NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume II, Issue 81, 6 February 1864, Page 6

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

ENGLAND.

London, 3rd December.

Sir John Lawrence is appointed GovernorGeneral of India, and leaves England on the 10th inst.

Lord Elgin's death is universally regretted.

The Attorney-General has applied for a new trial in the case of the Alexandra, decided against Government last term. A rule was granted. Judgment would be delivered on the 7th inst.

The Intercolonial Royal Mail Steam Company have entered into preliminary negociations with the Postmaster-General of New Zealand for a monthly mail service between England, Panama, New Zealand, and Sydney. The annual subsidy for five years is to be £76,000 for the entire route—the sum to be guaranteed by New Zealand alone. The Great Eastern is advertised for sale for a judgment debt of £SOOO. The Confederate rams at Birkenhead are closely watched by the English gunboats. Ireland is said to be on the eve of revolution, supported by armaments from America. The emigration to the Northern States is increasing rapidly. An influential meeting against transportation to Western Australia has been held in London, Sir Charles Nicholson presiding.

Obituary.—William Cubitt, M.P.; Lord Chesham, Rev. Dr. M'Caul, Rev. Thomas James, Rev. Canon Maltby, Admiral Plumridge, K.C.G.; Mr. Bunning, and Bonamy Dobree.

DENMARK. The Schleswig-Holstein question has opened up a new phase. The King of Denmark died suddenly on the 15th of November, after three days' illness from erysipelas; and failing an heir, was succeeded by King Christian, father of the Princess of Wales ; while the Duke of Augustenberg has laid claim to the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, supported by the German Government and population, who appear determined on the partition of the states from Denmark. The latter Power is making active preparations for war.

FRANCE. The Chambers were opened on the 4th of November by the Emperor with a remarkable speech. He despatched to all European Governments a letter asking them to attend a Congress in Paris for the solution of European and Foreign complications. The majority of the Powers have sent replies to the above letter. Spain and Italy request from the Emperor an exact definition of the objects proposed to be laid before the Congress, before consenting to attend. England and Austria positively decline, on the ground that the Congress was not likely to settle disputed questions more effectually than the individual Governments concerned. It is believed the Congress will not take place.

On 3rd December, M. Fould made a financial statement, to the effect that the total amount of the deficit was 172,000,000 francs, and he proposes a loan of 300,000,000.

AUSTRIA. The Government is exercising a cruel and merciless severity towards the Poles in Galicia, and has increased the garrison in Venetia, and recalled an soldiers from their furloughs. It is surmised that Austria has been alarmed by the project of Congress, and adopts the above measures to cultivate friendly relations with Russia. GREECE. The new King of the Hellenes has arrived at Athens, where he has been enthusiastically received. The contumacious lonians, however, are giving trouble. While demanding incorporation with Greece, they repudiate the conditions imposed. They refuse to pay the £IO,OOO a-year required for the King's civil list, and object to the demolition of the fortifications of Corfu. SPAIN. Advices from St. Domingo state that the rebels were in full possession of the island, with the exception of the capital MEXICO. Tusco city, ninety miles west of Mexico, garrisoned by the French and Mexicans, has been captured by guerillas on October 27. Three hundred prisoners were taken. SINGAPORE. December 21.—The Alabama is taking in coals. Steam is kept up ready for starting. She captured and burnt the Federal ships Amento, Winged Racer, and Contest, in the Java seas. The crews were landed at Batavia. i

POLAND. European diplomacy has done its best on behalf of the poor perishing Poles, and miserably failed. The Western Powers have been outwitted by Muscovite guile and MachiavfcKan cunning. The public sentiment of Europe has been defiantly outraged, and every compassionate plea in the interest of the struggling patriots has been answered by heavier blows, by more fiendish cruelties. These gallant people have been shamefully betrayed by sister nations. While our hearts have been all ablaze with indignation, our rulers have been indulging in hypocritical courtesies towards the slaughterers of these patriots. Our Foreign Secretary cuts a very sorry figure throughout the whole diplomatic proceedings, and especially so at their close. About five weeks ago the valiant little Earl declared at Blairgowrie that, by her barbarous and illegal treatment of Poland, Russia had forfeited the rights she had acquired under the Vienna Treaty. Smarting with defeat, as he retired from the field, Lord Russell determined to let fly this Parthian arrow at the haughty victor. The shaft was prepared and ready to launch, when lo ! his hand was arrested and the bow relaxed by a voice from Berlin. Our Foreign Secretary was told by M. de Bismarck, the jackal to the Muscovite bear, that if such an offensive declaration was made, Russia would regard it as a cams belli. This threat so frightened our hero that he quietly and submissively returned the missile to his quiver, and sent instead a cold curt note, declining to prolong the controversy any longer. And so ends, for the present, our diplomatic intervention on behalf of Poland. The talk, a month ago, of a secret mission to St. Petersburg by Marshal Niel has come to nothing. It is, happily, an unusual sight which Warsaw now presents —a city under torture, stretched on the rack for long months, with the whole world the helpless spectator of her agonies. It is literally torture, the peine forte et dure, which Russia is applying with the avowed object of crushing the life out of her victim, and leaving nothing but a city of the dead to be rescued by the Western Powers. The forced exodus of the middle-class population, which, under the form of the conscription, drove the Poles into insurrection, is being carried on now more openly and thoroughly by wholesale arrest and deportation ; while the insults heaped upon the Polish population of the city by the Cossack whips—the personal search of the passengers in the streets, which in the case of women is conducted with brutal indelicacy—seem deliberately designed to goad the people to frenzy, and to provide some excuse for the wholesale butcheries and deportations which, while the population confines itself to passive resistance even Russia dares not perpetrate in the face of the civilised world. Only recently, in a suspected district, a colonel of Cossacks, under the orders of the younger Mouravieff, in fifteen days imprisoned 350 landed proprietors, and laid the whole district waste. In Warsaw it is stated that even young and modest women are subjected to the most brutal outrage by the officials of the Russian gendarmerie, while the Cossack whips are used on the citizens as freely as to dogs; and, to crown all, every woman appearing in the streets in mourning is to be marched off to prison and heavily fined. To look melancholy or sad exposes to similar penalties. To dress gaily and smile cheerfully is the only way to escape Siberia. In a noble, spirit-stirring proclamation, the National Government has exhorted the people to bow to the arbitrary interdicts of the enemy. Highknee-boots are absolutely forbidden to the ladies. No one is allowed to be out after eight o'clock without a lantern —a regulation which has led to some revolting cruelties, as I could relate, if space permitted. The citadel and other temporary prisons are choked with female victims, whole batches of whom are from time to time secretly sent off to Siberia. Several women and girls have been executed for slight offences. The determination to depopulate the country is openly avowed by the Russians. Of course, simultaneous with these villanies, the work of confiscation, pillage, and plunder goes on unrestrainedly. Poles are thrust out from all civil employment; and the payment of ruinous taxes, for a time resisted, is now enforced by the soldiery. The convents have all been seized by the troops, and a number of them converted into barracks. In some of them printing-presses and type belonging to the National Government were discovered, and other important captures made. Langiewicz, the Polish ex-Dictator, has applied to the Austrian authorities for permission to withdraw into Switzerland. Should his request not be granted, he asks that he may be delivered up to the custody of the Russian authorities.

BUSSIAN PREPARATIONS FOR WAR. The correspondent of the " Volks Zeitung" in the lower Danube, states that the armaments of Russia, both on sea and land, are

progressing witnout interruption. Great preparations are being made in Russia all along the vast coast of the Black Sea, and the presence of the Emperor and his two brothers in the Crimea just at present is not a mere matter of chance. The Grand Duke Michael is directing the armaments in the Caucasus. The Russians wish at any cost to get the mastery over the insurrectionary movement which has taken place in Daghestan and on the coast of Circassia, and it is hoped that an offensive army will be ready to take the field next spring, to proceed in case of need through Gumri to the plateau of the Turkish Armenia. This would be a counter blow to that expected in the Baltic Sea. Another army will be concentrated in Bessarabia, to be ready to enter the principalities and help the Servians. Communication between these two armies is to be kept up, it is said, through the Crimea, and the entrenched camp now being formed at Kertch would cover this line of communication.

AMERICA. There are no great battles to report this month. Since the dates by the October mail, the time has been mainly spent in military manoeuvring, in which the balance of advantage has remained with the Confederates. In Virginia, Lee has succeeded to perfection in mystifying and bamboozling the Federals, whom he has paralysed by his master strategy. When I last wrote, the Confederates were encamped on the old historic ground at Bull Run. Meade had fled in haste and confusion before their advancing tread, and fears for the safety of Washington were rife. The Federals had the narrowest possible escape from beleaguerment and isolation, and made a great sacrifice of munitions and stores in their precipitata retreat. Some remarkable coup de main was evidently near at hand, thought everybody. Not so; just as we were expecting tidings of a third battle at Manassas, and possibly the capture of Washington, there came the perplexing news of Lee's retreat, without any obvious ostensible cause. At once, without the shadow of a suspicion that this movement might be part of Lee's game—a mask, ruse, or trap —up went the yell of exultation and brag from the creatures who were pale with dread a few hours before. "Defeated again!" shouted the self-deluded dolts, both in America and in England. Scarcely, however, had the citizens and officials of the capital become conscious of a sense of renewed security, when back came Lee again with an impetuous rush, hurling Meade headlong before him. Once more all was fear, confusion, loss, and perplexity. No one could devine the meaning of these extraordinary movements. The Federal generals knew not where the blow might fall. Alarming rumors prevailed. Washington was in danger. A fresh invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania was meditated. A flank attack on the army of the Potomac was preparing. Finding that none of those befel them, the Federals, after the lapse of several days, ventured to send out some reconnoitring parties, who found that the enemy retreated before their advances. As the Confederates fell back, they utterly destroyed the Alexandria and Orange railway for about twenty miles—the repair of which, it was estimated, would occupy the Federals fully a month, and in the mean time would keep them at a safe distance from Gen. Lee. It now seems to have occurred to the conceited partisans of the Northerners, that while the Southern General had been leading the Federal troops through these military dances, he had been despatching large reinforcements to the North-west, to operate against Burnside, who, it appears, is not superseded after all. This, probably, is the truth; for it is generally believed that Lee has so weakened the covering army of Richmond, that it does not now number over 35,000 men. He, however, is strong enough to keep Meade in check. He holds the fords of the Rappahannock, which have been fortified, and his cavalry frequently pass from the southern to the northern side to harass and distract the Federals. Among the skirmishes reported was one at Beaton, the first station on the Washington side of the Rappahannock, where a severe defeat was inflicted on the Federal cavalry. At a subsequent date a more serious encounter took place at Kelly's Ford, in which the North claims a victory. An advance appears to have been ordered from Washington, and Meade's forces are said to have crossed the southern bank of the river, after capturing the defences. This was not accomplished, however, without a struggle. The Confederates left 1800 prisoners in the hands of their opponents, but the later confess to a loss of 800 killed and wounded. If the Federals continue their advance we may expect tidings of a general engagement, but an almost universal impression exists that fighting is all over for the present season. The astounding intelligence of the supercession of Rosencranz was communicated by telegram via Suez. It fell like a thunderbolt upon the Northern people. He was their hero, idol, and ideal general. He was a real Wellington. Why, then, was he so suddenly, so cruelly, stricken down ? All sorts of strange stories are told about him. Even in the earliest accounts of the battle of Chicamanga it was stated that during the latter and fiercer part of the struggle he was absent from the field: asleep in bed, say some—under the influence of opium, explain others. At all events, he was not at his post, and while Thomas was manfully saving the army from utter destruction, he had fled from it in despair. He is censured by the Government for having advanced from Chattanooga, contrary to express orders. It is further stated that he was deposed because he

| was afflicted with epilepsy, and had a fit on the 1 battle-field; because he had an attack of vertigo; because his relations both with Halleck and his subordinates are bad; because he keeps about him, as chief police, a notorious jobber and intriguer ; because he takes opium in large quantities ; because he is liable to fits of religious despondency; because he is superstitious, and asked his brother, a Catholic bishop, to say masses for the success of his army. Non-success, is undoubtedly the real cause of his fall. He has been well received at Cincinnati, and in a speech to the people said, that since the battle of Chicamanga the President had written to express his satisfaction at what was done. He bears his disgrace with magnanimity. The supreme command in the North-West has been vested in General Grant, while the valiant Thomas has been placed over Rosencranz's division. Both belligerents have been straining every nerve to muster the largest possible forces for the coming encounter, which is likely to be one of momentous importance. Besides the Chattanooga army itself, Grant has brought upon the theatre his own forces from the Mississippi; Burnside has some 40,000 men on the border between East Tennessee and West Virginia; while Hooker has effected his junction with the main body, j after a stubborn fight, in which the Confederates yielded ground. All these troops, exceeding 200,000 combatants, may at any time be brought to bear upon Bragg's army in the defiles of Georgia. For some time it was reported by the Washington newsmongers that Look-out Mountain, commanding Chattanooga, had been abandoned by the Confederates. This proves to be false, since later accounts represent them as still firing from that lofty position upon the Federal camp. The mountain is held by Longstreet's corps. The Federals, till Hooker opened up the j river, were becoming dreadfully straightened for supplies, horses were dying of hunger, and the soldiers had to submit to half rations. Bat as Look-out Mountain commands the railway by j which alone the Federal army can be furnished I with provisions and munitions of war, it is eviI dent that Thomas's troops must be still in a very j perilous position. Bragg's army has been j weakened in front for some unknown purpose; ; mysterious manoeuvres are in progress; and the ! combinations intended to crush Burnside are j completed. His advanced positions had been attacked previous to the 9th inst, and portions ! of two Federal regiments had been captured. j President Davis has publicly boasted of his ability j to drive the enemy entirely out of Tennessee. i Notwithstanding all that has been done, the | Federal communications are still very insecure. But for Hooker's column the beleaguered Federals would be starving. On the 27th ult, it appears, one of his officers, General Smith, succeeded in opening by force of arms a land and water communication between Chattanooga and Bridgeport, a place below Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River. By this movement the position of the Confederates on the Look-out Mountain was endangered, and on the 28th it was said to have been abandoned to the Federals, without any attempt at resistance. On the 29th, at midnight, General Hooker was attacked by the Southerners at Brown's Ferry, on the river, between Bridgeport and Chattanooga, and, it is said, " repulsed the assailants in grand style." The fight by moonlight lasted till four in the morning. The conduct of the Northern troops is reported as " splendid." The result is the opening of an easy communication for the Federals, both by railway and waggon roads, and by the river, relieving them from the worst anxieties of their somewhat distressing position. The bombardment of the defences of Charleston has been renewed ; but the Confederates appear to have turned the interval to as good account as their assailants. Some thousands of shot and shell have been hurled against Forts Sumter and Johnstone, and Greek fire has been rained upon the rebel city; a great deal of damage has of course been inflicted, and several lives sacrificed ; but the conquest of Charleston is seemingly as far off as ever. At New Orleans there are rumors of expeditions and great deeds to come. But the conquest of Texas is no easy task. The North being pressed for soldiers, and as the term of service of a large number of volunteers expires next June, Mr Lincoln calls for 300,000 volunteers. If the number is not completed by January next, the deficiency will be supplied by the draft. In all the recent elections, the Republicans have everywhere triumphed over the Democratic party. In Ohio, the majority over Mr Vallandigham was 52,000, without counting the vote of the volunteers in the army. The war appears to be costing the American Government about £50,000,000 a year; at least the official statement of the indebtedness of the Union on Ist May, 1863, was 964,000,000 dollars, and is for Ist September, 228,000,000 dollars, an increase of £13,200,000 a month. This includes every liability except unpaid bills, which, though large, cannot reach the figure mentioned in the Times. Taking the dollar at a fifth of a pound, which is very nearly its value, the debt is now (Nov. Ist) £260,000,000, and the liabilities perhaps £40,000,000 more, or £300,000,000 in all. By this time next year it will be £450,000,000, bearing an average interest of a little more than five per cent, per annum.