NEWS BY THE ENGLISH MAIL.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2584, 2 July 1881, Page 2

NEWS BY THE ENGLISH MAIL.

It is stated in a St. Petersburg telegram that upwards of 12,000 convicts, on their way to exile in Siberia, arc expected to pass through Moscow this month. It is stated that about 105,000 emigrants from Ireland arrived at New York during the first four months of the year, or nearly 25,000 more than in the corresponding period of last year. An Ottawa telegram mentions a rumour that the Marquis of Lome, after his trip to Manitoba, will resign the Governor-Generalship of Canada and return to England. The United States Court of New York has dismissed the complaint of a steamship line against the immigration commissioners for the recovery of §1,000,000 paid as head money on immigrants.

Four hundred persons, according to official news from Odessa, have been arrested for taking part in the excesses against the Jews at Elizabethgrad last week. One hundred houses were pillaged, and two hundred persons were injured during the riots. On Easter Sunday morning, the Pope invited thirty cardinals to take chocolate with him, and handed to each of them a Latin hymn, composed by him in honor of St. Constantins and St. Herculantts.

The Jews in Podolia are being maltreated by the populace, and troops have been sent to quell the rioters. Many of the shops of Jews in the suburbs nave been plundered, and the windows of their houses smashed.

News received at Constantinople from Mecca states that some Arab tribes have entered and pillaged the Holy City and cut off the. postal communications. A caravan of Mussulman pilgrims from India has also been pillaged by Arabs. Letters received at Paris from Algiers tell a horrible story respecting the fate of the remnant of Colonel Flatters’s expedition after the massacre of their leader. Driven to take refuge in a cave and perishing with hunger, they had recourse to cannibalism, and ate fifteen of their fellows in succession. The death is announced of Comte. Leon, who was always reputed to be a natural son of Napoleon 1., whom he resembled in a remarkable manner. The count has died after a long and terrible illness at Pontoise, where he lived very quietly with his wife and his four children.

Her Majesty the Empress of Austria has just chosen from the very cream of the aristocracy twenty-eight new ladies of honour, nearly all in the prime of womanhood, and who will form a pleasing contrast with the wrinkled heads and shoulders of the official beauties of another age. The fifteen or twenty different new Court costumes which every one of these ladies will have to provide for the occasion will cost a mint of money. It is asserted that probate duty on about £60,000 will have to be paid on the late Earl of Beaconsfield’s will. Hughenden is said to be worth about £IBOO per annum, and this will, it is stated, be the only portion for the Earl’s heir.

Many of the Liberals are beginning to contemplate the great power which will be in the hands of Lord Salisbury as the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, It will be in his power to veto any Bill or clause in a Bill, that has been passed by the Commons. Many persons think this is too great a power to be in the hands of any Conservative peer, considering that we have a Liberal Government;

A most extraordinary addition has been mape to our Military Code, or rather is about to be made, in the shape of an Act for alternative punishments. It begins by assuming that many soldiers would prefer to be flogged, rather than be imprisoned or sent to hard labor. Then follows a verbose passage allowing soldiers, under rules to be issued by the Secretary for War, to elect to be flogged, instead of undergoing imprisonment.