ENGLISH MAIL NEWS.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 563, 26 August 1869, Page 4

ENGLISH MAIL NEWS.

A question affecting thp right of v dis r scntimj congregation to dismiss a minister was decided on May 28, in the Court of Chancery. The ministrations of tho Rev. $. 0. Gordon having giien rise tp dissensions amongst the congregation of an Indopondient chapel at Reading, a majority of th« worshippers passed a formal resolhtipn deposing him from the Qffice of cppitetor. There was no imputation what*: .over upon Mr (§rordqn's character, but' lie was disliked by tho congregation,forwhpn it w-^b oontended that they possessed an inherent right to elect or tp dismiss a pastqr at «my time. Mr Gjordon resisted the rfsolu ti« >n, on the ground that, as he had been guilty <>f neither misconduct nor neglect" of duty, lie had a life iutprest in his appointment und could not be removod at tfre caprice of a majority. The Vice-Chancellor, hqweyer, rnltJa otherAvise, and granted an injunction restraining Mr Gordpii from officiating in the chapel in question. Mr Ryan, proprietor of tho extpn^ive flour mills at Bruce, in the county of Limerick, has suspended payment. His debts amount to abotit L80 ? 000, of which L 30,000 are duu to five, hquses in Cork, and the greater portion of the remainder to, English, creditor^. Chief justice Chase ]}as ruled that the United States Qovepnineni cannot collect inconie7tq,x from foreigners who hold its bonds, and that the sijms already cqllected must be refunded. The Intprnal Revenue depai'tment is preparing to carry out this decision, >vhich will involve the reimbursement pf several hundred th.pus.and .dollars. For once there n^vy be spen in operation «a strike which employers and workpeople have combined to arrange. The masters have even pjferpd to contribute tp the support of the workmen if they wpl on}y keep out on strikp. The scene of this experiment ip the principal coal region of Pennsylvania, and £he object, of course, is to "starve". the market, and so force up prices. There are now about 20,000 miners on strike, but they make no demand for increase of wages, nor have th^y unsigned any cause for dissatisfaction. The £nek promised to be successful, for coal at pnee advanced from 50c to 1 tlolfcir per ton. It was thqught that butter results still might be achieved if the colliery owners and miners could continue to agree so pleasantly. Perhaps the invention may not be whqljy" new in England, but it has never been tried there on so extensive a scale. The sham strikes of Pennsylvania are likely to gain tho same sort of notoriety as that which Connecticut long enjoyed, perhaps undeservedly, for its wooden nutmegs and liams. In the cases " Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne v. Sir Piers Mostyn, and Tichborne v . Tichborne," Vice-Chan-pellor Stuart made an order on 12th June, on the application of the plaintiff (the plaimant of the Tichborne baronptoy and estates), that the time for retaining these bills on the file of the court should be expended tp tfte last day of Easter Term, 1870. It was stated that the evidence which is being taken under the commission issued by the Court of Probate could " not be completed sooner, the time fixed for the return qf the commission to the court being 12th Qctober, 1809. The question of the administration of the estate of the late Dowager Lady Tich-r borne was brought before Vice-Chancellor pn 12th June, by an application on the part of three creditors that the ordinary accounts of her estate might be taken, and that an order should be^made for payment pf her debts, or that, in case the court should think she had not a sufficiently constituted legal ppxaanal representative before the court, the receiver appointed in the cause should be appointed adminis? trator ad Ute'm. pending an application to the Uonrt of Probate. The Court of Probate, on the 25th of May, had declined to appoint an administrator ad litem withoiit the sanction of this court^ on the ground thfit his duties might clash with those of the receiver, and had left $he parties to apply to tnfa court on the subject. The vice-Chancellor, after some discussion, tn^de an order that, notwithstanding the appointed of the receive^, the creditors should bavg liberty to apply to the Court qf Probate for a grant of letters of administration. A Treasury warrant has just been issued which, reduces the rates of postage on . packets' consisting of printed papers, books, publications, and works of literature and art, or at patterns and samples of merchandise between the Unfted Kingdom and «itr colonial possessions if transmitted by the rou.te.l and in manner indicated in the warrant, which varies somewhat for the- different colonies. As regards Australia and New Zealand, the* will be charged after the Ist of July, 1869, on which day the warrant comes In force, upon all packets consisting of the. articles above-mentioned a uniform rate via Southampton of Id., if not exceeding 1 oz. in? weight; if above 1 oz., but not Exceeding 2 oz., 2d. :' via Marseilles, if not pxceedkig 1 oz., 2d ; and if above 1 oz., hilt not exceeding 2 oz., 4d. The existing regulations with respect to the dimensions and making up of the packet remain unaltered. The other colonies and cbuntries which share in the benefit of this reduction, provided the packets are transmitted by the routes prescribed with respect to them, are— British America l West Indies, Oape of Good Hope, St. Helena, East Indies, China, Japan, Java, Borneo, Philippines., &c. ' We have all heard of artesian wells, but a wonderful novelty is now announced in Algeria in the shape of artesian fisheries. A" welf lately sunk at Am Sala to the deptfi qf fortysfour metres threw up not pnly a large body of water, but to the great surprise of the engineers, an innuirierable quantity of small fish. These subterraneous verteb.rae are described as v eing on an average half an inch in length, and resembling whitebait both in appearance and taste. The female is distinguished from the male by the presence of fiark colored stripes on the upper part of #ie body. From the fact of the sand (extracted from these wells being identical with that which forms the bed; of the Nile, it js concluded that ah underground communication must exist between them and that river.. ' The Canadian Parliament is, we fear, preparing trouble' for us all. Hitherto licenses have been granted to Americans to fish within Canadian waters, but the colonial fishermen complain that the Americans crowd them out, and no more licenses, will be granted. The result of that will be that the. American fisherman will gp without licenses, and that there will be incessant sensation headings in the New York journals about Canadian

outrages on citizens of the Union. Have we not enough to quarrel about withqut squabbling over the ya.l»,c of a. fe\y cod i — r The hugp JBluerboQk jusjt issued upon local taxatiqn in England and Wales shows that it amounts" to 16i per cent, upon the annual rateable value pf the coiintry, and 15 percent, iip.qn the gross estimated rental. The total now amounts tp L16,66Q,455, or nearly double the cosj; of the civil administration of the United Kiugdmn. Of this enormqus sum thg uoor : ratp is LI 1, 061 , 502, or, nearly the post of the Army, and even more entirely waste, for flic Army does not, at all events, demoralize, the national character. Financiers sometimes complap that nothing remains for them. Oner half, at least, of all these rates are levipd, not upon prqfits, but upon $he in,aphinery fqu prqducjng profits, and a lai'ge portion of the remainder is spent in convincing Englishmen that it is needless, t° prpyidp fof old age. — Ib Vice-Chancellor James had befqrejhim, on Monday, the case of " Bfownjohn v. Gale,'' in which a question was raised as, to the disposal of a legacy of LSOO, given by the late William Hollins to the Irish Society of London, for giving scriptural education tp the native Irish, through the medium of their own language. In 1853 (after the date of Mr Hollins's will), that aociety became amalgamated with the Society for Irish Missions to Roman Catholics, and the latter society claimed the legacy. Counsel for the Irish Society of Dnblin insisted that there was no existing society which fully answered the description in the will, and that if the Irish Society of Dublin was not entitled to the legacy it ought to be administered under a scheme to be settled by fhe court. Counsel for the next of kin contended that the legacy had lapsed. The ViceChancellor held that the legacy lapsed in consequence of the so-called amalgamation of tho society indicated by the testator with another society whose objects were totally different. Isy that amalgamation the Irish Society was in fact extinguished. The money in question therefore fell into the residuary estate. The Levant Herald, in referring to the recent visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Constantinople, says it was reserved to the Princess to overturn the most rigid barriers of Oriental life, and assert the right of her sex to the very highest social recognition thatMahomedan manners can give to it, by obtaining a place for herself and three other ladies at the table of the Sultan. Already, it adds, polygamy is fast going out, though from reasons of economy, it fears, rather than morals, and it only needs that the " one wife," who is now becoming the mode, should be recognised as the equal of her husband, to elevate the whole sex, and in half a generation more raise perhaps the entire tone of social life among the Ma.homedan population of Turkey. The Government of Equador has formally repudiated its debt, on the plea of inability to pay tho interest. "It is well known, writes the Minister of Finance, with a naivete very amusing to those who do not hold bonds, "that a contract ceases to be binding from the time when there exists an absolute impossibility to fulfil its obligations, and much more so if this impossibility is increased by the onerous conditions* of the stipulations. Therefore, my Government suspends the payment of this debt." The event is not of much importance, the amount lost by this country being trifling ; but we call attention to it, because the debt is one of those supposed to be specially secured by an assignment of Customs duties, one of tho most illu3ory of all arrangements. The bondholders, Tinder a composition effected in 1855, were entitled to a fourth Lpf the Customs receipts ; but those receipts were still national revenue, and when the Government wanted money more than credit, it took them. The special assignment only created a false idea of -security. Archbishop Leahy has issued a pastoral to the laity of Tipperary, Btrongly adjuring them to abstain from assassination. He denjes that there is any conspiracy in Tipperary, and attributes the sudden outburst of crime to the sympathy expressed for fhe tenantry who resisted Mr Scully. Ho bids the people remember that if the laws are unjust, assassination is no remedy, but a crime, the wickedness of wlvich is only equal to its folly. He calls on them to trust in English legislation, in the efforts of Mr Gladstone, " a statesman great in every sense of the word," und in a British opinion now proclaiming "through millions of voices that the days of ascendancy are numbered," and warns them that agrarian outrage may disgust that opinion, and then "theirs will be the guilt of having made shipwreck of their country's hopes." If the great Catholic clergy will steadily set their faces against teri'orism, terrorism will cease, and with it one-half the prejudice that still prevents Protestants from doing "justice to the rival faith. At present the vulgar notion is that the Catholic clergy, who in most parts of the world are hostile to the popular cause, and who are everywhere of necessity opposed to secret societies, are in Ireland in hidden league with the Ribbonmen, who tell them nothing, and the Fenians, who despise them. The link between the priesthood and the peasants is not their opinion about murder, but a community of caste. The Irish is a peasant priesthood. MrW. A. Gibbs, of Oilwell Park, Woodford, Essex, has invented a machine for making hay independently of the weather. He calls his apparafois the " Desiccator." It will convert grass into hay without the help of sunshine, and without loss of the nutritive constituents ; it will dry corn in the sheaf, so that safe harvesting may be proceeded with in spite of the weather ; it will drive off the water out of sliced beetroot, and thus lighten its conveyance for the use of the sugar manufacturer ; and it will change mangolds or other roots into dry concentrated food. Mr Gibbs has lately introduced improvements in the construction of this simple airstove, so that without asteam-enginethe desiccating process can be easily carried on by help of common horse-works driving a fan. What a Yankee would call " a burst Tip" of a very sensational kind took place some time ago at an exhibition of a Mexican menagerie, at Forrest, Mississippi. A huge elephant, called Hercules, having been peevish and unruly for some days, was driven frantic by a countryman giving him a piece of tobacco. We read that the elephant broke his chain after violent struggles, the crowd fled in the wildest haste. The ponderous beast attacked a freight train that was approaching a track near the tent, striking it wi{i

such a force that be broke a tusk, was upset, and instantjy kjllpd. The locomor tive wad thrown oft' the track, ran into a .canvas tent ? butted intp the lions' cage, killing the liongss and freeing her mate. The lipn took to fright o\it of tq-yyn, the plodding coimtry folks,, up? setting horses and waggons, and smashing chicken coops. At last adviqes twenty mqunted mpn. wjth guns and dogs, were in pursuit of the royal quadruped. The pprtion pf £100 Igft by Jlenry Raines, the brewer, tp bo drawn for by girls of jrppd character in St. George's in r the-East, is this year unclaimed, and neither, drawing nor wedding will take place. The girl who drew the last prize H f LIOO 011 December 26, JB6B, oiight to have been niarried in due course on the Ist of {Ms month ; b^t alas ! it was found upon investigation that the j r oung man of her choice had not been Vtaptiged, and as strict Qhurph principles are imperatively required by the cpuditions pf tjie b.equest ; the marriage could not b,e sanctiqned by the trustees! * Thjj ffcstuied bride haa elected to keep her phpgen lil^and, and forfeit her LIOQ. is, the fourth year within half a century that neither drawing nor wedding took plape 011 May 1. In, 1839, in 1840, in 186Q, and now, no dam T sels have presented themselves as candidates. In Kansas, 4Q young Qermans, h,ave. written to a local paper, complaining of the dearth of women, and pffering marriage to any marriageable ladies thas may choosg to visit them. A remarkable festival has recently taken place at Bruges, in Belgium. It is en titled " The Festival of the Holy Blood," tind a celebration takes place but once in fifty years. The legend is that Count Thierry, a Crusader, was presented by the King of Jerusalem with "a small portion of the blood of our Saviour, squeezed by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus from the sponge, after washing the body, which they had taken down from the Cross.'' In the presence of the Emperor Conrad, the French King, and other notable persons, the Patriarch dropped a few drops of this precious blood into 3. little cylinder of crystal. This was put into a velvet case, and hung round Count Thierry's neck by a chain of gold. The Count, thinking himself unworthy to be even the bearer of such, a treasure, handed it over to the Abbot of St. Bertin, and, with his companions, escorted the "Heilig Bloed," or Holy Blood, back to Flanders — to Bruges, in point of fact. There is no more precious relic in all Belgium. The Peace Society must contain a good many very sanguine people. The drift of its last report, according to newspaper summaries of it, is that peple all over the world are becoming convinced of the needless aed wickedness of war. Does the Society perchance include the Americans, who have saved their Republic by war ; or the North Germans, who have become through it a nation ; or the Italians, to whom it has given freedom ; or die Russians, on whom it bestowed access to the West ; or the British, who acquired by it their empire ; or the Turks, with whom it is a religious duty I That the nations are becoming convinced of the expensiveness of war is perhaps true ; but as to its wickedness -in se, the drift of opinion is towards the idea that it is often the quickest solution of problems otherwise insoluble. At the Victoria Theatre, London, the well-known Richard Weaver, " the converted coal-heaver," was to deliver a farewell sermon, and an immense crowd attended. The rush was so great that, amongst other accidents, a child of about three months old was dragged out of its mother's arms and trampled under foot, and was quite dead when picked up. There was, as is usual at these meetings, an inordinate proportion of women, and the screaming and fainting that ensued upon the crush to obtain admittance created considerable alarm! Court circles at Berlin, says the Tributie, are gossiping over the prospective marriage of Mrs Abraham Lincoln and Count Schmidtzville, Grand Chamberlain to the Duke of Baden. America is going to destroy Niagara Falls ! There is something not a little startling and "sensational" hi the announcement, but it is true. It is actually contemplated to cut a canal 1,000 feet wide and 60 feet deep from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River, that the vast body of water that careers to the Falls from the great lakes may be diverted into the Mississippi. Chicago proposes the undertaking so that she may become virtually a seaport town. Such a canal would substantially diminish the Falls to one-tenth their present dimensions, and dwarf the grand St. Lawrence to the appearance of a creek. But this fate in st<-re for the gigantic immemorial cateract is nothing compared to the fate that menaces the nothern countries of Europe, especially Great Britain, should the Chicagonese put their plan into execution. From a lecture delivered by an American captain it appears that if the Darien Canal should be constructed, the Gulf Stream would force its way throiigh the canal instead of being deflected as now upon the coasts of Europe, " and thus a sudden change of climate mij-ht spread disaster throngh the richest countries of the Old World, and England become a region of almost arctic cold." The Spiritualists held another seance under the auspices of the famous Dialectical Society, and it must now be frankly conceded that have achieved a success of the most extraordinary description. AMr C , unfortunately the gentleman has been too modest to " rap out " the other letters of his name, has made a renarkable disclosure. At an interview with the spirits, under the protection of Miss Kate Fox, who is designated " the celebrated American medium," this happy man was addressed through the table by a certain " Annie." At the first blu3h of the matter, Mr C protested that he never knew an Annie. Instantly his troubled thoughts were quelled. It was only his mother-in-law come to thank him for his kindness to her daughter. On one occasion, returning to his lodgings, doubtless late in the evening, he found a young lady in hysterics on the sofa, her mamma overwhelmed with tears, and a small tripod table dancing frantically. Of course he was scandalised, and not to be appeased despite the circumstances that the table ambled towards him, and made a profound obeisance. With a gravity highly commendable, MrC approached the dissipated piece of furniture, and, placing his hand reverently upon it, delivered himself of an invocation which it would be profane to repeat, wherexipon the hilarious spirit departed.