MAIL NEWS. (PER IONIC.) From the Auckland "Star.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 147, 27 March 1886, Page 6

MAIL NEWS. (PER IONIC.) From the Auckland "Star.

The R.M.S. Ionic brings a day's later English news than the Alaineda. The Queen's Dislike of Mr Gladstone. Our London correspondent, writing on the evening of the 29th, says : " Rumoura are current this afternoon to the effect that the Queen, whose dislike to Mr Gladstone has of late become as undisguised as it is pronounced, meditates solving the present crisis in an unconstitutional manner. The •Daily Mews,' whilst affecting to discredit such gossip, observes : • It is said that Her Majesty has declined to accept the resignation of Ministers, and that Lord Salisbury has been called to Od borne in the hope of inducing him to withdraw his resignation. We give currency to the report w ith hesitation, though we find it generally accepted in political circles. It is not consonant with the Queen's recent practice when a Minister tenders his resignation. What happened when Mr Gladstone resigned was told by the right hon. gentleman himself in the House of Commons on June 12th. The coniinunication containing the resignation of Ministers reached Balmoral on the afternoon of the 10th. Her Majesty promptly acknowledged it by telegraph, and the next day accepted the resignation and cimultaneoucly summoned Lord Salisbury to Balmoral. So tar from there being hesitation then, there was even an alacnty in accepting the situation as presented by responsible Ministers. VVe find a difficulty in believing that any variation has occurred now, though there is the undeniable fact that it i« not the leader of the Opposition, but the Prime Minister, who, after Ministerial resignation bus been proilered, is summoned to the Queen's presence " Another bit of political gossip atloat is to the effect that Lord Harciugton, recognising the impossibility oi again working in the same Cabinet as Mr Gladstone, means to retire partiaily from public life. The Liberal papers ieer at the " Pall Mall's" suggestion that Mr Gladstone should make Mr Parnell the new Ghiol Secretary for Ireland. The " Daily News," in the course of a satirical leaderette on the subject, observes: — "It requires no special acquaintance with Irish teeling to know that from the day Mr Parnell accepted ottice under an English Government his mlluence would be gone. More than that, he would be an object of daily denunciation on the part ot his compatriots. There is nothing an Irish politician resents so bitterly as to see one of his quondam fellow- workers promoted. If the "Pall Mall Gazette" does not know this, Mr Parnell does, and to offer him office would be to anticipate a rude rebuff. Delilah might with equal hope of success have invited Samson in his waking hour3 to come and have his hair cut.

The Panama Canal. Prior to sailing from Southampton tor Panama yesterday, M. Lesseps was entertained at luncheon by the Mayor and Town Councillors of Southampton. Most of the toasts at the luncheon \v?re of the usual conventional character, and M. de Lesseps's replies were of the informal postprandial species, not meaning too much, and fascinating more for graceful delivery than for substance. He had to make a number of | little speeches, in the first of which he recognised in the presence of the Mayor and Corporation as representing the civic life of the country, and in the presence of Lord Montagu as representing aristocracy, a visible proof and illustration of the unity of English life, whether in its social or political aspect — a proof, in short, of the native genius of the English people for self - government. There was nothing very new in this, but, as I said before, it was mainly an affair of manner and not of matter. He was loudly cheered — and it unmUtakeably pleased him — when he described the Suez Canal as being, in its financial aspects, the creation of French peasants, French shopkeepers, Frenchmen not only of the rich classes, but of the very humblest and poorest, who did not fear to invest their savings in an enterprise which the English Palmerstons and the English Stephensons would have burked if they could. The old man's face flushed, and his voice, raised in pitch, trembled a little as he made this allusion to la belle France, to which he had yesterday said good-bye for a time. His last word in the banquetting room was sug gested by one of the municipal emblems which lay before him. This emblem is a miniature silver oar. It lay beside the two large maces in front of the Mayor, and is emblematic of the seafaring interests of the great borough of Southampton. Seizing tbe miniature oar and holding ifc up to the view of tho assembly, he remarked that it typified the most primitive methods of navigation, being surceei^d by the =ail, and the sail again by Eteam — the mothe power and instrument which will find fresh developments in the Panama Canal — developments, moreover, by which Southampton will largely benefit. It seemed pretty clear that the great majority of those present fully shared M. de Lessepe's beliefs and hope3 about the future of the Panama Canal, and its bearing upon the future of Southampton, Lord Montagu, Mr Giles, M.P., Mr Alderman Savory, of London, and other speakers, regarded Livrrpool and Southampton as starting points for much of our future traffic with the Eastern Australian coaet ; and spoke in enthusiastic terms of the vast service whi h the new canal must render, by afibrdi' to American and European vessel - the quickest pos a ible access to the Pacific shores of the New Continent. For such veesels it abolishes the roundabout way, measuring many thousands of miles, by Cape Horn. The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, for example, will welcome the new canal as the greatest of blessings ; for at present the Company are, of course, obliged to break bulk at the isthmus port on the Atlantic side, transfer goods by the land route, and re-ship on the Pacific side. A "Telegraph " correspondent gives the following graphic sketch of an interview with the vivacious Sir Ferdinand at Southampton. Last night, at midnight, I was awakened by a loud clattering and thumping on the corridor somewhere near my bedroom in the Radley Hotel. It was the great engineer on hie travels, just arrived by the late train from London, secretaries, followers, bag and baggage. Judging from thi interval which passed before we were one j more as quie 1 ; at> chuich mice, Monsieur le Comte was in no particular hurry to get to bed. Yet he must have been up with the lark— if, indeed, the lark ever thinks it worth while to get up in weather of this sort. At any rate, when I went to call upon him, a few minutes before eight o'clock, there he was, epick and span, fresh as rosy - fingered morn, standing with bis hands behind him, and his back to the fire, and the sweetest of quiet smiles on his striking keen face. As he was neatly dressed, from black tie to polished boots, he must have been up betimes. M. de Lesseps is eightyone years old, yet he would pass for a

youngish sixty. A large section of the commercial and engineering world is either dead against his magnificent enterprise or sceptical of his success ; yet he pursue3 the object of his last ambition with the buoyant spirits and hopefulness of youth. It is impossible to be in M. de Lesseps's company without feeling for him not only respect and admiration, but alao a sentiment of something very like affection. How that dapper little man has laughed at the croakers, as likewise at Mrs Grundy, these twenty-five years and more ! Their most appalling prophecies of ruin have never made the slightest impression upon him. Their abuse and their ridicule have run off from him like water from a duck's back. When they called nis Suez plana line vaste plaisanterie he laughed at them. When they called him iinfou dangereux he laughed still more ; and, as all the world has known for the last sixteen years, he got the bettor of Mrs Grundy and the croakers, and heaped confusion upon them in the end. If you remark to him how the prophets speak evil of the Panama scheme he will tell you, with a shrug of his shoulders, how he heaid exactly the same thing twenty years ago ; in fact, he appears to regard the hostile criticism which is still so prevalent as part of the fitness of things. "Why," he says, "they would not believe me when I told them I could dig out seventy million cubic mdtres of the Sue/ isthmus in two years ; but they believed it when, in less time than my promiood two years, they saw a long procession of steamers sailing through. I am doing now what I did then in Egypt. I am taking ■« ith me to Panama skilled engineers who will see with their own eyes what I can do there. We will return to Em ope in two months, and in three years from that time my hundred million cubic metres of sand and rock will be excavated, and the Pacific and Atlantic oceans joined together."