Mr. Cromp- ton would not be able to leave his bed for a week.

Mr. W. S. Harris, a manufacturer of Leicester, son of Mr. Harris who was formerly Member for the borough, has committed suicide, at an inn at Car- marthen. He was found dead in his bed in the morning ; a phial on the table, and a tumbler in the bed : he had drunk a large quantity of prussic acid. It seems that Harris was in pecuniary embarrassments ; but he ex- aggerated them in his mind : had he told his friends, his affairs could easily have been set straight. But he left Leicester for Rugby ; then proceeded to Swansea, whence he wrote to his relatives that his body would be found at Carmarthen. Mr. Harris was a Town-Councillor. The verdict of the Co- roner's Jury was " Temporary insanity."

A passenger has been dreadfully mutilated at Didcot station. A train stopped; he got out for a shqrt time, but did not return till the train was in motion ; then, attempting to cross the rails, he was knocked down, and one leg was completely cut off'.

There has been a collision on the South Devon Railway between Totnes and Brent. The line is single ; at certain places there are two lines of rail to allow trains to pass. On Monday last, a down goods-train, instead of remain- ing on the down-line at Battery incline, moved on to the single line, where it was met by an up express-train. There was a violent concussion ; but, though many of the passengers were hurt, no one was killed.

A large quantity of gas having escaped into a waiting-room at the Preston station, a workman incautiously applied a light to a pipe, and a frightful explosion ensued : several persons were badly burnt, and a good deal of the building was destroyed.