ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 81, 9 May 1843, Page 2

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

(From the Hobart Town Advertiser, March 31 .) Papers have been received in the colony, by the Agostina, vid Launceston, to the 6th of December, and by the Johanna, direct from London, to the 3d. * The Queen had been for some days on a visit to Walmer -Castle, where we regret to find she has been seriously indisposed witk a . severe cold. Sir James Clark had. been in anxious attendance. On Saturday, she left for Windsor, where she arrived that evening by the Great Western.

. The Queen, was expected to he confined in January. It was supposed that the meeting of Parliament would not take place until the usual period, the first week in. February. A reduction in tlie army to the extent o 3000 was already spoken of.. .1 The iiefts of the termination of the war with

Chiifa and Afghanistan had been received with the utmost rejoicing in England. Orders were sent to the War Office, to the chief of the Ordnance Department, that the Park and Tower guns should be fired, and at two on Wednesday, the 23d November* thS Park guns, to the number of 36, were fired amid the chUers of a vast concourse of people. Upon the ratification of the treaty of peace with Affghanistan, a day is to be appointed as a general holiday, an illumination with fireworks in the Park, and other amusements, similar to the proclamation of the peace of 1814. Mercantile men were already speculating on the field open to commercial enterprise, and several descriptions of goods had already advanced in the market. Wool had risen a penny a pound. Spain is in a very disturbed condition. An insurrection had broken out in Barcelona, and General Van Halen had marched against the insurgents, and was preparing to bombard the city. The political* horizon in. France is cloudy; and..politicians anticipate a rising storm. The Republicans are strengthening their position every day, and the party opposed to the English are increasing every day, and exercise a great influence on the elections. The death of the King, who is in' a wretched state of health, is looked forward to with much anxiety by men of all parties. It is feared or hoped, according to the bias of party, that the Regency will not be sufficiently strong to maintain the present government in tranquillity. Our readers will probably remember the death of Lord Norbury, who was assassinated while walking in his grounds, about three years since. Some circumstances threw on liis son the cruel suspicion of parricide, Nothing transpired to throw any light on the subject until a few months since : —“ By a letter dated Pomah, September 29, from a surgeon in one •of the East ludia artillery regiments, which arrived by the last overland mail, and which has been kindly shown to us by a brother of the writer, a young gentleman in this town, we learn that the murderer of the late Lord Norbury has been discovered. It seems that the murderer was in one of the regiments stationed at Bombay. He was attacked with a violent illness, and, thinking himself on the point of death, made a confession before his officers that he was the man who shot Lord Norbury. By means of great medical skill the man had got better, and the government had immediately taken the matter.in hand, but had conducted every thing connected with the affair with such secrecy that nothing further had transpired.- We are not award that this circumstance has been before mentioned ; but as the discovery of the. murderer (if it really have taken place, of which we see no reason to doubt) will probably lead to other circumstances than the mere apprehension of the prisoner," we should not have been fulfilling our duty to the public had we not given insertion to the extract from this letter.” —Liverpool Standard.

The Admiralty have issued a list of regulations, under which transport convict ships, taken up for the conveyance of troops, and freight-ships engaged for the conveyance of troops, exceeding their tonnage, are to be surveyed and examined in future by the Master Attendant of Deptford Victualling-yard and the Inspector of Transport Shipping.

A Court-martial will, it is said, be held on General Shelton and Colonel Palmer, and four other officers instrumental in the surrender and retreat from Cabool, immediately on their return to India.

A distressing circumstance had occurred at Cambridge; a young man named Mortlock, most respectably connected, had. attempted the life of his uncle, the Rev. E. Mortlock, of Christ’s College, by firing a pistol at him in his apartments at the University. A shocking murder had been committed at a place called St. Helens, sixteen miles from Liverpool, by a man named Buckley, who cut his wife’s throat with a clasp knife, so desperately as to cause instant death. The unfortunate ,;Woman -was in the last , month of her pregnancy. ...

At a meeting of the Dublin Corporation, the freedom of the city was conferred on Sit* Robert Sale, General Nott, General Pollock, and Lieutenant Cuddy, of the 55th. Mr. Fitzpatrick moved that a like honor be conferred on the heroic Lady Sale. The price of wheat, at the London Corn . Exchange, was 40s. to 565. per quarter, equivalent to-5 S; and 7s. per bushel. The steam ship Great Western has been offered for sale by public auction at Bristol. The bidding was very spirited, but she was ultimately bought in at 40,000?. A treaty of peace has been concluded between Peru and Bolivia. A Post-office treaty between Great Britain and France is on the eve of completion. The effect will be a great reduction of the present rates of postage. The total rental of the county of Middlesex is at present about 5,990,000/., being an increase on the rental of last' year amounting to 81,282 A Mr. Jervis has proposed a general system of i n the Island of Barbadoes, with a.

capital of 1,000,000 dollars, in shares of 100 dollars each. f A new criminal code, abolishing all the privileges and exemptions hitherto enjoyed by the higher classes, and restricting the punishment of death to a very small number of crimes) has just been promulgated at Rome. It is expected that, when the Paris and Rouen Railway is opened, the journey from London to Paris will be performed, by way of Brighton, in about fourteen hours. The treaty of the peace with China will leave disposable a large land and sea force. A private letter, from Bombay mentions that Sir Henry Pottinger had proposed to take advantage of these means, and to proceed to Japan, And delnand satisfaction for the long-continued insults we have endured froha the Emperor, and to require admission for our ships to those islands on terms of mutual mercantile advantage. We cannot say how far oilr correspondent's information may prove correct* but we have, heard that this is not fhte first time tile matter has been proposed to Government. The cruelties exercised against the crews of vessels Wrecked on these islands demand that sbme steps should be taken; and no more favourable opportunity has been afforded than the presence of our ships end troops in China, from which they can be easily directed upon Jeddo and other ports in Japan.— Naval and MilitaH/ Gazette.

Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield has been elected a member of the provisional parliament of Canada. He was returned by a constituency in the lower* or French district. Greece.— Under the head of Greece the Malta Times says : —“ Oiii* letters from Athens to the 7th instant, continue to give the same unsatisfactory accounts of this couiitry. The new customs law has driven away the Ipsariots* who have returned to. Turkey. The Greek press cry out loudly for a constitution. A Patras paper, the Echo, gives a deplorable exposition of the Greek pspulation, and prondunces the poverty of the people greater than at any former period. The government taxes amount to 18 millions of drachmas, to which must be added six millions more local imposts, making a total of 24 millions, or 833,000/. sterling, levied upon a population of less than 800,0(30 souls, or neatly 22 shillings per head.” Scarlet. —ls a red colour “fort vive,” as the French say. It has always been a favorite colour among the great, It forms the robe of the prince and the noble ; and in many countries of the judge. It composes the uniform of the British army—to figure, I suppose, the trade of killing. It is much used in composition, and by the poets, in a figurative sense, to denote unblushing, abandoned depravity. Atrocious villanies are said to be crimes of a Scarlet dye. It is said of the idolatry among the Jews that their sins were of Scarlet. It is associated with cruel and sanguinary punishments. Persecuting Rome is (so said our fathers) characterised in the Apocalypse as the Scarlet whore, who is said to be drunk with blood. The devil himself is there described by the epithet of the great Red dragon, into whose fiery domains, before apostates were sent by the inquisition, they were clothed in Scarlet. Political apostates, too, are sometimes clothed in Scarlet, but not as in the last case* to motint the scaffold ; but the bench or the peerage; It is remarkable that almost every bad passion, or bad habit, paints the human countenance with this glowing colour. Pride, anger, shame, and guilt, the Bacchanalian revel, and the aldermanic feast, are all written on the forehead with a Scarlet pen. Some people Write the word with a double T— Scarlett. If this is meant to indicate a greater intensity of the colour, a deeper and more dismal shade of the bad qualities which the term figuratively expresses, the addition is surely unnecessary; the poor sufferers from Scarlet fever, which now rages so fatally in England, would think the double T no improvement in orthography.— Draco.

Removal op Prisoners prom tUe Fi/eSet Prison. — On Wednesday, and folsp the. day before, a noisy and somewhat ludicrous,. yet painful scene, took place in the interior of this prison, in consequence of an imperative ordei* having been received for the immediate removal of the numerous prisoners from'thence to the Queen’s Bench; in the Borough. Although this order had long been expected, yet no one was immediately prepared for. it, and some individuals Very sturdily refused to obey those who attended to enforce it. Among the latter malcontents was the Well-known old miser, Jonathan Broad, who, it appears, has been upwards of sixteen years; an inhabitant of the Fleet. It may be remembered that some three years since, When the new provisions of the Insolvent Debtors’ Act came into operation, property might be searched for, under the vesting order,- for the creditors. Under this authority old Jonathan’s (chambers and person were searched, and property taken possession of to the amount of nearly 2,000/. On Wednesday the - eccentric old gentleman absolutely refused to quit his quarters, and held the officers at bay a considerable time, until at length he was coaxed out of his lair by the promise 'of a gratuitous l dihner and a -treat. A hackneycoach was then proeuredjvand; the old veteran

passed tlhoUgli the gates in company with another well-known character. On Tuesday twelve prisoners were removed, and on Wednesday sixteen more were thus shifted across the water to Banco Regina. By the end of thd present Week this location will be entirely Cmpty —solitary and lone as the hearts of many of the individuals who have been transferrec from its walls. The future destination of those extensive premises is not yet decided upon. Had it not been for the withering encroachments of the railways at every point of the compass, it was the intention of the proprietors of the Belle Sauvage, Ludgate-hill, to have treated for it, but this idea is now entirely abandoned, and the building will probably remain closed a considerable time.

Longevity op an Eel. —A few days ago Mr. William Hunter, of Ballyboghillbow, near Greyabbey, on clearing out his well, which is situated on the summit of one of the highest hills in the Ards, found an eel in good health. He put it into the well shortly after his removal there, upwards of forty.years ago. —Banner of Ulster.