MISCELLANEOUS NEWS BY THE MAIL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 52, 20 January 1872, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS BY THE MAIL.

The children of the Prince and Princess Louise of Hesse are suffering from whooping-cough. Tt is rumored in official quarters that Parliament will assemble at the end of January. A woman named Franter was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude by the Recorder of Newbury, for obtaining a shilling from a woman named Gregory under pretence of recovering some goods she had lost. Colonel C. Stirling, on the retired list, has committed suicide at Exeter. He placed the barrel of a pistol in his mouth, blowing away the left side of his head. He was fifty years of age, and is supposed to have been suffering from mental aberration. Sir Chas Dilke, M.P., delivered a lecture at Newcastle on “ Representation and Royalty.” At great length he contended that the cost of royalty is enormous, and that the expenditure resulted chiefly not in waste, but mischief. There was a wide-spread belief that a Republic in England was only a matter of education and time, and history and experience showed they could not have a Republic without they possessed Republican virtues. If they showed him a fair chance of a Republic free from the political corruptions, which hang about a Monarchy, then he would say, and he believed the middle classes in general would say, “ Let it come.” The “ Debats” comments upon some portionsof Mr Gladstone’s speech, which it regards as deserving the consideration of all Frenchmen. “ What we admire most,” says the writer, “is less the speech than the meeting itself of the Minister and his constituents. Can there be, indeed, a more striking evidence of the deference of the British Government to the national will than this act of Mr Gladstone, and could anything more clearly demonstrate to our Radicals the insignificance of the title of a Government than this example of a monarchy in which public opinion is the real sovereign ?” %The articles concludes—“ Happy is the nation where the humbler classes respeetfully submit themselves to the authority of the Queen and the Peers, and where the higher classes preserve by a due comprehension of their interests Royalty and the hereditary peerage. But still happier is the nation whose Governmen confines its action to enlightening and registering the people’s wishes freely expressed through the press and the elections,”

The “ New York Tribune” publishes the following despatch, dated Salt Lake City, Utah, October 21“ The jury in the Hawkins case has returned a verdict of guilty. The announcement caused much excitement. The counsel for the people moved that the defendant be taken into custody, and the motion was stoutly resisted by the defendant’s attorney. The prosecution, however, were firm in their demand that the case should take the ordinary course, and the United States Marshal was accordingly directed to hold Hawkins as a prisoner. Time was allowed to prepare a motion for a new trial and arrest of judgment. The penalty prescribed by the Utah statute for the crime of adultery is imprisonment for not over 20 years nor less thau 3 years, or a fine of not over 1000 dollars, or both fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the Court. This is a test ease, and virtually places all polygamists at the mercy of the first wife, who, under the act, is the only person who can institute proceedings against the husband.” A shocking accident occurred at the Mossbay Hematite Iron Works at Woikington. The works are only as yet in course of construction, and in connection with them a chimney stack is being built, and is at present 150 feet in height. When the accident occurred, four bricklayers were being drawn up the chimney in a cage. The strain on the rope, however, was too great. When the cage had been raised about 40 feet it gave way, and the men were precipitated out of it. One of them,named John Carney, from Birkenhead, was killed on the spot; and Mallon, their foreman, died very shortly afterwards. A third man, named Armstrong, was so severely injured that he is not expected to survive, having had both thighs fractured ; and the fourth man, Robertson, was seriously shaken by the fall.

The new street from the Thames Embankment at Black friars to the Mansion House, which is to bear the designation of Queen Victoria street, was opened by the chairman and members of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and took place in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators. The Lord Mayor, in some remarks, stated that there had been expended by the City of London on the Holborn Valley scheme, £2,359,000 ; upon the Metropolitan Meat Market,£l,o7s,ooo; upon Blackfriars’ Bridge, £350,000; upon Southwark Bridge, £.200,000 —or altogether £5,000,000. The u Economist” is persuaded that at the present moment there is as little idea in the country of abolishing the House of Lords as there is of abolishing the House of Commons or introducing j plebiscites . But a n|oderate infusion of life-peers of the same type as the new creation (Sir Frederick Rogers), though it would not of course remove the anomaly of hereditary legislators, might really do a great deal to attenuate the divergence between the two Houses, and to postpone indefinitely the political chances of the (at present) small party which advocates the abolition of the peers.