NOTES BY THE WAY.
found not guilty, the Attorney-General declined to proceed against the other prisoners.
Proposed Copyright Act amendment defeated by oneOn the 19th of June Sir E. Brydges moved for leave to bring in a Bill that would have delighted Mr. Marston, of the firm of Messrs. Low & Marston. It was "to amend the Act of the 43rd of the King relative to copyrights, and so far as regards the Act passed prior to
Queen Anne's Act, giving eleven copies of books published to the universities, &c., and also as far as regarded limited editions of books." Mr. Peel and Lord Palmerston opposed. Sir S. Romilly, Sir F. Burdett, Mr. Brougham, and Mr. C. Wynn supported the
motion, the last named stating that he
"saw no reason why the author of a book should be subjected to a tax of eleven copies of his work to the universities any more than a man who planted timber should be subject to a tax of eleven trees from each plantation he might make to the navy of the country."
The numbers were: for bringing in the Bill, fifty-seven ; against it, fifty-eight.
Education: Brougham's Report.The friends of education will find Mr. Brougham's Report of the Committee on General Education, given in the September number, of interest. Among other particulars it mentioned the case of a rector who was principal of a school, with a salary of 1,500l. per annum, and who assigned the whole to his brother, another clergyman. The latter, not choosing to perform the duties of his office, made a journeyman carpenter the schoolmaster, with an allowance of 40l. a year. There was another instance of a school, with an endowment for the master of 400l. a year, in which there was but one scholar.
Holborn Viaduct anticipatedThe Holborn Viaduct is anticipated in the October number, which contains a proposal that an iron bridge should be erected from Holborn Hill to Snow Hill, and that a toll should be charged for the first ten or twelve years to defray the cost. Considerable space is given in the same number and in that for November to an account of the trial and execution of Jeremiah Brandreth ("The Nottingham Captain"), William Turner, and Isaac Ludlam for high treason. (The number of prisoners arraigned was thirty-five.) The execution of the three men is graphically described. "Nothing could exceed the horror which the whole scene excited." The article concludes with the words :—
"As this has been the first instance of the sort, of men being convicted of levying war against the King, since 1745, so we hope it
will be the last."
More pleasant is it to read from Spain that Ferdinand VII., on visiting the prisons at Madrid lately, had ordered all the instru- ments of torture to be destroyed, and that he had abolished the torture in his dominions; that the King of Würtemberg had abolished the censorship of the press; and, with other items of
