ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 498, 11 May 1850, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

Liverpool Wool Market, December 28, 1849. A fair amount of business has been done this week. This is generally a period of holiday-making, but there have been a good many buyers down this week, and there is evidently an impression that wool will be bought better on this side of the new year than afterwards. The American President's message, which was anxiously looked for, had not been received, the House of Representatives not having elected a speaker. It seemed that no speaker can be elected without the consent of at least two-thirds of the house, and the late speaker, Mr. Winthrop, is deficient ten or twelve of that number. The opposition canidnte was Mr. Cobb, of Ohio (put forward

by the Locofocos), and subsequently Mr. Potter, of Obio. On the 10th December, the thirty-first balotting took place, and with no better success than before. Till the house makes a selection tbe business cannot be proceeded with. — A letter from Washington says, "It is rumoured here, in the best informed circlet, that at an early day in the session, a resolution will be introduced into the Senate suspending til intercourse of a diplomatic nature with Austria, growing out of her barbarous and brutal inhumanity." — An extraordinary murder had been committed at Boston, in the United States of America. The victim was a Dr. Parkman, and the presumed murderer, Professor Webster of Cambridge College. It was supposed that the murder was committed in order to evade payment of a debt. The evidence was only circumstantial, but it seemed conclusive, fragments of a human body having been found concealed in a vault, to which nobody but the professor had access. — A proposal, made by an American citizen,-was under consideration in the Mexican Congress for tbe construction of a railroad from Vera Crux to Acapulco, on th* Pacific passing through the city of Mexico. Tbe Nicaragua dispute is not, it seems, connected with the claims of England to the protectorate of the Musquito country, though the same parties are involved. England, it appears, has claims on the republic of Guatimala for destruction of English property ; and after these claims had been often preferred in vain, Mr. Chatfield, our Consul, gave public notice that he should, in the name of Her Britannic Majesty, take possession of the islands as a guarantee for the payment. The republic of Guatimala, to evade the threatened seizure, ceded the island of Tigre to the United States by a treaty formed with Mr. Squires, the American Consul, who seems to have eagerly seized the opportunity, as the possession would be of some importance in connexion with the canal and railway about to be formed across the isthmus to connect the Atlantic and Pacific. Regarding this cession as an evasion of the claims of his country, Mr. Chatfield went with a Queen's ship, took possession of the island, and raised the British flag. Both the Republic and Mr. Squires protested, and the latter is said to have demanded the evacuation of the island within six days, though the treaty for its cession had neither been authorised nor ratified by the United States Government.