AUSTRALIAN NEWS

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 5254, 28 July 1885, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN NEWS

Sydney, July 16. The agitation respecting the execution of the convict Johns was led by Thcs. Walker, the Freethinker, who, upon the night previous vsed language of an inflammatory character. The Governor rec jived a deputation, but declined to go behind the decision of his advisers. On the morning of the execution a large crowd assembled outside the gaol walls, where speeches were made, and there was a good deal of cheeriug, all of which was heard by the convict when he was addressing the press from the scaffold. Johns died a Freethinker, although he was attended at the last by the clergy. General Scratchley is organising his small staff preparatory to starting to New Guinea, The Geographical Fxpedition has left Thursday Island for New Guinea.

| The Assembly has passed the Payment. jof Members' Bill. The maximum amount^ is fixed at £200 for the session. A meeting of electors at Mackay passed: a resolution that the proposed scheme to, ask Government to grant loans in aid of erecting sugar mills is the only solution of the labor difficulty. The Government has accepted a tender for the first section of the telegraph line 1 to Cape Yorke'; length 200 miles. j

Baroness Burdett-Couts is about to establish a British Honey Company, for the purpose of promoting the industry of: beekeping amonp the poorer classes of the community. At Leek, England, recently a bachelor of seventy-eight was married to a widow of seventy-five, the latter having lost her first husband only five months ago. A harpoon of a pattern used forty years ago was found sticking in a whale caught a few days ago on the coast of Oregon. A young married woman has been senteced to five years' penal servitdue for a burglary in the Edgeware road.