Latest Intelligence.

Clutha Leader, Volume I, Issue 23, 17 December 1874, Page 6

Latest Intelligence.

ENGLISH INTELLIGENCE.

By the s.B. Claud Hamilton, which arrived at the Bluff on the lltb, we have London dates to the 2nd instant. The attendance at the wool sales is declining, and competition becoming languid; 60,000 bales were sold, aud 2,500 withdrawn. The Budget speech, delivered by the Treasurer, was well received. Captain Strachan, Governor of the West African settlements, assembled the chiefs at Cape Coast and delivered to them a message from the Queen, expressing the determination of the British Government to abolish slavery. The chiefs assented, but stipulated for permission to retain their actual slaves, if kindly treated. The steamer, La Plata, with the South American cable on board, foundered off Uahant. It is feared that sixty persons perished. The Benchers of Gray's Inn have unanimously disbarred Dr Kenealy for hia conduct in the Tichborne case. At the Lord Mayor's banquet Mr Disraeli referred to the annexation of Fiji as a proof that the Government would maintain a National Colonial policy. An extensive lock-out in Lincolnshire is threatened, the farmers insisting on a reduction of three shillings a week in the wages of farm hands. Fifteen hundred persona are sick with typhoid fever at Darwin, in Lancashire being more than one-sixteenth of the entire population. The first attempt of the Prussian Government to have the prie.ts elected by ihe congregation failed, the congregation refusing. In the crush at the Lord Mayor's show, several persons were killed and injured. The English Agricultural Laborers Union have adopted the proposal submitted by the Mississippi deputation, to despatch five million laborers to the United States. Extensive migration is going on, and creating alarm in Great Britain. A French lawyer, named Fonneu?, who secured the election of himself as King of Patagonia, has been arrested as a usurper. Cardinal Cullen and the entire Catholic Episcopate have issued a pastoral denouncing Professor Tyndall's speech at Belfast as a revival of Paganism. The steamer Mary, from Glasgow to Trinidad, foundered. Ten persons went down with the vessel, the remainder took to tbe boats. One boat, with five men, is supposed to have been swamped.