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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4210, 17 September 1874, Page 2

The news from Tasmania via Melbourne reports some very large failures in Launceston. Chief among those is the old house of Peters, Barnard, and Co., whose liabilities are said to amount to £160,000. In their fall they have brought down so many other firms, that business in the northern capital of Tasmania must have become completely, paralysed. That island was in a sufficiently depressed state before, and these calamities cannot hut he attended with most unfortunate consequences to the whole of the northern division of that Colony; It is rather strange to read in the English telegrams such an item as this : —“ The Marquis of Kipon has embraced Roman Catholicism, and resigned the Grand Mastership of the English Freemasons.” It was only the other day that the public were informed tJTat the Pope, who has lately been fulminating so strongly against the Freemasons, had himself been a member of the order from a period very early in life, and had only lately been expelled for non-compliance with some of the rules and requirements of the Society. The Order and the Church have always been widely separated, and they would now seem to be more apart than ever. The telegram gives no information, of course, as to or by what circumstances the withdrawal of the Marquis of Ripon from the Church of England has been brought about. The Marquis—the Right Hon. George Frederick Samuel Robinson, K.G. —wo observe, was born, in London in 1827, and succeeded to the estates of the family in 1859. He was better known as Lord Goderich. In 1859 he was Under-Secretary for War ; in 1801 Under-Secretary for India ; and in 1863 Secretary for War, with a seat in the Imperial Cabinet. He was afterwards Lord President of the Council, and in 1871 Chairman of the High Joint Commission which arranged the Treaty of Washington. He succeeded Lord Zetland as Grand Master of the Freemasons of England in 1870.