MAIL NEWS.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1007, 9 March 1883, Page 4

MAIL NEWS.

The Eoyal Geographical Society of London are favourable to making Franz Joseph Land a base from which to reach the North Pole. At a recent meeting Mr Leigh Smith and Mr Mclntosh urged this. The Irish prisoners, charged with conspiracy against the Government, will be committed in April for trial.

The London Times, in an editorial on February 12th, bewails farming proand says, “ A crisis in field work exists. It is water everywhere, and a good sowing time is wanted, and it is surmised much of the autumn-sown grain is rotten. All Europe is in a similar condition.”

A desparate street fight took place in Scutari on the 18th, in which 20 Turks were killed or wounded.

Messrs Macmillan, publishers, of London, will issue an illustrated magazine on the Ist October in opposition to the American periodicals, Harpers Monthly and The Century , which have gained sufficient foothold in London to excite the jealousy and apprehension of publishers. Mr John Morley will be editor, and he intends to show that English drawings and engravings are not a whit inferior to American.

Mr Reginald G. Wilberforce threatens his publisher, Mr Murray, with legal proceedings for a paragraph in the last Quarterly Review , in which the latter disclaims ail responsibility for the most objectionable passages in Mr Wilberforce’s biography of his father.

The late Earl of Ashburnham’s collection of manuscripts has been offered for sale to the British Museum. It extends from the Saxon period to the the letters of Cromwell, and consists of 400 Tolnmes. The value affixed to the collection is £160,000. Germany and America compete for their possession. Heavy gales and floods prevailed in England on the 12th. Sir Henry Gall, before the Liverpool Chamber oi Commerce, $p February 12th, insisted on the importance of the colonial trade of Great Britain, and pointed out the strong necessity for England to continue to receive food and raw material at the lowest possible prices. England, he said, can no longer feed herself from her own produce. Davis, Healy, and Quin were lodged in Kilraainham gaol on February Bth, for three months. They will be treated os first-class prisoners. Judah P. Benjamin, Q. C., has retired from practice. The doctors warned him that the state of his health rendered prolonged argument in Court unsafe. Mr Benjamin was one of Jeff Davis’s Cabinet. The London Times eulogises him, and says he was a benefit to the English mercantile law. Mr Woodhonse, Poor Law Inspector, in answer to a demand for employment for the starving poor who assembled at his hotel on the Blh, admitted that there was distress in the County of Donegal, and advocated emigration, when some one in the crowd exclaimed, “We would rather die than emigrate.” Mr O'Donnell, M.P. for Dungaroon, tells the Lord Mayor of London in a letter that the Mansion House, in its relation to Ireland, is a leech sucker, not a helper, and that funds intended for the relief of Ireland found their way into the pockets of city swindlers or into the fair, round paunches of city gluttons.

The Cork Exhibition is to be held in the summer, and continue during 1883. It will be entirely free from all questions of patriotism and politics, and hopes are felt that ibis course may lead to its success. A despatch from London, dated February IS, says the British barque Glendmera, from San Francisco for Queenstown; foundered off Kinsale. The crew were saved. - The International African Society denies that it has any hostile designs in Africa. The Government Bill for abolishing the present Corporation of London excites a wide and deep interest, and is by the majority of thinking people regarded ns a very uncalled-for measure. It deprives the Corporation of all its privileges which it at present enjoys, takes away from the city the control of its own police: force, and divides the whole metropolis into wards, which will.elect Councillors; These Councillors will elect the Lord Mayor, not the old city companies as heretofore. The Magistrates will be appointed by the Lord Chancellor, and the Aldermen will be elected only for a short term, not as at present for life. The City of London will merge in a certain number of wards in the metro-

polls, its ancient rights being' all swept away. Mr Charles Bright, the well-known lecturer on freetbonght and kindred subjects, returns to Australia by the steamship City of New York. He has been very successful in his American tour, regaining his health as well as improving his financial condition. The Board of Trade of San Francisco, at its annual meeting held oh February 6th, having referred the matter of the Australian steamship service to the directors of the Board, the said directors appointed a committee, at their meeting on the 9th, to take np the question, and secure such action thereon as may be deemed necessary for the purpose of securing a continuance of the said mail service connecting the United States with New Zealand and New South Wales. On the 9th January, Mace, while in New York, was advised of the drowning of his son, Albert Edward, in the Thames. He was 30 years of age, a

graduate of the Liverpool Institute, and engaged in mercantile life. Mace sailed for Home on the 10th. The coal miners of Pennsylvania have rebelled against the introduction of Hungarian cheap labour. Two members of the Salvation Army, young women, have been imprisoned at Paterson, New Jersey, on the 13th of February, for attempting to murder tlvir father. The Isle of Syke crofters have agreed that four ringleaders of the parly rcsistingservance oflandlord’a warrants should be surrendered at the Edinburgh Court, The Count de Chambonl proposes to issue a manifesto directly after the adjournment of the French Deputies. , The relations of Archbishop McCabe, of Dublin, were summoned to his deathbed on the 10th. A terrible accident occurred at Cincinnati on the 14th instant. Owing to inundations of the river the southern railroad depot gave way, throwing 100 people into 30 feet of water, the cars falling upon and covering them up. Among those lost was a member of Coup’s Circus Company. Mr Theodore Thomas’s great orchestra comes to San Francisco in June, at the expense of 50,000 dollars. Christine Nilsson has recovered her voice again. It was re, o ted to be hdpeh ssly impared. Mrs Langtry played “ The Honeymoon” in Chicago to an ovoflowing house. Her popularity is unabating. Terrific battles have taken place betwt en organised companies of Mexicans and bands of marauding Apaches in the Sierre Madre mountains, in which the Mexicans were victorious, securing a hundred scalps and horses. Two square miles of Cincinnati were reported under water on February 11th, and business men say the damages will reach millions of dollars. The gasworks were submerged, and the city placed in partial darkness. Mr Buchanan is a passenger by the City of New York for Australia, as correspondent of the Now York Herald. He will report on the Australian Colonies, and then make a tour of New Zealand. Edwin Booth, the American actor, has created a perfect furore in Berlin as Othello. On the. 11th he was presented with a silver laurel crown, amid storms of applause. Missis Booth'and Oharlesworth and three others were expelled from the Salvation Army in Geneva in Switzerland on the 13th February, being unable to account for the proceds of a collection at a meeting of the Army there.

A banquet celebrating the Spanish Republic idea was held in Madrid on Sunday, 11th February.