LONDON TOWN TALK.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 681, 25 August 1876, Page 4

LONDON TOWN TALK.

The London correspondent of the Argiis supplies the following gossip:— Did you ever read Mr Anthony Trollope's "The "Way we Live Now ?" If so, you need scarcely trouble youreelf 'to go through the Lisbon tramway case, in which Mr Albert Grant is Mr Melnotte, and the committee of directors, including a noble lord—exactly as in the fictions-are his hirelings. If the ■tory indeed had been written after the event instead of before it, one would have called its chief commercial incident a lampoon, so exactly would it have been a transcript of what had occurred in real life The poor public appears to have subscribed in all about £300,000 for a tramway that in the first instance could not be laid at all because of the steepness of the road, and was afterwards laid in a different place from that suggested by the prospectus, and where there was next to no traffic It is fair to the baron to state that when the first obstacle was found to exist he did propose to return some of their property to the shareholders, reserving for himself only £17,000, instead of twice that amount, which he had charged for the use of his name; but finding his directors inclined to go through with the affair, he went in for it also. lam curious to see how long Lord Henry Lennox—his paid lord (Lennox £2OO, Lennox £SOO, are interesting little items among the gigantic figures of the account)—will think it his duty to remain a member of the present Government. What is worse than all, however, is the revelation of the corruption of the "city editors" of our newspapers. Sampson of Thr limes is an old offender, who has already been condemned by the public voice, sad we do not wonder to see his name down opposite several hundred pounds paid to him for an eulogistic paragraph upon Lisbon tramways. The muse of Marmion, who was stigmatised as being greedy for taking half-a-crown a line, lived in very dull days, and poets know better now where to send their pigs to market than even Scott did. But the highest rate that has ever been paid for literuture sinks into insignificance compared with a city editor's honorarium for his woik of imagination. To " make the thing that is not as the thing that is," in prose, and among the commercial intelligence, is a feat that fetches about five-and-twenty pounds a line. Of course everybody is not a ramp6oD, nor is every newspaper a Timet. The city editor of the Standard only got £SO, while the do do of the Daily News thought so little of himself and the respectable organ wiih which he was connected as to condescend to take £2O. All these papers praised the Tramway Company; and the Daily Telegraph is the noble exception which is able to congratulate itself, not exactly upon not having been bribed—for one of its subordinates did take a little money—but upon not peiforming the service for which the money was paid. Baron Albert Grant and Co, in its case, got hold very literally of the wrong man, and greased the fingers of a newspaper clerk who was of no use to them. But what a picture upon the whole do these revelations afford of " How we live now " in the world of commerce 1 I am told that under present cir cumßtances proprietors of newspapers despair of getting men who are acquainted with the ways of the city, and at the same time well principled enough to resist the temptations that are continually thrust upon them, and whieh no amount of salary can make it " worth their while " to resist. In Mr Gladstone's latest article in the Contemporary Review, he has ingeniously divided the world of religious thought into five heads, which, of course, have each their subdivisions. If material considerations could actuate me in such a matter, I should i-o "iciinod jiwfc now to range myself among |hl Presbyterians. Mr Baird, the ironmaster, wuo das tuieady endowed the body with half a million of money, proposes to give them half a million more. It really seems very hard, Bince they are mostly Scotch people, and are accustomed to make a little go a conßiderable distance. What will they do with a million of money ? Whereas, here are the poor Wesleyans really in want of some, since they have just paid £16,000 for their law expenses in defending the right of their ministers to use the title of "reverend." Of course more money has often been paid for a title in England than this, bnt it is a large sum to give to so small a matter, and since the principle at issue concerns all other dissenting denominations, it seems to me they should all help to subscribe.