Worthing. Of eleven children, six servants, and two boatmen on board, nine children, two servants, and one boatman were drowned. 26.-Treaty of peace, friendship, and commerce, between her Majesty and the Tycoon of Japan, signed at Yeddo by Lord Elgin on the one side, and the Japanese Commissioners on the other. The ports and towns of Hakodadi, Kanagawa, and Nagasaki to be opened to British subjects, 1st July, 1859; a convenient port on the west coast, Ist January, 1860; and Hiogo, 1st January, 1863. A British diplomatic agent to reside at Yeddo, and consular agents at the other ports; the Tycoon having, on the other hand, power to appoint a diplomatic agent in London, and consuls at any port in Great Britain. 31. Close of the Encumbered Estates Court, Ireland. Since the first petition was filed, in October 1849, there had been sold through its agency 11,024 lots, representing a money value of 23, 161,093. The total number of petitions presented, including those for partition and exchange, were 4,413, and the mumber of conveyances executed by the Commissioners, 8,364, September 1.-Died, aged 62, Richard Ford, Esq., an eminent authority in Spanish literature and topography. Donati's comet visible to the naked eye as a star of the fourth magnitude. The comet arrived at its least distance from the sun on the morning of the 30th September, and for ten nights afterwards presented an appearance of great magnificence in the heavens. At one time the tail covered thirty-six degrees, and was calculated to measure 80,000,000 miles in length. On the 5th October the nucleus was very nearly in a line with the bright star Arcturus, which could be clearly seen through the densest part of the tail. On the 10th October the comet was at its nearest distance to the earth, 51,000,000 miles. After this the weather became unsettled, and the comet was rarely visible. The time of its revolution is calculated at 2,495 years. 9.-Conference of railway representatives at the Euston Hotel, London, to devise measures for improving the property of the shareholders, and increasing the efficiency of the railway system. 13. Accident at the Music Hall, Sheffield, caused by an explosion of gas, or, as some 66 66 13. The emigrant steamer Austria, 2,500 tons, trading between Hamburg and New York, burnt at sea when nine days from Hamburg, and 471 of the passengers and crew drowned by leaping from the ship, or swamped in the boats. At one time," writes a survivor, 'the scene on the quarter-deck was indescribable and truly heart-rending. Passengers were rushing frantically to and fro -husbands seeking their wives, wives in search of husbands, relatives looking after relatives, mothers lamenting the loss of their children; some wholly paralysed by fear, others madly crying to be saved; only a few perfectly calm and collected. The flames pressed so closely upon them, that many jumped into the sea; relatives, clasped in each other's arms, leapt over, and met a watery grave. Two girls, supposed to be sisters, jumped over and sank, kissing each other. A missionary and wife leapt into the sea together, and the stewardess and assistant steward, arm in arm, followed. One Hungarian gentleman, with seven children, four of them girls, made his wife jump in, then blessed his six eldest children, made them jump in one after another, and followed them with an infant in his own arms." 21.- Unveiling of the statue of Sir Isaac Newton erected at Grantham, his native place. Lord Brougham delivered an eloquent panegyric on the great philosopher. 24.--The Commission issued by the Bishop of Oxford, under the Church Discipline Act, to investigate the charges against the Rev. R. T. West, in connexion with the use of the confessional, take evidence in the Town Hall, Reading. The result was a report to the Bishop that there was not sufficient ground for instituting proceedings against Mr. West. Died at Vienna, Baron Ward, who from a Yorkshire stable-boy became Prime Minister of Parma, when he dethroned Charles II., and placed Charles III. on the throne. Doncaster races.-The St. Leger Stakes won by Mr. Merry's Sunbeam. October 1.-Explosion at the Page Bank Colliery, Brancepeth, Durham, causing the loss of ten lives. 4. The Directors of the Western Bank make a final call of 100l. per share on the shareholders, for the purpose of clearing off the liabilities of the bank to depositors. 5.- The Crystal Palace at New York destroyed by fire. 6.- Robert Bond, of Torton, near Preston, in a fit of jealousy at being refused by his sweetheart, murders her, by shooting her through the head, and then commits suicide by blowing his own brains out. 13. Thirteen lives lost by an explosion at the Primrose Colliery, near Swansea. 18.-Meeting of metropolitan vestrymen in St. James's Hall, to protest against the use of the confessional in the Church of England. John Carden, of Barnane, held to bail in the sum of 5,000l. to keep the peace towards Miss Arbuthnot in consequence of having recently made renewed attempts to accomplish her abduction. (See July 2, 1854.) 27.-Died, aged 63, Madame Ida Pfeiffer, traveller. Mr. Bright re-enters the political arena with an address to his new constituents at Birmingham, in which he defended the opinion he had expressed in opposition to Lord Palmerston's foreign policy, urged upon his hearers the necessity of Parliamentary reform, and drew an unflattering picture of the House of Peers, particularly of the spiritual peers; "a creature-what shall I say?-of monstrous, At a banquet, nay, even of adulterous birth. on the 29th, Mr. Bright strongly urged a peace policy in foreign affairs, vindicating his views by declaring that he promulgated none which had not been upheld by the most revered names in English history. We have past experience,' he said; "we have beacons, we have landmarks enough; we know what the past has cost us, we know how much and how far we have wandered, but we are not left without a guide. It is true we have not, as an ancient people had, the Urim and Thummim-the oracular gems on Aaron's breast-from which to take counsel, but we have the unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law to guide us; and only so far as we live by that guidance, can we be permanently a great nation, or our people a happy people.' 30.-Accidental poisonings at Bradford. The apothecary's assistant in Shipley having sent to a confectioner in Bradford 12 lbs. of arsenic in mistake for an equal quantity of 66 daff" or gypsum, the compound was made up into sweetmeats, 40 lbs. of which were sold to a small trader called Hardaker, who kept a stall in the market. The poisoned lozenges were in the course of the day vended to an extent which caused the death of eighteen persons, and placed the lives of 200 in great jeopardy. Hodgson, the chemist, was indicted for manslaughter at the York Assizes, but after hearing the evidence Baron Watson stopped the case, there being nothing in his opinion for the jury to consider. a letter The Emperor Napoleon in addressed to his cousin, the Minister of Algeria and the Colonies, intimates the withdrawal of his sanction from the attempt to obtain negro "If their labourers from the African coast. enrolment," he writes, "be only the slave-trade in disguise, I will have it on no terms." He recommends that an effort be made to obtain Indian coolies as free labourers. 31.-Died Major-General Sir W. Reid, author of "The Law of Storms," Governor of Bermuda and Malta. November 1.-The Governor-General of India issues a proclamation from Allahabad, announcing that henceforth all acts of the Government of India would be done in the name of the Queen alone; and he called upon the millions of her Majesty's subjects in India to yield a loyal obedience to the call which, in words full of benevolence and mercy, their Sovereign made upon their allegiance and faithfulness. 10. At the Central Criminal Court, Lemon Oliver, stockbroker, but not a member of the Stock Exchange, was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude for forging the signature of Robert Swan, and defrauding him of various securities deposited for safety in the There was also a London and County Bank. charge against him of appropriating to his own use 5,000l. entrusted to him by a lady named Dance, residing at Southsea, for the purpose of investing in Canadian securities. 12. The Daily News publishes two important despatches improperly conveyed from the Colonial Office, in which Sir John Young, the Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, advocated the abandonment of our protectorate over all the islands except Corfu, which strong fortress he recommended to be retained as a military post. Soon after receipt of the des. patches they were ordered to be printed for the use of the Cabinet, and the copies lay for some weeks in the Library of the Colonial Office A perunder the charge of the sub-librarian. son named Guernsey, who was a frequent visitor to the library, was tried on the 15th December for purloining the documents; and though his counsel did not deny that it was through him the Daily News obtained the despatches, he urged that the offence did not amount to felony, for which he was indicted. The jury returned a verdict of Not guilty. 17.-Died at Newton, Wales, where he was born, aged 89, Robert Owen, socialist. Round 18. The new great bell for the Palace at Westminster rung for the first time. the outer lip was inscribed :-"This bell, weighing 13 tons 10 cwt. 3 qrs. 15 lbs., was cast by George Mears, Whitechapel, for the clock of the Houses of Parliament, under the direction of Edmund Beckett Denison, Q.C., in the twenty-first year of the reign of Queen our Lord Victoria, and in the year of MDCCCLVIII." Diameter of bell, 9 feet; and height outside, 7 feet 6 inches. (See Oct. 1, 1859.) 23. The Court of Queen's Bench grant a rule to show cause why a mandamus should not issue, directing the Archbishop of Canterbury to hear Mr. Poole's appeal against the withdrawal of his licence. - Died at Arundel Castle, aged 68, Admiral Lord Lyons. 25. Came on in Paris, before the Court of Correctional Police, the trial of the Count (376) de Montalembert, for publishing the pamphlet "Un Débat sur l'Inde" (see May 19, 1858), in which he contrasted English and French institutions in a manner unfavourable to the latter. One passage said to have given especial offence was in these words :- "When I feel the pestilential influence rising higher and higher around me, when my ears ache with the buzzing of anteroom gossips, or the fracas of fanatics who think themselves our masters, or of hypocrites who believe us to be their dupes-when I feel smothered under the weight of an atmosphere loaded with servile and corrupting vapours-I rush to breathe for a time a pure medium, and to take a life-bath in the free air of England. I was unusually fortunate the last time that I gave myself this consolation, and happened to fall into the very midst of one of those grand and glorious debates in which all the resources of intellect and all the emotions of conscience of a great people are brought into play, in which the highest problems which can agitate a nation emancipated from tutelage are presented to be elucidated in broad day by the intervention of great minds; where men and things, parties and individuals, orators and writers, depositaries of the powers of the State and organs of public opinion, are called upon to reproduce in the heart of a new Rome the picture drawn of old, by a Roman fresh from the moving incidents of the Forum"Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, &c.'" M. Montalembert declined to withdraw or apologize for any statement in the pamphlet, and pleaded, both personally and through his eloquent advocate, M. Berryer, that it was not in excess of what was permitted by the Constitution. The President, addressing M. Berryer, said, "The court has suffered some very warm expressions and some very lively allusions to pass, but I am obliged to stop you in the dangerous course you are pursuing. You plead for the writings of M. De Montalembert; you renew the offence in endeavouring to justify it." M. Berryer.-"Allusions, M. le President! My language has betrayed me if it has in any way hid my thoughts." (Laughter.) The President." I cannot allow you to say that there is no longer liberty in France." M. Berryer."Ah! M. le President, if it be so, if it be necessary to deny what is clearer than the light of day, if it be necessary to lie, to lie towards my intelligence, to lie towards my conscience, I have nothing else to do but to be silent; I have nothing to do but to sit down and throw up my brief." The President." No, M. Berryer, you will not lie. In 1811, when you became a member of that bar which you have rendered illustrious, you took an oath which you have since renewed-an oath to observe the respect due to the laws; you have always observed that oath, and you will keep it also to-day." M. Berryer. -"I remember my oath: but you make me shudder, M. le President; you carry back my thoughts to a time when the praise of a good man, the approval of a virtue, of a good sentiment, of a good law, was not considered as a 66 crime. No, I do not wish to recall that period to your memory, legimus capitale fuisse. No, I do not consent that the praise of a free Government should be considered as an insult, for the reason alone, that this Government contrasts with the present institutions of France. This praise in the mouth of M. De Montalembert was altogether patriotic." M. Berryer then examined in detail the different heads of the accusation, and argued that no one of them was borne out by any passage in the article. Coming to the most important count in the indictment, that of an attack on "the rights of the Emperor under the Constitution and the principle of universal suffrage," he asserted that the Chief of the State was neither named nor designated. Not only so, but there was not a scrap of law to support the charge. The prosecution has recourse, in order to punish the pretended offence, to the laws of 1848 and 1849.... “Ah! gentlemen, do not regard as a crime our legitimate regrets. We are already far advanced in life, we have but a warmth which is passing away, allow us to die tranquil and faithful. We are sufficiently unfortunate in seeing our cause, our holy and glorious cause, betrayed, vanquished, denied, insulted. Suffer us to believe that we can preserve for it an inviolable attachment in the bottom of our hearts. Suffer us to think So. Suffer us to say so. Allow us to preserve and to recall the remembrance of those great combats of eloquence which have made known to us, and have caused us to love, the generous institutions which we have defended, which we will always defend, and to which we will be faithful to our very last hour." The judges, after deliberating an hour, inflicted a fine of 6000 francs, and ordered the Count to be imprisoned for six months. An appeal was made against the sentence, pending which the sentence was cancelled by the Emperor. The Count insisting on his right of appeal was again convicted, but had the sentence finally remitted on the 21st of December. 26. At a court-martial at Chatham, Private Thomas Tole, late of the 1st battalion 7th Royal Fusiliers, was found guilty of deserting to the Russians from the army before Sebastopol. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life. 28.-Sunday evening service celebrated for the first time under the dome of St. Paul's. The Bishop of London preached on the occasion to a crowded and attentive audience. 29. Mr. W. E. Gladstone, M. P., arrives at Corfu as Lord High Commissioner Extraordinary to the Ionian Islands. On the 3d he addressed the Senate in explanation of the object of his mission. "It avoided," he said, "every ulterior question that could derogate from the relations in which, by the consent of so many great States, England and the Islands have been reciprocally placed. The liberties guaranteed by the treaties of Paris and by Ionian law are, in the eyes of her Majesty, sacred. On the other hand, the purpose for which she has sent me is, not to inquire into the British protectorate, but to examine in what way Great Britain may most honourably and amply discharge the obligations which, for purposes European and Ionian, rather than British, she has contracted." 30.-Concluded in the Divorce Court, after a hearing of eight days, the case of Marchmont v. Marchmont, in which the wife, formerly the widow of a tavern-keeper in Threadneedlestreet, who left her 50,000l., petitioned for a judicial separation from her husband, formerly an Independent minister at Islington, on the ground of cruelty. The evidence showed that from the day after the marriage the respondent had indulged in a course of systematic cruelty in word and deed, threatening often, if she did not accede to his demands for money, that he would murder her. A plea of condonation was entered for the respondent, but it was not established. Judicial separation granted. 66 Meeting in Willis's Rooms, with speeches by the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Oxford, to direct attention to the providential openings recently made for the introduction of Christianity into China and Japan." 2. A sentence of indefinite suspension passed by a majority of bishops of the Scotch Episcopal Church, upon the Rev. Mr. Cheyne, Aberdeen, for teaching that there was a substantial presence in the Eucharist. 3. The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland issues a proclamation against societies of a seditious or treasonable character, and offers a reward of 100/. for such information as would lead to the conviction of parties administering unlawful oaths. 11.-Explosion at Tyldesley Colliery, near Leigh, causing the death of all employed in the pit-25 in number. The workings were generally considered dangerous, and many of the workmen had from time to time withdrawn in alarm. 16. At York Assizes two cases of the murder of sweethearts were tried. The first, Atkinson, of Darley, a person of weak intellect but easily excited, who had cut the girl's throat in eight different places, and then threw her into a ditch, was acquitted on the ground of insanity. The other, Whitworth, of Threapham, who made a brutal attack with a knife on the young woman, inflicting injuries from which she died in a few days, was found guilty, and sentenced to be executed. The Times, giving expression to an opinion current in commercial circles as to the suspicious manner in which the firm of Overend, Gurney, and Co. appeared from recent examinations in bankruptcy to be mixed up with the fraudulent warrant transactions of Cole, Davidson, and Gordon, Mr. D. B. Chapman, of the firm of Overend, writes to-day, that "it was most painful to us not to divulge the fraud under which we were suffering; but its magnitude took it out of the course of all ordinary proceedings, and compelled us to have consideration for our own position with the public.' On this the Times remarks, "We cannot admit that because a large sum was at stake this house was justified in confederating with swindlers in the circulation of false securities. We cannot allow that the laws that protect property do not apply to very large transactions, or that magnitude in the operation converts wrong into right. There is something dramatic in the comicality of Mr. Chapman selling these fictitious warrants, and starting at the idea of 'defiling himself' with a distillery." In another communication Mr. Chapman denied that any of the warrants had ever left their possession after the discovery of the fraud, and instructions were at once issued to the junior partners on no account to part with them. In delivering judgment in the case of Davidson and Gordon, on the 5th of January, Mr. Commissioner Goulburn expressed it as his opinion that Mr. Chapman was an accessory after the fact to a most gross and wicked fraud. In his examination Mr. Chapman had stated: "Mr. Gordon called at our office, and I said to him, I should like to go through your warrants with you.' He assented: upon which I called Mr. Bois, who brought a parcel of warrants. Upon turning them over, we observed three warrants endorsed by a most respectable house-Messrs. Gregson and Co. I immediately said, 'It is impossible there can be anything wrong with such warrants as these;' upon which Gordon said, "No; there is nothing wrong with the warrants: but the fact is, I have shipped the copper.' I was shocked. He stood before me in a different light, and has done so ever since." Again, in answer to Mr. Linklater's searching questions, the witness said, "When these warrants were applied for by the parties of whom we received the money, it appeared that there was not a sufficient quantity of spelter on the wharf to satisfy them. There were only eighty-two tons. Mr. Cole sent his clerk to inform us that he could not supply the spelter, unless we paid him 157. a ton, because he had abstracted the spelter and borrowed 157. a ton upon it. We said we would have nothing to do with Hagen's wharf, but if he would bring our warrants with the parties' receipt upon those whose money we had obtained, we would pay the 15 a ton. We did not pay the money (375) until the warrants were returned to us. The purchasers of our warrants never became aware they were of so doubtful a character." In answer to the question, whether the mode in which he carried out the transaction was to conceal the fact that the warrants were of a fictitious character, Mr. Chapman said, "I really must decline to answer that question. I only know the object was to fulfil our contract with the man whose money we had received."—"This," wrote the Times, returning to the charge, "is the evidence upon which we formed our opinion, that Mr. Chapman, acting for Overend and Gurney, did pass away for valuable consideration warrants which he knew to be of a fictitious character." 20.-Final suppression of the Indian mutiny. The Commander-in-Chief writes to the Governor-General that " the campaign is at an end, there being no longer even the vestige of rebellion in the province of Oude; and that the last remnant of the mutineers and insurgents have been hopelessly driven across the mountains which form the barrier between the kingdom of Nepaul and her Majesty's empire of Hindostan. 21.-Fall of Beacon-terrace, Torquay. Two of the occupiers were found crushed to death in their beds, two others sustained severe fractures, and many sustained lesser injuries from the falling mass. 22. Tried at the Middlesex Sessions Thomas William Capron, charged with assaulting Mr. Mowbray Morris, manager of the Times. The two parties appeared to have been friends some years ago, hunting and dining together; but eventually Capron's jealousy was raised by Morris's conduct towards his wife, and the acquaintance terminated in October 1852. On the 6th November last | Morris was to be married; and the defendant selected the previous evening to perpetrate the outrageous assault with which he was now charged. He took a cab, tracked Morris from place to place, till he found him at the house of his intended wife's brother; and, encountering the object of his search, struck him over the head with a stick, remarking, "I hope I have now given him two black eyes to go to the church with." In explanation of the alleged improper intimacy with Mrs. Capron, pleaded in extenuation, it was submitted in evidence that Morris was instructing her as a friend in an action for divorce she had raised on the ground of cruelty. The jury found Capron guilty, and he was sentenced to twenty-one days' imprisonment, a fine of 50/., and ordered to find sureties in 1,500l. to keep the peace. 27.-Accident at the Victoria Theatre, caused by a panic-stricken crowd from the gallery meeting on the staircase with a crowd waiting for admission to the new pantomime of "Harlequin True Blue." Fifteen lads were crushed or trampled to death, and thirty were picked up maimed or insensible. 1859. January 1.-Estrangement between France and Austria. Earl Cowley writes from Paris to the Earl of Malmesbury :-"It is the custom of the Emperor, when the diplomatic body wait upon his Majesty on the occasion of the new year, to say a word or two to each of them individually. This afternoon, when his Majesty approached the Austrian ambassador, he said, with some severity of tone, that, although the relations between the two empires were not such as he could desire, he begged to assure the Emperor of Austria that his personal feelings towards his Majesty remained unaltered." On the 3d Earl Cowley writes:-"The words spoken by the Emperor to the Austrian ambassador during the reception of the diplomatic body by his Majesty on New Year's Day, to which I had the honour to call your Lordship's attention in my despatch of the Ist instant, have, of course, been commented upon, with the usual additions and exaggerations that accompany the repetition of verbal statements, and have occasioned considerable disquietude in the public mind. Yesterday evening, at the Empress's reception, the Emperor accosted M. de Hübner with his usual affability; and it may be hoped, therefore, that this incident will be forgotten." The Moniteur of the 7th contained the following:-" Public opinion has been agitated for some days past by alarming reports, to which it is a duty of the Government to put an end by declaring that nothing in our diplomatic relations authorizes the fears to which these reports tend to give birth." On the 3d there was a fall of 1 per cent. on the French Bourse. 3.-Accident at the Polytechnic Institution, Regent-street, caused by the falling of the geometrical stone staircase when the audience were leaving in the evening. About 40 people were injured, but in only one case did the injuries result in death. 4.-At Agecroft Colliery, Pendlebury, near Manchester, the cage bringing seven workmen up the shaft is brought into collision with the gearing over the pit-mouth, and falls down the shaft, a distance of 360 yards. All its occupants were killed on the spot. 11. The saw-grinders of Sheffield attempt to blow up the house of a workman named Linley, on the ground that he was injuring their union. 12. The Earl of Malmesbury writes to Lord A. Loftus at Vienna :-"Her Majesty's Government entertain but little doubt that if Austria and France-the former an Italian, and both Catholic States--laying aside mutual suspicion, were to join heartily with a view to promote, by peaceful means, the regeneration of Italy, their combined influence would speedily effect a change in the present unhappy state of affairs, and contribute to establish con |