English News.

Clutha Leader, Volume II, Issue 108, 4 August 1876, Page 7

English News.

Lord Northbrook has been created an Earl. The Emperor William has gone to Ems to meet the Czar. The Duke of Edinburgh, in H.M.S. Sultan, has arrived at Malta. The Ascot Cup was won by Houlbon, and the Gold Cup by Apology. The celebrated autboress, George Sand (Madame Dude'vant) is dead. The rumors of a difference of policy between Turkey and Egypt are denied. Mr Bristow has resigned the post of Secretary to the United States Treasury. It is considered that recent events are a decided check upon Russian policy. The Callendar and Oban Railway is well advanced, and will be opened this time next year. There will probably be an interview between the Czar and the Emperor of Austria at Warsaw. It is proposed to construct a line of railway from Braemer to Alyth, with a branch line to Pitiochry. A great fire has occurred at Brook's wharf, by which a million and a half pounds of tea were burnt. The Lews herring fishery is a total failure this year, and it is feared some distress will be the result. It is suggested in Dundee that swimming should be added to the educational curriculum of the School Board. A Russian organ published in Belgium, contains an article virulenty attacking the policy of England. Latest telegrams from the Continent state that an outbreak of war between Turkey and Servia is imminent. The Cincinnati Convention elected Governor Hayes, an Ohio Republican, as their candidate for the Presidency. Mr William Hackett, now in Fiji, has received an appointment in Ceylon at a salary of £2500 a-year, and allowances. The fine old East Church at Aberdeen, which was gutted by fire in October, 1574-, has been restored at a cost of £5000. In reply to a note of the Grand Vizier, the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Servia has given an assurance of the peaceful intentions of Servia. The estate of Raasay, which was sold in 1874 for £62,000, has been resold for £69,500. The purchaser is Mr E. H. Wood, a Warwickshire gentleman. H.M. frigate Doris is in quarantine at Simon's Bay, in consequence of the outbreak of small-pox of a malignant type on board. Some of the officers and several of the crew died. The English Government having refused to surrender Winslow, the American forger, he has been discharged from custody, thereby terminating the Extradition Treaty of 1842. There is a rumor that the British India Company offered to take over all the P. and (). Stsam Company's fleet and property, guaranteeing seven per cent, in perpetuity to the shareholders. Lord Lytton is likely to resign the Governor-Generalship of India at the end of the year, the climate not suiting his health. Sir Philip Wodehouse retires from Bombay at the end of the year. A large sugar store at Greenock, belonging to the Harbor Corporation, has j been burned, together with 2000 tons of raw sugar which it contained. The loss, which, is estimated at £50,000, is covered by insurance. Rumors of a European conference have been dispelled. In the House of Commons on June 9, Mr Disraeli said all the Powers had agreed to exercise no undue pressure on the new Sultan, but allow time for his advisers to mature a new policy. A tramp mason at Ayr has been sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment for stealing from the Tarn o'Shanter Inn, High-street, one of the original cups from which Tarn o'Shanter and Soutter Johnny are said to have drunk at their weekly meetings in that house. The report of the Fugitive Slave Commission has been issued. It deprecates active interference on the part of commissioned officers against slavery where legalised, or of H.M. ships being made an asylum for slaves. The report favors discretion being given to commandsrs, and defines general principles for their guidance. The Lord Provost of Glasgow has been asked to initiate a movement for securing the obelisk at Alexandria (Egypt), known as Cleopatra's Needle, for Glasgow. The estimated expendi-, ture was set down at £8000 to £10,000. The Lotfd Provost declined to take the

lead in the matter, but suggested that the Town Council should be memorialised on the subject. At the Cambridge County Court, a very singular incident occurred during the public examination of Sergt. Wallis, a bankrupt, upon certain sales of corn effected by him since he filed his petition. He drew from his pocket and handed to Judge Beales, a bag con taining 800 sovereigns. The reason assigned for holding this back was want of faith in the trustee. The brickwork surrounding the memorial stone of the new parish church at Slough, recently laid by Princess Christian, was broken through on Sunday night, and the bottle which had been placed within the "stone taken away, doubtless with the expectation of finding in it the current coins of the realm ; the, bottle, however, contained only papers and documents. A sentence of imprisonment for 99 years was passed at St. Louis in April upon a negro who confessed that he had killed his wife. The ' St. Louis Republican ' states that he was allowed to avoid risk to his neck by pleading guilty of murder in the second degree ; and there being a law of the State of Missouri that a person sentenced to imprisonment for life can claim his discharge at the expiration of 15 years, the judge passed a sentence longer than for life. Barr, the man who murdered his wife and mother-in-law in Glasgow last March, and was apprehended in Aberdeenshire, was hanged at Glasgow in May last. The plea of insanity was urged on his behalf in vain, but to the last he himself maintained that when he committed the double murder he was not responsible for his actions — a statement which is doubtless true of al! murders committed under the influence of passion, but which does not excuse them for all that. Lord Shaftesbury, speaking at a meeting of the Ragged School Union at Exeter Hall, attacked the London School Board, stating that the unholy aggression of that body on the raggecl school system should be resisted foot to foot and arm to arm. The board so far had gained the victory, but it was the victory of compulsion over free will, of Taw over the influence of love, and of godless philosophy over the ennobling sympathies of Christians — a victory whicli they would find had been too dearly bought. In the February number of the ' Pacific Medical anal Surgical Journal,' a case is recorded in which small-pox was apparently, indeed without doubt, conveyed from Indiana to California in a letter. A man in the latter place received, on December 14 or 15 last, a letter from a sister in Indiana, informing him that she, her husband, and three children, had small-pox, and a baby had died. On December 27, rhe man became ill, and the disease developed into a well-marked case of discrete variola. — ' Sanitary Record.' On June 15, Lord Derby, in the House of Lords, said that the guarantee of the Treaty of Paris with regard to the integrity of Turkey remained unnotified, but that the clauses in the Treaty only refer to tbe aggressor of Turkey from without — not to internal quarrels. Telegrams from Constantinople, dated June 20, report a disagreement among the Turkish Ministers on the subject of the creation of a National Assembly. An indefinite postponement of the constitution is considered probable. William Carey, a collier, of Carribee Island, Wolverhampton, was charged with causing the death of two children, whose skeletons have been found in his house. On Saturday night the prisoner and- his wife quarrelled, when the nolice interposed, and the wife wanted her husband arrested. She reached from a , shelf a paper parcel stained with blood, containing the skulls and leg bones of two children. Afterwards other human bones were discovered. The police surgeon deposed lhat one frontal bone was fractured. Prisoner was remanded. His wife says she has had 16 children in 17 years. She accounts at present for nine only. At the Sheffield County Court, the Judge (Mr J. Ellison) gave judgment in a case which involved the question of' a wife's control over a wedding ring. The wife died at her mother's house, and shortly before her death gave her her wedding ring. The husband now claimed the value of it as a set-off against a claim brought against him for his wife's board and lodging. In giving judgment, his Honor said a wedding ring came under a class ofi articles which the wife had separately and independently of her husband, and she had power to keep them, but she had no power to give them away or leave them from her husband. On the contrary, the husband had power to give them away even during ber life. In this case the wife had no power to give away her ring, and his judgment must be accordingly. A horrible case of cruelty by a mother to her infant child was investigated at the Sheffield Town Hall. Julia Macmahon, wife of a forgeman, living in West Bar, became exasperated at her child, which was crying, and, in a fit of passion, seized it by the arm and hurled it ori to the kitchen fire, which was burning.fiercely at the time. The heartrending shrieks of the child, ; attracted the attention of the neighbors,; who found that the child in its agony had rolled off the fire, and was strug-

gling in the ashes. The mother, on being remonstrated with, seized the struggling infant and dashed it to the other side of the room. It was taken to the workhouse, where it was found to have a large hole in its head, and its body was so fearfully scorched that its recovery is impossible. The prisoner was remanded. The annual " Dead Letter Sale " at the Post office, at Washington, took place on March 17, when 8534 unclaimed packages were sold by auction. The articles specified in the catalogue, which contained no fewer than sixtysix pages, included a library of 1000 books, a quantity of sham and real jewellery, a black lace shawl, endless gold pins, white kid gloves, knives, necklets, spectacles, handkerchiefs, 1*44 clock hands, soap, a wolf-skin, a squirrel's tail, and the wings of a bat, two skirts, a pair of calf-skin uppers, microscopes, revolvers, a blanket, a piece of rubber hose, a fire kindler, two plugs of tobacco, a pie-crust cutter, a scouring brick, a soap guage, a box of chewing gum, a gas burner, harmonicon, a pack of cards, a fifty poker chips, a flute, a boy's jacket, a box of pumpkin meal, a towel, a shirt, a pair of slippers, a briarwood pipe, a can of fresh pine apples, a pocket-compass, a baby-yoke, a collection of Foreign stamps, three odd gloves, a gold-tasselled necktie, five imitation bird's, a tape measure, a fishline, some small saws, eleven buttons, and ten fish-hooks. Incredible as the following may appear, it is an authentic fact, to which hundreds can bear testimony : — About forty years ago a young man named Wilson, residing near the town of Perth, conceived the lunatic idea of leading a hermit's life. The youth from his early age showed symptoms of derangement, and this proceeding on his part was not considered strange by his friends. The chosen place of his hermitage was about three-quarters of a mile from the parental homestead, in the recess of a deDse bush. When he wants a drink he walks deliberately into the river, and wades out till the water reaches his waist, and then he stoops and quenches his thirst. His body is covered with hair. He never shows a dangerous disposition, and chatters in monysyllables. His hair is long, grey, and unkempt, and his beard reaches down below his waist. He is between sixty and seventy years of age, and is possibly the only living being ever known to have lived year after year perfectly naked, and exposed to all the inclemencies of weather which mark our Canadian winters. — * Carlton Place Herald.' The great event of the Free Church Assembly at Home was the union of the Reformed Presbyterian, or Cameronian, Church with the Free Church, after a separate existence of 200 years. This interesting event took place on May 25, when the members of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod, (59 strong, marched in procession from the Martyrs' Church, George IV. Bridge, to the Free Assembly Hall, where they were received with great enthusiasm by the densely crowded house The evening sitting was given un to congratulatory addresses on the event, when Dr Begg quite' excelled himself. Next morning a breakfast with the same object of rejoicing took place in the Music Hall, when about 500 hundred ladies and gentlemen were present. By this union 36 out of the 37 ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian Church have become incorporated with the Free Church, one only not adhering to .the union. Trouble has arisen in -thesß. I P. congregation at Whithorn over the union, the managers of the Chiirch strenuously opposing it. Last Sunday j they fastened the door of the Church with a bolt, locked the vestry door, and filled the keyhole with gravel. The minister (Mr Paton) broke open both doors with a crowbar, and held service as usual. It is likely, however, that the matter will give more trouble yet. A serious riot took place at Keith, Bamffshire, on the evening of Saturday, May 27. Reports had , been circulated that a servant girl in the employ of a butcher, named William Laing, had been so cruelly treated by her master and mistress that, after medical examination, she had been removed to a private lodging-house by the authorities. The incensed inhabitants thereupon assembled on the Market Green about 9 p.m., and after burning Mrs Laing in effigy amid yells and howls, rushed to Laing's house and smashed every pane of glass in it with stones. The mob numbered 2000, so that the three policemen in the town were afraid to interfere, and confined themselves to taking down the names of the ringleaders. The efforts of soma of the principal inhabitants to quell the disturbance were -quite ineffectual, and it was not till after 1 a.m. on Sunday that order was restored. Itis alleged, that the servant girl in question has been kept a close prisoner, anoYfed on bred and water only, for two months j that in lieu of a bed she had a dirty canvas cloth, used for wrapping meat in ; ; and that when, removed by the Police she was so weak .that it is doubtful if she will recover. After inquiry by the Sheriff-Substitute and Procura-tor-Fiscal, the JLaings have been arrested and thrown into Banff Prison. Indeed this course was, ; rendered, almost necessary to protect them from serious violence, so thoroughly incensed are the, inhabitants of Keith at' their inhuman treatment of (the pojo.r gjylj who , is only sixteen -years, of age.