The Grand Jury have thrown out. the bill in the Studdert case, and Major Studdert, his two sons, and the veter-mary surgeon and clerk with whom they were charged with conspiring to defraud the Government, have been discharged. It will be remembered that Major Stud-Gert was commissioned to buy horses for the troops in South Africa, and that ho bought largely through his'sons. Tt was alleged that they supplied aged and inferior horses and put heavy commissions into their own pockets; but in the opinion of many people the evidence at the magisterial inquiry did not reveal any flagrant dishonesty, and as the Government have already proceeded against the Major civilly and sold him up, a good deal of sympathy was felt for him, especially in Ireland. His acquittal has therefore been hailed with delight in many quarters. But the ground' upon which tha Grand Jury decided seems rather illogical. They demanded that the Government as prosecutors should call before them Colonel St. Quentin, and prosecuting counsel could not or would not do so. Now Colonel St. Quentin, though he was an official of the Remount Department, gave evidence before the magistrates which was on the whole deci and it seem rather absurd to insist on the prosecution calli 2 hostile witness. However, as the judge nted out, the Grand Jury had full power to throw out the bill without givin reason at all, and as they have thrown it out, there 1s an end of the ease. After the talk that there has been about the misdeeds of unpatriotic contractors and others who made money out of the war, it ix rather remarkable that the only cases in whi tion has been taken have resulted in vindication or acquittal.
Dr. Parke)
The greatest of the Congregationalists has not long survived the greatest of the Wesley Dr. Parker, after lying i aid to rest at Hampstead. There a good many people who d not admire his style of oratory, and who called it vulgar; but that ho pulpit. orator—the greatest since Spur-00)
in his power of moving the hearts tion—it ix impossible to!
and to his absolute sincerity and ation to his church all who knew him bear the strongest testimony. A strong resentment. has been aroused some passages in the obituary notice of him which appeared in the "Times." The writer, while acknowledging th: what Dr. Parker s "was not alw claptrap or mero vulgar playing to the gallery, but actually' dealt' in a_permanner with the eternal referred in satirical terms to al success" of the City Tem-is," he continued, "among whom in exalted inoments he would call self-conceited pedantic priests" there is not one, from the Primate downwards, who can command anything like the' personal profits which Dr. Parker drow from his Ministry and Inter on the writer spoke of that flourishing and strictly limited company, the City Temple." Tt is true that Di Parker did not live as simply as Mr. Hugh Price Hughes, who never received more than three hundred and allowances for house rent. and tra but Dr. Lunn, preaching at fames's. Hall, denounced the writer's statements as slanderous and untrue, and declared that Dr. Parker never received half the salary of the Editor of the "Times," and that he constantly made very. generous benefactions of which no public announcement was made. Tt is expected, now that the funeral is over, that those connected with the management. of the City Temple will take an opportunity of replying to the somewhat untimely strictures which appeared in the "Times."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.