ARRIVAL OF THE SUEZ MAIL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5005, 9 April 1877, Page 4

ARRIVAL OF THE SUEZ MAIL.

PER S.S. BANGALORE. London, February 16. The Queen in opening Parliament proceeded in the State coach, drawn by eight creamcolored horses. This was the first time it has been used for a number of years. The weather was magnificent. The Queen is now at Osborne, and is in excellent health. The Chinese Envoys were presented to her by Sir Thomas Wade. The Duke of Connaught met with a slight accident when out hunting. Mr. May, Attorney-General for Ireland, has been appointed Lord Chief Justice. Mr. Gibson, Q.C., M.P. for Dublin University, succeeds him, and has been re-elected without opposition. Mr. Plunkett, M.P., has retired from the Irish Solicitor-Generalship, which has been accepted by Mr. Eitzgibbon, Q.O. The Rev. E. Bickersteth is likely to be the new Bishop of Rochester, consequent upon Dr. Glaughton’s transfer to the See of St. Albans. The renewed outbreak of smallpox at Blackburn continues. At St. Peters, in the Isle of Thanet, the disease is committing great ravages. The village is tabooed, and all communication with it is stopped. In London now deaths are not so numerous.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, with their households in town and at Sandringham, have been re-vaccinated.

Cleopatra’s Needle is to be brought to London and placed on the Thames Embankment at the sole expense of l)r. Erasmus Wilson. Mr. Froude has accepted the rectorship of Glasgow University. General Tschernaieff has taken up quarters with his family iri Ventnor, Isle of Wight. No public demonstration has been made. Lion, a Mexican, rode 505 miles at the Agricultural Hall in 52 minutes (?). He was to have ridden six hundred miles, but the horses could not keep it up. A poor woman in Liverpool, without expectations, has come into seventy thousand pounds through the death of a relative she never knew.

A man named Dance, who deserted his wife and three children and joined the Shakers in the New Forest, has been sentenced to three months for desertion. Disclosures were made that the Shaker men and women were in the habit of dancing together in a state of perfect nudity. In consequence of the appearance of the cattle plague in the metropolis an Order in Council has been issued prohibiting the movement from London of cattle, sheep, or goats. Similar orders have been issued in Germany and Belgium. Fresh outbreaks of rinderpest have also appeared. Miners in the forest of Dean consented to accept 10 per cent, reduction, on the understanding that when coal has advanced a shilling per ton the old rate should be paid. A number of convicts at the naval works at Haul Bowline, near Queenstown, attacked the warders with picks and shovels. The military were called out, and charged the prisoners with fixed bayonets. Treadaway was found guilty of the murder of Collins at Pimlico. A plea of insanity failed.

A frightful tragedy has taken place at St. Brien, in Brittany. A journalist named Le Foil sent for a captain in the 71st Regiment, whom he suspected of being intimate with his wife, and stabbed him on arrival. He then went and stabbed his wife to the heart, and finally, in company with a young woman, committed suicide.

A woman named Elizabeth Kirkbridge has been committed for trial at Penrith, charged with murdering and concealing the bodies of six infant children she has had during several years. There was a great sensation in court during the hearing of the case. A man she had been living with is the instigator of the crimes. He had left her and married. Considerable excitement was manifested some days ago on the discovery of a number of bodies in an undertaker’s premises near the Regent’s Park. An investigation showed that they were of still-born children, for the burial of which the man had received the fees, but had never removed them to the cemetery.

Commodore Hoskins has been appointed Aide-de-Camp to the Queen. The cattle plague has broken out at Altona, and the export of cattle has been completely suspended in consequence. The disease is said to have been introduced by foreign beasts There were fearful gales on sea and land during January. Between thirty and forty North Sea fishing smacks are missing, with about two hundred men aboard. The steamer George Washington was wrecked off Cape Race, and all aboard, twenty-four in number, perished. Thiers has had a severe attack of illness.

The Count De Chambord is said to be staying at Versailles. Many hundred papers in France have been fined in various sums for slanderous articles against the mother of the Empress Eugenie. English exports to New Zealand, £184,400. Special services have been held in connection with the consecration of the Rev. J. R. Selwyn in New Zealand as Bishop of Melanesia.

The Argus correspondent telegraphs that a small local loan for New Zealand has been successfully negotiated during the past month. The city of Christchurch instructed the Bank of New Zealand to invite tenders for the half of a £200,000 loan, the money to be employed in carrying out an efficient scheme of drainage for that city and district. On the announcement, The Times warned the colony of the danger involved in making these frequent appeals to the British purse. “The rapidity,” says the city editor, “ with which the Government and municipalities of New Zealand bring out new loans is not a good sign, and it is to be regretted that works so indirectly beneficial as drainage could not have been made with money raised in the town itself. Secured though it be on the rateable property of the town, said to be of an annual value of £30,130, this loan can hardly form an enticing subject of investment here.” The public for once, however, did not heed these solemn dissuasions, the terms, six per cent, debentures at a minimum of 98, were too attractive to be resisted while there is such a surplusage of money in the market earning next to nothing. Application has been made to the Stock Exchange Committee for a special settling day in respect of this loan, and an official quotation. The position of New Zealand securities in our market has undoubtedly been strengthened from the public announcement recently made by the Agent-General that the Government will not bring forward any further loan in London during the present year. In reply to Lord Granville, Lord Derby explained that the reason why the Blue Books do not contain Lord Salisbury’s account of the interviews with McMahon and Decazes and Bismarck, whilst that relative to his conversation with the Austrian and Italian Ministers was given, was that the former was of a far more confidential character, and that the publication would produce an unpleasant feeling abroad. The second reading of the Public-house Closing Bill was carried by a large majority.