ENGLISH.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1247, 23 January 1896, Page 36

ENGLISH.

London, January 15. The new steamer Rakaia grounded on the Sandbank off Cape Verde on the 6th instant, but floated off without receiving much damage, and proceeded on her voyage to New Zealand. Major Sir Claude Maxwell Macdonald, Commissioner and Consul-General for the Nig'er Coast Protectorate, has been appointed British Minister in Pekin in succession to Sir N. O’Conor. Cardinal Manning’s biography, which is now published, shows that he was invited to stand as a candidate for the Papacy at the last election. The Mekong dispute with Prance has been settled. Mr W. A. Horn, of Adelaide, who fitted out the Horn Scientific Expedition which explored Central Australia in the middle of 1894, read a paper at the Colonial Institute dealing with his travels. He stated that the reports of the scientists who accompanied the expedition will be published in February. Sir Henry Norman, late Governor of Queensland, in an interview, stated that the principal towns of that colony were suffering from dissolute unemployed, and th it there is a splendid field in Queensland for energetic immigrants. Two collisions have occurred in the English Channel, resulting in the drowning of IS persons. Purkess, late manager of the Woodford Green branch of the London Joint Stock Bank, who confessed to the embezzlement of .£IB,OOO, has been sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. He said he had spent the money in gambling. Mr Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, is issuing an order absolving Victorians from double death duties. The Victorian Agent-General is asking that the order be made retrospective. Mr Justice Stirling has decided that it would be quite legal for the Queensland Investment Company to pay interest on calls paid in advance out of capital. The committee set up by the Scottish depositors in the English, Scottish and Australian Bank is disposed to approve of the proposed modification of the reconstruction scheme. London, January 16. Great Britain accepts the Mekong boundary delimitation.