ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

Southland Times, Issue 1218, 4 March 1870, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

Irish Emai&toTs to Algesia.— The Fall Mall Gazette says that a hundred and thirty Irißh emigrants arrived in Algeria last month, and a glowing account of their installation is given in Algerian newspapers. Of the new comers, nineteen were married men with wives and children, twenty-eight were unmarried, and ten were orphans, between sixteen, and seventeen years old. All were in vigorous health. The greater number were either farmers or farm* laborers, and among the former a few men in easy circumstances, went to Algeria as pioneers, in order to decide upon the resources of the country. The English press; llndignantly writes the Aklibar t having spread such terrible reports about Algeria, emigrants could expert nothing ■ but famine and deserts ; but on seeing Bona and the green hills surrounding it, they, shouted joyful nurr ihs, and declared that they had found another Erin. AH obtained immediate occupation in a promising part of the country ; those who had a little capital received a grant of land. The others were hired aa laborers, i each laborer having a cow, and a hectare of land to himself. A priest accompanied the emigrants, who Will wait to see them settled before returning to Ireland. The Bishop of, Lichfield atst> the Education Question. — The Bishop of Lichfield has addressed a circular to his clergy, calling on them to state their mind oft the main points affecting the education ii question, in view of the probabie J le J gl4atipn next session. The chief subjects "t|> jbe considered, are, he says, these :~1. I Whether a " conscience clause " should be accepted by all Church schools receiving public support ? 2. Whether in any case education should be enforced ; and, if so, in what manner ? 3. Whether school , fees should be j abolished in any cases ; and, if so, how I free schools are to be supported ? 4. In general, to consider how to supplement the present system to meet the case of 1 children, at present attending no school. .

5. The question of local rates for the support of schools. 6. If a school be supported by local rates, whether i would be desirable to accept a mixed board of managers, to be elected by the ratepayers ? Death of Me "W. Barber. — The Daily Neios says : — " Mr W. H^ Barber, whose romantic story in connection with the great will forgeries of Fletcher and his confederates, was once familiar enough to the public, ' died on Friday of heart , disease, in his sixty first year. The Fletcher frauds were accomplished by means of forged documents dealing with unclaimed dividends in the Bank of England, the confederates being used by him chiefly to personate legatees and witnesses to pretended signatures. Mr Barber, who was employed by Fletcher in the customary war to prove the forged wills and transact other business in connection with them, was convicted in 1844 at the Old Bailey as an accomplice ; but j was subsequently proved, both by the separate and independent confessions of Fletcher and all his accomplices, and by numerous collateral evidences, to have acted in the business with bona fides. The case of Mr Barber would be memorable, if for no other reason, as the first example of an innocent man obtaining compensation from the nation for a wrongful conviction before a criminal tribunal. £5000 were voted to him by Parliament in 1859." A Magistrate on Ignorance and Edttcati >n. — Mr Kynnersley, the Birmingham Stipendiary Magistrate, was one of the principal speakers at a great meeting held in Birmingham last week to oppose the Education League in particular, and compulsory education as a principle, " You will tell me," said Mr Kynnersley, " that ignorance is a moral cv il — that it leads to vicious habits, and vicious habits to robbery and murder, to insecurity of life and property. But I answer that ignorance is not necessarily an evil to any one but the person himself. Ignorance is not by any means incompatible with honesty and truthfulness and industry, the kindest nature and the warmest affections, nor is learning incompatible with idleness, and profligacy, and brutality, and habitual fraud and dishonesty. Look at the revelations of our Bankruptcy Courts, where every one is more or less educated.. Look at the men who are at every Assizes and Sessions convicted of forgery and embezzlement — fraudulent bankers, fraudulent trustees. Nineteen out of twenty of these men had received a superior education." In another portion of his address, Mr Kynnersley said — « I do not deny the moral obligation on every parent to do the best he can for the education of his child, and I have not a word to say against any sort of pressure being put on the drunken, idle, profligate brute, who not only systematically neglects all the duties of a parent to his children, but who, by his example, does everything he can to make them as bad as himself — pests and nuisances to the whole community, leaving them to go where they please and do . what they please, lodge where the v can and live how they can, utterly indifferent whether they work, or beg, or steal. For the education of children of this description, however, we want no fresh legislation. Ifc is already provided for by the Industrial Schools Act, of which we have already so largely, but so ostentatiously, availed ourselves in Birmingham." Mr Mechi os Agriculture. — Mr Mechi has been lecturing on agriculture to the members of the Framlingham Farmers' Club. Mr Mechi argued that steam power had bo multiplied population, by affording increased and more profitable manufacturing employment, that we were no longer in the primitive pastoral period, when the people were few and the acres were many. In 1800 the population was 10,000,000, while the number of acres available for agricultural purposes was 45,000,000. In 1869 the population had increased to 32,000,000, and the number of acres remained at 45,000,000. The hungry millions of the manufacturing districts now demanded from agriculurists a change of practice. He considered it a disgrace that, wanting 10,000,000 quarters of foreign wheat annually, we permitted one-half of our acreage to remain in primitive pasturage. —Home paper. The Rev. George Gilfillan re-delivered his oration on the Byron-Stowe mystery at Sunderland, and m*de the following additional remarks : — Mrs Stowe, I see by to-day's Scotsman, intends not only to return to the inglorious charge, but to write a book, and next to give a history of the whole disgusting matter, explaining therein, and showing the historical connection of Lady Byron's letters to Mrs Leigh. We may well ask, where are her friends? Will no one— her sensible husband, her gifted brother — intarfere to tell her that, even though she should succeed in writing a plausible book, it will first of all come out under the penumbra of the prejudice which her " True Story " — so grossly false and outrageously overdone — created against her, damaging, if not her trustworthiness, her prudence, reticence, and sense; and, secondly, that the book is not likely to demonstrate her proposition ; and, thirdly, that even though it should, it will only perpetuate, along with the blasted memory of its subject, her ultroneous, officious, unwomanly, unenviable share in the miserable task, and send her name down to posterity as a sort of volunteer moral Mrs Calcrafib, or female executioner to a being whom, with all his faults, I pronounce ineffably greater and nobler than her small, sanctimonious, but viperous Xankee self. The Latest Quotations in thr Matrimonial Market. — Marriages scarce and depressed ; engagements dull and but few coming forward ; courtships long and lingering ; mercantile business dull ; scandal market overstocked ; beaux, supply light, stock inferior and in good demand; discarded lovers plenty and ■tock accumulating; —tattling, a good i assortment.

Consider \bleex<Mtementhns Ween <:ause I in the colli°rv villiaes of Etherly and Tofrhill, Bishop Auckland, during th-? past few days, by a disclosure, that has been made by the death of a woman who has fq^the past 50 years resvled in that neighborhood as a man, and married two wives. It is said that she cam' 6 from Scotland 50 years ago in the gu'se of a young man, and obtained employment at one of the collierieß, at which she worked as one of the men for some time, and paid her addresses to, and ultimately married a servant girl living at the village inn. After her marriage she relinquished working at the pit, and commenced to make besoms, yellow clay balls, and pipeclay rubbers, which she and her partner vended in the surrounding viU laces. They had lived together 23 yeare, when the wife died, and the reputed husband profesßed to lament her loss very much, but at length the grief wore off and she married a second wife, with whom she lived for a number of years, but not on the most affectionate terms, and eventually, by mutual consent, they separated. For some time the woman had lain on a bed of sickness, and been dependent upon some kind .neighbours, whom, However, she always prevent 3d coming fro neir her, and latterly she persisted in wearing trousers in bed. The other day she died, and when the neighbours came and were doing the usual offices of laying her out, the discovery of her sex was made. The deceased woman gave her name as Josiah Charles Stephenson, and jshe ha* often been heard to speak of being heir to some property about Berwiek-on-Tweed, but had no money^ to go and claim it. Many strange stories are told in conection with this singular individual's history. — Some News. The Pbiesthood is Belgium. — The" law of libel and the state of the priesthood appear to be both somewhat peculiar in Belgium. A highly respectable paper, La Flandre, under the beading, " Chronique clerico-judiciaire," gives some details " of the indecency which are modestly' concealed in the obscurity of. a learned language. The names of the offenders^ and the particulars of their several offences, are recited at length. The' recital that, follows reminds one of the catalogue of charges brought against the • brethren of most religious houses in England at. the dissolution of monasteries. It is of course unfit for publication. Part of Belgium used to be called the paradise of priests, but this was before La Mandre appeared. — Pall Mall Gazette* '- LOBD ShaJTESBFBY's BOX EMtGBANM.' — Last August, it appears, the Eev. BichardWake, an English clergyman, organised an association in England "to facilitate the settlement of English agriculturists on the Pacific Railway lands in the United States," and the association has purchased 38,000 acres of laud on the line of that road in Kansas, where* a village has been founded, and where there are now about 100 English families. The Earl of Stiaftesbury " has adopted this colony as a medium for establishing an agricultural college, and: a farm for training the boys he may send over from his institutions in England— the institutions referred to being the reformatory schools belonging to the Reformatory Association, of which the noble Earl is the President. He has purchased for this purpose 1280 acres of .the railway lands, near this English colony; and on Monday last a detachment of 20 boys arrived here from London in the steamer Bellona in charge of a superintendent, en route for ■-- the Earl's estate in Kansas. The National Land Company, through whom the land was purchased, took charge of the boys while here, and on Tuesday night entertained them with a fine dinner at the Astor House. The boys are from sixteen to eighteen years old, and are said to be very fine fellows. It is, of course, a good thing that these boys have beeii rescued from a life of crime, reformed, and placed in the way of becoming wealthy citizens of this great country. But one cannot help thinking that, if these are the rewards given to those who have been criminal and have repented, there should be some way of making the lot of those who have kept themselves free from vice equally pleasant. — New York Correspondent. From the Anglo.Australian in the European Mail we extract the following : — " "Whether or not Colonial Parliaments demean themselves like children playing at being grown up, the colonists who attend the Cannon-street weekly public meatings on the colonial question conduct themselves, in the opinion of very many (to ; invert Mrs Clerk's simile), "like men playing at children." Unless some alteration be promptly made in the manner of their proceedings, the whole affair will inevitably fall iato ridicule, and really become what a portion of the Press already esteems it, "a mere farce. 11 To begin with— no kind of order whatever , reigns at these meetings. Everyone seems to speak "as often as the spirit moves him," without any regard to the relevancy of what he says, or to any of the rules that ordinarily regulate public discussions. It is useless to blink the fact that the chairman, who is otherwise highly respected, is utterly unable to control the meetings, which are fast acquiring under his chairmanship many of the degenerate features of rt a free and easy debating club." Dea.wing. — A drawing-master, worrying his pupil with contemptuous remark, upon his lack of ability, ended by askings " Now, sir, if you were going to draw me, what part of me would you continence with first ?" — The boy, with a meaning look into his master's face, answered, very quietly, " Your neck, sir I" ; Friendship.— " Where are you going?' asked a gentleman of an acquaintance. — "To see a friend."— " Then I should like to go with you, for I never saw one yet." "Willie P— — , a little five-year-old, was playing with a honey-bee, when the angpry bee stung him. " Oh, grand ma," cried Willie, " I didn't know bees had splinters in their feet !"