be able to secure a large booty; the clerk, Tester, should give information by which the proper time might be known. Many successive evenings, with deliberate perseverance, they hired cabs, and carrying the shot in carpet-bags, hurried to the station, but for a long time they were doomed to disappointment. At length an occasion happened, which was taken advantage of in the following manner :

"At last, on the 15th of May, 1855, Tester met Agar at the sta tion, and told him it was all right.' Pierce was in waiting not far off, and the two drove up to the station dressed as gentlemen, and obtained first-class tickets for Folkestone. They handed their carpet bags to a porter, who little knew that they were filled with shot, and he gave them to the guard, Burgess, who put them in his van. Watching his opportunity, Agar jumped into the van with Burgess, and Pierce got into a first-class carriage. Here then was the opportunity, which had been sought and planned for months. Agar and Burgess found themselves alone in the guard's van with bullion boxes containing about £12,000. With a mallet and chisel, with which he had provided himself, Agar wrenched off the iron clasps from the box of Messrs. Abell, took out the gold bars which it contained, substituted the shot bags previously arranged, replaced the iron clasps and nails, lit some wax with a taper, which Burgess had provided, resealed the boxes with a common seal, which Pierce had bought in Fetter Lane, and secured the greater part of the gold in his courier-bag before the train arrived at Redhill."

Here a portion of the gold was transferred to Tester, and Pierce slipped into the van along with Agar and Burgess. Again they attacked the safe and boxes, and before they reached Folkestone had transferred very nearly the entire amount into their carpet-bags. The safes were removed at this station by the officials, but the gang continued on their way to Dover, where they alighted and put up at the Dover Castle Inn. There they remained only a very short time, but were near falling into a trap by taking off their courier-bags, which they found it difficult to replace without exciting observation. Having determined on returning at once to London, as the best hiding place, they had provided themselves with return Ostend tickets, in order to lull suspicions from their short stay, but this plan gave rise to a difficulty. The porters remarked that no luggage had come from Ostend that night. Oh, no," was the ready answer, "our luggage came the night before," and they passed on to the train. On arriving in London, they drove a cab to near Paddington, then back to the North Western, and finally drew up at a public house but went into another.

The next thing to do was to turn the gold to account and divide the proceeds. Part of it consisted of American eagles, which were disposed of to money changers, and next they set about melting down the bars in crucibles. This was partially done at the house of Agar, who lived with a young woman named Fanny Kay as his wife. A furnace was erected, and fire kept up in it for several days and nights at a great heat. This aroused the suspicions of the woman, who became troublesome. Agar quarrelled with her, separated from her, and went with Pierce to other lodgings, where they completed the division of their spoil. Part of the gold was sold to a man named Saward, who had been a barrister, and of whom we shall speak more hereafter.

So far all their plans had succeeded, and Agar was so contented with his work, that he sold out £3,000 consols, and passed to Pierce £2,500 to invest for the benefit of Fanny Kay and her child. A former crime of Agar, however, now came against him. He was betrayed by an accomplice in a forgery, arrested, convicted, and sentenced to transportation for life. Finding himself completely deprived of all liberty, he made over to Pierce, all the rest of his property, nearly £15,000, for the benefit of Fanny Kay. Pierce determined to swindle the poor woman; made her a few payments, and then abandoned her. Indignant, she disclosed all she knew of the robbery to the South Eastern Railway authorities, and Agar being under sentence, confirmed her story and gave full particulars. Pierce was arrested, his residence searched; Burgess and Tester were taken, and the three put on their trial. Agar and Fanny Kay, their former accomplices and associates, were brought as evidence, with other corroboration, against them. Burgess and Tester were sentenced to fourteen years transportation, as being servants of the company, and the mean villain, Pierce, escaped with only three years' imprisonment through a defect of the law. Baron Martin, in passing sentence on him, said, "I do declare, that if I stood in that dock to receive sentence, I should feel more degraded to be in your place than in that even of either of your associates. Agar trusted you-in all, you must have got out of him £15,000. This you stole and appropriated to your own use. It is a worse offence, I do declare, than the act of which you have been just found guilty. I would rather have been concerned in stealing the gold than in the robbery of that wretched woman-call her harlot if you

will-and her child. A greater villain than you are, I believe, does not exist." So ended this romantic drama, so interwoven with plot and counter-plot, that it forms the subject of one of the most interesting trials on record. We are very sorry that we have not had more space to give some extracts from Mr. Evan's book, which would thoroughly develop the story.

Connected with this is that of the great cheque forgeries, by Saward the barrrister, before alluded to, as having disposed of some of the gold, who had associated with him three other villains-Anderson, Atwell, and Hardwicke. Their plan of operations was the following. Having attained by pocketpicking, or fictitious letter writing, the blank checks and signatures of respectable moneyed men, Saward forged checks to large amounts. Then advertising for a young man to fill a situation as porter, they employed him to go to the Bank to get the check cashed, watching him narrowly to see whether the forgery was detected, or if he tried to make off with the money. By this system of fraud they obtained many hundreds of thousands of pounds; but having extended their scheme too far, down to Yarmouth, a bungle on the part of one of the confederates was the cause of disclosing the whole catalogue of crime. The details of the method of working these forgeries are of a very interesting nature, useful to be known to bankers and others, who may be in danger of being made the victims of similar swindlers.

Such are the contents of the book before us. They disclose how much unworthy matter often lies beneath the surface of high-sounding, money-making concerns; how necessary it is that in public and other companies the strictest supervision should be exercised, and,as we think, they show that the government does not interfere with a sufficiently direct action,to protect the interests of shareholders and the public. There is not sufficient responsibility attached to the offices of directors or managers, although the law in that respect has been of late very much strengthened. Officials are not looked after as they ought to be, and above all, the police has not got sufficiently easy access to railway trains and other places where robberies may be committed. The rules of railways with respect to exclusion of persons from platforms are not strict enough in this country; such a robbery as that of the gold bullion could never occur in France, where a sharp eye is kept after the exact regulations of the service of trains.

We have shewn how these various classes of frauds and forgeries originate; it may now be asked, how are they to be guarded against? In Railways, all the accounts and vouchers should be passed through a central clearing office, where ample check could be held on alterations, falsifications, and forgeries. This is found to operate so beneficially on some lines in Ireland, that the saving effected by the detection of mistakes and peculations more than repays the cost of the audit. Nearly the same thing might be done with banks, or they might be put under a very strict governmental inspection, and made liable to daily personal examination by committees of shareholders. With respect to the overtrading by merchants, it is almost impossible to check it, except by introducing some more stringent penal clauses in the Bankruptcy Acts against those who continue to obtain goods on credit after a certain proportion of their capital is lost, or who overdraw largely their accounts in Banks without lodging adequate securities. The other cases are those of an absolutely criminal nature, already provided for by the law, which, however, still seems very imperfect and easy of evasion in some particulars, as where Cole and Watts very nearly escaped conviction, were it not for the acuteness of the Judges who tried them. Mr. Evans' book ought for these matters, to attract the attention of the Law Amendment Society, and furnish grounds for many improvements by acts of the legislature.

ART. VI.-PUBLIC CHARITY FROM A CATHOLIC POINT OF VIEW.

La Question de la Charité et des Associations Religieuses en Belgique. Par Ed. Ducpetiaux, Inspecteur Général des Prisons, et des Etablisments de Bienfaisance. Bruxelles : Aug. Decq. 1858.

Religious orders are, in all Catholic countries, indispensable auxiliaries for the exercise and promotion of charity. On this ground they are entitled to those privileges and protection guaranteed to the latter. To deny their co-operation would be to suppress the practice of charity itself, inasinuch as it is inspired by religion.

This proposition implies an unconditional, or absolute, character which, no doubt, is liable to be disputed.

We are all aware of those prejudices which exist against religious orders, and the accusations of which they are the object. It is this that induces us to examine, by the light of history, and an impartial and minute investigation of facts and proofs, if those prejudices are well founded, if those accusations be of a nature to justify their exclusion from the sphere of benevolence. It is not an apology of religious orders that we have undertaken; such is not our mission. The rights and claims of religious communities can be sustained by arguments of a higher order, foreign to the subject on which we are engaged. We shall therefore confine ourselves to the investigation of their influence on the sphere of charity, referring only to those sources of information which are open to all who wish to avail themselves of them. Our only object is the desire, and the necessity we feel, of discovering, of stating and proclaiming the truth fairly and dispassionately. Let those who are disposed to disagree with us adopt the same plan; let them search for the truth, as we have done, without any preconceived notions, with impartiality, and we feel convinced they will come to the same conclusions with us.

To render this study easy, and to put it into proper order, we will first prove the rights of religious orders, then their use and the services they are calculated to confer on society; we will then pass in review the objections to which they give rise,