GENERAL SUMMARY.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 41, 15 March 1884, Page 3

GENERAL SUMMARY.

(FEBKUABY2tO 18.)

Parliament opens on Fobruary 5. London is already filling fast. Permanent town residences of country families have emerged from their wrappings, and temporary residences of the same class have been definitely accommodated. Everywhere the metropolis shows a perceptible stir and awakening.

Tho Irish parliamentary party have issued their programme for the session. The basis of the scheme is independent hostility to Government and Opposition alike. Mr Healy has assured us that Irishmen hate Englishmen with inextinguishable hate, and are to be reconciled by no process known to tho science of statesmanship.

A sculling race for stakes amounting to £400 took place on the Thames on January 2S between George Bubear, of Putney, and William Elliott, ©f Blyth, the former winning easily. In the case of Wolff and Bondurand, charged with conspiring to blow up the German Embassy, m which the jury at the Old Bailey were unable to agree, a nolle proscqui has been entered by the Crown, and the prisoners will not again be put upon their trial. The Marquis of Hertford died on January 25, of the effects of the accident m the hunting field. He had nearly completed his 71st year. He is succeeded m his estates and honours by his eldest son, the Earl of Yarmouth. I

Advices from South Africa report the death of Cetewayo, the famous Zulu chieftain, from heart disease.

Stellmacher, the assassin of Detective Bloch, has confessed that he murdered Police Commissary Klubech. He declares that Elsert, the money-changer, was murdered and robbed by Socialists m order to procure funds for the Socialistic agitation. Stellmacher was implicated m the plot against the Emperor of Germany. The Austrian authorities will ask Switzerland to extradite his accomplice.

At a banquet of leading members of the scientific press, De Lesseps stated that the scheme for creating a sea m the desert of Sahara would shortly be realised. Roduaire, the French hydrographer, who conceived the project of cutting through the sanddunes which separate the Mediterranean from the desert m order to transform the arid sands into a fertile country, is about to start for Tunis with a firman from the Sultan to begin operations. The Emperor of Germany is renewing his efforts to effect a reconciliation between Prince Frederick and his wife. He has appointed Count Reanitz m behalf of the Princess to meet Governor Blamenthal on behalf of the Prince to arrange a base of settlement.

The social democrats (Berlin) are making vigorous preparations for the coming election. The police broke up two meetings of working men. The Government, hitherto unconcerned, is now closely watching the present movement. London, February 13. —Michael Davitt delivered a lecture at Newcastle-on-Tyne last evening on "The lrish Problem and its Solution." The lecturer was received with persistent howling and hissing, and a rush was made for the platform. Thirty policemen interfered, and Davitt drew a revolver, which he held m his hand for some minutes. He summoned the occupants of the gallery to eject the disturbers from the hall, which they succeeded m doing, being assisted by the police. There Avas some fighting when the disturbers were being ejected, and several persons were severely injured. An American spiritualist named Bastian gave a seance at the Imperial Palace Vienna at the invitation of the Crown Prince Rudolph and Archduke John. Bastian summoned the spirits from a room adjoining the Exhibition Hall, whereupon a tall figure m mourning appeared before the stricken spectators. Suddenly the Crown Prince pulled a string closing a secret door to the entrance, when the spirit, who was Bastian himself, made frantic but vain efforts to escape, amid the laughter of the assembly. The London" Observer," commenting on the lost Greely Arctic Expedition, says it is quite possible, considering the chronic mutiny which seems the regulation life on board American Arctic adventures, like those of Kane and Hall, that the men murdered their commander.

Meetings condemnatory of the Government's Egyptian policy were held at Guildhall on the loth, and Panel's Hall, Piccadilly, on the 16th. There was a crowded attendance and great uproar at both. The Cobden Club has circulated 20,000 copies of a pamphlet by Giffen, entitled, " Progress of the Working Classes," which Mr Gladstone pronounces the best answer to the doctrines advanced by Henry George. Two Liverpool corn merchants, Jno. Herd, jun., and William Mullens, convicted of obtaining by false pretences £16,000 from the North-western Bank, have been sentenced to imprisonment — Herd to IS months and Mullens to three months.

Mr Gladstone was the subject of an unpleasant surprise on the afternoon of February. He was walking along Bond-street, unattended, on his way to the House of Commons, when suddenly a man seized him by the collar and brought him to a standstill. Mr Gladstone, with some difficulty, shook off his assailant, and continued on foot to his destination. It was asserted later that the man's action was due to a stupid wager.

15,000 people at Sheffield passed resolutions denouncing the Egyptian policy of the Government as a sacrifice of national honour and prestige. The Mayor presided. Henry Monteille and Co., dyers, of Glasgow, failed on February sth, for £103,000, with assets placed at £110,000. Bradlaugh's appeal against the Sergeant-at-Arms for removing him from the House of Commons, and not permitting him to enter, was disallowed by the Court of Queen's Bench, February Bth. James O'Kelly, Egyptian correspondent of the "London Daily News," supposed to be killed, turned up at Assioot, January sth. The New North Staffordshire Coal and Iron Company suspended February Ist, owing to the depression m the coal trade. The colliery employed 1,200 men with an output of 1,000 tons daily.

W. Thomas, Sons, and Co., stockbrokers, London, failed on January 31st for £835,000, owing inside the Stock Exchange and to customers. The Cornish Bank and Insurance Company are great sufferers. The failure created great astonishment. It is belie vedßlaueway, an absconding member of the firm, has fled to America. Moody began his mission at Stratford-le-Bow on January 23, and notwithstanding that a hurricane prevailed, 6,000 people were present. Lord Norrey's stud stables, near Oxford, England, were burned on January 23, with fourteen valuable horses. Sir Bevys, the winner of the Derby m 1879, was saved. The " Times" of February 3rd says it is decided that Parliament shall be asked to grant £2,000,000, for additional defence of the Clyde, Humber, Mersey, and Tyne rivers, the Bristol Channel ports, Aden, Singapore, Hong Kong, Point de Galle, and

Capo Town, and the islands of St. Helena and Ascension, all being of vital necessity for the British fleet, which m case of war will have to depend upon coaling facilities for their power to defend our possessions. The same paper states the British army is never more than adequate for the work it has to do, and the occupation of Egypt is a severe strain upon ordinary military arrangements. The importance- of improving defences may be judged from the fact that the property of Liverpool alone, which a hostile fleet might destroy, is estimated at £400,000,000. The proposed marriage between Lord Garmoyle (Lord Cairns's eldest son) and Miss Fortescue, an actress at the Gaiety Theatre, London, has been broken off, and the suit for breach of promise following compromised for £20,000. Lord Cairns and his son will soon start for a long tour m the United States.

Despatches from London to February 12th say there are symptoms of trouble m Hyderabad. The new ruler is not yet eighteen, and is an impassive voluptuary. Tho new Premier is not yet twenty, but haughty and indiscreet, while the turbulent nobles have begun to fight among themselves. General Booth, chief of the Salvation Army, intends to make a tour of the United States m March.

Manchester seems determined to have a ship canal. Promoters will go on with the bill during the coming session. The total estimated cost of the works is £6,904,000, and the canal will extend from Trafford Bridge over the river Irwell to the estuary of the Mersey, about a mile above Runcorn Bridge. It is a grand scheme, with very few engineering difficulties, by which wool and cotton ships will be able to go down to the centre of production. Naturally the bill will meet with much opposition from the Corporation of Liverpool and the local docks, harbour, and railway companies, but it is something m favour of the promoters of the scheme that they seem confident of success.

It may be presumed that Mr Parnell and his Cabinet have decided upon the course they intend to pursue, inasmuch as, opon the eve of the assembling of Parliament, we find Messrs Mayne, Biggar, and O'Brien can be spared to excite the minds of the electors of Newport, m Tipperary, by inflammatory speeches. These gentlemen may well boast of their success, for we doubt if 10,000 persons could be got together to listen to the most popular speaker m England. In Ireland, however, it is different, especially when the object is to declare that the Land Act and the Labourers Act are inadequate as a settlement c«f the land question. It may be inferred, therefore, from the agitation now going on, that amendments m these bills will be pressed for by the Parnell party, and that for the rest they will be guided by the chapter of accidents. Safe m the conviction that they are a party not easily to be snuffed out, it is their boast that they can afford to bide their time.

On the Continent, the Nihilistic upgrowth m Vienna is the most interesting topic. The Parliamentary Inquiry Committee holds its meetings with closed doors, under pledge of secrecy, and is attended by the chief police officials. The Hungarian Premier has got a resolution passed which means the practical abandonment of the attempt to legalise Judaic-Christian marriages. In Spain, Canovas del Castillo is doing his best to provoke a revolution. He has snubbed the Catalonian protectionists, has prohibited Republican dinners, which have been allowed for the last five years, and has sanctioned the imprisonment for eight years of editors of mildly critical ai'ticles.

In Berlin they have little politics and no amusement. The death of the Saxon princess has broken up the social season at a fast and furious period before the beginning of Lent, and court officials secretly rejoice at an excuse for pleading the Emperor's fatigue. The little politics is found m venomous discussions m Bismarckian journals of the vote of the American Congress on Herr Lasker, which has set all Parliamentary parties by tho ears. The break-up of the Garmoyle-Fortescue match promises ugly complications. All the people are fierce against Garmoyle for his ostentatious exhibition of his betrothed after the manner of the fatuous

" masher," and against his father, Lord Cairns, for his mixture of canting piety and attorney cunning, his professed acquiescence and secret hostility. The old man's letters are Miss Fortesque's most valuable possession, and the anxiety to obtain them her chief advantage. Gilbert, who acts as her friend, is told to make as hard a bargain for her as he always does for himself. She contemplates returning to the stage. Society here is deeply interested m the festival for the Albert Hall Hospital, m which our most fashionable ladies will figure m peasant dresses of various countries, and duchesses will serve wine and beer at extravagant prices to the bibulous. " Plunger " Walton is expected to return to America m April, for the purpose of meeting the debts of the English " ring. " He will bring with him the American jockey O'Donoghue, a3 he does not trust the English jockeys. Mr Charles Lewes, son of George Eliot, writes it is untrue that the great novelist left many note books behind her,dealing with numerous subjects. When the biography upon which her husband, Mr Cross, is now engaged and the forthcoming volume of essays are published there will remain almost nothing unprinted. M. Rouher left a voluminous history of the second empire.

Mary Anderson is trying to arrange to take the Drury Lane Theatre for several months, opening m June. She has tried the stage to see whether her voice is equal to the auditorium. Should Manager Harris agree to her proposition, she will produce " Romeo and Juliet" upon a grand scale. The newest form of ball-room dress is known as the ballet. In spite of the name, it is of normal length, but over the principal skirt, which is perfectly straight, fall a series of others, each eight or nine inches shorter than its immediate neighbour. Mrs Gladstone, who is a very homely and usually a very badly-dressed woman, has taken to wearing the richest clothes and the finest diamonds.

The case of the baccarat clubs has revealed unsuspected depths of aristocratic gambling m London. Charles Russell, who defended the culprits, declared that m many clubs judges, bishops, and statesmen play nightly for high stakes, and Russell ought to know, for he is notoriously the boldest gambler, as well as the greatest advocate, m the English courts. The establishment of a school of physiological research at Oxford has left the fanatical s anti-vivisectionists mourning. Mr Freeman, the historian and lecturer, with characteristic exaggeration, described the laboratory as a chamber of horrors. Another crazy crowd which opposes the Contagious Diseasds Act, had a prayermeeting of eight hours' duration on the day of the opening of Parliament. Some of the devotees are described as very excited, hymns were sung, and there were male and female speakers. Special prayers were offered for the Government and the newspapers, the members of the House, and the sisters m the lobby, but there was the unusual decency of silonce on the subject of the agitation.

Mr Gladstone was at the deathbed and attended the funeral of Abraham Hayward, the old essayist. Though he always wroto for the Tory " Quarterly," Hayward was a staunch Liberal, and loved Gladstone and hated Beaconsfiold. The Tory statesman took his revenge by describing him as an unmentionable animal, and when asked tho reason, said he lived on other men's heads. Thackeray also hated tho bitter-tongued old diner-out, and called him a sheep-faced fox with a wolfs fangs. Mr Gladstone has oeen again confronted with his family's connection with West Indian slavery, and a Conservative candidate declares that Gladstone's father received for his slaves £2 a head abovo the average.

The courts have had before them the will of a Lord Chancellor, making the fourth disputed will of England's greatest lawyers m the last few years. A Scotch parson has been dismissed for refusing to comfort tho paupers of the workhouse where he was chaplain with the doctrine of eternal damnation. A dean of the more tolerant Anglican Church has been preaching that gambling is sometimes legitimate. A bill for cremation has boon introduced m Parliament. The last discovery of the statistical fiend is that divorces and suicides are highest m Saxony, and the demon of warlike invention is experimenting m Germany on a torpedo balloon. The Invincibles.who have been recently removed from the Dublin prison, havo been distributed among the prisons at Portsmouth, Dartmoor, Perth, and Millbank. Among them are Fitzharris, better know as " Skin-the-Goat ;" Lawrence Hanlon, James Mullett, and Dowling, all of whoci are under life sentences to penal servitude for their connection with the Phoenix Park murders and the Field case. The prisoners were taken from their cells m the early morning m close vans. A strong body of mounted police guarded them as they were driven to North Wall, Dublin, and placed on board the Government steamer Valorous. During the transfer from the vans to the steamer tho prisoners were recognised by some of tho bystanders, and a cheer was raised. But the prisoners preserved a dead silence.