VICTORIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VII, Issue 486, 1 July 1857, Page 3

VICTORIA.

(From the Sydney Empire.) By the Simla steamer we have news from Melbourne to the 15th May. The Haines ministry had been so successful in their re-elections as to have made up more than the necessary constitutional complement of parliamentary members, and were, therefore, in a position to meet the house. After rather a close contest, Mr. Ebden, the Colonial Treasurer of the new ministry, had again been returned as the representative of Brighton, having beaten his opponent, Mr. Toynbee, by a majority of thirty-five votes. The numbers being for Ebden, 239—for Toynbee, 204. The poll book of the returning officer was lost during the election, and a large reward had been offered for it. In the Town Talk of the * Herald ' of the 15th, there is the following account of a remarkable apprehension for forgery:—" On Wednesday afternoon, a

man named John Houston was apprehended in Melbourne, upon a charge of forgery committed in Adelaide, under rather peculiar circumstances. About t'.e sth December, 1855, the prisoner arrived in Adelaide as surgeon-superintendent of the ship Constance, and was introduced to Mr Tomline, manager,of the South Australian Banking Company, by Captain Bagot, who had returned to the colony per the same vessel. Captain Bagot introduced him as a respectable man who intended to transact some business with the bank, and Houston's respectability was confirmed by a letter which he produced, from Major-General the hon. W. C. Grey. Houston stated that he intended making some collections of Natural History for the London Zoological Society, and produced a document purporting to be a letter of credit and authority from Mr. Mitchell, the secretary of the society, empowering him to draw upon the society for £500, and Mr. Tomline agreed to purchase the drafts, and the money was advanced to him by five several £100 payments. The first four drafts were subsequently repudiated by the society, and Mr. Mitchell's letter pronounced to be a forgery, Houston, after perpetrating the fraud, absconded from Adelaide, and succeeded in reaching London, but on arriving there, he ascertained by some means the detectives were on the look-out for him, and he lost no I time in taking a passage in the Hiawatha, for Geelong, and he arrived at his destination about two months ago. On the 22nd July, 1856, a warrant for his apprehension was issued in Adelaide, sent on to Melbourne, backed by a Melbourne magistrate, and entrusted for execution to detective Mainwairing, who tracked up the fugitive to a house in North Melbourne, and there arrested him. He was brought up pro forma at the City Police Court yesterday, and remanded to Adelaide. The prisoner is a gentlemanly-looking person, and made no remark beyond a request that he might be permitted to [send on some clothing and a small sum of money belonging to him at his late lodgings." We learn from the 'Argus' of May 15, that the excitement and insubordination which prevailed amongst the convicts on board the President hulk at the period of the late Mr. Price's murder have remained unabated to the present time. The Visiting Justice and magistrates have been frequently on the spot, and unremmitting in their anxious endeavours to devise a system of classification of the prisoners which will be more effective in the restoration and maintenance of order than that which is pursued at present. The conduct of the prisoners on Saturday last was so exceedingly boisterous and refractory, that orders had been issued to place the whole of those on board the President on a bread and water diet until further instructions. It will be imagined that affairs had assumed a formidable aspect before the authorities felt themselves Justified in resorting to such a means of reducing the unhappy men to a state of subjection. Their conduct has been, almost without intermission from the period referred to, of a most violent character, and the language which they use, threatening and profane in the extreme. The criminals in the other hulks are behaving themselves in a peaceable and orderly manner. The * Ovens and Murray Advertiser' says,— * A correspondent, whom we have every reason to believe well-informed, writes to us to say that a measure has been prepared by the Government for assigning to each of the four chief gold-fields a separate county court judge, with equity and insolvent jurisdiction. This measure will prove a great boon to this district, but we fancy that the general administration of the law would be much more improved if the whole of the magisterial business were united with the office.' ■