The Southland Times. TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1872.

Southland Times, Issue 1578, 14 May 1872, Page 2

The Southland Times. TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1872.

Bx the arrival of the Omeo, which left Melbourne just as the telegraphic news via Suez had been published there, we are enabled to present our readers with English intelligence up to the 12th ult. The news on the whole is of a most satisfactory character, and contains many items of interest of a matter-of-fact kind, though the high coloring which our American friends delight in is conspicuously absent. Their version of the same facts, when it comes, may afford an amusing and it may be instructive study. To begin with "what most concerns ourselves, wool has not been known to be so high during the present generation. "What more can our squatters desire ! True, I the seizing of these unfortunate two thousand tins of preserved meat by the Commissioners of Sewers had, for the moment, checked the demand for that article ; but we may trust the intelligence of the English buyer to find out very soon that a bad tin of meat tells its own tale by the bulging of the canißter, and that nobody need be taken in by it. One thousand bales of New Zealand hemp had been sold at full rates. The official name of that commodity is Phormiura, devised in the colony as a distinctive appellation, the fibre of the true hemp being of quite a different character; but the London price currents have not yet adopted the new word. Money was abundant, and the national prosperity was shown by a surplus of three and a half millions of income over expenditure. The income-tax was accordingly to be reduced twopence on incomes under £300, and the duty on coffee and chicory lowered to one-half. In spite of all this prosperity, however, the agricultural laborers seem to have made up their minds at last that they are under-paid, and determined to try what can be done by combination. The trades' unions, it is said, are furnishing funds. To those who know what the average English agricultural laborer is, there will be no difficulty in understanding that " the farmers and landlords are alarmed " at a portent so unheard of, especially if we are to believe that " the movement is assuming national proportions." The upshot of it cannot surely bode anything but good to a country where wages are 7s a-day, instead of 7s a-week. Sir Charles Dilke's motion on the civil list had caused a " scene " in the House of Commons. We are not informed what the motion was, or how it was disposed of, but, beyond the "scene," we may feel tolerably certain that nothing came of it. The Alabama question was in statu quo. The Continent was quiet ; the Queen visiting her daughters in Germany, and the Pbiwce of "Wales recruiting in Italy, where he had had an audience with the Pope. Eroto two places, distant by nearly the diameter of the globe, California and Asiatic Turkey, we hear simultaneously of earthquakes of unusual severity, attended with great loss of life. For the remainder of the news we refer our readers to the telegraphic details, which occupy nearly all the available space in our columns.