DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 577, 25 April 1876, Page 4

DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

Intelligence has been received at Plymouth by a cable telegram of the total loss of the Liverpool ship Khandeist in the Boutb Pacific. Fifty passengers and all the crew landed at Pitcairn Island, and werehospit ably enteitained by the descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty settled there. They remained there two months before being taken off by the steamer Eonerdale, of Shields, which carried them to San Francisco, where they are now waiting to secure a passage home. They were many days at sea in the ship’s boats jbefore reaching Pitcairn Island. Slavery in Zanzibar—The treaty between her Majesty and the Seyyid of Zanzibar, supplementary to the treaty for the suppression of the slave trade of the sth of June, 1873, was issued among the Parliamentary papers. It was signed in London on the 14th of July, 1875, and conta n- Gw following articles among others:-!, Tae presence on board of a vessel of dnmr q'ie in attendance on or in dincha ge of th legitimate business of their masters, or m slaves honafide employed in the nnvigaM< n of the vessel, shall in no case of if.se f justify the seizure and condemnation of the V(-a=ifd. provided that such slaves are not detainee on board against their will. If any such slaves are detained on board against Unit will they shall be freed, hut the vessel shall, nevertheless, not on that account alone be condemned. 2. All vessels found conveying slaves (other than domestic slaves in attendance on or in the discharge of the legitima’e business of their masters, or slaves ton a fide employed in the navigation of the vessels) to or from any part of his Highness’s dominions, or of any foreien country, whether fuch slaves be destined for sale or not, shall be deemed guilty of carrying on the slave trade, and may be seized by any of her Majesty’s ships of war and condemned by any British Court exercising Admiralty

Two cases of personation at elections were appointed, says the West Coast Times , to be tried at the District Court in Westport. The first—against Baptiste Perou, for having personated one Morris Perou—failed for want of proof of a certified copy of the electoral roll. A copy of the roll signed by the returning officer was put in, but that was held to be insufficient, and by the direction of the court the jury acquitted the prisoner, who was discharged, after an admonition from the Bench. In consequence of the objection taken and sustained, the case against Patrick Foley was not proceeded with. Messrs Haselden and Fisher were solicitors for the defence of Perou. According to the Nation , American diplomatists do not confine themselves to diplomacy, but undertake other duties of a hardly less important nature. The late American Minister to Peru was, it is asserted, in the habit of lending money, at high rates of interest, on the security of jewels. This caused some comment in the American papers, and now another “ extraordinary revelation” is made. It seems that Mr Washburne, the late second secretary of Legation in Paris, was a short time ago home on leave of absence, and during his stay in New York advertised in his own name in the New York Clipper for “ a first-class bare-back male and female rider” for the “ Great American Circus, Paris, France —the palace circus of the world.” He, in short, says the Nation , “ appears to have acted agent of a spirited American circus proprietor, who has just opened or is about to open a monster hippodrome in Paris. The New York Tribune, also learns on inquiry that Mr Washbourne tried during his stay in that city to secure animals for the “palace circus.” This is considered below the dignity of the diplo raatic service, but it must be remembered that to negotiate the engagement of “a bareback male and female rider” is good practice for those still more delicate negotiations the conduct of which is the chief duty of diplomatists. The London correspondent of a contemporary says ;—“ If some accounts that reach us from India are to be relied upon, however, no matter how loyally His Royal Highness may be received by the natives, his own fellow-countrymen, the official personages charged with his personal safety, will have cause to congratulate themselves that they have seen him off to England safe and sound. The precautions for his security were something extraordinary ; the fate that befel Lord Mayo at the hands of a fanatic being always before theireyes. Two British officers, lam assured, sit up—not sleep—in the room in which the Prince reposes ; and when he is camping out a whole company is stationed all night round his tent. He seems, in fact, to be like some beautiful service of egg shell china, which its fashionable owner is proud to possess and exhibit to her guests, but is still better pleased when the occasion for its use has passed, and it is packed up in wool in its box again. For my part, in common with most Englishmen. I should be genuinely grieved should ‘ anything happen to him,’ as the evasive phase runs, and has run from the old Greek times, to avoid speaking of pale death. But I wear my Royalty with a difference from Lord Wharncliffe, who, in speaking of the diminution of crime at Sheffield, ascribes it to the moral impression produced by the visit of the Prince of Wales to that town. Nothing in the way of forced connection has been read equal to this, since the answer (in the ‘ Rejected Addresses’) to ' Who fills the butcher’s shops with la*ge blue flies V was expected to be ‘ The Corsican usurper.’ ”

New claimants for the credit of the invention of the electric telegraph crop up every day. The other day the Allegemaine Zeitung asserted that Samuel Thomas S. emmering was clearly entitled to the honor, his scheme having been published in 1809. In the Times, however, appears a communication, in which it is alleged that twenty years earlier than this date Lomond, in France, had proved by experiment the practicability of using electricity for telegraphic communication. In support of this claim, the correspondent of the Times quotes a passage from a volume of travels in France during 1787 and the two following years, by Arthur Young, F.R.S., in which M. Lomond’s in vention is described, and it certainly bears a very close resemblance to the mechanism employed in the earlier stages of practical telegraphy. At a complimentary picnic given to the Mayor of Asbfield, Mr Parkes, b ing called upon to respond to the toast of V The Parliament,” amused his auditors by a speech, of which the following is a report :—“ He said that as it appeared they wished him to say something, he would tell them what in hi; judgment Parliament was like. He was one of those strange creatures who had a fond love for the lower animals, He liked dogs and cats, and hears, native bears, and opossums, and he had a kind of love for a snake. [Laughter] Very well, if he had nothing else to do but to gratify his own ta«te, he should try to collect <ogethe» specimens of all these creatures. But his meacs and the labors that were cast upon him did not allow him to gratify his taste, and the nearest approach he got to that gratification was in the Legislative Assembly. In the Legislative Assembly he often indulged in physiological studies, and in his taste for for natural history, and he could always find there a type for an old Jack possum— [laughter]—and for a native bear, and for a wombat, and for a black snake —[laughter—and he was never at a loss for types tor rata. [Laughter ] It was the most curious menagerie he ever saw, [Laughter.] He excepted Mr Moses. [Laughter.] 0> if he were to cite him ns a representative of any animal in animated nature he should consider him as a bird of paiadise. [Great laughter.] He could assure th< m that if they had any taste whatever for the s udv of animal nature, they could not. derive greatet instruction or amuse themselves better than watch the proceedings of that extraordinary collection of bipeds found in the Legislative Assembly. | Laughter.] Their excellent friend (Mr Sutherland), who was looking so earnestly, he would consider as represented by an Australian lion, or a Scotch lion—certainly not an African lion. [Laughter ] But whatever might be the peculiar features of Mr Sutherland or Mr Moses, the Assembly, as a whole, could not be better typified than as representing the lower animals of this country. He hoped they would not imagine that he was passing anything like an unfavorable criticism upon these gentlemen, because in his experience he met so many who would bo shamed altogether by the correct behaviour of a good dog, His experience told him that there were a gieat number of dogs even in Ashfield that stood considerably higher than some members of

the genus homo. [Great laughter ] But, joking apart, he considered the electors of this country did contrive to send into the Legislature the most contradictory characters. They had men returned by the same body of electors the most opposite in feeling, the most defiant of each other in their arguments and their general character. But a sense of the obligation under which they lay, and of the account which they must one day or other render to their fellowcolonists, had the effect of grinding them down into a groove of common intelligence.’ A letter from Amsterdam in the Cologne Gazette says that political affa’rs in Holland during the past year have, as has been the case for many years past, not been very satisfactory. A few important bills have been passed, but the situation generally has become rather worse than better. The Ministry, taken from the smallest party in the Chamber and the country, maintains itself in office by a skilful management of minorities, and is thereby enabled to protect itself against the opposition of the Liberal majority, which by its factious spirit and its shameless personal attacks has lost much of its moral influence. The Dutch Liberals can hardly expect to come into power so long as they have neither leaders nor a united policy, and their views are daily becoming more and more divergent. Their disunion affords a pretext to the other parties for asserting that they support M. Heemskerk in order to prevent the country from falling into a state of anarchy. Meanwhile the clericals continue to agitate; the Calvinists by means of “revivals,” while the Ultramontanes have formed a party of their own in the House, called the “ Catholic ” party. In the press a bitter conflict rages between the orthodox clergy and the Liberal theologians, the latter of whom adhere as rigidly to their dogmas as their adversaries. While these dissensions are on, political progress is at a standstill, and popular discontent increases, especially as the Government does not make up for its inactivity at home by a successful policy abroad.