NEWS BY THE ENGLISH MAIL.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 592, 11 December 1869, Page 2

NEWS BY THE ENGLISH MAIL.

Auckland had the advantage of receiving the English news first and most fully this month, the North Island portion of the mail having been conveyed thither by the s.s. Hero. The following are fresh items of the month's intelligence : Earl Derby is seriously ill, and gradually sinking. The Lord Chief Justice Clerk of Scotland, Mr Patton, who destroyed himself by drowning, did so from a sensitive dread of exposure of bribery practices in connection with the Bridgewater election several years ago. The exposure of the election corruption before the Commissioners at Beverley, Bridgewater, and Norwich have excited horror and disgust in the public mind, preparing the way for the ballot.

On the trial of Barret, for attempting to murder Captain Lambert in Ireland, the jury disagreed, and were discharged, One juryman, suspected of being fovorable to the condemnation of the prisoner, was mobbed and pelted; the Judges were also assaulted in their cai'riage. Two more agrarian murders are reported in Ireland, one a laborer near Cashel, and the other a bailiff in the county of Longford. Mr Nicholson, Kells, was fired at and wounded. The Fenian amnesty movement continues with unabated energy, but the seditious tone in which the release of the prisoners is demanded renders it impossible for the Government to yield. Colonel Kelly, one of the Fenians who escaped from the Manchester prison van, was supposed to have been discovered, under melancholy circumstances. One night two men were going westward in a cab, when one leaning out of the window overbalanced himself, and,falling,fractured his skull; he was taken to the hospital, where he died. He was known as Edward Martin, a printer's reader, but the detectives identified him as the missing Colonel Kelly. Further investigation, however, proved them mistaken. There was a great Fenian demonstration at the funeral of Kelly. The valuable letters contributed by the Times'' Special Commissioner in Ireland, and communications from influential landlords are ripening the opinion for the equitable settlement of the Irish land tenure question, and next session a measure ensuring long leases and legal compensation for improvements will probably pass, satisfying all except the extreme Radicals.

The United Provincial Synods of the Irish Church met, deliberated, and agreed upon a common representation of the clergy and laity for the new Church body. Dr Lee's motion to exclude the laity was defeated, and a proposition to prevent them exercising a voice in doctrinal subjects was also contemptuously rejected—the wealthy laity meanwhile subscribing liberally to an endowment fund. Broadhead, of Sheffield trade union notoriety, having been refused a license for a public-house by the magistrates, on account of his crimes, determines to leave the country, and calls on his friends to subscribe to pay bis expenses, A letter in the daily papers recommends galvanic shocks as a substitute for flogging as a punnishment to garotters and wife-beatcrs. The hitch between English cricketer? and the agent employed to engage them for the trip to Australia is likely to bo adjusted, and the following professionals will form the " eleven " :—J. C. Shaw, A. Shaw, J. Oscroft, F. Silcock, Willsher, Marten, Jupp, Pooley, Humphrey, Griffiths, and Southern. The machinery of the Australian Woollen Mills is being shipped on board the Thespian, at Liverpool, which leaves on the 10th October. An explosion of fireworks took place in a shop at Bayswater, which killed seven persons. New Zealaud flax imported into England, and dressed by machinery there, has realised £IOS per ton.

Several earthquake shocks have occurred at St. Thomas, and at Manila the town was visited hy an earthquake ou October Ist. Many buildings were shaken and damage done. Six lives were lost. Calcutta was visited by a cyclone on October 7th; no great damage was done. Large tracts of country iu the Rajpootana district of India have been devastated by locusts, and in some places not a green thing is left.