ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 652, 1 November 1851, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Gore Brown, C. 8,, of the 21st Fusiliers, has been appointed Governor of the island of St. Helena, in the room of Sir Emerson Tennant, resigned. Viscount Ponsonby, late Ambassador at Vienna,, has been placed on the first-class list of diplomatists on a pension of £2,500 per annum.

The Commissioners of Woods and Forests have decided upon widening Park-lane from Oxford-street to Grosvenor-gate to the extent of eight feet. This step has been taken on the petition of the inhabitants, who have been required I»y the Commissioners to pay half the expenses incurred.

As a proof of the improved value of property at Birmingham, the remarkable fact may be stated, that the guardians of poor, lately sold by public auction a portion of some land belonging to the parish, which originally cost, in the year 1824, only £9OO, for do less a sum than £5,000. thereby realising a profit of upwards of £4,300. Much other property, including the Infant Poor Asylum and the Old Workhouse, remains to be disposed of; and such is the demand for property, that it is supposed the proceeds will defray the cost of the New Workhouse now in course of erection at Birmingham-heath, intended to accommodate 1500 inirates. But if pauperism continues to decrease in the town of Birmingham in the ratio it has done during the last two years, the probability is that the new building, which is considered quite a “ Model Workhouse," will never contain above half that number of paupers. The diminution of pauperism and the contemporaneous increase in the value of property at Birmingham, are both remarkable facts.

The Earl Grosvenor, who had been making a tour in the East was expected to re•turn to England in June. This young nobleman was abbut to form a matrimonial alliance with the Lady Constance Leveson Gower, the youngest and beautiful daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland.

At a recent evening party in Aberdeen, it was proposed to dispose of the belle of the room by lottery. Twenty tickets were immediately sold at a fixed price. The joke ended not here. The fortunate adventurer has since married the lady. The Polish soldier, aged 127, who was received last year into the Hotel des Invalides, died in May last, in the infirmary of that establishment from an attack of grippe. The leaders and many distinguished members of the Whig party have presented the Right Hou. Henry Tuffnell, M.P., forDevonport, and formerly Secretary of the Treasury, with a splendid candelabrum, as a testimonial of their high personal respect and appreciation of his valuable and laborious services in the cause of reform, more especially during the four years be filled the roost difficult of all official trusts, Secretary to the Treasury.

Mr, George Thompson in America.— The honorable member for the Tower Hamlets has created a “sensation” in the Northern States of America, and bis bold and forcible harangues have tended in no slight

degree to arouse the thinking people of Massachusetts from a culpable lethargy on the subject of negro servitude. Mr. Thompson, after the experience of the last few months, speaks with less bitterness of bis own country, and evidently thinks that an English Tory is a truer friend of freedom than an American “Democrat!” Ina speech at Springfield, where he narrowly escaped personal injury, we find him saying, “in my own country it is my anti-slavery principles which opens the doors of every church to me, here it is my anti-slavery principles which shut the doors of the churches, and often the balls to me. I have been utterly outlawed ; not a magistrate will grant me the protection of the laws of the land, which save even the thief, the burglar, and the assassin from the bands of the mob ! From the floor of Congress to the furthest bounds of the United States. I am denounced by recreant statesmen, hireling priests, and a press whose mendacity is unparalleled in the world.” Some bold Yankee present attempted a defence of slavery, and put some questions to Mr. Thompson, but he proved a pigmy opponent, and the replies soon made him regret his boldness. A gentleman who was present advised the chop-fallen hero to “ begin practice by lifting the calf every day, and perhaps in time he might succeed in lifting the ox.”